But the doctor's frame lay scarcely more than an hour or two in the
torpor of troubled slumbers. When he awoke in the darkness of his
warm, closed room, he was aware, even before thought was awake in him,
of the painful oppression, the sickness of heart which the sorrow we
have slept on leaves behind it. It is as though the disaster of which
the shock merely jarred us at first, had, during sleep, stolen into
our very flesh, bruising and exhausting it like a fever. Memory
returned to him like a blow, and he sat up in bed. Then slowly, one by
one, he again went through all the arguments which had wrung his heart
on the jetty while the fog-horns were bellowing. The more he thought
the less he doubted. He felt himself dragged along by his logic to the
inevitable certainty, as by a clutching, strangling hand.
He was thirsty and hot, his heart beat wildly. He got up to open his
window and breathe the fresh air, and as he stood there a low sound
fell on his ear through the wall. Jean was sleeping peacefully, and
gently snoring. He could sleep! He had no presentiment, no suspicions!
A man who had known their mother left him all his fortune; he took the
money and thought it quite fair and natural! He was sleeping, rich and
contented, not knowing that his brother was gasping with anguish and
distress. And rage boiled up in him against this heedless and happy
sleeper.
Only yesterday he would have knocked at his door, have gone in, and
sitting by the bed, would have said to Jean, scared by the sudden
waking:
"Jean, you must not keep this legacy which by to-morrow may have
brought suspicion and dishonor on our mother."
But to-day he could say nothing; he could not tell Jean that he did
not believe him to be their father's son. Now he must guard, must bury
the shame he had discovered, hide from every eye the stain which he
had detected and which no one must perceive, not even his
brother--especially not his brother.
He no longer thought about the vain respect of public opinion. He
would have been glad that all the world should accuse his mother if
only he, he alone, knew her to be innocent! How could he bear to live
with her every day, believing as he looked at her that his brother was
the child of a stranger?
And how calm and serene she was, nevertheless, how sure of herself she
always seemed! Was it possible that such a woman as she, pure of soul
and upright in heart, should fall, dragged astray by passion, and yet
nothing ever appear afterward of her remorse and the stings of a
troubled conscience? Ah, but remorse must have tortured her, long ago
in the earlier days, and then have faded out, as everything fades. She
had surely bewailed her sin, and then, little by little, had almost
forgotten it. Have not all women, all, this fault of prodigious
forgetfulness which enables them, after a few years, hardly to
recognize the man to whose kisses they have lent their lips? The kiss
strikes like a thunder-bolt, the love passes away like a storm, and
then life, like the sky, is calm once more, and begins again as it
was before. Do you ever remember a cloud?
Pierre could no longer endure to stay in the room! This house, his
father's house, crushed him. He felt the roof weigh on his head, and
the walls suffocate him. And as he was very thirsty he lighted his
candle to go to drink a glass of fresh water from the filter in the
kitchen.
He went down the two flights of stairs; then, as he was coming up
again with the water-bottle filled, he sat down, in his nightshirt, on
a step of the stairs where there was a draught, and drank, without a
tumbler, in long pulls like a runner who is out of breath. When he
ceased to move the silence of the house touched his feelings; then,
one by one, he could distinguish the faintest sounds. First there was
the ticking of the clock in the dining-room which seemed to grow
louder every second. Then he heard another snore, an old man's snore,
short, labored and hard, his father beyond doubt; and he writhed at
the idea, as if it had but this moment sprung upon him, that these two
men, sleeping under the same roof--father and son--were nothing to
each other! Not a tie, not the very slightest, bound them together,
and they did not know it! They spoke to each other affectionately,
they embraced each other, they rejoiced and lamented together over the
same things, just as if the same blood flowed in their veins. And two
men born at opposite ends of the earth could not be more alien to each
other than this father and son. They believed they loved each other,
because a lie had grown up between them. This paternal love, this
filial love, were the outcome of a lie--a lie which could not be
unmasked, and which no one would ever know but he, the true son.
But yet, but yet--if he were mistaken? How could he make sure? Oh, if
only some likeness, however slight, could be traced between his father
and Jean, one of those mysterious resemblances which run from an
ancestor to the great-great-grandson, showing that the whole race are
the offspring of the same kiss. To him, a medical man, so little would
suffice to enable him to discern this--the curve of a nostril, the
space between the eyes, the character of the teeth or hair; nay
less--a gesture, a trick, a habit, an inherited taste, any mark or
token which a practiced eye might recognize as characteristic.
