What is Known!
The incident of the empty envelope had sent dreariest conviction home to M. Bourget. That he should have read black proof in it was not perhaps astonishing; yet he had so strong a sense of the code of honour which governed an ancient family like that of Beaudrillart, and so obstinate a belief in his own opinion, that the shock was staggering. Besides, it dealt a direct blow at his vanity. He felt with a shiver that his intimates at Tours would by their jeers revenge themselves for his boasting speeches which they had been forced to endure in silence. Already he saw the smiles, heard the gibes, and a cold sweat broke out as he pictured the secret glee with which Leroux, for instance, under pretence of sympathy, would hand him the local newspaper giving the fullest particulars of this extraordinary affair. Already the letters glared at him: “The Affair Beaudrillart—the Poissy Scandal.” The humiliation sent him hurrying along the straight, flat road as if he felt Fate at his heels, shouting mockery.
Now and then he broke out into a rage of denial. A man working in a way-side field was so amazed at the hoarse sound that he ran to the hedge to behold, as he thought, a short, stout, red-faced mad bourgeois, hastening along with violent gestures and clinched fists. The man stared after him, scratching his head and reflecting. He was a madman, no doubt; but if he were to attempt to secure him, he might very well get some injuries for his pains. Besides, he would have to run to overtake him, and if he stayed where he was, the keepers, who would probably soon come along, might give him a few sous for his information. So M. Bourget went on his excited way unmolested.
He did not think of Nathalie so much as of Raoul. Nathalie was a woman; her father, moreover, had often been annoyed at her failing to show sufficient interest in the great family in which he flattered himself he had placed her. The toppling down of that edifice would not break her heart. But Raoul—the boy whose inheritance should have come to him as his father received it, and who now ran the risk of being branded for a thief’s son—it was when he dwelt upon Raoul that the cry of rage escaped. The child’s unconsciousness made the sin against him the worse. Such a child, such a boy! Manly, daring, wilful, truthful—that he should be weighted with a burden of dishonour!
“When he gets to understand it, if it doesn’t kill him, it will ruin his life,” muttered his grandfather with a groan.
There was a further trial to his practical mind in being forced to remain quiet. If he could have run about from office to office, set lawyers at work, felt himself to be moving events, things would have been more endurable. But Mme. de Beaudrillart’s warning remained in his mind. She had said that by going to Paris he might very likely cause mischief, and he was sufficiently ignorant of the ways of the great city and the great world in it to accept her opinion as probable. At Tours, where he was known, he might browbeat his fellow-townsmen on any point wherein he and they differed; but in Paris, what was he? A unit in a position where his vanity did not care to picture himself.
He reached Tours weary and dusty, and felt the need for his usual cup of coffee at the café—perhaps greater need for the exercise of his usual self-assertion. On his way through the streets he met the doctor, who held up his hands.
“Are you off a journey, my good Monsieur Bourget? You have the air of a man who has been travelling all night.”
“And why should I not, if it pleases me?” demanded M. Bourget, with his most combative air.
“Why not? Why not indeed? Heaven forbid that I should be the one to prevent you!” returned the doctor, laughing. “I merely venture to remark that your journey, wherever it was, has apparently had the effect of causing you fatigue.”