Chapter III: Part I: The Will to Live (2)

“And Maurice,” she replied. “Is he pleased with his new place, my roses and the window? If I were he, I should be enchanted to work near you.”

She had a way of following him in his preoccupations and preparing the way for confidences.

“It was about Maurice I came to talk with you. We had a discussion together just now. I was perhaps a little quick.”

“You, father?”

“As a matter of fact, I clashed with him. He left the house in anger, and anger is a bad counsellor. Go and find him, Margaret. You’ll know how to bring him back.”

She rose briskly without the slightest hesitation.

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps at Frasne’s office. Anyway, the town is not large. You’ll run across him. God forbid that you shouldn’t.”

“I’ll go there first.”

“You understand,” added Mr. Roquevillard quietly, “I couldn’t go myself.”

“Oh, no; not you. He isn’t worth it. He’s been too funny for quite a while. You’d almost say he didn’t like us as much as he used to.”

Father and daughter looked at each other and understood, but did not pursue the subject further.

She put on her hat and jacket hastily, and vanished in pursuit of Maurice. In the street she turned her back to the castle, went down Boigne Street, and by one of those numerous side passages that make a network of Chambéry, she reached the City Hall Square. It was the old Place de Lans, where the commercial life of the city flowed in other days. Some crooked buildings, one of those Italian houses ornamented with veranda and loggia, which may be decorative in photographs and postal cards, but which in reality are dirty, worm-eaten and forlorn, did not succeed in imparting any interest to it. On the wall of a building that had been restored, a black marble tablet was let in, bearing this inscription:

IN THIS HOUSE
WERE BORN
JOSEPH DE MAISTRE, APRIL 1ST, 1758
AND
XAVIER DE MAISTRE, NOVEMBER 8TH, 1763

Below, a gilded shield announced a lawyer’s office. Margaret Roquevillard searched for the historic landmark with her eyes and mounted the staircase. Her heart beating, for her hurried walk had taxed her strength, she knocked on the door of the Frasne office, entered and accosted the first clerk she saw, demanding:

“My brother, Mr. Maurice Roquevillard, please.”

“He’s not here, mademoiselle,” said the young man, rising with great politeness. “He’s not been here this afternoon.”

But behind a desk, another clerk, whom she did not see, threw out, in a sour voice that betrayed a long-accumulating grudge:

“Go and ask Mrs. Frasne.”

Margaret blushed up to her ears, but thanked him, and without further delay went, in fact, and rang the bell of Mrs. Frasne’s apartment. She was told that madame had gone out. She was relieved for a moment by this news, but after a few steps, regretted it, for her best chance of finding her brother had been there. Where should she discover him now? She went next to Favre Street, to Mrs. Marcellaz, her sister-in-law, who was just coming back from a walk with her three children. Little Julian threw himself upon his aunt, and would not let himself be separated from her, while her sister replied, indifferently:

“No, Maurice is not here. He scarcely ever comes to see me.”

A bump that Adrienne had given herself and was fretting over took up all her further attention.

After these checks, Margaret began to search first one place, then another, in the town, without much hope, walking very fast, as if fear were at her heels. Underneath the Porticoes she passed her fiancé, who made a movement as if to stop her; she passed beyond him, then turned and came back to him a moment.

“Good-day, Raymond,” she said, without a moment to lose. “Haven’t you seen Maurice anywhere?”

“No, Margaret. Are you looking for him?”

“Yes.”

“Shall I help you?”

“No, thanks. I’ll see you this evening.”

Raymond turned and watched her as she walked briskly off.

“She’s not very amiable,” he was thinking. “She’s always so reserved with me.”

But he followed her with his eyes until she was out of sight.

Margaret, pursuing her futile search, was accosted before the Cathedral by a young friend, Jeanne Sassenay, who was passing with her maid. She was a little girl of sixteen or seventeen years, young for her age, with blonde braids down her back, and a quite pretty mobile little face. She fell upon Miss Roquevillard, whom she admired very much.

“Miss Margaret, you are in a great hurry,” she cried.

“Good-day, Jeanne.”

“You’re copying your brother, who passed me in the street without saying a word. I’m old enough to be bowed to just the same.”

And lowering her head a little, she gave a downward glance, as if to lengthen the bottom of her skirt.

“Evidently,” conceded Margaret. “But where did you meet Maurice?”

“On the Reclus bridge.”

“Just now?”

“Oh, no. It was before my music lesson, an hour or two ago.”

“Where was he going?”

“I’ve not the slightest idea. You tell him for me that he’s not very nice.”

“I’ll tell him so most assuredly. With my friends especially it was unpardonable of him.”

“I forgive him just the same,” averred Jeanne Sassenay, bursting into a laugh, which showed a row of white and hearty little teeth.

Left alone again, Margaret saw the open door of the church, and stepped inside the holy place a moment. At this hour there were only two or three forms bent in prayer here and there beneath the vaulted ceiling. But for herself she had great difficulty in saying any prayers: sometimes her thoughts would run on what a charming wife this young girl, so lively and gay and yet serious, too, would make for her brother Maurice in two or three years: sometimes she would recall her father’s anxious face as she had left him. Of herself she did not think at all. At the threshold it struck her all at once that her meditations had not been for herself or her fiancé.

