The will to live (Les Roquevillard)

by Henry Bordeaux

THE WILL TO LIVE

I
THE VINTAGE

FROM the summit of the hill the voice of Mr. Francis Roquevillard came down to the grape-gatherers, who, ranged along the vines on the hillside, were lightening the stalks of their dark fruit.

“The night’s coming. All together now! One more good pull.”

It was a benevolent voice, but it had an accent of command. It made every finger nimbler at the sound of it; even the shoulders of those labourers that had begun to loaf bent again to work. Good-humouredly the master added:

“In the morning they are as swift as swallows, and in the afternoon they idle and chatter like a lot of jays.”

The remark called forth general laughter.

“Yes, Squire.”

They never addressed the master of La Vigie in any other way than that, adding oftener than not his title of lawyer. La Vigie was a fine estate, comprising woods, fields and vineyards in a single holding, at the other end of the canton of Coquin, two or three miles from Chambéry. You reached it by following a country road, and crossing an old bridge built on arches over the deep waters of the river Hyère. The grounds commanded a view of the Lyons road which used to join Savoy and France, leading across the freestone hills of the Echelles. Its name, the Look Out, was taken from a tower that once crowned the round hill, but of which now no trace remained. The estate had belonged for several centuries to the family of Roquevillard, who had added to it little by little, as the country house and the outbuildings erected bit by bit testified, a group of somewhat questionable harmony, but expressive nevertheless, like some old face on which the vicissitudes of a long life are traced. Here was written the past history of a strong race, faithful to its native land. The Roquevillards had been, father and son, for generations, people of the law. They had produced judges and leaders of the bar, as well as presidents of the ancient senate of the province, and had given to the new court of appeals a councillor who had refused all advancement to die at home. Nevertheless, the country persisted in regarding them all indifferently as just lawyers, and no doubt found in this title some sense of mutual protection. Nearly forty years of practice, an exact acquaintance with the law, a warm and vigorous eloquence, gave the present proprietor a particular title to this popularity.

The regular alignment of the vineyard made it easy to oversee the gathering of the harvest. Already the tints of the leaves began to hint of October, and on the hills a more vivid earth opposed a paler sky. The various levels were distinguished more clearly than before by their new colours: La Mondeuse green and gold, the Grand Noir and the Douce Noire green and purple. Among the bare branches, the sombre patches of the grapes caught the eye. With knives open and dripping hands, the vintagers, prompt for the work of sacrifice, renewed their efforts, handling the grapes as if they were sacrificial victims, severing them with one sharp stroke and casting them into the baskets. The women one and all had raised their skirts, gathering and fixing them behind in order to be more free in their movements on the heavy soil, and wearing a motley handkerchief or scarf knotted round their heads to keep off the rays of the hot sun. From time to time some one of them, straightening up, would rise from the sea of branches like a salmon coming up to the surface a moment, and then plunge down again. Some among them were old women, knotted and wrinkled, slow and stiff in their joints, capable, nevertheless, of great endurance and with eyes always on the watch; they were not regular employees any longer and were struggling all the more to keep their last jobs. There were young women of twenty, more adroit and lively, exposing their faces and their bare forearms fearlessly, safe in the coat of tan that protects the flesh from a too caressing sky. There were young girls, too, immature as yet, and less persistent, changing their places, disturbing the ranks or sitting back quite simply, with the gaiety of school-girls on vacation, as supple and flexible as the vines they handled. There were even little children under care of mothers who could not leave them at home, gathering grapes on their own account, scampering about and besmearing lips and cheeks with juice like precocious bacchantes.

On the path, about half-way up the hill, which divided the estate and facilitated its cultivation, the waggon, harnessed to two red oxen, with horns trained back in the form of a lyre, waited patiently for the moment of moving toward the wine-press. The men loaded it gravely. You did not hear laughter from them like the women, but only the exchanging of brief directions now and then. The younger of them wore white caps and flannel belts that gave their bodies full play, an Alpine huntsmen’s fashion much imitated among the young people of Savoy. Two of them would pass a staff of strong wood through the handles of the overflowing bushel basket, raise it to their shoulders, and, giving their burden a slight rocking motion, place it in its turn upon the truck. One old man with a grey beard, who stood in the vehicle and directed them, finished the crushing of the grapes in the baskets that were already filled. Every now and then he would raise himself to his full height, his hands red and dripping with the blood of the vines.

Opposite La Vigie the shadows of evening were creeping up the slopes of Vimines and Saint Sulpice, coming nearer to the range of Lepine which received the setting sun, and on down the twisting valley of Saint Thibaud de Coux and the Echelles. But the light flooded the vineyard with purple and gold. It showed forth the lines of the women, turned their plain kerchiefs into aureoles, caressed the oxen’s horns, enveloped the grey beard and the ruddy face of the head cultivator in the waggon, illuminated the energetic features of Mr. Roquevillard beneath his hat brim, and still further up flashed on the proud steeple of Montagnole, to rest at last audaciously, like a crown, on the legendary rock of Mount Granier.

The workers, forming a group round some branches that had been set aside and saved, were busy gathering a few last grapes. One more basket was hoisted up, while the voice of old Jeremiah in the waggon announced in triumph:

“There we are, Squire.”

“How many cart-loads have we?” inquired the master.

“A dozen.”

“It’s a good year.”

As the oxen began to move off, followed by all the band of workers, he added:

“Now it’s my turn. This way, everybody.”

With their baskets on their arms and knives or bill-hooks in their hands, the workers climbed to the top of the hill and gathered round Mr. Roquevillard. He planted his iron-shod cane in the ground, and, taking out of his pocket a little bag, began to count money from it, mostly coppers, with some pieces of silver, whereupon even the most talkative of the women stopped. It was a solemn business, this get ting paid. Behind the gathering the windowpanes and slate-roofs reflected the flame of the sun like mirrors.

Friendly and familiar, Mr. Roquevillard called each worker by name, addressing some of them even with affection, for the oldest of them he had always known by sight, and the younger he had been acquainted with from childhood. To the wages of their day’s work he added a pleasant word in every case, and each acknowledged it in turn with a “Thank you, Squire.”

One or two of them who had seemed a little lazy during the day got a bit of blame, pronounced in a pleasant tone, but showing, nevertheless, that the master kept his two eyes open. Even the children, who had paid themselves with fruit as they played, got a few coppers from Squire Roquevillard, who loved them.

“Those that have received their pay pass to the left,” he said, in the midst of the proceedings. “I don’t want to begin again indefinitely.”

“It wouldn’t be a bad idea, though,” rejoined a fine-looking young woman of eighteen or twenty years.

She wore no kerchief on her head, as if to face the daylight the more openly with her youth. Her hair, a little disarranged, fell forward. Her mouth was large and her expression rather common, but she had a look of health, bright eyes, and in especial a golden tint, as of full white grapes that are reddened by warmth till they seem full of the elixir of the sun. Mr. Roquevillard stared at her.

“How fast you’ve grown, Catherine!” he said. “When are they going to marry you off?”

She reddened with pleasure at this public notice that was taken of her.

“Wait and see!”

“Well, well! You’re not bad looking, Catherine.”

And with the money that he handed her he joined a bit of counsel, putting it quite seriously:

“Be good, little girl. Virtue’s worth more than beauty.”

