“I am not ungrateful,” said Fortinbras.
They entered a café for the sake of shelter from the bitter January wind, and they talked, as they had done lately, of many intimate things; of the past, of Martin, of the immediate future. Fortinbras would not accompany Bigourdin to Brantôme. His presence would only add poignancy to the grief of Félise. It was more impossible now than ever to undeceive her, as one could not speak ill of the dead. No; he would remain in Paris, where he had much to do. First he must move from the Rue Maugrabine. The place would be haunted. Besides, what did one old vagabond want with two rooms and a kitchen? He would sell his few belongings, and take a furnished room somewhere among the chimney-pots. . . . Bigourdin lifted his petit verre of Armagnac, and forgetting all about it, put it down again.
“What I am going to tell you,” said he, “may seem cynical, but it is only common sense. Do not leave the Rue Maugrabine without having searched every corner, every box, every garment, every piece of furniture.”
“Search?—what for?”
“The little economies of Cécile,” said Bigourdin.
Fortinbras put up a protesting hand. Instinct revolted. “Impossible!” he declared.
Bigourdin persisted. “Although you have lived long in the country and been married to a Frenchwoman, you do not know, like myself who have it in my veins, of what the peasant blood of France is capable where money is concerned. It is impossible on your own showing, that Cécile should have spent five thousand francs a year. You have seen for yourself that she received the money. What has she done with it?” He leaned across the table and with great forefinger tapped the shoulder of Fortinbras. “She has hoarded it. It is there in the Rue Maugrabine.”
Fortinbras shook his leonine head. “It was absurd. In the olden days, when she had money, had she not scattered it recklessly?” Bigourdin agreed.
“But then,” said he, “you struck misfortune, poverty. Did you not observe a change in her habits, and in her character? Of course, we have often spoken of it. It was the outer trappings of the bourgeois that had disappeared and the paysanne asserted herself. For many years my father supported my mother’s mother, a peasant from La Beauce who gave out that she was penniless. When she died they accidentally found the mattress of her bed stuffed with a little fortune. The blood of Grandmère Tidier ran in the veins of Cécile. And Cécile like all the family knew of the fortune of Grandmère Tidier.”
All that in Fortinbras was half-forgotten, buried beneath the rubbish heap of years, again protested: his gently nurtured childhood, his smooth English home, his impeccable Anglo-Indian father, Major-General Fortinbras, who had all the servants in morning and evening for family prayers and read the lessons in the little village church on Sundays, his school-days—Winchester, with its noble traditions—all, as we English understand it, that goes to the making of an honourable gentleman. If Pactolus, dammed by his wife, poured through the kitchen taps, he would not turn them.