With new resolution she returned again to the Frasne offices, but with no more success than before. This time she did not ring Mrs. Frasne’s bell, but for the sake of peace resigned herself at last to defeat. As she went up Boigne Street again in the fading daylight, the tower of the archives and the castle turret opposite her were outlined against a reddened sky. In the flaming sunset these witnesses of the past rose up in all their glory, as if to show their splendour one last time before they crumbled down. It was one of those evenings of apotheosis that come in autumn, with a glory all the more moving for being fragile--one of those moments of grandeur that are the prelude to decay.

She was struck with these proud shadows etched on the conflagration of the sky, but instead of walking the more slowly to take in the spectacle, she cleared the old familiar porch at one bound.

“Has Mr. Maurice come in yet?” she asked at the very door.

“No, miss, not yet,” explained the maid. “Mr. Roquevillard is waiting for you.”

Her father had heard her, and was already opening the door of his study to let her in.

“Well, Margaret?”

“Father, I couldn’t find him.”

They said little, but, nevertheless, both father and daughter felt all the secret suspense and anguish of some menaced evil--an evil greater than those which youth is usually guilty of, they felt, for they had a foreboding fear of the strength of Mrs. Frasne.

III

THE CALVARY OF LEMENC

ON leaving his father’s house Maurice Roquevillard crossed to the other side of the town and made his way straight up to the Calvary of Lemenc, the place where Mrs. Frasne had appointed that they should meet.

The choice of this place in itself was a defiance of public opinion. It was a hill that dominated all Chambéry and was visible from all sides. In the old days it had been only a bare rock, of such considerable strategic importance that in the times of the old dukes there had been a beacon there, answering the signals of Lepine and Guet, those forward-thrusting summits that stand like redoubtable sentinels on the frontiers of France. You reach it nowadays by a path which rises upward from the Reclus district, above the railways, and follows on one side the high walls of a convent, and on the other a series of miserable one-story dwellings. At the end of this defile you come out into the country, and find yourself opposite a little hill, crowned no longer now with works of war, but with a chapel that stands out against the dear and distant background of the Revard hills and Nivolet. From there on the path is quite open. A thin border of acacias gives it scant protection. Cut into the very rock, it crowds out the meagre grass. Some unfinished stations of the cross, with empty niches, occur at intervals on the way up. It is an abandoned promenade, where even if you are visible from a distance you do not ever meet a soul.

The little chapel of the cross, Byzantine in style, consists of a dome and peristyle resting on four columns, their bases raised a few steps above the ground. An archbishop of Chambéry was buried there in 1889. His tomb is cut in the rock, and the interior of the monument is quite empty.

From the first station at the foot of the path Maurice could distinguish a figure seated on the steps between the columns. It was she, waiting for him. In vain, beside her, the pale gold branches of the acacias lightly showed their delicate sprays; in vain the purple mountains rose before him in their autumn light: he saw only her, framed at the foot of the cross. Her elbows on her knees, she rested her face upon her two hands, the fingers open and showing rosy and transparent in the sunlight. Motionlessly with her eyes of fire she watched him coming. He hastened to her all out of breath. When he was near her she rose with a single, unsuspected movement, like a careless fawn that surprises you with its unexpected play of muscles.

“I was afraid you weren’t coming,” she said, “and my life was over.”

“I was detained, Edith.”

He was so obviously upset that she could not reproach him. She took him by the hand and led him round to the other side of the chapel, where she showed him the lush grass, and a protecting shadow.

“Let’s sit down, shall we? It’s not cold. We shall be all right.”

They ensconced themselves side by side there, leaning against the wall of the shrine, which shut them out from Chambéry and the world. They could see nothing in front of them but the peaks of Nivolet in the full sunlight. She twined herself caressingly round him.

“I love you so much,” she murmured plaintively.

Was not their love delicious and dolorous both at once? They called each other by endearing terms, and yet they were not lovers. She held herself away a little to get a better look at him.

“You have been unhappy. Was it on my account?”

He reviewed his scene with his father briefly, telling of his discovery of their infatuation, and of the still greater difficulties it implied for their future.

“What’s to become of us?” he asked.

“Yes, what is to become of us?” she repeated. “Our secret is no longer ours, and I, well, I don’t know how to hide it any longer.”

“Our secret is no longer ours,” he repeated bitterly, “and you, you have never yet been mine.”

She leaned her head on the young man’s breast and yielded purposefully to him, lulling him like a child, the wheedling tones of her voice striking on his heart strings like fingers on the keys of a piano.

“How dare you say I am not yours? When have I refused myself to you, you bad boy? Will you go away from here with me? I am all yours. But you are so young, and I shall be thirty very soon. Thirty years, and my love, which is my whole life, began only a few months ago. I looked at you, and there was sunlight on you, and I crept out of the shadows to be with you. One day I’ll tell you about my childhood, my youth and marriage, and I shall tell it so as to see your tears.”

“Edith!”

“Ah, yes! People who find marriage the gate to light and gladness, and not the door to a prison, have a fine time of it scorning our frailty. When fate overtakes them, too, do they get any more than we deserve? But they don’t ever ask themselves that question. Happiness is due them as a matter of course. They don’t even do anything to protect it, and if they happen to lose it, they call it just their bad luck, anybody’s fault but their own.”

