Chapter VIII: Part III: I (2)

“I’m only related to you by marriage, Francis, but I bear the same name, and am mindful of it. I’ll put twenty thousand francs at your disposal if you need it in your turn. I don’t understand a bit of your histories, but I know you’re in misfortune. As for Mrs. Frasne, she’s a hussy!”

“Dear aunty, I love you,” said Margaret.

And Mr. Roquevillard added:

“Thank you, Thérèse. I shall probably not need it. I’m happy to think I can count on you if necessary.”

Last of all, old Uncle Stephen outlined his opinion in a slow but firm voice, which cracked like an old bell every now and then as he tried to force it.

“The father is the arbiter of his family and property, Francis. You have all the responsibility, you needn’t ask leave from any one. I was younger than your father. We were orphans at an early age, and he brought us children up and helped us in every way, for he was the heir and head of the family. In those days--it was under the Sardinian rule, before the annexation--daughters received only their legal share, and they were not married for their money. The patrimony went all to one member of the family, and its obligations could not be neglected by the one who inherited it. He had to look out for the younger ones, endowing and establishing them in life, besides seeing to the infirm and needy and the old folk. These young people to-day don’t know what the patrimony meant then, when it was the material force of the family, the whole family grouped about one head, assured of living and enduring because it held together. To-day what use is there in keeping an estate together? If you don’t sell it, the law will take a hand and scatter it when you die. With a forced division of estates there is no more patrimony. What with each one being for himself on the one hand, and the continuous prying and meddling of the state, on the other hand, in all the doings of one’s life, there is no more family. We shall see what this society of individuals subject to the state will make of things.”

He gave a circumspect and scornful little laugh, and ended up with less general considerations.

“However, you’re right to set our honour above money. You’re right, too, to give us warning. We were with you in your prosperity. Fate strikes you down, and we must be with you there, too. I haven’t very much for my part. Outside my legal pension I’ve scarcely more than twenty-five or thirty thousand francs in securities, the income of which helps me to get along. I’m already very old. After I’m gone it’s yours--it’s yours now if you want it.”

Mr. Roquevillard, much moved, replied simply:

“I’m proud of your approval, uncle, and touched by your support. My work will now be easier to carry through. This sacrifice of money will mean Maurice’s acquittal: my experience makes me believe that firmly. I don’t see how I can save La Vigie. Counting up everything, I am worth----”

“This doesn’t concern us further,” said Uncle Stephen, rising.

“I ought to tell you, on the contrary. I want you all to know in case La Vigie goes out of the Roquevillards’ hands one day that it hasn’t been without sorrow, or because there was no necessity. You are my witnesses. La Vigie is worth at least one hundred and sixty thousand francs. My Saint Cassinwoods are appraised at twenty thousand. Germaine had a dot of sixty thousand francs.”

“Ought I to return it all to you or only part of it?” inquired Charles Marcellaz timidly, his generosity the more to be commended because regrets, remorse and hesitation went with it. “It is invested at a certain figure in a share of the law practice I bought at Lyons.”

“By no means, my dear Charles. It belongs to you and Germaine outright, and you have three children to look out for. When Felicie went into the convent we bought annuities for her with twenty thousand francs, and we had reserved a like sum for Margaret’s dot. Of this she has already had eight thousand francs, which she sent to her brother.”

“One hundred and eight thousand,” counted up Leo, who had been sulking, beneath his breath. “He comes high.”

He was not aware as yet of the little loans from their sinking funds of which his own mother and the old magistrate had been guilty the preceding year.

“Father,” said Margaret, “dispose of my dot. I shall never marry.”

“Women are meant to be married,” declared the widow.

But Margaret added resolutely: “I have my diploma. I shall work. I’ll start a school.”

“Women oughtn’t to inherit, according to my ideas,” put in Uncle Stephen, “but I’ll moderate my principles in Margaret’s favour. She shall have my forty thousand francs when I die.”

“Thirty thousand,” corrected Leo, appraising his loss.

“No, forty,” replied the old man, suppressing his avarice definitely but painfully in the common crisis. “I put it lower just now inadvertently. It’s as much as forty-five, to be done with it. I’ll make a new will. I had made you my heir, Francis.”

“I thank you for Margaret, uncle. But I shall not touch her dot, which isn’t enough anyway, unless it’s impossible to realise on La Vigie promptly and at good terms. It will be better to sell the estate, if possible, than to mortgage it. I’ve thought it all out. The returns from land nowadays are precarious. With modern transportation facilities there is competition from such a distance that we can’t any longer count on profits. I prefer to make Margaret’s future sure, and let my sons arrange their own schemes of life. If I can’t find any one to buy, then the land can always be given as security for a loan.”

“We can give you good security, too,” the widow assured him.

“Exactly,” acquiesced Uncle Stephen.

The family council was over. Friendly farewells were exchanged by all excepting Leo, who still showed a little coldness to his uncle.

“It’s always the security that is lost,” he observed to his mother on the staircase.

“I’d pay it gladly,” said the latter flatly.

“Oh, you. You’re too good,” retorted her son.

“And you’re too ungrateful,” said his mother.

“It was my father that was helped out of a hole. Not I.”

“You or your father. Doesn’t it come to the same thing?”

“No.”

Charles escorted Mr. Stephen Roquevillard home, and Maurice’s father was left alone with his daughter. Outside the house the light was growing dim. Mist was cloaking the turret and the tower of the archives, as with an evening mantle. The office was filled with the special sadness that comes with the end of a winter’s day. Margaret put another log on the fire.