She promised it unhesitatingly:

“Yes, Squire.”

As the end of the line was reached the master inspected his troop and demanded:

“Is every one satisfied?”

Twenty happy voices replied, thanking him.

But one of the children pointed with his finger to an old woman who stood apart, embarrassed and discomfited.

“Mother Fauchois.”

The child’s words passed unheeded, and no one interfered, as if the old woman deserved no salutations.

“Well, now, good evening, all of you,” responded the ringing voice of Mr. Roquevillard. “You’ll reach Saint Cassin and Vimines all right before dark.”

“Good-bye, Squire.”

Standing quiet at his post of observation he saw the shadows of the workers, dark against the sunset, grow smaller and then disappear. Their voices rose to him from below. They separated into two groups, those from Vimines and Saint Cassin, respectively. These latter, whose path lay to the left, began to sing: a rustic chorus with a long-drawn close. Already the sun just touched the mountains. At the master’s side old Fauchois never stirred, claiming nothing.

“Pierrette,” said Mr. Roquevillard abruptly.

She thrust her head forward, showing features not so much old as sorrowful and broken.

“Yes, Master Francis,” she murmured.

“Here are one hundred sous. Go home and have some good soup.”

“It’s three days’ work,” said the poor creature, staring at the crown piece that lay white in her shrivelled hand, “and I’ve only earned one.”

“Take your pay, always. And your daughter. How’s she?”

“She’s gone to Lyons.”

“Does she work there?”

The old woman let her two arms fall at her sides, and said nothing.

“She must work,” said Mr. Roquevillard.

“Since her sentence she can’t find a place. Who wants a thief?”

The lawyer pleaded the circumstances of her case in extenuation. “She stole from thoughtlessness, coquetry, vanity. She’s not really bad. At her age she’ll turn over a new leaf. What does she live on?”

“And what do you suppose she lives off? Men, of course.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because once, at first, I sent her a little money order to help her. She sent it back to me, with another, a big one, which I burned up.”

“You burned it?”

“Yes, Master Francis. It was the wages of shame.”

And her anger straightened up her peasant form once more, making it seem menacing in the full light, her hands clenched like an accusing destiny.

“I don’t see how I ever had her. There have never been anything but good people in our family. I’m ashamed now.”

“It isn’t your fault, Pierrette.”

She shook her head, with an air of conviction: “It’s always the fault of the family. You know that. You said so yourself.”

“I? When?”

“Yes, once before me, at Julienne, before the conviction. It worried me even then. And I brought her to see you one day.”

“I remember. And what did I say to her?”

“That when one had the good fortune to belong to an honest family, one ought to respect oneself all the more for it. Because in families everything is common property, land and debts, good conduct and bad.”

“Still, no one can throw a stone at you.”

“People do, though, just the same. And they’re right. Lucky enough I lost my husband before it all happened.”

“He would have protected you.”

“He would have killed her.”

“And you, you love her just the same?”

“She’s my child.”

“Well, well, Pierrette. Don’t be discouraged. So long as one isn’t dead, there’s nothing to be lost. Go on home. I’m going to the presses now, to make sure the vats are all right.”

“Thank you, Master Francis.”

She had worked for the household at the Look Out from time to time, helping with the washing as well as at vintages, or even occasionally in the kitchen, so that she exercised the servants’ privilege of using his first name.

When she had gone Mr. Roquevillard made no haste to move. He lingered, taking in with a loving eye all the fine land that stretched about him: the disburdened vines, whose purple and gold would live for him again in his joyful wines, the fields twice tilled, the orchards, the little nameless stream beyond them that separated the cantons of Coquin and Saint Cassin, the woods of oak and beeches, red and white, their colours shaded off by autumn into a pale bouquet. In these lands and the varied cultivation of them he read in this quiet hour a history not of the seasons, but of his own family. Such and such an ancestor had bought this field here, another had planted that vineyard; and he himself, had he not passed the boundaries of the canton when he acquired those woods that were so crowded now they called for cutting? Turning toward the farm buildings, he could see the first primitive cabin, changed now into a stable, which the first Roquevillards, honest peasants, had built. He contrasted it with the present large and substantial dwelling blazing with Virginia creeper. It was the same race, abiding in the same place, fortified by a past of honest labour and economy. He paid homage to it, recalling the words of old Fauchois:

“It’s always the fault of the family.”

His own race, moreover, had given the country men capable of serving the republic, as useful there as they had been in the administering of their own affairs. Thus the generations helped each other to a common prosperity. Had not the earliest of them all prepared his work for him? This land that he was treading on they had coveted and earned before him. This wide view had thrilled and exalted them as it thrilled him. With some difficulty he detached his gaze from his own domain and prefigured things as they must have seen it, the combination of lines and tints that made up the landscape, and on which their sense of it, like his own, must have depended. For though cultivatism may modify the immediate appearance of the land, men’s hands change nothing of its splendour and extent: they add only certain human marks, a roof with smoke above it, telling of the sweetness of a hearth, a path or hedge, memorials of the social life, a bell tower that speaks of prayer.

Alone on the hillside he joined to the beauty of the evening the pleasure of communion with his race. He felt that the obscure past had given an importance to this corner of the earth. Opposite to him, the chain of Lepine, its monotony broken by the summit of the Signal, was edged with red. His gaze descended to the plain, followed a moment the graceful, flowing range of the Echelles, to which the last spurs of the mountains seemed to act as escorts on either side, then rose again to the indentations of the Corbelet, Joigny and Granier, and returned again to the hills nearer by, to the storeyed valleys and their more harmonious curves. In this bit of broken nature, hard and soft by turns, he retraced the characters of his parentage—the audacity of his grandfather, who bore arms during the Revolution, the nonchalance of his father, lapsing into mere philosophy and contemplation, and letting his sacred patrimony become compromised almost unawares.

“Not one of them,” he was thinking, “but could thus behold the spectacle of the setting sun from this place. One day, when I am no more, one of my children will take up these comparisons again—my children, who will continue our work, people of means and worth.”

From the past that buttressed him he made out the future in security.

Absorbed in these reflections, he did not see the woman’s form that had left the house and was now coming toward him. It was a woman already aged, with a dark shawl thrown over her shoulders, and using a cane as she walked, with an air of great lassitude and exhaustion. Her face, as you saw it in the evening light, must once have been beautiful. The years had chastened it without taking from it a certain expression of purity, which surprised one at first and then attracted. It was the visible imprint of an upright soul, purged of all evil, even a little mystical.

“Are they not coming yet?” asked Mrs. Roquevillard of her husband.

“Yes, Valentine; there they are.”

Both understood that they were speaking of their children. He pointed but for her at the foot of the declivity, on the upward path, a numerous group. At the head of it came two babies, whom their grandmother recognised at once:

“Peter and Adrienne. They are taking the short cut. I don’t see little Julian.”

“He has probably good hold of his Aunt Margaret’s hand. He never leaves her.”

“Of course. I can see him between Margaret and her fiancé. He’s keeping them apart, the naughty boy. And his mother, where is she?”

“She’s coming behind them, quietly as usual, with her brother Hubert.”

“Our oldest son. Can you make out his decoration?”

Mr. Roquevillard smiled, and glanced at his companion. “How could you, from this distance?”