“Edith! I love you, and you’re not happy.”

She half raised herself, and took his face in her hands, with an adoring gesture.

“Give me one year of your life for the whole of mine, Will you? Come! Let us go away, let us forget--I don’t want to lie any more--I don’t want to belong to any one else. I can’t any more, now that I’m yours.”

She stood up with one bound. Behind the chapel, not far from them, the rock fell perpendicularly to the Aix road. She went up close to the edge, defying the empty air.

“Edith!” he cried, jumping up hastily.

She came back to him, more calm, and smiling.

“I love dizzy places, but I’ve more sense than that,” she said, coming back to her place beside him.

But it was only to begin again the worry about the future.

“Our secret is everybody’s secret now. My husband will know it soon. He suspects it already. He loves me in his way, but it’s a way that revolts me. I’m sure that he is spying on us. He’ll revenge himself somehow. He’ll manage it very deliberately, like everything he undertakes.”

“Listen, Edith. You must divorce him.”

“Divorce him, yes. I’ve thought of that. But suppose he should oppose me. And he will, too. And then a divorce always takes a year or two, perhaps more. It would oblige me to go and live with my people, away from you. To be always waiting, still two long years of seclusion: I should come out of it all quite old. I should be separated from you. From you, do you understand? I have thought it all over, you see. It’s impossible.”

They were silent a moment, and in the stillness that surrounded them as they leant against each other the deep calls of their two natures sounded. A rustling along the wall near them made them start.

“Some one is coming,” he whispered.

“Let us stay,” she replied imperiously.

They stayed. Their destiny was taking its course; already it lay in their own hands. But their witness was only a she-goat nibbling the sparse grass. A little girl, who followed after her with a switch, considered them a moment blankly and went on her way again. And they were sorry that their imprudence had not been followed by some irreparable consequence.

Time passed, but decided nothing for them. Should they take up their heavy chains again and go back down the hill; or should they break them, refusing to take any new precautions? She crept close along his side, trying to read the answer in his eyes.

“Your eyes, your dear eyes. Why do they turn away from me?” she pleaded.

“I don’t know,” he sighed, half closing them, growing dizzy as he had been just now when she leant beyond the precipice.

She kissed him on the eyelids, uttering sweet words that cloaked a bold resolve.

“These autumn days, these golden days, make me feel as if my heart were breaking. Each evening as it falls is cruel to me, because it has robbed me of a happiness. I am going away to-night, do you know it?”

At this unexpected finish he started, and disengaged himself from her arms.

“Don’t say that, Edith.”

“These last days, when I’ve told you that, you’ve thought it all an idle threat. You’ve deceived yourself, Maurice. I shall go away this evening.”

At other times when she had tempted him thus he had put aside her plan as impractical, even going so far once as to offer to leave first and send for her afterward when he should have obtained something to do in Paris. Disturbed, frightened, beggared of devices before this new assault, more keen than any of the others, and more pressing, he found himself trying still to hold her back.

“Hush! I’m staying here, and I love you.”

For the third time, masterful and overwrought, she repeated:

“I shall leave to-night. The train for Italy passes through at midnight. At midnight I shall be free.”

He knotted his hands in despair.

“Hush!”

“Free to cry out my love. Free, if you’re not there, to taste this new joy of crying without constraint. Free to adore you, if you come.”

“For pity’s sake don’t tempt me any more.”

“I’m suffocated in this town of yours. Its old houses smell musty. I am suffocated with tenderness, do you see? Here we shall always be kept apart. I want to enjoy my sorrow if you don’t come: if you do come I want to live and breathe. Will you come? Will you come to-night?”

In the end she overpowered his senses with her kisses, and he promised.

A moment she tasted her triumph in silence, then murmured:

“I have forgotten all my past.”

She led him away from their retreat, in front of the Calvary, round toward the sun. What use was there in any more concealment? They could see now in a great glory, under a clear sky, the radiant diverse forms of the land. There before them, stretching away to the farthest horizon, filling in all the empty space between the black masses of the Granier and the Roche du Guet, were the delicate outlines of the Dauphine Alps--the Sept-Laux, Berlange, and the Grand Charnier--powdered with the first snows and rosy now with the dying light of day. Less distant, and further to the right, the wooded slopes of Corbelet and Lepine, between which the valley of the Echelles was hollowed out, bore like a gold-red fleece the woods and forests that the autumn had set ablaze. Before these chains of mountains was a garland of delicate hills--Charmettes, Montagnole, Saint-Cassin, Vimines, whose soft curves and graceful undulations made one’s eyes love to dwell on them. Floods of light slipped down through their folds, making shafts of dust between their shadows. The sharp spires of the bell towers, the green and gold poplars, served as salient points in the scene. In the plain, Chambéry slumbered. And quite nearby, at the foot of the hill, a vine of dull red and gold threw in its striking note of joyousness.

“Show me Italy,” she bade him.