“I’m glad it’s over,” said her father. “It passed off well, I thought.”

But Margaret thought indignantly of her cousin Leo.

“That Leo is bad,” she said. “I detest him.”

“His mother is a fine woman,” was her father’s comment.

They were silent. Then both of them glanced at the map of La Vigie on the wall. Instead of a faded sheet of paper, they saw a vision of the place again under the beautiful sunlight of the vintage time, with all its golden vines, the harvested fields, the pastures ready to be tilled, the great comfortable house. The estate which they had sentenced to be sold was making its last appeal to them.

Like Maurice on the Calvary of Lemenc, before he had gone away from them, but with a different sort of love, a love from which all selfish thought of happiness was purged, they said good-bye to La Vigie.

III

MR. FRASNE’S CLEVER TRANSACTION

NOTHING was being talked about in all Chambéry but the clever transaction of Mr. Frasne. It was especially the favourite topic of conversation at the reception given by Mr. and Mrs. Sassenay one evening in celebration of the eighteenth birthday of their daughter Jeanne. One of the characteristics of provincial society seems to be that the men take the occupations and preoccupations of the city into company with them, clinging to the excitements of their business in the midst of social pleasures. At the Sassenays’ they one and all abandoned the ladies to the rivalries of clothes, and between the waltzes made off hastily into corners to take up the burden of their financial slanders and professional cares. On this special occasion, the family drama which had shaken the Roquevillards’ long standing social status, with its climax due to come off the day after to-morrow--it was the evening of December 4th--at the sitting of the court of assizes, was stirring public comment to its depths. Public opinion in Chambéry was tired, no doubt, of the well-founded and continuous ascendancy of the Roquevillards. It was worked up with the desire for levelling down, which is one of the modern zeals, as well as irritation at the persistent pride that refused to plead for itself or beg for sympathy even in misfortune. People, in short, were on the watch for the final collapse of a race which at other times had been considered an ornament to the city.

In the smoking-room were gathered men of law, doctors, manufacturers, capitalists; a few of them now and then, as the first strains of a waltz sounded, made for the group of girls and younger women seated in the drawing-room, like an assaulting party issuing in victorious sallies from a place besieged, to return again shortly to their masculine circle. Only one of them all knew nothing of this lucky speculation of the notary, which some found fault with and others praised, namely, the Viscount de la Mortellerie. His excuse was that he had tarried too long in the fourteenth century, with the history of the ducal castle that he was writing. In vain he tried to interest his neighbours in the ingenuity of Amedeus V, who in 1328 had wooden conduits arranged to bring water from the fountain of Saint Martri to his vast kitchens, where it gushed out in an enormous stone basin, which served also as a pool for the salmon that were destined for the ducal table. People would not listen to this babbler who was almost six hundred years behind the times. Mr. Latache, president of the Chamber of Notaries, sententious, ceremonious, bored, upholding the dignity of his life and business reputation, bore the brunt of the attack made by the little lawyer Coulanges. This latter, a scented, curled and powdered little individual, had assumed the defense of Mr. Frasne on behalf of the younger school.

“No, no,” declared Mr. Latache solemnly, “the criminal action follows the civil in such matters. Frasne should have waited for the jury’s verdict before accepting reparation for material damage. Or rather, since he has been fully indemnified, he should withdraw his complaint altogether. He ought not to mix up money matters with his vengeance.”

“Pardon me, pardon me,” parried the bubbling lawyer, fencing promptly. “Let us reason the thing out, I beg of you. Mr. Frasne made a complaint against Maurice Roquevillard of embezzlement in the sum of one hundred thousand francs, and instituted a civil suit against him. The elder Roquevillard offered to restore this sum to him before the arrest, and you blame him now for accepting it?”

“I don’t blame him for accepting it, but as he has taken it, I blame him for keeping up his suit. And I don’t understand Mr. Roquevillard.”

“Oh, he knows his son is guilty, and he buys the jury’s indulgence in this way. As for Mr. Frasne, since conviction is always uncertain at trials, he prefers a bird in the hand to two in the bush. Besides, at the hearing, he will make capital out of this payment, as if it were an admission of guilt. It’s a very strong presumption.”

“It’s a great advantage to Frasne certainly. I can’t explain Roquevillard’s motives, but just the same he’s too experienced to leave such a weapon in his adversary’s hands without having taken precaution on his own part. The receipt which he must have demanded surely provides that if he discharges the obligation of a third party, it’s irrelevant whether that third party is his son or not.”

“As a matter of fact, the receipt does make this reservation, and in the most formal terms,” announced another lawyer, Mr. Paillet, coming up at this moment and entering into the discussion without loss of time.

“I supposed as much,” said Mr. Latache triumphantly. “And rather than affix his signature to a paper containing such a restriction, Mr. Frasne would have been better advised to leave it to the decision of the court.”

But Mr. Coulanges was not ready to surrender yet.

“What does such a receipt prove?” he objected. “Would you give up one hundred thousand francs for some one you didn’t know?”

The lookers-on agreed that he was right, and testified to their opinion by a flattering murmur of approval, as much as to say that indeed such a piece of generosity must have come from some imperious necessity. Nevertheless, his success was short-lived. Mr. Paillet swept it away for him like a conjurer making a nutmeg disappear before their eyes. He was a gay, round, fat man, who knew everything, poking in everywhere and telling everything he knew.

“I see,” he said, “that you don’t, any of you, know of Mr. Frasne’s finest stroke.”