She laughed with him at this, graciously.

“There is a large red ribbon on the mountain.”

“And you read in the sky: ‘Hubert Roquevillard, twenty-eight years old, lieutenant of marines, decorated for bravery in war, recommended for promotion, campaign in China, defence of Pei-Tung.’”

“Indeed, I do,” she agreed: “I can read it all quite distinctly.”

She scrutinised the path again. “And Maurice. I don’t see Maurice.”

“He’s further back, I think, with some one else.”

Mrs. Roquevillard, satisfied, placed her hand on her husband’s shoulder.

“That must be our son-in-law, Charles Marcellaz. The roll is complete. I count them always, just as I did when they were little—Germaine, Hubert, Maurice, Margaret.”

“And Felicie was always absent,” he said.

A shadow darkened his features: he could never accustom himself to the absence of his second daughter, now a Little Sister of the Poor across the seas in Hanoi. Mrs. Roquevillard leant more heavily on her husband’s arm.

“No, Francis, she’s not so far from us. Her thoughts are with us. I know and feel it. Hubert, who saw her on his way back from China, found her happy. And then, one day, we shall all be united.”

He was afraid of his feelings, and began counting the approaching group again.

“That’s not Charles coming with Maurice,” he said. “It’s a woman. They have left the short cut. They’re spreading out.”

“It’s Mrs. Frasne, perhaps. Do you see her husband?”

“Yes, it’s she; but I don’t see the notary.”

“He’ll come up later with Charles. Their studies keep them till six o’clock.”

“The Frasnes dine here this evening, don’t they?” he asked.

She seemed to make excuses for it as for a fault.

“Yes. They often ask Maurice there, and he begged me to invite them.”

They were silent a moment, both with the same concern.

“I don’t like that woman,” she said at last.

“And why?”

Mrs. Roquevillard fixed her clear eyes on the sun set.

“I don’t know. We’ve no idea where she came from, and tremble to think how far she’ll go. She’s not good looking, but just the sight of her makes the mothers worry for their sons, and the wives for their husbands.”

“What a pity,” he said. “Who’s been talking to you about her?”

“Nobody. All I know I have guessed at. Those who pray much are not always the worst informed. She has strange eyes, dark but with fire in them. She frightens me.”

“Ah! I see. Well, people in the village do talk about her and our son.”

“Maurice should be warned,” said his mother. “He should be warned at once.”

“But, my dear, how shall we go about it? We are not certain of anything. Gossip and talk, what do they signify?”

“It isn’t the gossip. I feel trouble coming. I am sure of it. He is in some danger.”

“Sometimes combating a love affair only brings it to a head,” Mr. Roquevillard replied. “You know that. You consented to having the Frasnes asked here. Besides, young people don’t tolerate any meddling in their lives, Maurice least of all. He’s very proud. He’s not twenty-four yet, and a doctor of law. He has complete confidence in himself. He has absurd theories on the right to be happy, the necessity of one’s own personal development. Paris sends them back to us more refined, but rebellious. It takes experience to make them really wise.”

“You’ve been worrying about it, too, then?” said his wife. “And you’ve said nothing about it all to me.”

“What was the use in making you worry? You are already so tired.”

“Yes, when I ought to be strong, too. A mother needs strength. But you have enough for us both.”

He went on:

“We were wrong in having him go into Frasnes’s offices. I wanted him to get into the way of a business practice, especially assignments and liquidations, before he made his début at the bar. Frasne is the successor of Mr. Clairval, who was my friend, and our own solicitor. I respected the tradition of the family, and that’s just where I made my mistake. However, everything will be different very soon now.”

“Soon?”

“Yes. I shall be taking Maurice into my office: he can finish his first stage there. Or else he can study proceedings with Marcellaz. When we move back to town I’ll look round and see.”

“Good,” she said, pressing his hand. “There will be less occasion for him to meet her. But that isn’t enough in itself. You find him reasonable. I think him rather a bit romantic. I should prefer to turn his fancy somewhere else.”

“But how?”

“Well, an early engagement, for instance. Early engagements make young people think and develop character. In France I think we hasten marriage too much, when you consider that marriage disposes of life and family and a future all in one.”

“It’s true.”

“Margaret has thought of little Jeanne Sassenay for Maurice.”

“But she’s only a child yet.”

“A pretty one, though, and brought up by a lovely mother.”

Her last words were cut short by shrill young voices squalling out:

“Good-evening, grandmother! Good-evening, grandfather!”

It was the advance guard, Peter and Adrienne, out of breath with running, just over the edge of the hill, and tumbling out on the level ground. They struggled to make more speed in spite of the “Not so fast, not so fast,” from Mrs. Roquevillard, and their grandfather caught them on the wing.

“You know, grand-dad,” said Adrienne, who was very talkative, and spoke familiarly to everybody, being no respecter of persons, “Julian stayed behind with Aunt Margaret, and mamma ordered him to come with us.”

Half-way down the hill the young people who were coming up cried out in their turn:

“Good-evening!”

Only Maurice and Mrs. Frasne were too far away to join in these family greetings. By tacit consent, they both walked more and more slowly as they approached the summit, and following all the windings of the path they had managed to get a further considerable space between themselves and the others, although Margaret had turned several times and called to them. The mountain was hidden from them by the close angle of the hillside, so that they saw the figures of Mr. and Mrs. Roquevillard in silhouette against the clear sky. Mrs. Frasne turned an enigmatic smile upon her companion, whom their tête-à-tête was making languid.

“Your father must have been handsomer than you,” she said, and added, quite low, as if to herself: “He’ll find out what he wants to, your father.”

The young man maintained a perverse silence.

“How old is your father?” she asked again, smiling at her success in having annoyed him.

“Sixty, I think.”

“Sixty years. Well, he detests me. If he could, he would suppress me with great pleasure.”

“You’re mistaken: he always welcomes you here.”

“Oh, those things can be felt. He detests me, and yet he interests me. I’ve always liked characters, myself.”

Just before the top of the hill the path turned and disclosed a new view framed between the embankment on the right and the border of shrubs on the left, their leaves half coloured and mingling the green of spring with autumnal gold. Le Nivolet came abruptly into view, with its regular architectural lines and gradients, re-echoing the glory of the vanished sun.

The slender thickets that clung to its rocky sides took on a tint of violet like the dregs of wine, while the chain of Margeria behind it showed quite rosy and charming, in its tones of flesh-colour.

“See, what a change in the scene,” murmured Maurice, not noticing that his companion paid heed much sooner to the fact of their being alone than to the marvels of the evening light.

She halted in their walk, and he turned back toward her.

“What’s the matter? Are you tired?”

“Oh, no. I’m only giving you time to admire the landscape.”

“Would you be jealous?”

“Yes, you love your country, and I——”

“And you?”

“I shan’t say the rest——”

“But I’ll say it. I’ll tell you how I love you.”

He took her in his arms. She was a thin, dark woman, with large eyes; her flesh firm and her caresses melting. As she turned her head a little he could see, beneath the half-closed and palpitant pupils, that look of black and gold in which all the voluptuous anguish of the season and the hour were reflected.

“How little she seems against my breast,” he thought, as he clasped her to him; “a little thing, yet more to me than all the world.” Aloud he murmured:

“I love you, Edith.”