He thought long, but could remember nothing; no, nothing. But he had
looked carelessly, observed badly, having no reason for spying such
imperceptible indications.
He got up to go back to his room and mounted the stairs with a slow
step, still lost in thought. As he passed the door of his brother's
room he stood stock still, his hand put out to open it. An imperative
need had just come over him to see Jean at once, to look at him at his
leisure, to surprise him in his sleep, while the calm countenance and
relaxed features were at rest and all the grimace of life put off.
Thus he might catch the dormant secret of his physiognomy, and if any
appreciable likeness existed it would not escape him.
But supposing Jean were to wake, what could he say? How could he
explain this intrusion?
He stood still, his fingers clenched on the door-handle, trying to
devise a reason, an excuse. Then he remembered that a week ago he had
lent his brother a phial of laudanum to relieve a fit of toothache.
He might himself have been in pain this night and have come to find
the drug. So he went in with a stealthy step, like a robber. Jean, his
mouth open, was sunk in deep, animal slumbers. His beard and fair hair
made a golden patch on the white linen; he did not wake, but he ceased
snoring.
Pierre, leaning over him, gazed at him with hungry eagerness. No, this
youngster was not in the least like Roland; and for the second time
the recollection of the little portrait of Maréchal, which had
vanished, recurred to his mind. He must find it! When he should see it
perhaps he should cease to doubt!
His brother stirred, conscious no doubt of a presence, or disturbed by
the light of the taper on his eyelids. The doctor retired on tiptoe to
the door which he noiselessly closed; then he went back to his room,
but not to bed again.
Day was long in coming. The hours struck one after another on the
dining-room clock, and its tone was a deep and solemn one, as though
the little piece of clockwork had swallowed a cathedral bell. The
sound rose through the empty staircase, penetrating through walls and
doors, and dying away in the rooms where it fell on the torpid ears of
the sleeping household. Pierre had taken to walking to and fro between
his bed and the window. What was he going to do? He was too much upset
to spend this day at home. He wanted still to be alone, at any rate
till the next day, to reflect, to compose himself, to strengthen
himself for the common every-day life which he must take up again.
Well, he would go over to Trouville to see the swarming crowd on the
sands. That would amuse him, change the air of his thoughts, and give
him time to inure himself to the horrible thing he had discovered. As
soon as morning dawned he made his toilet and dressed. The fog had
vanished and it was fine, very fine. As the boat for Trouville did not
start till nine, it struck the doctor that he must greet his mother
before starting.
He waited till the hour at which she was accustomed to get up, and
then went downstairs. His heart beat so violently as he touched her
door that he paused for breath. His hand as it lay on the lock was
limp and tremulous, almost incapable of the slight effort of turning
the handle to open it. He knocked. His mother's voice inquired:
"Who is there?"
"I--Pierre."
"What do you want?"
"Only to say good morning, because I am going to spend the day at
Trouville with some friends."
"But I am still in bed."
"Very well, do not disturb yourself. I shall see you this evening,
when I come in."
He hoped to get off without seeing her, without pressing on her cheek
the false kiss which it made his heart sick to think of. But she
replied:
"No. Wait a moment. I will let you in. Wait till I get into bed
again."
He heard her bare feet on the floor and the sound of the bolt drawn
back. Then she called out:
"Come in."
He went in. She was sitting up in bed, while, by her side, Roland,
with a silk handkerchief by way of nightcap and his face to the wall,
still lay sleeping. Nothing ever woke him but a shaking hard enough to
pull his arm off. On the days when he went fishing it was Joséphine,
rung up by Papagris at the hour fixed, who roused her master from his
stubborn slumbers.
Pierre as he went toward his mother, looked at her with a sudden sense
of never having seen her before. She held up her face, he kissed each
cheek, and then sat down in a low chair.
"It was last evening that you decided on this excursion?" she asked.
"Yes, last evening."
"Will you return to dinner?"
"I do not know. At any rate do not wait for me."
He looked at her with stupefied curiosity. This woman was his mother!
