IX

This impression of dread kept hold of me during the whole of that

evening, and for several days afterwards. There is an infinite

distance between our fancies, however precise they may be, and the

least bit of reality.

My father's letters had stirred my being to its utmost depths, had

summoned up tragic pictures before my eyes; but the simple fact of

my having seen the agonized look in my stepfather's face, after my

interview with him, gave me a shock of an entirely different kind.

Even after I had read the letters repeatedly, I had cherished a

secret hope that I was mistaken, that some slight proof would arise

and dispel suspicions which I denounced as senseless, perhaps

because I had a foreknowledge of the dreadful duty that would

devolve upon me when the hour of certainty had come. Then I should

be obliged to act on a resolution, and I dared not look the

necessity in the face. No, I had not so regarded it, previous to

my meeting with my enemy, when I saw him cowering in anguish upon

the cushions of his carriage. Now I would force myself to

contemplate it. What should my course be, if he were guilty? I

put this question to myself plainly, and I perceived all the horror

of the situation. On whatever side I turned I was confronted with

intolerable misery.

That things should remain as they were I could not endure. I saw

my mother approach M. Termonde, as she often did, and touch his

forehead caressingly with her hand or her lips. That she should do

this to the murderer of my father! My very bones burned at the

mere thought of it, and I felt as though an arrow pierced my

breast. So be it! I would act; I would find strength to go to my

mother and say: "This man is an assassin," and prove it to her--and

lo! I was already shrinking from the pain that my words must

inflict on her. It seemed to me that while I was speaking I should

see her eyes open wide, and, through the distended pupils, discern

the rending asunder of her being, even to her heart, and that she

would go mad or fall down dead on the spot, before my eyes. No, I

would speak to her myself. If I held the convincing proof in my

hands I would appeal to justice.

But then a new scene arose before me. I pictured my mother at the

moment of her husband's arrest. She would be there, in the room,

close to him. "Of what crime is he accused?" she would ask, and

she would have to hear the inevitable answer. And I should be the

voluntary cause of this, I, who, since my childhood, and to spare

her a pang, had stifled all my complaints at the time when my heart

was laden with so many sighs, so many tears, so much sorrow, that

it would have been a supreme relief to have poured them out to her.

I had not done so then, because I knew that she was happy in her

life, and that it was her happiness only that blinded her to my

pain. I preferred that she should be blind and happy. And now?

Ah! how could I strike her such a cruel blow, dear and fragile

being that she was?

The first glimpse of the double prospect of misery which my future

offered if my suspicions proved just was too terrible for

endurance, and I summoned all my strength of will to shut out a

vision which must bring about such consequences. Contrary to my

habit, I persuaded myself into a happy solution. My stepfather

looked sad when he passed me in his coupe; true, but what did this

prove? Had he not many causes of care and trouble, beginning with

his health, which was failing from day to day?

One fact only would have furnished me with absolute, indisputable

proof; if he had been shaken by a nervous convulsion while we were

talking, if I had seen him (as Hamlet, my brother in anguish, saw

his uncle) start up with distorted face, before the suddenly-evoked

specter of his crime. Not a muscle of his face had moved, not an

eyelash had quivered;--why, then, should I set down this untroubled

calm to amazing hypocrisy, and take the discomposure of his

countenance half an hour later for a revelation of the truth? This

was just reasoning, or at least it appears so to me, now that I am

writing down my recollections in cold blood. They did not prevail

against the sort of fatal instinct which forced me to follow this

trail. Yes, it was absurd, it was mad, gratuitously to imagine

that M. Termonde had employed another person to murder my father;

yet I could not prevent myself constantly admitting that this most

unlikely suggestion of my fancy was possible, and sometimes that it

was certain.

When a man has given place in his mind to ideas of this kind he is

no longer his own master; either he is a coward, or the thing must

be fought out. It was due to my father, my mother, and myself that

I should KNOW.