“Really?” she said, with her same purposed smile.

“When will you be mine?”

“When I can be only yours.”

“But that’s impossible.”

“Why?

“You are bound.”

“We could go away together.”

“What should we live on?”

“On my dot.”

“I couldn’t do that. And, besides, you haven’t the control of it.”

“I can take it back.”

“No—no!”

“You could work.”

He was silent. She paid him back in irony, almost in irritation.

“Oh, you prefer to mind your father. Well, be like him, then, a big man in a little village, with a lot of children.”

She caught an expression of such sadness on his face at this that she blotted it out against her heart.

“Oh, I love you,” she cried, “and I torment you. But don’t you see, I’m suffocated here in Chambéry. I want to get away from it, to love you freely, to live. I’ve a horror of falsehood. And you, you don’t love me.”

“Edith,” he cried, “how can you say that?”

“No, you don’t,” she repeated. “If you really loved me you would have made me your own a long time ago.”

Heavy hearted with these reproaches, they began their walk again, slowly. The view, taken out of its frame now, grew larger, and in the distance, beyond the last spires of Le Nivolet, disclosed Lake Bourget, its violet-blue merging with graduated tints into the purple mists that rose from its further end. But the two lovers saw nothing of all this. This mortal sweetness of the year, this high inquietude of nature, this enthusiasm of the autumn evening, like one long cry of desire—what need had they for anything of this outside their own hearts?

Near the house they found Mrs. Roquevillard, who came herself to meet Mrs. Frasne, though she was not supposed to be outdoors after sundown.

... Later in the evening Mr. Roquevillard, returning from the wine-presses before he was expected, espied his son and the young woman in a shadowy corner. During the vintage there is much coming and going in a house, and it is easy to creep outside without being noticed.

“He saw us,” said Maurice.

“All the better,” she replied.

And as Mr. Roquevillard passed behind the stable that had been the ancient home of his ancestors, to reach the dwelling that his grandfather had built and he himself enlarged, he tried in vain to shake off the anxiety that weighed upon him.

“I was young once, too,” he reminded himself.

But even youth had not turned him from his duty toward the future of his race. Would this younger son of his, who must continue his father’s work, know in time what it meant in energy and self-denial to be the head of a family? He was not usually very impressionable, Mr. Roquevillard, and yet to-night he felt around him, as if it were a flock of evil birds, a hopelessness like that of old abandoned Mother Fauchois, a sense of melancholy and fragility as of the dying year. Only just now, in the midst of his domain, he had reviewed the rise of the Roquevillards to power and wealth. It was his own pride. A talk with an old woman, the surprising of a kiss, and behold him, with a presentiment that was certainly absurd and unreasonable, remembering how the seasons pass and family fortunes totter and decay.

II
THE CONFLICT

THE Roquevillards moved in from the country after the departure of their son Hubert, who was in garrison at Brest, and took up their winter quarters in Chambéry. They occupied the second story of an old mansion that lay across the end of Boigne Street, alongside the castle. October was drawing to a close, and the sittings of the various courts brought the lawyer back to work.

One day, after luncheon, at which his wife had not been present, owing to her indisposition, Mr. Roquevillard called to his daughter Margaret, while Maurice was absorbed in the newspapers.

“Come with me, Margaret. You can give me some advice,” he said.

“What about, father?”

He glanced toward Maurice, who, however, did not hear them.

“On a new arrangement for my study,” he said.

This study and work-room, conforming to the angle of the street, which widened out at this point, was a spacious room, with a very high ceiling, lighted by four windows. Two of these windows, in a way, framed a picture of Savoy an history. They gave a view of the castle of the former dukes, a great block of stone buildings, blackened with time, dating from the fourteenth century, of a flat and heavy style of architecture scarcely relieved by some carving in high relief. This old and ruinous habitation was flanked on the right by the head of the Sainte-Chapelle, a delicate Gothic flower, which seemed to uphold, like some solid shaft, the bases of the fortress. At the right it was dominated by the tower of the archives, covered with ivy and Virginia creeper, itself crowned by a turret freshly painted white and looking quite vainglorious, like an aigrette or plume. These edifices of different ages and characters, their construction delayed or hastened according to the financial resources and ambitions of the princely builders, though less orderly, are more eloquent than the unified structures of a single master. A long sequence of history, with its hours of happiness and sorrow, dwells in them. The two towers rose out of a confused mass of trees planted in two superimposed terraces, across which they seemed to intermingle. Beneath the plane trees of the lower level stood the recently erected monuments to Joseph and Xavier de Maistre. Thus, within a little space, dwelt the memories of many centuries. The place was as deserted as a tomb: only the past spoke there.

There is no such thing as getting accustomed to a beautiful view: one day of sunshine suffices to make it new again. When Mr. Roquevillard and his daughter came into this room, if the sun attacked the mournful façade without success, nevertheless it tinted with rose the fine gothic lace-work of the chapel, and above the lighter branches that had begun to lose their leaves, it endowed the vine on the tower of the archives with fresh splendour, and showed even the vainglorious little turret at its best.

“You’ve everything very comfortable for your work here,” said Margaret. “I’m glad, for you work so hard.”

“I should have liked your mother to take this room for her drawing-room,” said her father, “but she would not have it. But don’t you notice anything special, little girl?”

She looked all round the familiar walls, at the book-cases encumbered with works on law and jurisprudence, at the portraits of former judges, her ancestors, more rigid than their justice in the painstaking canvases of the mediocre artists, a view of the Lake of Bourget by Hugard, the best of the Savoyan landscapists, and finally the framed map of La Vigie in the place of honour.

“No, nothing,” she declared, after her inspection.

“That’s because you’re looking too high.”

She noticed then that the heavy oak table, large, enough to hold as many briefs as one could possibly desire, had made way for one that was smaller and more elegant, placed so that it had the best of both light and view.

“Oh,” she cried, “why do you put yourself back like this?”

“Why, to make room for your brother.”

“For Maurice? Is he leaving Mr. Frasne’s office?”

“Yes. He’s to have a place near the window here. See how autumn is shaking off the plane-tree leaves. I prefer the spring. There’s a Judas tree beneath the turret that’s a bright red then, and plum trees in blossom.”

Margaret hardly heard him, and looked quite downcast.

“It’s lovely for Maurice, yes,” she said; “but how about you?”

“Little girl, don’t you know a young man must have things pleasant round him? See if you can finish arranging that table for me. Put some flowers on it, for instance.”

“There’s hardly anything left, father. I’ve nothing but chrysanthemums.”

“Let’s, have some chrysanthemums then. One or two, not more, in a long vase. These young doctors of law come back from Paris with a taste for pretty things, and I’ve not the least bit myself. But you have taste and grace for all of us, and you’ll know how to help us keep him.”

He smiled, with a little constrained smile that begged approval. He moved nearer to the girl and put his hand on her fine dark chestnut hair, unheeding whether he disarranged it.

“You will be leaving us soon, Margaret. Are you glad you’re going to be married?”

Instead of replying to him, she leant against her father and began to weep with a heavy heart. She looked like Mr. Roquevillard, though with a different expression of countenance. With a figure rather tall and vigorous, a slightly arched nose, a straight chin, she gave one, like him, an impression of security and loyalty, an impression to which large brown eyes, the eyes of her mother, added a profound sweetness, whereas her father’s eyes, deep-set and small, threw a flame so sharp that one could hardly bear their gaze.