All those features, seen daily from childhood, from the time when his
eye could first distinguish things, that smile, that voice--so well
known, so familiar, abruptly struck him as new, different from what
they had always been to him hitherto. He understood now that, loving
her, he had never looked at her. All the same it was very really she,
and he knew every little detail of her face; still, it was the first
time he clearly identified them all. His anxious attention,
scrutinizing her face which he loved, recalled a difference, a
physiognomy he had never before discerned.
He rose to go; then, suddenly yielding to the invincible longing to
know which had been gnawing at him since yesterday, he said:
"By the way, I fancy I remember that you used to have, in Paris, a
little portrait of Maréchal, in the drawing-room."
She hesitated for a second or two, or at least he fancied she
hesitated; then she said:
"To be sure."
"What has become of the portrait?"
She might have replied more readily:
"That portrait--stay; I don't exactly know--perhaps it is in my desk."
"It would be kind of you to find it."
"Yes, I will look for it. What do you want it for?"
"Oh, it was not for myself. I thought it would be a natural thing to
give it to Jean, and that he would be pleased to have it."
"Yes, you are right; that is a good idea. I will look for it, as soon
as I am up."
And he went out.
It was a blue day, without a breath of wind. The folks in the streets
seemed in good spirits, the merchants going to business, the clerks
going to their office, the girls going to their shop. Some sang as
they went, exhilarated by the bright weather.
The passengers were already going on board the Trouville boat; Pierre
took a seat aft on a wooden bench.
He asked himself:
"Now was she uneasy at my asking for the portrait or only surprised?
Has she mislaid it, or has she hidden it? Does she know where it is,
or does she not? If she has hidden it--why?"
And his mind, still following up the same line of thought from one
deduction to another, came to this conclusion:
That portrait--of a friend, of a lover, had remained in the
drawing-room in a conspicuous place, till one day when the wife and
mother perceived, first of all and before any one else, that it bore a
likeness to her son. Without doubt she had for a long time been on the
watch for this resemblance; then, having detected it, having noticed
its beginnings, and understanding that any one might, any day, observe
it too, she had one evening removed the perilous little picture and
had hidden it, not daring to destroy it.
Pierre recollected quite clearly now that it was long, long before
they left Paris that the miniature had vanished. It had disappeared,
he thought, about the time when Jean's beard was beginning to grow,
which had made him suddenly and wonderfully like the fair young man
who smiled from the picture frame.
The motion of the boat as it put off disturbed and dissipated his
meditations. He stood up and looked at the sea. The little steamer,
once outside the piers, turned to the left, and puffing and snorting
and quivering, made for a distant point visible through the morning
haze. The red sail of a heavy fishing-bark, lying motionless on the
level waters, looked like a large rock standing up out of the sea. And
the Seine, rolling down from Rouen, seemed a wide inlet dividing two
neighboring lands. They reached the harbor of Trouville in less than
an hour, and as it was the time of day when the world was bathing,
Pierre went to the shore.
From a distance it looked like a garden full of gaudy flowers. All
along the stretch of yellow sand, from the pier as far as the Roches
Noires, sunshades of every hue, hats of every shape, dresses of every
color, in groups outside the bathing huts, in long rows by the margin
of the waves, or scattered here and there, really looked like immense
bouquets on a vast meadow. And the Babel of sounds--voices near and
far ringing thin in the light atmosphere, shouts and cries of children
being bathed, clear laughter of women--all made a pleasant, continuous
din, mingling with the unheeding breeze, and breathed with the air
itself.
Pierre walked on among all this throng, more lost, more remote from
them, more isolated, more drowned in his torturing thoughts, than if
he had been flung overboard from the deck of a ship a hundred miles
from shore. He passed by them and heard a few sentences without
listening; and he saw, without looking, how the men spoke to the
women, and the women smiled at the men. Then, suddenly, as if he had
awoke, he perceived them all; and hatred of them all surged up in his
soul, for they seemed happy and content.
