Chapter Sixteen.
Father and Daughter.
The country round Poissy, mellow with ripening grapes, sunned itself in broad luxuriance, and the river threaded it lazily, its silver length curving snake-like between green edges. Nathalie and her little son were by its side, she bareheaded, with only a white umbrella between her and the sun, which now and then caught the rich red-brown of hair and brightened it. Raoul, with his little closely-cropped head and dark dancing eyes, was engaged in plying a primitive fishing-line, formed of whip-cord fastened at one end to a long stick, and adorned at the other with a crooked pin and a small piece of meat. Every now and then a bit of weed caught the bait, and gave all the excitement of a bite, and this and the joy of getting his feet wet kept him perfectly content and happy. Occasionally a peasant passed them, always with the same remark, “Fine weather, madame, for the grapes;” but otherwise the sleepy silence of the place was undisturbed, and Nathalie liked it better than she had ever liked it before.
She was happier, for one thing, though she blamed herself for the selfishness of her happiness, since evidently a cloud of uneasiness rested on Poissy. Mme. de Beaudrillart did not confide in her daughter-in-law; but a change had come over her since their departure for Paris; age seemed to have suddenly laid a grasping hand upon her; she was silent, grave, rigid. Léon’s moods varied from gloom to gaiety. Claire indulged in taunts as to the delights of Paris. Only Félicie’s small interests kept her busily occupied. Her own father’s advice had amazed Nathalie. From him she expected fighting counsels, whereas he wrote with a hesitation new to him, and talked temporisingly, with suggestions of possible arrangements. Moreover, they had been at home three days, and he had not come out, as she had expected, to see Léon on the matter, while she disliked leaving her husband for as many hours as would be required for driving into Tours.
Yet she was happy. The bare shadow of doubt had not once fluttered across her mind. She could conceive that there were difficulties in the case, and that certain unfortunate circumstances might be difficult to get over; she had realised that M. Rodoin was not so sanguine at the end of his interview as at the beginning, and that Maître Barraud was taciturn; but her own conviction stood like a rock, and wanted no support, was troubled by no inconsistencies. And it was bliss to feel herself no longer shut out. Before, when Léon was in perplexity or trouble, he turned to his mother; now he turned to her. Perhaps he felt the influence of her implicit faith, a sun in which he might still plume himself. Presently he joined her.
“I saw your white flag from the bank. Many fish caught!” Raoul was too much absorbed to answer, and his father watched him with amusement. “Upon my word, the monkey has such a good idea of throwing his line that I must get him a proper rod. I have just been talking to Jacques, and he tells me they begin the vintage to-morrow.”
“And the weather so superb! It will be a good year for us all,” said Nathalie.
“Oh, excellent! If only I had not this confounded business hanging over my head!”
“Let us hope it will soon be ended.” She slipped her hand into his. “I think Monsieur Rodoin quite understood that there should be no delay, but perhaps you will have to go up again soon and hurry them.”
“Not without you,” he said, quickly. Her heart bounded, and she sent him a smile for an answer. “The nuisance is, having to give evidence one’s self.”
“Oh, you will be glad to do that,” she said, comfortingly. “No one can explain it all so well.”
“That’s very fine!”—he spoke with irritation. “Who can explain, when those fellows are at one all round with their questions!”
“What can they bring out but the truth!” said Nathalie. “And the more of that the better.”
“It might go against me,” he hazarded.
“You mean you may not establish the libel! I don’t see how it is possible; because they don’t deny having made the claim, and as they can’t support it, it must surely upset them.”
“I wish you’d find out what your father thinks about it. Drive in to-morrow.”
One of his fits of uneasiness was on him, as she perceived, and, to soothe him, she made the promise.
“And get the boy a rod. Here, Raoul, tell your mother to go to Tours and buy you a proper fishing-rod.”
Raoul came with a rush, and fell on his father. “As big as yours?”
“Big enough for a black-eyed imp like you.”
A pommelling match followed, ending by Raoul snatching off his father’s straw hat and flinging it into the river, where it sailed slowly down, Raoul shrieking with delight, and Léon running along the edge to rescue it at last with difficulty from a clump of flags. He came back threatening his son, who by this time was worked into wild unruliness, so that Nathalie was obliged to hold him fast in spite of his struggles. He grew quiet in time, and they went across the bridge to one or two of the nearest vineyards, where preparations had already begun, and where the finest bunch was gathered and offered to the master. The cloud had lifted again, and Léon was at his kindliest, with a smile and a cheery word for everybody. Who could wonder that Nathalie was happy?
At the door of her father’s house she met Fanchon, who immediately fell to making mysterious signs with hand and head, implying cautious communications of importance. Nathalie, vaguely uneasy, inquired whether her father was ill.