He was distressed by her sudden burst of tears.

“Why do you cry? Isn’t this marriage all right for you? Raymond Bercy is a good boy, and comes of a good family. He’s finished his medical course, and now is definitely settled here in the city. Have you anything against him? You must not marry him if you don’t love him.”

She stifled her sobs long enough to murmur:

“Oh, I’ve nothing to reproach him with, except——”

“There, there, now, little girl, go on.”

She turned admiring eyes upon her father.

“Except that he isn’t a man like you.”

“You’re absurd, Margaret.” But she began to explain herself further as she grew more calm.

“I don’t know why I’m crying. I ought to be happy. Have I not always been happy here? My childhood comes back to me, with all its joys and sunlight. And I feel quite sorrowful at the thought of going away.”

He comforted her seriously.

“Don’t look backward, Margaret. Let your mother and me do I that. You must think of your woman’s life to come. Prepare yourself for your future, and be strong.”

She tried to smile.

“My future is my family.”

“The family you are going to found for yourself, yes.”

“You have often told me, father, in all our winter walks together, to cherish the traditions of our family.”

“But traditions, young logician, are not cherished in a wardrobe, after the manner of our neighbour in the country. Look at old Viscount de la Mortellerie. He shuts himself up with his heraldry and genealogies, and is surprised when his farmers make so bold as to steal his wine. Tradition is not fostered even in an old mansion, or on an old estate, important as it is to guard our patrimony. Tradition is part and parcel of our daily life, our sentiments; gives support to it, makes it lasting and rich in values.”

Again she looked at him with her big, enthusiastic eyes, and sighed:

“I am too much attached to this home of ours.”

“No, no,” protested her father firmly; “you must not say that. There is always something of the unknown in marriage; I know how the prospect of such a change in your life must make you stop and think. But since neither your heart nor your reason finds serious objections, you must be brave and gay in leaving us. You have been happy with us, that’s my reward. But you can be happy, you must be, even away from us. Go find the flowers for me, and send Maurice.”

“Yes, father.”

She came back in a few moments, carrying quite a sheaf of flowers in her arms. With deft hands she transformed the table intended for her brother, and made it look attractive.

“I had some roses after all, the very last. There! In that vase that changes colour in the sun like an opal. They’re very pretty.”

Mr. Roquevillard repeated good-naturedly:

“Very pretty, indeed.”

But it was his daughter that he praised. She laughed and ran off, saying:

“Now I’ll go and warn Maurice.”

The young man came in promptly after his sister had gone for him.

“You have something to say to me?” he asked as he entered, his hat and cane in his hand, as if he had only a little while to stay.

He was tall, like his father, but thinner and more polished. More elegant in manner, too, and in appearance, he, nevertheless, did not, like his father, bear the same signs of grandeur in his face and attitude, a natural majesty which Mr. Roquevillard at this particular moment tried to tone down, assuming instead an air of affectionate comradeship.

“See how Margaret has arranged your table,” he began.

“My table?”

“Yes, this one, with the roses. You see the castle from it and there’s a good light. Wouldn’t you like to complete your reading with me, Maurice?”

A ray of sunlight touched the flowers, and outside the tower of the archives and the turret were bathed in light. The day made itself an accomplice with Mr. Roquevillard, courting his son with touching awkwardness. But only long afterward do sons appreciate their fathers’ patience with them, and then only through the apprenticeship of their own paternity.

“Then I’m not to return to Mr. Frasne’s office?” asked Maurice.

“No, it’s not necessary. You know enough now of the laws of succession. You can get an idea of business better here, and can attend court oftener. If you like, you can spend some months with your brother-in-law, Charles, who will initiate you into the fine points of procedure. He’s one of our busiest attorneys. Eventually you will make your début at the bar. If you want it, I’ve a very pretty case to offer you. It’s a very interesting point of law. It turns on the validity of a bill of sale.”

Never had he pleaded with such care and condescension. But the young man let him talk. He reflected.

“I thought it was understood,” he said, “that I should spend six months in Frasne’s office.”

“Well, then, the six months have almost rolled by. You began there in June, and here we are at the end of October.”

“But I took my vacation at the beginning of August, and it’s only a little while since I began again. And I’ve been examining some important liquidations these last days.”

“We shall find plenty of liquidations for you in the law courts,” replied Mr. Roquevillard bluntly. “They come up oftenest of anything at trials. I have a number of unusual pieces of business for the reopening this time. You shall help me. Go get your papers from Frasne’s office and install yourself here.”

“Mr. Frasne is away. It would be more courteous to wait till he gets back.”

He piled up objections, but his father paid no heed to any of them.

“He’s expected back to-morrow. Besides, I warned him about this before he went.”

At this news, Maurice, who had been waiting for the excuse, grew refractory.

“You warned him without saying anything to me about it? I shall never be anything but a little boy here, then. I am disposed of as if I were an object. But I don’t see why my independence must be sacrificed. I am free, and I expect at least to be consulted, even if I can’t have my own way.”

In the face of this revolt, which he had expected, and of which he guessed the secret cause, Mr. Roquevillard preserved his calm, despite the disrespectful tone the conversation was taking on. He knew that thoroughbreds were the most difficult steeds to manage, as the most tempered characters required the most skilful handling.

“Little boy or big boy, you are my son,” he said simply, “and I shall help you in the arrangements for your future.”

But the young man pitched squarely upon the difficulty which both of them until then had kept in the background.

“What’s the use in dissimulation? I know perfectly well why you are taking me away from Frasne’s office.”

His father’s presence of mind nearly warded off the blow:

“Will things be so bad for you, then, in my study, and can you so lightly disdain my guidance? Will your independence be in danger because you benefit by my professional experience, my forty years at the bar? I don’t understand you.”

Seeing his son begin to give way, he thought to complete his victory by a little tenderness.

“Your mother is sick. Your sister is going to leave us. If you stay, I shall be less lonely.”

For a moment he hoped that he had warded off the storm. Maurice hesitated a little while, for at the bottom of his heart he really admired his father; then, persuading himself that he was scoring a victory over hypocrisy, he threw himself headlong again into the offensive.

“Yes, people have taken occasion to warn you against me and Mrs. Frasne. What have they been saying to you? I want to know, and I have the right to know. Bah! This provincial life is so impossible. One is watched and spied on, guarded, bound down. The noblest sentiments are travestied by all the envious hypocrisy and pious venom the village can muster up. But you, father, I won’t admit that you would listen to such low slanders, slanders that don’t hesitate to attack the most virtuous of women.”

Mr. Roquevillard could no longer shun the issue.

“I’ve let you talk, Maurice. Now listen to me. I don’t bother myself with gossip, and I don’t ask you whether it is true that you are more often in your chief’s drawing-room than in his office during his numerous absences on business. All the reasons I gave you for coming here were true ones. But since you cross-question me in this way, I won’t dodge the debate. I’ll admit that on Mrs. Frasne’s account, too, I asked you to finish your studies with me, the natural thing to do anyway. And I don’t need to lend an ear to every calumny. I’ve seen enough with my own eyes.”

“And what then?”