Now, as he went, he studied the groups, wandering round them full of a
fresh set of ideas. All these many-hued dresses which covered the
sands like nosegays, these pretty stuffs, those showy parasols, the
fictitious grace of tightened waists, all the ingenious devices of
fashion from the smart little shoe to the extravagant hat, the
insinuating charm of gesture, voice and smile, all the coquettish airs
in short displayed on this sea-shore, suddenly struck him as
stupendous efflorescences of female depravity. All these bedizened
women aimed at pleasing, bewitching, and deluding some man. They had
dressed themselves out for men--for all men--all excepting the husband
whom they no longer needed to conquer. They had dressed themselves out
for the lover of yesterday and the lover of to-morrow, for the
stranger they might meet and notice or were perhaps on the lookout
for.
And these men sitting close to them, eye to eye and mouth to mouth,
invited them, hunted them like game, coy and furtive notwithstanding
that it seemed so near and so easy to capture. This wide shore was,
then, no more than a love-market--some drove a hard bargain for their
kisses while others only promised them. And he reflected that it was
everywhere the same, all the world over.
His mother had done what others did--that was all. Others? No. For
there were exceptions--many, very many. These women he saw about him,
rich, giddy, love-seeking, belonged on the whole to the class of
fashionable and showy women of the world, some indeed to the less
respectable sisterhood, for on these sands, trampled by the legion of
idlers, the tribe of virtuous, home-keeping women were not to be seen.
The tide was rising, driving the foremost rank of visitors gradually
landward. He saw the various groups jump up and fly, carrying their
chairs with them, before the yellow waves as they rolled up edged with
a lacelike frill of foam. The bathing-machines too were being pulled
up by horses, and along the planked way which formed the promenade
running along the shore from end to end, there was now an increasing
flow, slow and dense, of well-dressed people in two opposite streams
elbowing and mingling. Pierre, made nervous and exasperated by this
bustle, made his escape into the town, and went to get his breakfast
at a modest tavern on the skirts of the fields.
When he had finished with coffee, he stretched his legs on a couple
of chairs under a lime tree in front of the house, and as he had
hardly slept the night before, he presently fell into a doze. After
resting for some hours he shook himself, and finding that it was time
to go on board again he set out, tormented by a sudden stiffness which
had come upon him during his long nap. Now he was eager to be at home
again; to know whether his mother had found the portrait of Maréchal.
Would she be the first to speak of it, or would he be obliged to ask
for it again? If she waited to be questioned further it must be
because she had some secret reason for not showing the miniature.
But when he was at home again, and in his room, he hesitated about
going down to dinner. He was too wretched. His revolted soul had not
yet had time to calm down. However, he made up his mind to it, and
appeared in the dining-room just as they were sitting down.
All their faces were beaming.
"Well," said Roland, "are you getting on with your purchases? I do not
want to see anything till it is all in its place."
And his wife replied: "Oh, yes. We are getting on. But it takes much
consideration to avoid buying things that do not match. The furniture
question is an absorbing one."
She had spent the day in going with Jean to cabinet-makers and
upholsterers. Her fancy was for rich materials, rather splendid, to
strike the eye at once. Her son, on the contrary, wished for something
simple and elegant. So in front of everything put before them they had
each repeated their arguments. She declared that a client, a
defendant, must be impressed; that as soon as he is shown into his
counsel's waiting-room he should have a sense of wealth.
Jean, on the other hand, wishing to attract only an elegant and
opulent class, was anxious to captivate persons of refinement by his
quiet and perfect taste.
And this discussion, which had gone on all day, began again with the
soup.
Roland had no opinion. He repeated: "I do not want to hear anything
about it. I will go and see it when it is all finished."
Mme. Roland appealed to the judgment of her elder son.
"And you, Pierre, what do you think of the matter?"
His nerves were in a state of such intense excitement that he would
have liked to reply with an oath. However, he only answered in a dry
tone quivering with annoyance:
"Oh, I am quite of Jean's mind. I like nothing so well as simplicity,
which, in matters of taste, is equivalent to rectitude in matters of
conduct."
His mother went on:
"You must remember that we live in a city of commercial men, where
good taste is not to be met with at every turn."
Pierre replied:
"What does that matter? Is that a reason for living as fools do? If my
fellow-townsmen are stupid and ill-bred, need I follow their example?
A woman does not misconduct herself because her neighbor has a
lover."
Jean began to laugh.
"You argue by comparisons which seem to have been borrowed from the
maxims of a moralist."