He made a negligent gesture toward the right, but instead of following the movement of his arm, she turned toward him, and was aghast to find his face so full of anguish. She understood. For herself she could view like a passing tourist these lofty beauties of nature’s mood. Her companion did not feel it thus. Was it not his own land’s supreme attempt to hold him back? Down there he could see La Vigie, and memories of his childhood, of a childhood all clean and pure, rose up from the earth like birds and came to him. Nearer, as he could tell from the vicinity of the castle, was “The House,” that place which each of us calls, just like that, “the house,” as if there were but one in the world.

She followed this last conflict that showed in Maurice’s eyes with a sort of envy, she who had nothing to give up herself. With a sigh she touched him on the shoulder.

“Listen,” she said, “let me go away alone.”

But he was uncomfortable at being detected in the most hidden and instinctive impulses of his soul.

“No, no! You don’t love me, then, any more?”

“As if I didn’t!”

She smiled at him, with an infinitely tender smile that he did not see. The fires in her eyes grew veiled. A woman of to-day, keen for sincerity and the individual life, grown suddenly impatient after nine years of silent waiting, she had decided, cost what it might, to take advantage of her husband’s temporary absence and escape out of the prison house of her marriage. Her romantic departure had been carefully prepared in all its practical details, and in its chosen hour. Maurice’s irritation with his father favoured her plan and left him almost at her mercy. And yet now, how could she best testify to her great love for Maurice? By associating him with her in her inevitable and dangerous destiny, or, better still, by leaving him here in his native place? Before her love for him she could not bear her life. He had, without knowing it, fanned the spirit of revolt in her. How could she separate herself from him? The offer she had just made him broke her very heart, and yet she insisted on it. Never before had she been so conscious of the detachment from herself which passion now and then lets loose on us, as a humid plain is burned dry by the devouring sun.

“One thing at a time, slowly,” she replied, “you would forget me. Don’t protest. Listen to me. You are so young. All your life is before you. Let me go alone.”

But he revolted against this injurious condescension. What was to keep him back? Had not his reason--the reasoning of twenty-four--shown the right of every one to seek his own happiness?

“I don’t want life without you,” he protested.

“I will stay,” she said again, “if you prefer it. I shall learn to tell better lies, you’ll see. When one is in love all wrongs are right for the sake of love.”

It was a proposal made too late. This time she knew, and watched for a refusal. It came, and she threw herself against her lover’s breast.

“I love you so I could die for you,” he murmured.

“Is that all?” she said. “I love you more than that.”

“It’s not possible.”

“Oh, yes. I love you so I could commit crime for you.” And without transition she added negligently:

“This evening I shall take away my dot with me.”

He recalled his father’s doubts on this point.

“Your dot?”

“Yes. It’s provided for in my marriage settlement. Did I not show it to you?”

“You haven’t the right to take it. The court only allowed it to you.”

“Shall I surrender what’s my own to my husband? And what should we live on if I did?”

“Edith, I shall have some money to-night. Then I can find some work to do in Paris. The father of one of my friends is manager of a large company there, and he’s promised to save a place for me in their lawyer’s offices. These last days I have recalled his promise to do so, at all events.”

She did not discourage this bland optimism.

“Yes, you will have to work. We’ll go to Paris later. But to-night it’s Italy.”

“Why?”

“Isn’t it the regular pilgrimage for honeymoons?”

She bent her head modestly, supple and pliant, and appeared all at once a young girl just betrothed--woman of thirty though she was, with her face that could change so easily from disenchantment to childish grace, as eager to taste of life as children are of those green fruits the very sight of which sets the teeth on edge.

The shadows were already coming up over the plain. Before them the map of the landscape grew clearer as its golden tones grew purple. She suffered from these too beautiful October evenings as from desire.

“To-morrow,” she said, “to-morrow.”

He took a step forward, and turning his back deliberately on the scene, he looked at her alone, as she stood leaning there against a column beneath the peristyle of the chapel. Was she not henceforth to be all his country to him?

They took a sort of revenge against the town by going openly down the hill of Lemenc together, as far as the Reclus bridge, taking the risk of meeting people whom they knew.

“It’s almost five,” she said as she was leaving him. “Only seven hours more.”

Hope revivified the flame in her eyes. Yet Maurice could only see in these seven hours, distastefully, the cruel time that he must pass in deception of his family. She guessed this, and sympathised with her lover’s lot, meaning to destroy in advance the influence that she feared.

“Poor child, shall you know how to fib for a whole evening?”

He started at finding himself discovered, and repeated to her, not without bitterness, her own lately uttered words.

“There’s nothing wrong any more when you love.”

“It’s horrible,” she replied, “you see. You can understand my shame and weariness. As for me, I lie because I love you. Courage, until to-night.”

Before going home he went hastily round to see various people, from whom he hoped to borrow the necessary money. From his great-uncle Stephen Roquevillard, an original old fellow who passed for a miser, from his Aunt Teresa, pious and charitable, he secured some loans, about a thousand francs, besides five hundred from his sister Mrs. Marcellaz, as well as from his future brother-in-law Raymond Bercy. He had to concoct some story about debts contracted during his student days in Paris. It was a ruse that caused him some humiliation--a sacrifice which he offered to his love, but without deriving much comfort from it. He did not stop to think, moreover, that all the strangers to whom he had applied had refused him, while his family, whether with tenderness or crustiness, had hastened to help him in his imaginary plight.