“Tell us about it.”

“Well, well.”

He held his company by the importance of the news he brought. But the orchestra tuned up for an everlasting set of landers, and he abandoned his scandalised hearers in a craven manner, rolling off like a ball to the feet of the lady whom he had asked to be his partner. From the recess of the window the gentlemen who remained behind, for lack of anything better, watched the evolutions of the various couples, assuming a detached and judicial air as the dancers of both sexes advanced and retreated, saluted or turned according to the rhythm of the music and the various figures. Among the dancers was Jeanne Sassenay, her cheeks like roses, her hair rebelling against its neat and careful dressing. Quite graceful and childlike in a pale blue dress cut slightly low in the neck and showing a bit of white flesh caressed by the crystal lights, she was putting her whole mind on keeping the figures straight. Her whole being glowed with her pleasure and the importance of the evening.

She excited a variety of comments from the lookers-on:

“Not bad looking, that little girl,” said one.

“Very thin: look at her shoulder blades,” said another.

“Only eighteen,” remarked a third.

“Oh, she’ll marry soon.”

“Why?”

“She has a large dot.”

“Yes, but her brother has piled up debts.”

“Whom will she marry?”

“No one knows yet. They talk of Raymond Bercy.”

“Who was engaged to Miss Roquevillard?”

“He’s just beginning his doctor’s practice.”

“Exactly; he hasn’t killed any one yet.”

After the final galop the lawyer Paillet, finding himself thirsty, conducted his companion to the refreshment-room, where he drank some champagne and ate a _pâté de foie gras_ sandwich; and thus restored, condescended to reappear before the circle, where his desertion was severely appreciated. But he held out against them laughingly.

“If you scold me you shan’t learn anything.”

“Well, then, we’re listening.”

“You were still at the point where Mr. Roquevillard had restored one hundred thousand francs to Mr. Frasne.”

“It was interesting, wasn’t it?”

“Not very, compared with what you’re going to hear next.”

The first notes of a polka sounded, and he turned his head. His hearers trembled lest he should have the heart to leave them a second time with their mouths watering. Quite a group decided to mass themselves near the door and bar his passage.

“You’re warm. It wouldn’t be wise,” observed Mr. Latache.

And the lawyer Coulanges, adopting a different method, began to cast doubts upon the famous piece of news that had been promised them. Thereupon the news gatherer opened his mouth to let loose his prey.

“Very well, then. You don’t know that Mr. Frasne acquires for nothing the fine estate of La Vigie, worth about two hundred thousand francs.”

Exclamations of incredulity met him on all sides.

“You don’t say so!”

“You’re laughing at us.”

Mr. Battard and Mr. Vallerois, the district attorney, who had been chatting at a distance, came up at this moment, their ears alert for news.

“Exactly,” said the orator. “For nothing.”

“But how?”

“Like this: Mr. Roquevillard, in order to secure the money he wanted, advertised La Vigie for sale. Mr. Doudan, the notary, offered him one hundred thousand francs for it, payable immediately, but reserving the right to keep the name of the true purchaser secret for a fortnight. A fortnight--bear this in mind. Mr. Roquevillard, who hadn’t much time or choice before the trial, accepted. He could not hope for anything better in so brief an interval. Now, through the indiscretion of a clerk, it has leaked out--I learned it just now--that the real purchaser was Mr. Frasne. Mr. Frasne, if you please, spends one hundred thousand francs with one hand and receives it back with the other, and finds himself to boot, by a simple trick the proprietor of a magnificent estate for nothing.”

This machiavellian ruse was too far beyond the common run of bourgeois artifice not to provoke astonishment. They did not hunt for the moral point of it, neither did they sound the depths of the Roquevillards’ sacrifice of the family patrimony. Mr. Frasne had gone through a sorry crisis; his home, if not his fortune, had been ruined, and he had devoted his energies to the only thing that was still susceptible of diverting him--business--as an artist finds his consolation in art or a rich woman hers in charity. Interesting combinations of contracts or figures established an alibi for his sad thoughts. He forgot his own weariness for the moment in unravelling the affairs of his clients, with a satisfaction like that of a skilful fighter in the battle of interests. The case of La Vigie had inspired him to a bit of audaciously clever tactics that he could not resist. He had hoped the secret of it would be guarded until after the assizes. But what secret can be kept in a town of less than twenty thousand inhabitants, where it is regarded as pretentious and original to lead one’s personal life as one likes?

Mr. Latache was the first to give his views on the transaction, in two words, which, coming from the President of the Chamber of Discipline, were worth a speech.

“It’s not just.”

“Why do you say that?” retorted Mr. Coulanges. “An estate was for sale. Some one bought it. It’s the law.”

Nevertheless, the sagacious manœuvre of Mr. Frasne won, after all, only a small measure of approbation, and this from the youthful camp, which plays its enthusiasm to-day, like its funds, on solid wickets. He had succeeded too well in his material enterprise, and the gallery, severe in manners and practical in its good sense, was more sorry about his conduct now than it had been diverted by his wife’s flight with Maurice.

Besides, he came from Dauphiné, and in the eyes of a community accustomed to particularise, that made a stranger of him, whom such gains enriched at the expense of their own province. People had not been vexed, to be sure, by the humiliation of the Roquevillards, because the high esteem in which the family was generally held irritated the mediocrities, but they were surprised to find the Roquevillards making the disaster worse, astonished to think they consummated their ruin with their own hands. Why this disinterestedness if Maurice was not guilty, and if he was, why this admission? For they were not aware of the resolution the young man had taken. Mr. Hamel was very secretive, and as for Mr. Battard, his silence was calculated: an epicure of cases that made talk, he still hoped that his support would be called for.