Pierre made no reply. His mother and his brother reverted to the
question of stuffs and armchairs.
He sat looking at them, as he had looked at his mother in the morning
before starting for Trouville; looking at them as a stranger who would
study them, and he felt as though he had really suddenly come into a
family of which he knew nothing.
His father, above all, amazed his eye and his mind. That flabby, burly
man, happy and besotted, was his own father! No, no; Jean was not in
the least like him.
His family!
Within these two days an unknown and malignant hand, the hand of a
dead man, had torn asunder and broken, one by one, all the ties which
had held these four human beings together. It was all over, all
ruined. He had now no mother--for he could no longer love her now that
he could not revere her with that perfect, tender, and pious respect
which a son's love demands; no brother--since his brother was the
child of a stranger; nothing was left him but his father, that coarse
man whom he could not love in spite of himself.
And he suddenly broke out:
"I say, mother, have you found that portrait?"
She opened her eyes in surprise.
"What portrait?"
"The portrait of Maréchal."
"No--that is to say--yes--I have not found it, but I think I know
where it is."
"What is that?" asked Roland. And Pierre answered:
"A little likeness of Maréchal which used to be in the drawing-room in
Paris. I thought that Jean might be glad to have it."
Roland exclaimed:
"Why, yes, to be sure; I remember it perfectly. I saw it again last
week. Your mother found it in her desk when she was tidying the
papers. It was on Thursday or Friday. Do you remember, Louise? I was
shaving myself when you took it out and laid it on a chair by your
side with a pile of letters of which you burnt half. Strange, isn't
it, that you should have come across that portrait only two or three
days before Jean heard of his legacy? If I believed in presentiments I
should think that this was one."
Mme. Roland calmly replied:
"Yes, I know where it is. I will fetch it presently."
Then she had lied! When she had said that very morning to her son, who
had asked her what had become of the miniature: "I don't exactly
know--perhaps it is in my desk"--it was a lie! She had seen it,
touched it, handled it, gazed at it but a few days since; and then she
had hidden it away again in the secret drawer with those letters--his
letters.
Pierre looked at the mother who had lied to him; looked at her with
the concentrated fury of a son who had been cheated, robbed of his
most sacred affection, and with the jealous wrath of a man who, after
long being blind, at last discovers a disgraceful betrayal. If he had
been that woman's husband--and not her child--he would have gripped
her by the wrists, seized her by the shoulders or the hair, have flung
her on the ground, have hit her, hurt her, crushed her! And he might
say nothing, do nothing, show nothing, reveal nothing. He was her son;
he had no vengeance to take. And he had not been deceived.
Nay, but she had deceived his tenderness, his pious respect. She owed
to him to be without reproach, as all mothers owe it to their
children. If the fury that boiled within him verged on hatred it was
that he felt her to be even more guilty toward him than toward his
father.
The love of man and wife is a voluntary compact in which the one who
proves weak is guilty only of perfidy; but when the wife is a mother
her duty is a higher one, since nature has intrusted her with a race.
If she fails then she is cowardly, worthless, infamous.
"I do not care," said Roland suddenly, stretching out his legs under
the table, as he did every evening while he sipped his glass of
black-currant brandy, "You may do worse than live idle when you have a
snug little income. I hope Jean will have us to dinner in style now.
Hang it all! if I have an indigestion now and then I cannot help it."
Then turning to his wife he added:
"Go and fetch that portrait, little woman, as you have done your
dinner. I should like to see it again myself."
She rose, took a taper, and went. Then, after an absence which Pierre
thought long, though she was not away more than three minutes, Mme.
Roland returned smiling, and holding an old-fashioned gilt frame by
the ring.
"Here it is," said she, "I found it at once."
The doctor was the first to put forth his hand; he took the picture,
and holding it a little away from him, he examined it. Then, fully
aware that his mother was looking at him, he slowly raised his eyes
and fixed them on his brother to compare the faces. He could hardly
refrain, in his violence, from saying: "Dear me! How like Jean!" And
though he dared not utter the terrible words, he betrayed his thought
by his manner of comparing the living face with the painted one.