“There’s no use telling you. Don’t insist.”

“You’ve threatened me. Now I should like to know.”

“Very well, then. When your mother, at your request, receives your guests, you should at least respect your own roof. You know what I’m alluding to.”

But Maurice, made tactless by his anger, for the second time, went too far in his argumentative eagerness to justify his passion.

“My personal life deserves respect, too. I don’t want people to meddle with it. I have given you satisfaction on all the points as to which my father has any right to ask a reckoning.”

“Maurice!”

“I passed my examinations, and brilliantly, too. I came back after six years in Paris without a single debt. What blame have I ever deserved from you? You can’t reproach me even with one of those low Latin Quarter intrigues that are so common among the students.”

“I’ve not reproached you with anything. But, my poor child——”

“I’m not a child.”

“You’ll always be a child to your father; Don’t you understand that just because work and pride and family traditions have protected your youth with their sense of order and discipline, this woman, who’s older than you are, and whose name I’ve not been the first to mention here, is all the more a danger for you? Do you so much as know who she is?”

“Don’t talk about her!” cried Maurice.

“I will talk about her, though,” said Mr. Roquevillard, in a tone that had become abrupt and imperious. “Am I the head of the family, or am I not? By what right do you tell me to keep still? Are you afraid I am going to use undignified arguments with you? You know that would not be like me.”

“Mrs. Frasne is a good woman,” repeated the young man.

“Yes, one of those good women who have to play with fire to distract themselves, who are never satisfied unless they monopolise all the men in a drawing-room, even the old ones. One of those virtuous women of to-day, who have read everything except the Gospel, who understand everything except their duty, who excuse everything except virtue, who take advantage of every privilege but that of doing good, which is always open to them. Why are they virtuous? You can’t tell. Neither faith nor shame deters them, and as for honour, that’s a religion for men alone. They are all rebels. In their youth they are content with words. When youth threatens to take wing, believe me, they want realities. This woman here, the young wife of a man already well on in years, ought at least to remember that he houses and feeds her, for he married her without a cent.”

“That’s not true. She had a dot of one hundred thousand francs.”

“Who told you so?”

“She did, herself.”

“I hope so. However, my informant is my old friend Clairval, who introduced the Frasnes to us when his successor was installed here, and he does not speak lightly. Between her dread of poverty, or at least of coming down a long way in the world, and of her husband, whose grim face is not very reassuring, I’ll admit, if she still prefers her husband, that’s as much sense as could be expected of her.”

Quite trembling with this contemptuous treatment of his idol, Maurice took a step forward.

“Enough, father, I beg of you. Don’t accuse her of any baseness. Don’t challenge her courage. I can assure you that you would be wrong. I don’t want to hear her defamed any more, and so I’m going.”

“I forbid you to set foot again in Frasne’s offices.”

“Take care that I don’t refuse ever to set foot in yours.”

This last threat was launched by Maurice from the threshold.

“Maurice!” called Mr. Roquevillard in a changed voice, with a tone more of appeal than of command.

He followed after the boy hastily: only to find that the vestibule was empty, the young man already half-way down the outer steps.

Alone in the great bare study, the father looked at the little table, where the sun fell gently on the roses, all the fine preparations of welcome he had made under the approval of the old portraits, with the country of the past showing through the windows, and he felt himself abandoned like the leader of an army in the evening of his defeat.

“Can a son so rebel against his father?” he reflected. “I spoke gently to him in the beginning. He grew irritable almost at once. How potent that woman is with him, and how I should like to break her! He’ll come back. It’s impossible that he should not. I’ll go and find him, in case——I was too distant with him perhaps. I wounded him unnecessarily. He loves her, poor child. He believes what she tells him. With her siren’s voice and her eyes of fire and all her pretty looks, she has cajoled him, and plays with him. Yes, I was wrong to defy them. Their scorn of hypocrisy and their revolt against society make these women more dangerous than those of other days.... He has run off to her, no doubt. She’ll stir him up against me, against his father. Against your father, Maurice, who, in his love for you, tried to keep you in the right track....”

But he was not a man for useless lamentation. Searching some decision to be made, he went to his wife’s room, for it was there he customarily repaired for counsel in difficult moments. But he found the curtains drawn and Mrs. Roquevillard sleeping. Afflicted with a slow consumption, which had grown more pronounced as she grew older, she suffered often now from a facial neuralgia that completely exhausted her. Many a time, for years, he had opened her door like this, counting on her calm judgment and clear vision, and had had to steal away again without making any noise, thrown back on his own resources. He always felt less confidence in himself when she was depressed or laid low. He was worrying about their son: mothers are more close and have more influence than fathers. She could perhaps have conjured away this peril that threatened Maurice.

“I am alone,” he thought sadly, standing by her sick bed.

Quietly as a cat he stole out of the room. In the drawing-room he found Margaret writing, and from her serene presence drew, as always, some reassurance.

“Here’s the one to help me,” he said to himself. “There’s no sister more devoted.”

He went nearer to her, forcing himself to dissemble his anxiety as she raised her head and smiled.

“What are you doing, little girl? I’ll wager you’re ordering something for your trousseau from some fine shop.”

“Father, you’re nowhere near it.”

“You’re writing to some of your school friends, then, to tell them of your engagement.”

“No nearer.”

“Then you’re reminding your fiancé that he dines here this evening.”

“There’s no need of that.”

She held out the pages in which she had been writing, and he recognised the Roquevillard Book of the Family. According to old-fashioned custom, the Roquevillards kept one of those common-sense books in which our ancestors used to note down, side by side with the management of their estate, certain important facts of private life, such as marriages and deaths, births and honours, expenses, contracts, etc.—books which evoke the past with the impressiveness of old wills, and teach confidence in the future to any one who can draw inspiration from his forebears’ lives or wants to grow up worthy of them.

“I’m bringing it down to date,” added the girl. “Maurice’s return and Hubert’s decoration haven’t been entered in it yet.”

Mr. Roquevillard turned over the leaves of this book that bore such patient witness to the energy of his race, not without pride.

“Who will keep it up after you, Margaret?”

“But I shall go on with it myself, father.”

“No, a woman must belong to her new home.”

She blushed like a school-girl discovered in some fault.

“I’m afraid I shall make a very bad wife,” she said, “for I shall always remain attached to the old home. Everything that goes on here is very dear to me, dwells in my very heart.”

He could not keep from murmuring:

“Dear child!”

“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.

“How do you account for the fact that the thief did not take everything?” objected the commissioner. “As a rule, they don’t voluntarily limit their profits.”

“I’ll explain that to the public prosecutor, to whom I shall carry my complaint at once.”

“That’s for you to say. You suspect some one, then?”

“Yes.”

“Your servants?”

“No. They would not have been in here. And, besides, they would not have known how to make out the combination.”

“Good. I’ll go and draw up my report.”

“Come with me to the court-house. It’s only a step.”

“As you wish.”

They presented themselves to the prosecutor directly, and the notary had a long conference with him, a conference that prolonged itself some time after the commissioner of police had left them. As Mr. Frasne came down the staircase he met Mr. Roquevillard at the foot, coming in on his way to court. It was a quarter past twelve, the hour for the opening of the hearings. The two men looked at each other and bowed.