At the same time he was excited by these revelations, and could not refrain from talking in his turn. The special circle where the affair had been under discussion was now disturbed, the dance being finished, by new arrivals. Conversation began again here and there, breaking out in little separate groups, like smothered fire that sparkles and scatters. The district attorney, Mr. Vallerois, rejoined Mr. Battard in the embrasure of a window.

“You will hold the cards when you plead now,” he said. “You can riddle Mrs. Frasne’s husband with sarcasm.”

“It isn’t certain yet that I shall make the argument,” replied the lawyer.

“What! You are not to make the argument?”

Mr. Battard had to explain his confidences, which had escaped him without thinking, by going further into the thing.

“That young duffer Maurice doesn’t wish to be seriously defended. He prefers to look out for his mistress’s honour.”

He pronounced these last words with disdainful irony, explaining to the attentive magistrate that the accused man threatened to contradict in advance any reference to Mrs. Frasne as the guilty party.

“If you don’t argue, then who will?”

“I don’t know. Mr. Hamel doubtless.”

His tone showed hardly any more respect for the aged lawyer than for the guilty woman. The former’s age and feebleness were thrown into high relief by the single mocking mention of his name.

After some moments of silence Mr. Vallerois concluded:

“I understand what Roquevillard’s driving at now. He’s suppressing the theft to save his son. It’s his last chance. He doesn’t hesitate to sacrifice his fortune. It’s very fine.”

Not very much interested in this praise, Mr. Battard sketched a vague gesture that was susceptible of various interpretations.

“All this is between you and me,” he said, to recapture his professional secret.

And with his beard carefully displayed against his shirt front, he made his way up to a group of ladies, stepping slowly and majestically, like a peacock preparing himself for a promenade with his mates.

Left alone, the magistrate made no haste to search out another guest to talk with. He still thought admiringly of Mr. Roquevillard, recalling the man’s sorrowful and valiant life since that day in the office when he had been told of Mr. Frasne’s complaint. Even then he had shown himself unselfish and proudly prepared for sacrifices.

“Why am I the only one here,” Mr. Vallerois asked himself, “to appreciate this great force of character? There isn’t a man here can hold a candle to him, yet these gentlemen just now treated him so loftily, as if misfortune had made him small and insignificant. The provinces are vindictive and envious.”

Along these simple lines that were being laid down, he reflected, the drama would be a moving one, very entertaining for the spectators. Young Maurice, appearing disarmed before the jury, betrayed his family, and his father was sacrificing the old estate for a song to save the prodigal son. But if the counsel for the accused had his lips sealed, another voice, more powerful than his, could make itself heard instead. After the prosecutor’s speech for the plaintiff, was it not the duty of the public minister to present the case in his turn? Instead of relying upon “justice,” according to the formula sacred to this sort of business, more private than public, was it not his duty to intervene with some effect and set forth once and for all the luckless preponderating rôle, the unique rôle, of Mrs. Frasne, the only one who had been guilty of any abuse of confidence, even though she could not be condemned for it? What a fine opportunity to serve truth, to render unto each according to his works, to carry a little joy into this so sorely tried household of the Roquevillards.

All these reflections crowded through Mr. Vallerois’s brain, but he himself was disposed of by the circumstances of the thing: a general advocate would occupy the place of the public minister at the assizes, and not he. The case of Maurice Roquevillard did not properly concern him further. Besides, he had been blamed for the unusual measure he had taken with the notary last year, for it had not been kept a secret very long. What was the use of mixing in an affair that did not concern him, from which nothing but unpleasantness could arise? For the sake of peace his sympathy was well enough trained to be content with doing nothing.

Rather than sound the whole depth of his egotism, or pass harsh judgment on it, he hastily rejoined the throng of guests, happy to feel that there were people round him. The presence of our fellow creatures is a comfort to us when we have been tempted to take the measure of our pettiness. That is a kind of temptation which is always reserved for the best of us to yield to.

The movement toward the refreshment tables had now begun, and there was a coming and going through the two drawing-rooms, the ante-chamber and the dining-room, prolonging itself, with frequent delays as the young people found opportunities for flirtation. Some of them, all for dancing, called noisily for the orchestra again. Some of the young girls showed already that they were clever and happy in the tricks and coquetry that land a husband some day. Some of them, though only a few, so far as a cursory glance could tell, did not bother to see whether a man wore an engagement ring or not before they trained their artful batteries on him. The eyes of youth flashed under the chandeliers, as sparkling as the jewels which shone in hair or corsage, on wrists or fingers. Among the men’s black coats the clear bits of colour and mellow outlines of the women’s frocks stood out like water-colours.

In which category did Miss Jeanne Sassenay belong, determinedly making off with Raymond Bercy, the fiancé last year of Miss Roquevillard, while her mother’s vigilant eye followed her with solicitude and some surprise? Her little head was like a Greek statue’s, borne so elegantly and easily above its stone shoulders: was it so scatter-brained it could not even cherish the memory of her abandoned friend? Were her cool blue eyes, with their clear glances, only indifferent and not sincere? Her cheeks glowed with the exercise of dancing, but she was not smiling, she was wrinkling her eyebrows, and shut her lips tight, as if she were making some important decision. It was an air that contrasted quaintly with her pretty, childlike manner.

