"Oh! George, you see; you see how it is. He does not speak, or laugh, or play; he is never merry, and he never does what other children do. And it seems to me that he loves me so much, that he adores me! He never leaves my side, never. I begin to believe that he only lives from my breath. Oh! George, if I were to tell you of certain days, long, long days, which seem endless. I work near the window; I raise my eyes, and I meet his eyes gazing, gazing at me. It is a slow torture, a punishment that I cannot describe. It is as if I felt my blood flowing drop by drop from my heart."
She stopped, choked by anguish. Drying her tears, she went on:
"If at least the one I am bearing is born, I will not say beautiful, but with health! If, for this once, God will come to my aid!"
She became silent, attentive, as if to draw an omen from the trembling of the new life which she carried in her womb. George took her hand. And for several minutes the brother and sister sat mute and motionless on the bench, overwhelmed by existence.
Before them stretched out the solitary and abandoned garden. The cypress-trees, straight and motionless, reared their tall trunks religiously towards the sky, like votive candles. The rare zephyrs which passed over the neighboring rose-trees had scarcely enough strength to cause the fall of the leaves of the few faded roses. From time to time, after intervals of silence, came sounds of a piano from the distant house.
CHAPTER IV.
"When? When? The action they wish to force on me becomes inevitable then? I shall be obliged, then, to face that brute?" George saw the hour approach with ungovernable dread. An insurmountable repugnance arose from the roots of his being at the very thought that he was going to find himself alone, in a closed room, in a tête-à-tête, with that man.
As the days passed, he felt increase his anxiety and humiliation, caused by culpable inertia. He felt that his mother, that his sister, that all the victims, expected from him, the first-born, some energetic action, some kind of protest—protection. Why, in fact, had he been summoned? Why had he come? From now on, it no longer seemed possible for him to leave without having done his duty. Without doubt, at the last minute, he could have escaped without saying good-by, and then written a letter justifying his conduct by any plausible pretext. When his distress was at its height, he ventured to think of this ignominious resource; he stopped to consider a way, to arrange the most trifling details, to picture the results. But, in the scenes conjured up, the unhappy and ravaged face of his mother awoke in him an intolerable remorse. The reflections which he made on his egotism and his weakness revolted him against himself: and he sought with puerile fury to find some particle of energy which he could excite and efficaciously employ against the greater part of his being, and which would permit him to triumph over it as over a cowardly brute. But this false energy did not last, did not serve in the least to press him to a manly resolution. Then he undertook to calmly examine his situation, and he deluded himself by the very vigor of his reasoning. He thought: "What good could I do? What evils could my intervention remedy? Will this unhappy effort which my mother and the rest demand from me yield any real advantage? And what advantage?" As he had not found in himself the energy necessary for the execution of the act, as he had not succeeded in provoking in himself a satisfactory revolt, he had recourse to the opposite method—he attempted to demonstrate to his own satisfaction the uselessness of the effort. "What would be the result of the interview? It would certainly have none. According to my father's humor or according to the trend of his conversation, he would be either violent or persuasive. In the first case, his violence and insults would take me by surprise. In the second case, my father would find a mass of arguments to prove to me either his innocence or the necessity of his faults, and I should be taken equally by surprise. The facts are irreparable. When vice is rooted in the intimate substance of a man, it becomes indestructible. Now, my father is at the age when vice can no longer be rooted out, when habits can no longer be changed. For years he has been associated with that woman and those children. Have I the slightest chance to convince him that he ought to break off all those ties? Yesterday, I saw the woman. It sufficed to see her, to guess that she will never let go her hold on the man whose flesh she holds in her clutches. She will dominate him until his death. The thing is now irremediable. And then, there are those children and those children's rights. Besides, after all that has occurred, would a reconciliation be possible between my father and mother? Never. All my attempts would then be fruitless. And then? There still remains the question of material damage, of money squandered, of dilapidation. But does it fall on me to put all this in order, since I live far away from the house? It would require constant vigilance to do that, and only Diego could do it. I will speak to Diego; I will arrange with him. In short, the most urgent matter just now is Camille's dowry. Albert frequently brings the subject up, and is even the most annoying of all my solicitors. Perhaps I shall be able to make some arrangement without difficulty."
He intended to favor his sister by contributing towards her dowry; for, the heir of all his uncle Demetrius's fortune, he was rich, and already in possession of his property. The intention to perform this generous act raised him once more in his own conscience. He believed himself freed from all other duties, from any other disagreeable step, by the sacrifice which he consented to make of his money.
When he turned his steps towards his mother's room he felt less uneasy, lighter, more comfortable. Moreover, he had learned that since morning his father had returned to the country place where he usually went in order to have more freedom in his actions. And it relieved him greatly to think that in the evening, at table, a certain place would be vacant.