At six o’clock he returned to Frasne’s offices, just as the clerks were closing up.

“I’ve a letter or two to write,” he said. “I’ll lock up.”

He did write, as a matter of fact, to the most influential of his acquaintances, asking that some lucrative place in Paris might be gotten for him as promptly as possible. Having taken prizes in all his courses, he counted on the recommendations of his old law professors to help him. He was not easily dashed by the difficulties of existence, and had no doubt of his ability to surmount them easily. Where should the answers to his letters be sent?

He hesitated, then wrote down: _Milan, post restante_.

By these preparations, which kept his mind occupied, he succeeded in obscuring his regret at parting. It came over him again, however, sharp and poignant, when he crossed the threshold of his father’s house for the last time. He slipped in furtively and was at once noticed, but shut himself up in his room. Margaret came to look for him there at dinner time, and found him with his head in his hands beneath the lamp, so absorbed that he did not hear her knock.

“Maurice,” she asked, “what’s troubling you?”

“Nothing.”

“I’m your little sister, and you’re not willing to tell me your worries. Who knows if I might not be of some use to you?”

To account for his air of worry, which he could not deny, he fell back again on his pretended need of money, the story that he had just been telling in various forms. The girl stopped him at once.

“Wait a moment,” she said.

She disappeared, and came back a little later triumphantly, placing in front of him a fine blue bill for one thousand francs.

“Is that enough? Father gave me three of them for my trousseau, and luckily this one’s left.”

“You are mad, Margaret. I don’t want it.”

“Yes, yes, take it. I shall be so glad. A few bits of linen more or less will scarcely make me feel poor.”

She laughed, and he, his nerves all strung, felt the tears gather at the edge of his eyes. By a great effort he succeeded in controlling himself, and rested content with drawing the girl to his heart--a heart which, after all, did not belong entirely to Mrs. Frasne.

“Love me always,” he murmured, “whatever happens.”

She raised her eyes to his inquiringly, but was too generous to demand a secret in exchange for what she had done. Only, as she went with him to the dining-room, she let these words slip out quietly, like a prayer:

“Be nice to father, and I shall love you still more.”

Dinner passed without incident, thanks to the presence of Raymond Bercy, which made the meeting of father and son less trying. In the evening Maurice withdrew at an early hour, making the excuse of a headache. He went to his mother’s room, where she lay in bed still suffering. In his soul’s anguish he embraced the invalid in the darkness. She knew him by his kiss, and feebly called him by his name, patting his face with her hands. He stifled a sob and went out. Love condemned him to such cruelties.

He packed his valise lightly, so that he might carry it himself to the station, and put all the money he had in a pocket-book. With the loans he had raised that night, and Margaret’s, it made altogether a little more than five thousand francs, a total which seemed to him in his inexperience an important sum of money. Next he packed up the few pieces of jewelry that belonged to him and might be turned to account, and then, his toilette for the execution made, sat down and waited like a criminal condemned to death for the hour that should deliver him to his beloved. His reason, his infallible reason, sustained him in his resolve, represented to him the beauty of living his life freely and in his own way, rather than taking his place as the last of his class in the uninterrupted line of the Roquevillards.

... Reassured by Maurice’s attitude, and by a half confidence on the part of Margaret, Mr. Roquevillard went to bed and asleep without any immediate concern, deciding first, however, that he would send his son away from Chambéry. He would write to an old friend that he had done various good turns for at one time and another, who had knocked about the world a good deal and squandered his inheritance, but who was now settled in Tunis as a lawyer, and had prospered there. He had lately expressed in his letters a desire to retire from practice, or at least to take in an assistant. At twenty-four such a voyage, such a life, with all its novelty, might mean forgetfulness, salvation, for Maurice.

In the night he thought he heard a door open and shut, but silence descending on the house again, he fancied he must have been mistaken, and tried to get to sleep once more. After a rather long struggle, he lighted a match, and looked at his watch, which showed half an hour past midnight. He rose and left his room. At the end of the hall a ray of light appeared beneath Maurice’s door. He went up to it, listened, and hearing no sound, he knocked. There was no response, and after some hesitation he went in.

“He must have forgotten to put out his lamp,” he tried to persuade himself, anxiety already beginning to torment him.

With one glance he saw that the bed was untouched, that a drawer had been emptied. He went back to his own room, dressed in haste and ran like a young man, despite his sixty years, to the railway station. The time for the express to Italy must have passed, but there was still a last train in the direction of Geneva. An employee, who recognised him, gave him his information. Maurice had gone away with _her_. They had taken their tickets for Turin.

Alone there in the night he gave a groan, like some oak straining at the first blow of the axe. But, like the oak, too, he was full of resistance, and stiffened himself against fate.

It was not possible that a whole race, a family, not possible even that one life, could be compromised by a single youthful fault. He would find his son again, sooner or later, and bring him home. Or else fate would take charge of him as of the prodigal son; and as in the parable, too, he would be weak enough to kill the fatted calf on his return, instead of loading him with reproaches. The paternal hearth: there one comes back to dress one’s wounds, certain of not being turned away. A husband may desert his wife, a woman her husband, ungrateful children may desert their father and mother: a father and mother can never abandon their child, even if the whole world should give him up.