“I haven’t danced with you yet,” the young man was saying. “Won’t you give me a waltz?”

“No,” she replied emphatically, first looking round to see that they were quite alone.

“Why not? Are all your waltzes taken?”

“No, not all.”

He did not think her serious, and was not chilled by her coolness.

“I’m warned, then. Many thanks,” he laughed.

She gave one of those tired “ughs,” like workmen lifting a heavy weight, and then began to talk all at once, full of her subject:

“Indeed I must warn you, sir. Your mother has talked to mamma. And mamma has no secrets from me. If she ever has any, I guess them. Very well, then, I’ll never, do you hear, never consent to marry you.”

“I beg your pardon, mademoiselle, I have not asked for your hand,” the young man retorted in astonishment.

“Your mother has been over the ground, as they say so prettily,” she resumed.

“Mothers make a great many plans for their sons. This one, however flattering it is, doesn’t correspond with my intentions.”

“Oh, so much the worse,” said Jeanne.

“I’m not thinking of marrying,” he said.

“You’re wrong there,” said the girl, the reproach sounding queer and almost funny from her childish mouth.

“When one has the luck in life to meet a young girl like Margaret Roquevillard,” she added, “one oughtn’t to wreck such happiness one’s self.”

So this was what she had been driving at. He understood. She should have known from the change in his face that she had struck home, but at her tender age vision is not clear enough to read the inner feelings through the features. She was accordingly hardly moderate in heaping up her boarding-school disdain upon him.

“It’s always shabby, my dear sir, to desert a fiancée. And when she is in trouble it’s perfectly abominable.”

What right had she to scold him so violently? Raymond Bercy was irritated by it all, and yet, at the bottom of his heart, was conscious of a bitter-sweet pleasure in hearing Margaret spoken of. His anger and bitterness crept into his retort.

“I didn’t appoint you to judge me, mademoiselle,” he said, “but if you talk to me in the name of another, my reply is that----”

“I’m not speaking in any one’s name----”

“That you are misinformed. It wasn’t I who broke our engagement. I would gladly have kept it.”

“You would have kept it? Oh, when the sun is shining, you men, all of you, are always on hand; and when it rains, there isn’t a soul of you about.”

“But you are too unjust, after all. I shall lose my patience with you.”

She was as far as ever from keeping still, going on to worry him, like a wasp that hovers round you and tries to sting.

“It’s a great mistake for a man to get cross,” she said.

“I don’t have to report to you, Miss Sassenay. Let me tell you, however, that Miss Roquevillard broke our engagement of her own free will.”

“Out of generosity.”

“Without any consideration for my feelings or the pain it gave me.”

“In such circumstances you shouldn’t have let her break it,” declared Jeanne. Her cheeks had grown quite red, and her self-possession was gone. She was contradicting herself furiously, and he, too, was scarcely more calm than she was.

“And if her brother is convicted?” he demanded.

“’Tis a fine case, isn’t it?”

“Oh, really, do you think so, Miss Sassenay?”

“Yes, really. As for me, if I were in love it would be all the same to me if my fiancé were sent to the galleys. I’d follow him, do you hear, sir. And if I had to commit some crime to be sent after him, I’d commit it. Biff, boom! Just like that!”

“You’re a child,” he commented; then brusquely he changed his tone, and whispered in a heavy voice:

“Do you think I have no regrets for her?”

She changed as quickly as he had, triumphantly, and was almost on the point of falling on his neck. Mrs. Sassenay, surprising this by-play from a distance, was distressed by what she saw, and blamed herself for her neglect.

“Oh, I knew quite well, sir,” said Jeanne, “that you couldn’t want to marry me. Good, then, be off with you. Run and tell Margaret. Beg her for my sake to forgive you. Take your place again quickly in the family before the trial comes on. Afterwards it will be too late. It will do more good than prescribing all sorts of nasty medicines for your sick people.”

“Thanks.”

“Be off then, at once.”

“But it’s half-past eleven,” argued Raymond.

“To-morrow, then.”

Mrs. Sassenay, meanwhile, making her way toward her daughter, was stopped by a group of people in animated conversation. The group was growing larger every minute.

“Are you sure?” asked Mr. Vallerois of a young officer whose uniform bore the epaulettes of the general staff.

“Quite sure,” said the officer. “The news reached our division at six o’clock. The general went in person to call on Mr. Roquevillard.”

“In person,” corroborated Mr. Coulanges, who had been astonished and impressed by this official step toward one who was down and out like Mr. Roquevillard.

Mrs. Sassenay turned to her neighbour, Mr. Latache, for information.

“What news are they talking about?” she inquired.

“Of the death of Lieutenant Roquevillard,” was the reply. “He died of yellow fever in the Soudan.”

“How unfortunate that family is!” murmured Mrs. Sassenay, moved with pity.

“Are they not, indeed!” said Mr. Latache.

So cruel a grief centred all the women’s sympathy on the Roquevillards, and removed the hostility of the men, though people had been complacent witnesses of the family’s material and moral decadence. They had merely wanted to take the Roquevillards down a peg or two, but fate was crushing them with no compassion or reprieve. The partisans of Mr. Frasne and his clever operation were silent, the district attorney expressing the sentiment of them all in the phrase:

“Poor things!”

Shortly after this colloquy Jeanne Sassenay disappeared. In vain her mother searched for her through the rooms. In the vestibule she perceived Raymond Bercy hastily getting into his overcoat.

“Are you going already?” she asked.

