“An idiot!” she exclaimed. “Yes, you are right there, Madame! A dolt and a fool! but, thank God, sufficiently sane to-night to prevent your staining your hands with my son’s blood, as you did with that of his father. Had I not been a fool, should I not have guessed your purpose that night?—then, too, you wished to speak with your son alone—then too you wished to discuss the future after you had dragged him down with you into a morass of debts and obligations which he could not meet. To satisfy your lust for pomp, and for show, you made him spend and borrow, and then when the day of reckoning came——”
“Silence, Marcelle!”
“When the day of reckoning came,” Marcelle reiterated coldly, “you, his mother, placed before him the only alternative that your damnable pride would allow—a pistol which you, yourself, put into his hand.”
“My son preferred death to dishonour,” old Madame put in boldly.
“At his mother’s command,” the other retorted. “Oh! you thought I did not know, you thought I did not guess. But—you remember—it was midsummer—the window was open—I was down in the garden—I heard your voice: ‘My son, there is only one way open for a de Ventadour!’ I ran into the house, I ran up the stairs—you remember?—I was on the threshold when rang the pistol shot which at your bidding had ended his dear life.”
“What I did then is between me and my conscience——”
“Perhaps,” Marcelle replied, “but for what you do now, you will answer to me. I suffered once—I will not suffer again——”
Again with that same wild gesture she pushed her hair away from her forehead. Nicolette thought that she was on the point of swooning, but her excitement gave her strength: she pulled herself together, drew the portière aside, opened the door, and went through into the other room.
Grandmama appeared for a moment undecided: that her pride had received a severe shaking, there could be no doubt: for once she had been routed in a wordy combat with the woman whom she affected to despise. But she was too arrogant, too dictatorial to argue, where she had failed to command. Perhaps she knew that her influence over Bertrand would not be diminished by his mother’s interference. She was not ashamed of that dark page in the past history: her notions of honour, and of what was due to the family name were not likely to be modified by the ravings of a sick imbecile. She was fond of Bertrand and proud of him, but if the cataclysm which she dreaded did eventually come about, she would still far sooner see him dead than dishonoured. A debtor’s prison was no longer an impossibility for a de Ventadour; the principles of equality born of that infamous Revolution, and fostered by that abominable Corsican upstart had not been altogether eliminated from the laws of France with the restoration of her Bourbon kings. Everything nowadays was possible, even, it seems, the revolt of weak members of a family against its acknowledged head.
Marcelle had gone through into the next room without caring whether her mother-in-law followed her or not. Just as she entered she was heard to call her son’s name, tenderly, and as if in astonishment. Old Madame then took a step forward and peeped through the door. Then she threw back her head and laughed.