“Charles will be here to-morrow on the one-o’clock train. He can’t come sooner.”
“I expected him.”
“I’ll leave you now, father.”
As the door shut upon her, he seized eagerly a photograph of Hubert that stood on the table, and gazed long at the features of his firstborn.
“Forgive me, Hubert,” he said deep down in his heart, “I’m thinking only of your brother now. You must not think that I’ve forgotten you. You see, I am not free. To-morrow I’ll call to you and speak to you and weep for you. To-morrow I shall be yours. This evening I belong to all our race.”
Gently he set the picture down again. And putting aside his sorrow for the immediate necessities of the present, he began his work.
VII
JEANNE SASSENAY
AT the trial, in obedience to her father’s instructions, Margaret Roquevillard gave evidence, under the head of information, as to the money from her trousseau funds which she had lent to Maurice the evening of his departure for Italy, as well as what she had sent to him at Orta. Her testimony over, she had gone home in all haste, as if the fuss made about her generosity filled her with shame. In a feeble way she was to have been of use in the defence of Maurice, and she reproached herself with having shown so much weakness, with having replied so timidly to the interrogations of the presiding judge. Her courage was of the inner kind, and ill adjusted itself to public show. She deplored her modesty now, for to herself it seemed like cowardice, and she was afraid of having impaired the force of her statements by the hesitating way in which she made them.
What had taken place in the court-room before she was led in and after her flight? She could not have told anything about it; she was only conscious of an invincible fear from her first brief contact with justice. She had been shut up in a room with the other witnesses, and had heard the bailiff’s voice calling them one by one, and had seen them go out, her great-uncle Stephen and her Aunt Thérèse just before her. Her turn came last, and she had been conducted to the bar trembling like a new recruit pushed out before the footlights. She had seen a great crowd facing her as she came in, upstairs and down on the floor and in the balcony, a multitude of eyes staring at her, wounding and overwhelming her. All Chambéry was there, spying pitilessly on a young girl’s fear, as they had spied eagerly of late on her family’s death agony. She found herself at last before three magistrates in their red robes, with the rows of jurors on their right. She had thought she should faint when she gave her name, but her father’s voice had caught her ears, that firm, warm voice which she knew so well. It had fortified her instantly, like a cordial. The old advocate was standing erect in front of Maurice, whom he seemed to be protecting, and his presence was so calm that she was at once surprised and quieted by the contagion of it. He put in quite simple terms the questions to be put to her. She had made barely audible replies, and then had fled like a poor bird fluttering off into the brushwood.
“Father will be displeased with me,” she thought in self-reproach. “What a command he has over himself! How he controls himself, and how they all fear him! He stood up twice, and each time I felt a deeper silence in the room. His eyes flashed fire. He seemed young again. He is our whole strength and will.”