“Mademoiselle ought to know that he is not himself,” whispered Fanchon. “He sits there,”—signalling with her thumb over her right shoulder—“thinking, thinking, though the saints only know what he has got to think about! Don’t I make him his bouillon, and his salad, and his coffee, just as he likes them, and leave him to find fault as much as it pleases him, since that gives him an appetite? But there! ever since that morning when he left me in the midst of an omelette, and dashed off to Poissy, hiring a carriage and all—he that I never thought to see in a hired carriage, unless it was to be taken to his grave—he’s never been the same man. And not once has he been out to the door to look for mademoiselle—for madame, I should say—and Monsieur Raoul, though on the days he expected them he was always popping in and out. Well, I dare say it will do him good to see mademoiselle, and I shall be back in five minutes to hear what she thinks, for I am only going to run round to Madame Boucher, and show her what sort of an egg she sold me this morning.”
M. Bourget, indeed, was unlike his usual turbulent self. He greeted his daughter without effusion, and did not even ask for Raoul, or show any disappointment at not seeing him. He was sitting near the window, a newspaper in his hand, but she fancied he had only just unfolded it to avoid the charge of idleness. He did not look ill, or she might have felt less uneasy; if it were possible to apply such a word to M. Bourget’s square personality, he looked crushed. Mme. Léon went quickly up to him and kissed him.
“Have you been expecting us, dear father? I should have come at once on our return, but that Léon wanted some one to talk matters over with. I am afraid you have been anxious, and I wish now that I had written.”
“Have you anything good to tell?” inquired M. Bourget, brusquely.
He had fastened his eyes upon her determinedly, and bent forward.
“I think so. Léon has agreed to bring an action against this man.”
“What for? What for!”
“For slander,” said Nathalie, surprised that he should put the question.
“Then he’s got evidence to disprove it?”
“His own word,” replied the wife, proudly.
“Ah-h—!” M. Bourget’s ah-h—! was like a snarl; he fell into his original position, and fixed his eyes on the ground. She drew back a step, in her turn holding him with her eyes. “Father! You doubt him!”
He sat silent, gloomy, slowly nodding.
“Oh!” In the word was anger, scorn, incredulity. She had difficulty in commanding herself from uttering more; but the one exclamation was eloquent. Her father looked up at her.
“Hum! I see you don’t. Well, prove it; prove that he’s innocent. That can’t be such a hard matter. Do you think I want it the other way? Why, I can’t even go for my coffee but that little imbecile Leroux flings a taunt in my face. I tell you that I—I!—after all these years—walk about the town in dread of what I shall hear.”
He began almost inaudibly, ended loudly. There was no softening in her glance.
“Oh!” she reiterated. “The shame of hearing you say this! You, who know him!”
“Ask his mother,” he muttered. “She can’t deny it. She thinks the same. Do you know what he did! Gave her the receipt, as she supposed, to keep, and it was a blank sheet of paper.”
She burst in: “What of that? She fretted him into it. She can fret, I tell you! He had no receipt; he has said so throughout Oh!”—she laughed—“and this is what has persuaded you!”
“Well, I hope you are right.” But she could see he was not shaken.
“Léon sent me to know what you thought about it all.”
“Sit down, then, and let’s hear,” he said, gloomily. “There’s a chair.”
She drew it back, sat down, and said, coldly: “What do you wish to hear!”
“What line he takes—what he has to go upon.”
She looked at him unflinchingly.
“There is no line, as you call it, but the straight one of what happened. Monsieur de Cadanet lent the money to Léon, not very willingly, but after some persuasion. Léon thinks that perhaps when it got to this Lemaire’s ears, it enraged him, because he was so jealous; and that he caught hold of the trifling circumstance—that when Léon was in the street, he met Monsieur de Cadanet’s messenger, and glanced at the letters he carried—to make up his absurd story.”
He raised bloodshot eyes and stared restlessly at her, meeting her own untroubled by a shadow of doubt. Then he bent his head again—
“What does the lawyer say!”
He did not believe one word of the story. Now that his faith was gone, it had sunk utterly, crumbled into dry dust, and he was only possessed with a dull rage against the man who had shattered the dream and delight of his life, and left him a laughing-stock to Leroux and his fellows. She tightened the lock of her hands, recognising his antagonism.
“He urged Léon to take the initiative.”
“Yes, yes; they will get something out of it!” he cried, wrathfully, and then muttered to himself, “Collapse, collapse!” She started to her feet.
“Father, I cannot stay and listen to you! May God forgive you! Oh, my dear Léon, that it should be any one belonging to me that does you this dishonour! Father, one day you will be sorry—bitterly sorry. I think you must be mad—ill! Are you ill? Has anything happened to you! You have been sitting here alone, and letting yourself get confused. Look at me. I am his wife. Do you suppose I could stand and smile if I were not as sure—as sure of him as of my own life!”
Her words fell on his heart as if it had been made of flint, rolling off the surface. He did not feel them. He did not even pity her. He said, brutally:
“You had better ask what he was before you married him.”
