“Perhaps it is not a bad plan to see whether it is possible to shut his mouth. Monsieur Léon is the best judge.”
M. Bourget said this reflectively. Mme. de Beaudrillart, looking here and there with the instinct of an animal whose young are attacked, quivered.
“Are you supposing, monsieur, that my son would stoop to bribe?”
“It would not answer. It never does,” he answered, disregarding her indignation; “otherwise, get the fellow to accept a sum, and you have him. He could not move afterwards, because he would have put himself within reach of the law. He could not even blab, because he calls himself a gentleman.” He glanced at Mme. de Beaudrillart, and stopped suddenly. She had drawn a step nearer to him; all her features were sharpened, her voice harsh.
“Do you know what you are saying?” she cried. “To do this would be to acknowledge himself guilty! And you suggest it to me—his mother!”
“Come come, madame,” said M. Bourget, reasonably, “you forget that I also am his father-in-law, and anything which would put an extinguisher on the business without setting the world’s tongues wagging is worth discussion. However, Monsieur Léon, who knows the ins and outs of it all, as you and I don’t, may have some better plan in his head, and I suppose there are honest lawyers to be met with, even in Paris. As I said, too, he has Nathalie at his elbow. Who is his lawyer? Monsieur Rodoin?”
“Yes. Oh, if only I were there!” exclaimed Mme. de Beaudrillart, beginning to walk up and down the room.
M. Bourget conceived it prudent to take no notice of this desire; for privately he thought it as well that her rigid notions of honour, which he admired immensely but considered unpractical, should be replaced by Nathalie’s excellent sense. The discovery of the blank envelope had affected him very disagreeably. If there had been nothing in the shape of a receipt he would have put down the want to carelessness, or some overstrained idea which was pardonable in a Beaudrillart. But the empty enclosure pointed to deceit. For some reason or other Léon had hoodwinked his mother, and M. Bourget was convinced not only that the money had never been repaid, but that this movement on the part of Lemaire was but the sequel to a dark story. Rumours of the Baron Léon’s proceedings in Paris, which he had chosen to ignore when he gave him his daughter, came back to him now with terrible insistence. If the present overhanging disgrace reached the ears of those intimates at Tours whom he had pelted with boasts, could he ever hold up his head again? He shuddered. Wrong or right, honour or dishonour, if a bribe could have stopped the accuser’s mouth, M. Bourget would have urged its payment.
As for Mme. de Beaudrillart, she, too, was shaken. Passionately to proclaim her belief in her son was only the weapon caught up by a wounded heart with which to defend itself. She had covered them with tenderest excuses, but she knew, in that deeper consciousness where she dared not penetrate, that Léon had committed a thousand follies in those old days which she had hoped were buried. Alas, sin is an unquiet ghost. It walks.