“Yes, Mrs. Sassenay,” he replied, with no further explanation of his precipitate departure.

She thought she guessed the young man’s trouble, and connected the circumstances with her daughter’s disappearance, beginning to be seriously worried.

“Have you seen Jeanne?” she asked of her husband, whom she met at the entrance to the drawing-room.

“No. Are you looking for her?”

Mr. Sassenay was a frankly active and loyal man, but quite destitute of psychology; he could overcome the greatest material obstacles, but was incapable of stopping to analyse sentiments. His wife judged it useless to tell him of her fears, and contented herself with enjoining him to look after their guests. For her own part she went straight to her daughter’s room. She entered, and the moment she turned the switch of the electric light she discovered Jeanne there--all crumpled up and shrunken in an armchair, weeping regardless of her rumpled frock.

“Jeanne, what’s the matter?” she asked at once, beginning to pet her.

“Oh, mamma,” wailed the girl.

It was the cry of a little child that is soon quieted.

“Why are you crying, Jeanne?” asked her mother.

“I keep thinking of Margaret’s troubles while I’m dancing,” she explained.

Mrs. Sassenay breathed more freely. She knew how fond her daughter was of Margaret Roquevillard. But as the sobs did not stop she asked gently:

“Are you thinking of Lieutenant Hubert?”

“Yes. He was nice ... we used to play tennis together. He was always the best player.”

The cause of the girl’s grief did not lie in that quarter.

“Poor Margaret!” she added, changing her subject half unconsciously. “I liked Maurice, who is in prison, better than Hubert. He’ll be acquitted, won’t he?”

“I hope so, dear.”

“An innocent man who is acquitted, or even one who is condemned--there’s something fine about it, isn’t there, mamma?”

“Are you sure he’s innocent?”

“Margaret’s brother? How can you ask it?”

Mrs. Sassenay smiled at this assurance and indignation, which she had provoked on purpose. All the time she was petting and soothing her daughter, her memory was recalling a long-ago talk she had had with Mrs. Roquevillard on the subject of their children. “One day perhaps,” the saintly woman had said to her, “if Maurice is worthy of it, I will ask your child’s hand for him. She will be near you.”

Maurice had not been worthy, but his prestige of other days was still potent over this too generous little girl. That was the danger. It must be looked out for. And while she promised herself to be careful, Jeanne’s mother thought in spite of herself of those other Roquevillards, the dead and the living; so deserving, and so sorely tried.

The noise of the orchestra came up to the room half muffled.

“Dry your eyes, Jeanne. Gently, so. A little powder. There. You’re looking very well this evening. Now let’s go back quickly to the drawing-room. People will notice our absence.”

“That’s true, mamma, and I promised this waltz.”

And growing suddenly serene again, the girl preceded her mother down the hall.

At that very hour Raymond Bercy, completely upset by the death of his friend Hubert, was pacing the hundred steps opposite the Roquevillards’ house, to and fro. The roof of the castle, covered with snow, showed vaguely in the starlight. The tower of the archives and the turret seemed to watch like sentinels over the sleeping town. Through the four windows of the study which he knew so well a thin light filtered between the blinds. In there Margaret and her father were suffering together, struck once more to their very hearts.

He longed to go in and join them, but he dared not. His broken engagement, his parents’ objections, what the world would think, all sorts of obscure and selfish motives, had held him back. But in the cold night, in the course of this walk which he kept up so late, he came to know his heart better, knew that sorrow and pity, more than joy, make love increase.

IV

THE COUNSEL OF THE SOIL

SOME decision must be made. Mr. Roquevillard had been stunned since last evening by his son’s loss, of which he had heard in a laconic official note, saying that Hubert had died in his country’s service, far from any help, in an advanced post. His father had not even the supreme consolation of giving way to his sorrow. Hubert had gone away to the colonies to seek out danger and win some glory that should brighten the family’s tarnished name, and so he was the last victim of Maurice’s heedless wrongs against them all. Maurice, himself, to-morrow, was to appear in court, and there was still the struggling with the wilful difficulties of his defence. No doubt the sacrifice of the family estate would have its effect. No doubt the reparation made to the plaintiff would render acquittal certain, or at any rate probable, and turn the tables in favour of the accused. But even acquittal must not be wrung from the jury through pity or through favour. To come back again to his own fireside, to deserve honour again in the city or at the bar, to continue a tradition and hand it down in his turn, the young man must leave the court-house stripped of every injurious suspicion, discharged from every fault against the law and honour. And how was this to be accomplished without mentioning the name of Mrs. Frasne?

It was true that Mr. Battard, after the sale of La Vigie, had gone back on his refusal to plead.

“It has cost you more than it’s worth,” he had said, with professional cynicism. “But your generosity will soften the jury’s minds. They’re the sort who will split hairs about an egg and hang an orchard thief, but weep like calves when they learn you’ve sold your land to indemnify the plaintiff. They may even be capable, if they stop to think, of convicting your son just the same, on account of the bad example that you give them, if Mr. Frasne’s clever transaction, when it is made known in court in the final argument, doesn’t probably precipitate a furious envy in them that will be in your favour.”

For Mr. Battard thought very ill of justice and humanity, but knew the case, and offered his services. His reputation made him a coadjutor that could not be refused. At five o’clock he was to come and have a last talk in Mr. Roquevillard’s office, with Mr. Hamel, on the main lines of his argument. Nevertheless, Maurice’s father had no confidence in the power of Mr. Battard’s showy and sceptical art to sustain the cause of a whole race.