The town lay as if dead in the moonlight. Mr. Roquevillard’s steps resounded in the deserted streets. From Boigne Street, as he went up, he could see the castle tower clear before him, lengthened by the perspective of the night. A neighbouring tree traced the shadow of its leaves on the façade. In a few hours the hushed city would come to life again, to laugh insultingly at this family drama.

When he opened his door a white shadow came to him. It was Margaret.

“Father, what is it?”

In default of his wife he must share the weight of this trial with Margaret. He thought enough of her not to attempt concealment.

“They have gone,” he muttered briefly.

“Oh,” she breathed, understanding, and remembering the sad phrase her brother had used to her that evening.

Again father and daughter clasped each other to their hearts in a common anguish. Then tenderly he led her to her room and left her.

“Let your mother sleep, little girl,” he said. “She always finds out our troubles soon enough.”

IV

THE VENGEANCE OF MR. FRASNE

MR. FRASNE, bundled up in his overcoat on account of the early freshness of the air, and carrying a little bag in his hand, descended from the express in Chambéry at seven in the morning, after an absence of two days, and walked briskly home.

By the affected air of the maid who opened the door he knew immediately that something had happened or was happening in the house. He was a man going on toward fifty, rather well preserved, correct, cold and distinguished looking at first sight, but with thick lips, and especially a pair of pop-eyes, half concealed behind his glasses, that sooner or later gave one an impression of distrust.

“Everything all right?” he asked, in spite of his troublesome presentiment. “And madame?”

The servant threw a barely perceptible mocking note into her answer:

“Madame left last night for Italy, with her trunks.”

“For Italy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“At what hour?”

“At midnight.”

“Without any explanation?”

“Madame told me as she was leaving that you had been informed.”

“That’s true,” replied Mr. Frasne, with some presence of mind. “Bring me my breakfast to my study.”

And without any further show of surprise he entered his private room, which adjoined his offices. What use was there in putting any further questions to this girl, who was ill-disposed and plainly not very well informed? The unexpected news shot at him point blank had not yet hurt him. His only sensations were those of astonishment. A wound, even a mortal one, cannot at first be distinguished from a simple shock. It takes some time before suffering sets in.

His glance was sharpened and his nerves were taut when he caught sight of a letter lying on the table, sealed and placed almost aggressively within view. He took it in his hands, but without opening it, trying to guess its contents. There would doubtless be some explanation of this departure--carelessness, bravado, or indiscretion, who could tell? After nine years of marriage he was so little sure of his wife that all these conjectures seemed equally likely. Should he look for a companion in his wife’s flight, or would it be just the caprice of a neurasthenic, who would ere long come back to the fold? The name of Maurice Roquevillard did not enter his mind. Mrs. Frasne sought for men’s attentions, and amused herself with them: every one paid harmless court to her. He could not take seriously the banal friendship that she had shown for his clerk, even though he had been warned in some anonymous letters that the town was already preoccupied with it. He showed the rather general disdain of mature men for young people, with their propensity to take time for an ally and content them selves with hope. In proportion as a man loses his youth, it is always his own age or an age approaching it that he attributes to seducers. Sentiment in youth’s eyes goes for nothing unless it leads to some developments, and he knew how many adulterous thoughts are prevented by moral conditions in the country from going further. And, besides, how could he admit so unreasonable a hypothesis as her voluntarily renouncing a place so comfortable and untroubled? He did not understand it at all, but he found himself in the presence of a fact, and he attached importance to nothing but facts. He was irritated by this mystery which his penetration could not clear up, so he tore open the envelope and read:

SIR: _I have never loved you, and you knew it. What is a woman’s heart that it should be taken possession of by a legal document? I have stood my slavery for nine years because I loved no one else. To-day everything is changed: I set myself free in loyalty to myself, refusing to be shared. What is there to prevent me? In the very beginning of our marriage you objected to having children. A little hand held out to me might have been enough to enchain me completely, but our house is empty, and no one has any need of me. You thought me worth one hundred thousand francs in our marriage contract. You will think it natural that I take away with me the price paid for me. I have already paid for it myself with my youth. In leaving you I pardon you. Good-bye._

EDITH DANNEMARIE.

For Mr. Frasne, whether from professional habit or a positive turn of mind, everything in life, even sentiment, translated itself into acts and obligations. Our characters rule us even in our suffering: in this shipwreck in which his life was going down he was for the moment conscious only of the loss of his wife, not his money, even though he was not prodigal with money; but to revive his past and exasperate his sorrow he went instinctively to an old portfolio and got out the marriage contract to which the letter made allusion. With this bit of stamped paper he evoked more clearly the great passion that had taken his later youth in its grasp. He saw again at the church door a young girl, delicate and supple, whose movements and eyes betrayed the fever in her veins. It was at Tronche, near Grenoble, his native country. He came there each summer for his vacation, from Paris, when he was head clerk. He could not make up his mind, though on the brink of forty, to leave the capital for good, and buy a practice in Dauphiné. According to inquiries that he made, Edith Dannemarie lived with her mother in the neighbourhood, in a little house to which the two women had retired almost without resources after the death of the head of the family, who had ruined himself with cards. A young country girl with those eyes ought to be easy prey. Two years in succession he had attempted to get hold of her. She was waiting for a prince, for her fancy flew high, and was losing her patience with the long waiting, solitude keeping her imagination warm. Accordingly she rebuffed him, but not severely enough to send him away for good. She had discovered without preparatory studies the art of promising and refusing, and she practised it on a man whom conquests in an easy and sensually minded world must have made more irritable and nervous in the face of coquetry. He should have known himself defeated, but his desire was greater than his interest. Being alone in the world, after the loss of his parents, who had left him a goodly inheritance, he decided at last to ask formally for her hand--a hand which at one and the same time repulsed him and coyly exhibited the proper place for an engagement ring.