They had, no doubt, details in common; the same beard, the same brow;
but nothing sufficiently marked to justify the assertion: "This is the
father and that the son." It was rather a family likeness, a
relationship of physiognomies in which the same blood courses. But
what to Pierre was far more decisive than the common aspect of the
faces, was that his mother had risen, had turned her back, and was
pretending, too deliberately, to be putting the sugar basin and the
liqueur bottle away in a cupboard. She understood that he knew, or at
any rate had his suspicions.
"Hand it on to me," said Roland.
Pierre held out the miniature and his father drew the candle toward
him to see it better; then he murmured in a pathetic tone:
"Poor fellow! To think that he was like that when we first knew him!
Cristi! How time flies! He was a good-looking man, too, in those days,
and with such a pleasant manner--was not he, Louise?"
As his wife made no answer he went on:
"And what an even temper! I never saw him put out. And now it is all
at an end--nothing left of him--but what he bequeathed to Jean. Well,
at any rate you may take your oath that that man was a good and
faithful friend to the last. Even on his deathbed he did not forget
us."
Jean, in his turn, held out his hand for the picture. He gazed at it
for a few minutes and then said regretfully:
"I do not recognize it at all. I only remember him with white hair."
He returned the miniature to his mother. She cast a hasty glance at
it, looking away again as if she were frightened; then in her usual
voice, she said:
"It belongs to you now, my little Jean, as you are his heir. We will
take it to your new rooms." And when they went into the drawing-room
she placed the picture on the chimney-shelf by the clock, where it had
formerly stood.
Roland filled his pipe; Pierre and Jean lighted cigarettes. They
commonly smoked them, Pierre while he paced the room, Jean, sunk in a
deep armchair, with his legs crossed. Their father always sat astride
on a chair and spit from afar into the fireplace.
Mme. Roland, on a low seat by a little table on which the lamp stood,
embroidered, or knitted, or marked linen.
This evening she was beginning a piece of worsted work, intended for
Jean's lodgings. It was a difficult and complicated pattern, and
required all her attention. Still, now and again, her eye, which was
counting the stitches, glanced up swiftly and furtively at the little
portrait of the dead as it leaned against the clock. And the doctor,
who was striding to and fro across the little room in four or five
steps, met his mother's look at each turn.
It was as though they were spying on each other; and acute uneasiness,
intolerable to be borne, clutched at Pierre's heart. He was saying to
himself--at once tortured and glad:
"She must be in misery at this moment if she knows that I guess!" And
each time he reached the fireplace he stopped for a few seconds to
look at Maréchal's fair hair, and show quite plainly that he was
haunted by a fixed idea. So that this little portrait, smaller than an
opened palm, was like a living being, malignant and threatening,
suddenly brought into this house and this family.
Presently the street-door bell rang. Mme. Roland, always so
self-possessed, started violently, betraying to her doctor son the
anguish of her nerves. Then she said: "It must be Mme. Rosémilly"; and
her eye again anxiously turned to the mantelshelf.
Pierre understood, or thought he understood, her fears and misery. A
woman's eye is keen, a woman's wit is nimble, and her instincts
suspicious. When this woman who was coming in should see the miniature
of a man she did not know, she might perhaps at the first glance
discover the likeness between this face and Jean. Then she would know
and understand everything.
He was seized with a dread, a sudden and horrible dread of this shame
being unveiled, and, turning about just as the door opened, he took
the little painting and slipped it under the clock without being seen
by his father and brother.
When he met his mother's eyes again they seemed to him altered, dim,
and haggard.
"Good evening," said Mme. Rosémilly. "I have come to ask you for a cup
of tea."
But while they were bustling about her and asking after her health,
Pierre made off, the door having been left open.
When his absence was perceived they were all surprised. Jean, annoyed
for the young widow, who, he thought, would be hurt, muttered: "What a
bear!"
Mme. Roland replied: "You must not be vexed with him; he is not very
well to-day and tired with his excursion to Trouville."
"Never mind," said Roland, "that is no reason for taking himself off
like a savage."
Mme. Rosémilly tried to smooth matters by saying:
"Not at all, not at all. He has gone away in the English fashion;
people always disappear in that way in fashionable circles if they
want to leave early."
"Oh, in fashionable circles, I dare say," replied Jean. "But a man
does not treat his family _à l'Anglaise_, and my brother has done
nothing else for some time past."