V
A FAMILY IN DANGER

BEFORE the court sits, the barristers and attorneys customarily meet and chat a few moments amongst themselves in the lobby. It is the place where all the town news is subjected to the test. To-day Mr. Roquevillard, famous for his good humour and redoubtable sallies, took his robe from its hook in the cloak-room and went directly to his place at the bar. His colleagues eyed him from a distance, with ill-natured curiosity, while they made merry over the escapade of young Maurice, which for the matter of that they treated lightly, and as a revenge upon the constraints of country manners. As Mr. Roquevillard was apparently absorbed in the preparation of his plea, a court attendant came to his bench and touched him on the shoulder.

“Sir, you are wanted in the prosecutor’s office.”

He rose at once, respectfully.

“I’ll come,” he said. It happened every day that the prosecutor took advantage of the presence of some lawyer at the sessions to consult with him on some point of penal business. Mr. Roquevillard, nevertheless, was not without some anxiety. His encounter with Mr. Frasne at the entrance to the court-house made him speculate:

“Will he be so foolish as to enter a complaint of adultery?”

Legally adultery remains a misdemeanour in France. A husband, but not a wife, has the right to enter a complaint, but it is a privilege seldom exercised. But the notary’s face was so difficult to make out——

The prosecutor, Mr. Vallerois, had held the office in Chambéry for several years, and had had time to appreciate Mr. Roquevillard’s professional probity, character and talent. People talked, it is true, of his possible candidacy at the next election, and the opposition would find in him, should he accept, its most energetic and acknowledged chief. Mr. Frasne’s accusation fatally destroyed this political danger. Ambitious office-holder that he was, Mr. Vallerois was considering this aspect of things without displeasure when Mr. Roquevillard entered the room.

But he thought less of this when he began his obligatory talk with him, and it was to his credit that in the lawyer facing him he saw only an honest man in trouble. He held out his hand to him and began:

“I have a disagreeable duty to take up with you.”

He stopped and hesitated. Mr. Roquevillard’s moral force showed to best advantage in difficult circumstances. He appreciated the delicacy of the prosecutor, but he went straight to the point himself.

“It concerns my son?”

“Yes.”

“In the matter of a divorce in which his name is involved? A complaint of adultery?”

“No, unfortunately.”

“Unfortunately?”

The word could scarcely have any significance. In a firm but muffled voice, Mr. Roquevillard demanded: “Does it concern an accident? A suicide?”

“No, no. Reassure yourself,” cried Mr. Vallerois, realising the error that he had provoked. “He eloped last night with Mrs. Frasne: the whole town knows it. But what is more serious is that Mr. Frasne, who has just been here, has placed in my hands a complaint of abuse of confidence against him.”

In spite of his self-possession, the old lawyer, red to his forehead, grew indignant.

“Abuse of confidence? I know my son. It’s impossible.”

The prosecutor let him read the accusation which the notary had signed, together with the examinations made by the commissioner of police. Mr. Roquevillard read them through attentively and without interruption. It might be, it was, the foundering of his family, the disgrace of his name. Master of him self, but stricken to his heart, he said at last:

“Mr. Frasne is taking a base revenge.”

“I believe as you do,” replied Mr. Vallerois, letting his sympathy appear without circumlocution. “But the money has disappeared. How can a public trial be prevented?”

“My son is not the only one in this case. When a boy of twenty elopes with a woman of thirty, which of the two prepares and directs the expedition?”

“I made him listen to all that just now, in this very place, with some insistence. I recommended prudence, and insisted upon twenty-four hours of reflection. I am forced back on taking some formal action. Justice must take its course. I am obliged to lay the matter before the examining magistrate.”

Mr. Roquevillard, summoning his courage to meet this blow of fate, said nothing, while the prosecutor turned the insoluble problem over and over again.

“There are presumptions against him, serious, precise and corroborating. In the first place the facilities of his position in the office, then his presence there last night with the keys, after the other clerks had gone, his lack of resources with which to carry through this bold elopement, and even his pains to limit the sum he took, as if he were fixing the rating of a loan he expected to repay.”

“There are other presumptions in his favour,” replied the father proudly. “In the first place, his family. The last of a long line of honest people does not lie. And who told you that he left without any money? When his own money is used up, he’ll come back. I’ll answer for it.”

Their interview was interrupted by an attendant coming to summon the lawyer, for whose argument the court was waiting.

“I’ll follow,” said Mr. Roquevillard, motioning him away.

“But he has been accused. How will he defend himself?” asked Mr. Vallerois. “You must realise that he has a bad case. Evidence accumulates against him. And even on the most favourable hypothesis he must accuse some one else to clear himself. Do you wish that? And he will pass always as having been an accomplice. At all events, if you know where he is, advise him to wait there before he re-enters France. I will deal lightly in the matter of the extradition.”

Mr. Roquevillard shook his head energetically.

“No, no. To run away is to confess. He must come back. I shall find proof of his innocence.”

And after a moment of reflection, during which he weighed the pros and cons, he added:

“Since our misfortune touches you, Mr. Prosecutor, give me leave to ask a service of you, a great service which may yet save us.”

“Which is?”

“Propose to Frasne that he withdraw his complaint in consideration of the full payment to him of one hundred thousand francs.”

“You would make restitution?”

“I will pay him the money.”

“And if your son is not guilty?”

“He’s in a situation from which there’s no way out, as you have said. Our honour is worth more than that. Even pursuit must splash mud on it.”

“Mr. Frasne is supposed to be close. His complaint perhaps is only a way of putting himself in funds again. Try him with half of it.”

“No; no bargaining. Full payment in consideration of withdrawal.”

The attorney was much distressed; naturally desirous of quiet and propriety, he fell back now on his professional scruples.

“You are right, and I want to oblige you, especially in view of the sacrifice you propose. But does it become my character to risk such an abnormal step?”

Mr. Roquevillard put a little emotion in his reply.

“It’s abnormal, yes. But time presses. I am pleading in court. In a little while the complaint will be noised about. You alone know of it and can still suspend it. Quash it. I beg of you.”

“It’s impossible. I can’t deliberately seek out a complainant.”

“You can have him come here.”

“So be it,” said Mr. Vallerois. “The means are dear, but effective surely. I will present the proposal in my own name, so that if by any chance I fail, you will not be embarrassed. The offer on your part might seem to be an admission of the crime.”

“Thank you.”

They separated. The lawyer returned to the court-room, where the councillors were growing impatient, and began his argument with his customary lucidity. Listening to the ordered closeness of his reasoning, no one would have suspected that anguish tortured him. But when he sat down, this old fighter who was never tired, he was conscious at last of an extreme fatigue, heavy as the mysterious blows of age.

After the argument in rebuttal and his brief reply, he regained his liberty at last. He looked at his watch: it was half-past three. In this interval of three hours the fate of his son had been decided. He went up again to the prosecutor’s office, where Mr. Vallerois was waiting for him. At a glance he could see that that officer’s mission had failed.

“Mr. Frasne came here,” explained the latter. “You were right. He wants revenge.”

“He refused?”

“Absolutely. He prefers his revenge to his money. In vain I pressed him in every way in my power. I spoke of the scandal, which would react against his wife; spoke even of his lack of evidence. He replied that if I did not begin a public action, he would bring a civil suit before the examining magistrate. He has the right, and his resolution is unbreakable.”