After luncheon, at which he and Margaret hardly touched their food, he rose and went out for a walk. His too heavy sorrow smothered him within doors. Outside he should be able to think more clearly. The air would revive his thoughts, restore his spent forces and beaten energy. As he reached the door Margaret called him.

“Father.”

He turned quickly. Margaret, since his wife’s death, and even before it, had been his confidante and counsellor, his supreme comforter in life. Since the departure of little Julian, whose father had taken him back to Lyons the morning after the family council, Margaret and her father had been left to face each other all alone in the gradually emptied house. All that night again, almost till morning, they had talked of Hubert, weeping for him and praying. When Margaret came up to him now he put his hand on her beautiful hair and let it linger there. She understood that he was saying a blessing for her, quite low, and her eyes, so easily misted now, so used to tears, grew moist once more.

“Father,” she asked, “what have you decided on for Maurice?”

“Battard is ready to defend him. He’s coming at five o’clock with Hamel. I’m going out to think over my last instructions to them in the open air.”

“You don’t want me to go with you?”

“No, little girl. Don’t worry about me. I’ll work while I’m walking. We haven’t time for burying our dead. The living need us.”

“Well, then, I’ll go to the gaol and do my part there.”

“Yes, you can tell the sad news to _him_.”

“Poor Maurice, how he will suffer!”

“Less than we do.”

“Oh, no, father. As much as we do, and more than we do. He will reproach himself.”

“He may well do so. Hubert is gone because of him.”

“Exactly, father. We cry, you and I, without self-reproach. Shall I say nothing to him for you?”

“No, nothing.”

“Father----”

“Tell him--tell him to remember that he is the last of the Roquevillards.”

He went out, passing by the castle and on into the country. It was a fine winter’s day, with the sun shining on the snow. Mechanically he took the Lyons road that led to La Vigie, his customary walk. It led through the village of Cognin, and, beyond the sawmills near the Saint Charles bridge, settled into a long defile between the Vimines and Saint Cassin hills, spurs of the mountains of Lepine and Corbelet, coming out at last by the pass of the Echelles. From this place on, lost in his meditations, Mr. Roquevillard followed the rural path on the left which was the way to La Vigie. He crossed the old bridge thrown over the Hyères, now a thin stream of water between too icy borders, the leafless poplars and willow trees no longer hiding it. After a brief circuit he found himself in a fold of the deserted valley, shut in by the slopes of Montagnole, whose bell-tower he could see outlined against the sky. But he took no note of the solitude. On the contrary, he walked more lightly, and was conscious of some lightening of his sorrow, too. Was he not at home here, at home on either side? And did not the good earth bring him the comfort of its old safe friendship, of his childhood memories whose grace it cherished, of all the human past which had remade it after nature finished? In this vineyard on the left, with its shrouded vines--he could distinguish the stakes and the wires that ran between them--he had always gathered the grapes at autumn. On the right, beyond the stream which served as common boundary between him and his neighbour, this dismantled hill, with a single tree standing over it, had borne the woods of beeches red and white, and the oaks, which he had bought with his savings to enlarge his holdings and had ordered cut not long ago. At the top of the ascent he would reach the old house that he had restored, its very age testifying to the hardiness of his race and its taste for solid things. He would enter by the farm, pat the children’s heads, drink a little glass of brandy of his own distilling, with the farmer, who did not object to alcohol; above all, his gaze would sweep the whole horizon, where the storm-tossed mountain forms and fertile plains, with a lake in the distance, made a composition of motionless and inspiring lines; then the nearer horizon of La Vigie with its divers tillages.

He walked briskly, lost thus in his thoughts. On this familiar soil his steps had again their old brisk ring, as in the days when he had felt like a young man despite his years, happily surrounded by those he loved and confident in their love and life.

Suddenly he stopped.

“But I am no longer at home here,” he thought abruptly. “La Vigie is sold. The Roquevillards are no longer masters there. What am I doing? I must get out of this.”

And he turned in his path, his head bent low, like a tramp caught in an orchard.

He stopped at the stream which separated Cognin from Saint Cassin. He cleared it at a bound, and found himself this time on a piece of land which had been outside the straight line of cultivation on the estate, and had not been included in the bill of sale. It remained henceforth his only landed property. At the foot of the slope he stopped a moment to get his breath, like a company that comes upon some shelter in retreat. Then he began to clamber up the slope, not without difficulty, for he slipped and had to thrust his cane in the ground to hold his balance. The path, faintly marked at best, ended by losing itself altogether, and he made his way as well as he could in the direction of the solitary tree that stood out clear against the sky on the summit. It was an old oak, which had been spared, not for its age nor the fine effect of its height and branches, but on account of a beginning of dry rot that impaired its saleability. Its clinging leaves, all tightened and shrivelled up after the manner of oaks, the better to defend themselves against the wind, were loath even now to fall, their rusty tints appearing here and there beneath the rime. Along the hillside the tree trunks cut by the woodsmen, but not carted away before winter came on, lay like corpses in the snow, some still clothed in their bark, others already stripped.

Finally Mr. Roquevillard reached the point he had been making for. He touched with his hand, as if it had been a friend, the tree that had drawn him this far, admiring its grandeur and pride.

“You are like me,” he reflected, mopping his brow. “You have seen your companions struck down, and are left alone. But we are condemned. Time is the axe that will soon fell us.”