How could he construct again from the laconic clauses of a contract the traces of that love? One article conceded to his future bride, in consideration of the marriage, a gift of one hundred thousand francs; not, as is customary and almost fashionable in such cases, a gift on the condition of her surviving the giver, but an immediate settlement, resembling a transfer of property. This abnormal generosity was the proof of his feebleness, the lamentable testimony to his defeat. It conferred authenticity on his passion.

The maid who brought in his chocolate distracted him a moment from his examination. She watched her master out of the corner of her eye as she served him, and was astonished to see him with business papers in his hands. Here he was examining a brief, while she was watching for an outbreak of spite or fury, ready to make a good story out of it in the town. He dismissed her with a wave of his hand, and breakfasted without appetite, by sheer force of will. Should he not need to keep his forces all intact, presently, and decide definitely what to do?

As he gulped down his steaming chocolate he succeeded in making the dead years live again. He revived them from his own point of view, incapable, like many men and almost all women, of representing things from that of their partners. There was the marriage at Tronches, after many hesitations and delays, which had not been of his making; then the departure for Paris. In Paris there had been revealed to him an unknown companion, a woman who passed without transition or surprise from isolation and monotony to the most delirious gaiety. If she did not manage him in his maturity, neither did he respect her youth. It was then, in the hope of finding more quiet in the country, that he had bought out Mr. Clairval’s practice at Chambéry, in default of an office being obtainable in Grenoble. His wife had adapted herself, with the indifference of those whom life cannot satisfy further, to this radical change in her existence. She appeared to accept their retreat as a pleasure, without enthusiasm, but with no objections. Two years slipped by thus, as peacefully as could be expected of a woman who even in her calmer moments never failed to give him some anxiety. And now, just as he began to think she was sunk deep in the comfort of good surroundings, content with their daily jog trot, suddenly, without a sound of warning, she was leaving her husband and running away with a lover.

The lawyer was crushed by a catastrophe that had caught him so unprepared, and mechanically went back over these memories, the deed of gift bringing back all details to him. For the second time he stood on the brink, and this time he measured it better. This Maurice Roquevillard, whom he had disdained just now on his arrival, began to loom larger in his jealous fury. Edith had not gone away alone. She had gone with him probably, nay, surely. At this very moment, far away down there in Italy, safely out of reach, he held her in his arms. Mr. Frasne took his handkerchief and passed it across his eyes, then held it savagely to his mouth with both hands, and gritted his teeth upon it. Presently he gave way and wept without control. “He loves me in his way,” she had said of him. His way was one which is not the most noble, but is the most fertile certainly in devising torments. It knocks itself against definite and cruelly imagined things, it tears up the heart as a plow tears up the ground, and lays hatred bare.

Mr. Frasne took up the letter and the contract again, this time not to sound the depths of his misery, but to search for some plan of vengeance. The clerks would be invading the office before long. Before they came he must decide on his inquiry, and prepare to forge his arms. The money that Edith had taken away, that she had stolen really, for a gift between betrothed persons would in all cases be annulled in consequence of a divorce pronounced against the giver, she must have taken from the safe. He had recently deposited there the proceeds of a one hundred and twenty thousand francs sale of land, a sum which was to be turned over in a few days, or as soon as the deed was ready to be executed. He had indiscreetly spoken of it, and she might have learned of it from him. A key can be made or stolen, but how had she discovered the mysterious combination of figures without which this key to the safe was useless?

He rose and went up to the safe, which bore no trace of any breakage. He felt in his pocket and took out his bunch of keys. Then he perceived that this one key was missing. It must have been extracted the very day of his departure. He had a duplicate, it is true, and had confided the other, according to his habit, to his head clerk during his absence. He would wait till the arrival of the clerk, who could open and verify the contents of the safe, and at the same time serve as a witness.