She did not shrink, as he expected. Her breath came quickly, but unshaken confidence was in her face.
“I know my husband.”
“Then, go!” He waved his hand. “Go!”
“I am going, and I shall try not to be angry, because you are not yourself.”
He looked up gloomily.
“No; I am not myself. I don’t expect ever to be myself again. Before this, I have always held up my head; but now—” He drooped again into depression; and her heart smote her.
“Father, fling away this horrible, unjust suspicion!” she cried, coming close, and laying her hands on his shoulders. “It does Léon such cruel harm! Only reflect what it means. One would suppose you were his enemy.” Then she knelt down by his side. “Father!”
“Let him disprove it.”
“So he will.”
“Not with that cock-and-bull story. There, there, you’d better go. What’s the good of talking? I cannot pardon.” He was implacable. Self-love refused to waste pity on others when he suffered so much himself. Her steadfastness merely incensed him. He was granite. But at his words she rose up quickly.
“Do not do him the wrong of supposing I am asking you to pardon him. May God forgive you!”
“You’ve said that twice. Now, go.”
She went out of the room, looking back. A sign of compunction would have taken her again to his side, but none came. Fanchon marched out of the kitchen, wiping the flour from her hands with a cloth.
“But, Mademoiselle Nathalie, you are not going to leave monsieur so soon! As soon as ever I saw you, I said to myself, ‘There, now, here comes the best medicine for monsieur,’ and I made up my mind you’d stop a good bit, and that would cheer him up. Why, you’ve been here next to no time! And monsieur not even coming out to see you off! Well, that’s droll! I never knew him not come out.”
“I do not think he is quite himself to-day,” said his daughter, catching at straws. “Has any one been here—any one to vex him?”
“Holy Virgin! no, who should come? And as for vexing, there’s no one would dare. Something he’s eaten or drunk, but not of my getting, has just set the world upside-down with him. Oh, he’ll be better to-morrow, you’ll see! And Monsieur Raoul, the treasure, how is it with him?”
Nathalie drove home, unshaken but thoughtful. The slander, then, was more serious in its effects than she had imagined, since her father, with all his pride in Poissy and the De Beaudrillarts, was affected by it. To her it had seemed only ludicrous; but she began to perceive that other people would expect absolute proof that the thing was not. By her own feelings she was sure this would be agony to Léon. She blamed herself for having treated his fits of depression too lightly, and promised herself to be more sympathetic. She would ask him, too, to explain the incident of the envelope.
As for Mme. de Beaudrillart, that she could really have any doubt, was impossible, and she smiled again at the bare idea. She could imagine how it had been struck into her father’s mind by her mother-in-law’s impassive manner. Secure, as she would have been, she probably did not attempt to express her security, and, especially with M. Bourget in the room, would have been so coldly indifferent that he had misjudged her. Nathalie understood that her father would have expected indignation and protestations, and not meeting them, thrust their absence upon conviction of guilt. She tried to think calmly, justly of him. “Some chance word has stung him,” she thought, wondering that the clang of rumour had so soon reached the quiet town, and not understanding that it was M. Bourget’s own fear which had given chance words their imaginary force. She was only thankful that Léon had not accompanied her. If he had read distrust in M. Bourget’s manner, she could scarcely have borne it. They must be kept apart until the time when the force of the law obliged her father to admit the shamefulness of his distrust.
Reaching Poissy, she heard that all, even Mme. de Beaudrillart, had gone down to one of the nearest vineyards. She knew that her husband would not have expected her to return so soon, and impulse made her long to be by his side. She lost no time in hurrying after them, crossing the river by the bridge, and finding them without difficulty, guided, as she was, by the vibration of voices in the clear air. From out of her anxious thoughts she came into the gayest of scenes. The grapes were being picked into great baskets; from a sky of clearest blue, the sun, now a little low, shone ripeningly upon the mellow clusters, the women’s white head-gear and bright dresses flitting here and there between the green vines; light, warmth, colour, and gaiety were everywhere. Raoul was the masterful head of the troop of children whom he had constituted his regiment, Léon in his grey suit was chatting familiarly with one of the oldest of his tenants, Mme. de Beaudrillart and Claire stood graciously regarding the busy scene, and eating from the beautiful bunch of grapes which had just been presented to them, while Félicie, with her small steps, moved about from group to group. Almost every one from the château, down to Jean Charpentier, was there, and in all fair France it would have been difficult to have lit upon a spot more peaceful, more sunny, and more secure.
Nathalie drew a long breath as she stood for an instant watching it. This was her home, her peace, her security. Her husband caught sight of her, and came towards her with his easy smile upon his face.
“Back already, chérie? A thousand welcomes! They say the vintage is splendid—better than it had been for years. No phyloxera, and magnificently ripened. Look how the light shoots through those bunches. Old Félix is delighted.”
Surely, her security.