“And if I should try myself to move him? Our relations were pleasant.”

“Your visit would be useless, painful; perhaps even compromising. I don’t advise you that way at all. I spoke to him of your family, of yourself: He replied: ‘His son has broken my heart. So much the worse if the innocent pay for the guilty.’”

Mr. Roquevillard reflected a moment, and yielded to this advice, of which he could not but approve. He took leave of the prosecutor, stretching out his hand to him.

“There’s nothing left for me but to thank you. You have treated me as a friend, and I shall not forget it.”

“I’m sorry for you,” replied Mr. Vallerois, who was really touched.

The lawyer, his portfolio under his arm, went on his way home. He walked briskly, with his always youthful tread, holding his head high, according to his habit, but his face was very pale. Under the Porticoes, that resort for loungers, he came across friends, who turned aside, while passersby stared at him insistently and mockingly. He perceived that Frasne’s clerks were already hawking the shame of the Roquevillards about the town. The Roquevillards: it was the first failing, for centuries, of any of the race. It must have been watched for, that it should be spread with so much spite. What base envy the pride in their name stirred up! The weakness of one member undid a whole past of energy and honour, a past that had furnished such manly examples for so many years. Did not those who exulted in it understand that this ruin reached them, too?

He straightened himself up and walked more slowly. No one now could look him in the eye. Stiffening with contempt, setting his face to the storm, he reflected: “Dogs, bark and keep away from me. Don’t come nearer. As long as I’m alive I shall protect my own. I’ll shield them with all my power. And you shall not see me suffer.”

Outside his door he was accosted by the Viscount de la Mortellerie, his country neighbour. Must he submit already to condolences and sympathy? Yet this eccentric, in hunting him out, showed himself the most human of all. The old nobleman pointed out the castle, bathed in the evening light.

“At the reception of the Emperor Sigismund in 1416,” he confided mysteriously, “the Duke Amedeus VIII gave a banquet in the grand hall there. It was prepared by Jean de Belleville, the inventor of Savoy cakes. The meats were gilded and covered with ornaments and streamers bearing the arms of the guests, and each one received the dishes that were meant for him in single, double or triple portions, according to his rank. I love the distinction, don’t you? That we should eat, not according to our appetite, but our importance.”

“One portion would do for me,” replied Mr. Roquevillard, shaking off his anger.

He could not, himself, beguile the present with these memories of the past. He disappeared beneath the archway, mounted the stairs, and reached his study, avoiding the room where his wife, as always, kept her bed. But she heard him pass and sent for him, hoping that he might give her some news of her son. He found her alone, sitting up in bed, in the falling shadows.

“Margaret has gone out,” she murmured; and scarcely daring to frame her question, she added: “You know nothing of Maurice?”

“No, nothing. For a long time doubtless we shall know nothing.”

“How hard your voice is, Francis,” replied the invalid. “This woman has bewitched him, you see, the poor boy.”

“Feebleness is one kind of guiltiness.”

She was struck by this rigid tone, and pressing the button of the electric light, beheld her husband looking as if stricken with a sudden old age, so pale and hollow-eyed that she felt at once a presentiment of danger.

“Francis,” she begged of him, “there is something else that you’re hiding from me. Am I not your comrade as I used to be, from whom you have no secrets?”

He moved nearer toward the bed. “Why no, dear wife, there’s nothing else. Isn’t our son’s desertion of us enough?”

Sitting up again, her arms stretched out, she only entreated him the more.

“I can read in your look some terrible menace that hangs over us. Don’t spare me as you did last night. Speak. I shall be brave.”

“You are exciting yourself needlessly. There’s nothing.”

“I swear to you that I shall have the courage to bear it. Don’t you believe me?”

“Valentine, calm yourself.”

“Wait, you shall believe me.”

And joining her hands, the aged woman on her bed of pain called aloud to her God for help. In her pale and emaciated face, through which the pulse of life moved so feebly, her eyes flashed with an ardent flame.

“Valentine,” he said softly.

She turned toward him as if transfigured.

“Now,” she said, “now speak. I can bear all. Is he dead?”

“Oh, no!”

Her heart had given the same cry as his. Conquered by this faith that animated her, he confided to her the terrible accusation that had attainted their flesh and blood. She thrust it from her indignantly.

“It’s not true. Our son is not a thief.”

“No, but for every one else he is.”

“What of that, if it is not true? And that I know, I’m sure of it.”

He cut her short with a quick gesture, dwelling upon the disaster:

“He has brought disgrace on us.”

It was the crime against his race, head of the family as he was, that he condemned, while the Christian woman thought only of her boy’s heart.

“God will not abandon us,” she declared solemnly.

As she uttered these single words of hope Margaret entered, much upset and evidently battling with her dismay. She looked at her father and mother, saw them both suffering there with the same sorrow, and like a stream that breaks its barriers her self-restraint gave way in a burst of tears.

Mrs. Roquevillard drew her to her heart.

“Come to me,” she said.

“Who has been hurting you?” her father demanded.

She was feverish with excitement, but controlled her distress to make some explanation.

“People are insulting us,” she began.

“Who?”

“I’ve just come from Mrs. Bercy’s. Raymond was there. ‘A pretty brother you have,’ said Mrs. Bercy to me. It was horrid of her. As for me, I only kept my head down. Then she began again: ‘You know the story the clerks in the Frasne office are telling about him?’ Still I held my tongue. ‘They say your brother wasn’t content with the wife.’ ‘Mamma,’ cried Raymond feebly. But I was already on my feet. ‘Go on, madame, you must,’ I said. And she dared to finish: ‘He took away the cash-box, too.’ Then I said, ‘I forbid you to insult my brother.’ And to Raymond I added: ‘You, sir, who can’t protect me in your own house, may consider yourself free.’ He wanted to keep me back, but I would not listen to anything more, and here I am.”

“Dear little girl,” murmured her mother, putting her arms around her.

“Oh,” cried Mr. Roquevillard, standing over the two heads, his wife’s and his daughter’s, “people always condemn you thus, without hearing you.”

But already Margaret had forgotten her personal troubles in the common sorrow. She rose and went up to her father, gazing earnestly into his eyes.

“You, father, in whom I have such confidence, tell me, it isn’t true, is it?”

“It’s false,” the invalid assured her.

“I hope so,” said the head of the family. “But all the appearances are against him, and he runs the risk of being sentenced.”

“Sentenced?”

“Yes, sentenced,” replied the lawyer, “and with him all of us that bear his name, all of us who come from the same past with him and are making toward the same future.”

He made a movement as if at once to protect the two weeping women and threaten the deserter:

“One feeble moment has been enough to wreck the efforts of so many close and solid generations. Oh, let him down there in his shameful flight measure the damage of his treachery! His sister’s betrothal is broken, his brother’s future is spoiled, his mother’s health is shattered, his family’s fortune is compromised, our name spotted and our honour stained! That’s his work! And that is called love! What does it matter whether he has stolen a sum of money! From us he has stolen everything. What is there left to us to-day?”

“You,” cried Margaret. “And you will save him.”

“God,” said Mrs. Roquevillard, finding a strange serenity in her sorrow. “Have confidence. The worth of a race can never be undone. It will redeem the culprit’s faults.”