Returning to his work-table, he found a penal code and began to run through the paragraphs under the title of crimes and misdemeanours against property. He read in Article 380 that abstractions made by husbands to the injury of their wives, and by wives against their husbands, can only give rise to civil actions. But the end of this same paragraph that disarmed him against the faithless woman armed him against her accomplice:

_With respect to all other individuals who shall receive or apply to their own profit all or any part of the objects stolen, they shall be punished as if guilty of theft._

Started on this scent, he found things better still. Article 408, which treated of the abuse of confidence, gave it as an aggravating circumstance when the theft was committed by a public or administrative officer, by a domestic servant, a man under employment for wages, a student, clerk, commissioner, workman, companion or apprentice, to the injury of his master; and the penalty in such cases was imprisonment. What was to prevent him from accusing Maurice Roquevillard, and him alone? Was it not all probable and likely? The young man knew the premises, the payments made through the office, the dates of contracts, the absence of his chief. He could have discovered the secret of the lock, have extracted the key for a moment from the hands of the head clerk. With no fortune of his own, he must have had to supply himself with funds to carry off his mistress. Finally, did not his flight to foreign territory condemn him? Of course, the statement made by Mrs. Frasne expressly contradicted this version of the case, but Mrs. Frasne’s declaration, ineffective against herself, though awkward for her lover, could well enough be suppressed. This declaration out of the way, nothing could make the latter appear innocent again. He would even be without any grounds of defence: for to defend himself, would he not have to turn against his mistress, admitting at last that they had both been supported by the funds that she had taken? A man of honour could not do this. Maurice’s conviction was, therefore, certain. Extradition would put an end to his amorous flight. He would have to appear at the assizes. Branded, overthrown and broken, he would expiate their fault for both the culprits. And finally, his family, to make atonement for his fault, would perhaps restore the sum that had been taken away. Thus the disaster would at least result in no material loss. And already the material loss began to seem not negligible to Mr. Frasne, the more so as he reflected further upon it.

The more he explored in all its aspects a combination so rich in inference, and traced all its possibilities to the end, the more he felt his despair grow lighter. He forgot his sorrow in preparing a fine punishment for his rival. He considered pitilessly the remotest consequences of his revenge, not least of them the abasement of the haughty Roquevillards, and this despite the fact that as Mr. Clairval’s successor he had been received by them as a friend. In his unhappiness he hurled his sufferings like curses in the face of the whole world. For a last time he read this letter, the only source of difficulty to his plan: then, his mind made up, he threw it in the fire and watched it twist and blacken into ashes.

Nine o’clock struck.

Punctually the clerks arrived at the office, one by one, and took their places at their desks. Their chief stepped at once to the door leading from his own room into the office, and, without any salutations, began to question the head clerk in a preoccupied manner.

“Philippeaux, I can’t find the key of the safe.”

“Why, here it is, sir,” replied the clerk. “You handed it to me to take care of while you were away. I have not used it.”

“Good. Come with me, then.”

The two men passed into the study.

Mr. Frasne opened the safe and noticed at once a certain disorder in its contents.

“You have been looking for something, a will perhaps?” he asked blandly.

Philippeaux protested with the greatest energy.

“No, sir. I can swear to it.”

“Then I don’t understand any better than I did at first. Wait a moment. This envelope has been torn open. It contained the money from the purchase of Belvade: one hundred and twenty thousand francs. We counted it together.”

“That’s true,” agreed the frightened clerk.

Still very calm, the notary did not pursue his investigation any further, closing the safe carefully.

“Some one has been in here.”

“But it’s not possible, sir.”

“I tell you some one has been here. We’ll check up the contents before the commissioner of police. Who shut up the office last night?”

“Maurice Roquevillard.”

“Did he stay here alone?”

“Yes, to write some letters.”

“How long?”

“I don’t know. I met him under the Porticoes half an hour later. He gave me the keys.”

“The keys? The key of the safe was in your bunch?”

“Yes.”

“That was imprudent.”

After a silence Mr. Frasne resumed: “Why has he not come yet?”

“Who?”

“Maurice Roquevillard.”

“He won’t come,” flung out the clerk vindictively.

Mr. Frasne fixed him with his perspicacious eyes. He drew two conclusions from this examination: the rumour of his misfortune was already running through the town, and Philippeaux, whose jealousy he suspected, would be a safe ally for him. Nevertheless, he pretended ignorance.

“That’s right. He ought to be with his father.”

“No, Mr. Frasne. He took the train last night at midnight.”

“Where for?”

“Italy!”

“Ah, I understand at last,” avowed the solicitor this time.

And slowly he pronounced his decree against Maurice:

“It’s he, then, that will have forced my safe. How did he discover the combination?”

Philippeaux bent his head: fear and envy made an informer out of him.

“The combination is written down in my memorandum book, though with nothing to identify it: my memory’s not good. Roquevillard might have seen it and suspected its use.”

Again Mr. Frasne, whom all the circumstances favoured, scrutinised his clerk and concealed his inward satisfaction.

“You have been doubly imprudent, Philippeaux. Take one of your comrades and call the commissioner of police. He shall make a strict search here himself.”

Thus the safe was visited legally in the presence of several witnesses. Mr. Frasne patiently made his inventory. Not a thing was missing and the sum of the money deposited proved to be exact.

“The only thing left to examine,” said the solicitor quietly, conducting the inquest methodically, “is this long envelope, which has been unsealed. It contained the purchase price of Belvade, twenty acres, one hundred and twenty thousand francs in banknotes. I counted them before going away, with my head clerk, here, who can corroborate me.”

“Perfectly, sir.”

“The sum was put away along there.”

Now the envelope contained no more than twenty bills.

“I have been robbed of one hundred thousand francs,” concluded Mr. Frasne.