He had been a little retarded in climbing up the hill, and though the afternoon was not far advanced, the sun was already declining toward the Lepine chain. December days are so short, and the nearness of the mountains cut them shorter still. From the hill he could see the same view almost as from La Vigie: the Signal facing him, and below it the receding valley of the Echelles; on the right, in the background, beyond the plain, the lake of Bourget, the Revard range, and the Nivolet with its regular gradations. The snow made the outlines less distinct, blurring the foreground till the landscape was all soft and uniform. Threats of evening tinted it a delicate rose, spreading over all things the hue of living flesh.

In spite of the clear air, Mr. Roquevillard felt the cold, and buttoned up his overcoat. Now that he was no longer warm from walking he was again conscious of his age and sorrow. Why had he climbed this hill? Its slope seemed to him like a cemetery, with its felled trees scattered over the white ground. Did he come here, opposite the old place abandoned now after the care of so many centuries, to gaze upon its ruin and mourn the death of its hopes? Across the valley he could distinguish the lands and buildings that had been his heritage. The house, which only a year ago had sheltered all the reassembled, joyful family, was closed now: never again should he pass its doors.

Silence and solitude were all round him on this funereal, leafless hillock where he stood. About him, within him, it was Death. And as a vanquished chief calls the roll of his soldiers after battle, he summoned up his sorrows one by one: his wife’s life had been crushed out, borne down by her troubles; his daughter Felicie given up to God, far away over the seas and lost to him; Hubert, his firstborn, his best boy, struck down in full youth, far from France and all that were dear to him; Germaine, leaving her native country; Margaret, vowed to celibacy by her poverty; and finally Maurice, the last of the Roquevillards, on whom the future of the race depended, thrown into prison upon an infamous charge; threatened with conviction even though the paternal lands had been sacrificed to save him. In vain had sixty years been given to the nurture of this family. Decimated, crushed by the fault of a single member, it lay prone now at the foot of La Vigie, like the trunks of these trees half bedded in the snow. To him whose robust force and faith had looked for victory, defeat and shame had been dealt out.

In his discouragement he leant against the oak, his brother in misfortune. He gave a long, despairing groan, the groan of a tree which totters beneath the raining blows of the axe before it falls. The unheeding earth and sky were immobile in their quiet colours; he felt himself abandoned.

Two tears rolled down his cheeks--a man’s tears, the more rare and moving because they are a confession of humility and weakness, falling slowly in the cold air, half frozen on his unwarmed cheeks. He did not dream that he wept. He only realised it upon perceiving a human form slowly climbing the hillside toward him. He dried his eyes, lest he should be surprised in his sorrow. It was the figure of a woman gathering dead wood and faggots. Bending over the white earth, she could not see him; only when she got near the oak she straightened up a little and recognised him.

“Master Francis!” she murmured.

“Mother Fauchois!” he exclaimed.

She came nearer, and put down her burden; searched for the right thing to say, and finding nothing, began to weep, not silently, but with loud sobs.

“Why do you cry?” asked Mr. Roquevillard.

“For you, Master Francis.”

“For me?”

“Yes.”

He had never confided his grief to any one; his pride and reserve kept pity at a distance; but he accepted it from this poor old woman, and gave her his hand. “You’ve heard of all my troubles?”

“Yes, Master Francis.”

“The last of them?”

“Yes--through a man from Saint Cassin, who came back from town this morning.”

“Ah, I see.”

They were silent; then Mother Fauchois began her lamentations again in a loud voice. It is not the way of the primitive to be silent in sorrow.

“Master Hubert, so gallant, so nice and young, so good to everybody! He used to come into the kitchen and watch the dishes and laugh with us. And madame--madame was one of the good God’s saints. They are the sort you find in Paradise, Master Francis.”

Mr. Roquevillard stood motionless and silent, envying the dead who were at rest. Mother Fauchois went prattling on again:

“And Master Maurice, they’ll give him back to you? It’s to-morrow the trial comes off,” she added, quite low, with her peasant’s dread of justice.

He saw her cross herself, praying for the Lord’s help for him, and involuntarily he recalled her daughter who had been condemned for theft. He inquired about her gently, for his tried soul was cleansed now of all contempt or pride.

“And your daughter, have you good news from her?”

“She’s come back to me, Master Francis.”

“I’m glad of that.”

“Oh, she doesn’t deserve any credit for it. She had to. She came back from Lyons quite sick. She doesn’t want to get well.”

“What’s the matter with her?”

“She was very sick after her baby was born.”

“A baby? Is she married?”

“No, Master Francis. But she has a baby. A little darling, very lively; plays all day long. I wouldn’t look at the little angel at first, on account of the disgrace, you understand. But when I saw it it gave one little laugh and made my heart leap. Now it’s all the pleasure I have left.”

“Is it a girl?”

“A girl? You’d say it was a boy, sure enough, a big boy, very plump.”

“It’s quite an expense for you.”

“For sure. But when I come home and see this urchin with his bottle it makes me feel as good as a glass of your wine. It makes life feel warm and pleasant again.”

“You’re pretty old to work now,” said Mr. Roquevillard.

“Exactly. I’m no good for anything else any more.”

Even from her wretchedness she could draw comfort, and misfortune brought her a supreme interest for her last days. His mind was distracted from his own trouble by her story, and he marvelled at the courage of the poor woman, who, without knowing it, set him an example of bravery and forgiveness. She stooped down to lift her bundle again to her shoulders.

“Good-bye, Master Francis.”

“Where are you going?”

“To Cognin, to take my wood to the baker’s.”

“Wait a moment.”