I walked about my rooms for hours, revolving these thoughts, and

more than once I took up a pistol, saying to myself: "Just a touch,

a slight movement like this"--I made the gesture--"and I am cured

forever of my mortal pain." But the very handling of the weapon,

the touch of the smooth barrel, reminded me of the mysterious scene

of my father's death. It called up before me the sitting-room in

the Imperial Hotel, the disguised man waiting, my father coming in,

taking a seat at the table, turning over the papers laid before

him, while a pistol, like this one in my hand, was levelled at him,

close to the back of his neck; and then the fatal crack of the

weapon, the head dropping down upon the table, the murderer

wrapping the bleeding neck in towels and washing his hands, coolly,

leisurely, as though he had just completed some ordinary task. The

picture roused in me a raging thirst for vengeance. I approached

the portrait of the dead man, which looked at me with its

motionless eyes. What! I had my suspicions of the instigator of

this murder, and I would leave them unverified because I was afraid

of what I should have to do afterwards! No, no; at any price, I

must in the first place know!

Three days elapsed. I was suffering tortures of irresolution,

mingled with incoherent projects no sooner formed than they were

rejected as impracticable. To know?--this was easily said, but I,

who was so eager, nervous, and excitable, so little able to

restrain my quickly-varying emotions, would never be able to extort

his secret from so resolute a man, one so completely master of

himself as my stepfather. My consciousness of his strength and my

weakness made me dread his presence as much as I desired it. I was

like a novice in arms who was about to fight a duel with a very

skillful adversary; he desires to defend himself and to be

victorious, but he is doubtful of his own coolness. What was I to

do now, when I had struck a first blow and it had not been

decisive? If our interview had really told upon his conscience,

how was I to proceed to the redoubling of the first effect, to the

final reduction of that proud spirit?

My reflections had arrived and stopped at this point, I was forming

and re-forming plans only to abandon them, when a note reached me

from my mother, complaining that I had not gone to her house since

the day on which I had missed seeing her, and telling me that my

stepfather had been very ill indeed two days previously with his

customary liver complaint.

Two days previously, that was on the day after my conversation with

him.

Here again it might be said that fate was making sport of me,

redoubling the ambiguity of the signs, the chief cause of my

despair. Was the imminence of this attack explanatory of the

agonized expression on my stepfather's face when he passed me in

his carriage? Was it a cause, or merely the effect of the terror

by which he had been assailed, if he was guilty, under his mask of

indifference, while I flung my menacing words in his face? Oh, how

intolerable was this uncertainty, and my mother increased it, when

I went to her, by her first words.

"This," she said, "is the second attack he has had in two months;

they have never come so near together until now. What alarms me

most is the strength of the doses of morphine he takes to lull the

pain. He has never been a sound sleeper, and for some years he has

not slept one single night without having recourse to narcotics;

but he used to be moderate--whereas, now--"

She shook her head dejectedly, poor woman, and I, instead of

compassionating her sorrow, was conjecturing whether this, too, was

not a sign, whether the man's sleeplessness did not arise from

terrible, invincible remorse, or whether it also could be merely

the result of illness.

"Would you like to see him?" asked my mother, almost timidly, and

as I hesitated she added, under the impression that I was afraid of

fatiguing him, whereas I was much surprised by the proposal, "he

asked to see you himself; he wants to hear the news from you about

yesterday's ballot at the club." Was this the real motive of a

desire to see me, which I could not but regard as singular, or did

he want to prove that our interview had left him wholly unmoved?

Was I to interpret the message which he had sent me by my mother as

an additional sign of the extreme importance that he attached to

the details of "society" life, or was he, apprehending my

suspicions, forestalling them? Or, yet again, was he, too,

tortured by the desire TO KNOW, by the urgent need of satisfying

his curiosity by the sight of my face, whereon he might decipher my

thoughts?

I entered the room--it was the same that had been mine when I was a

child, but I had not been inside its door for years--in a state of

mind similar to that in which I had gone to my former interview

with him. I had, however, no hope now that M. Termonde would be

brought to his knees by my direct allusion to the hideous crime of

which I imagined him to be guilty. My stepfather occupied the room

as a sleeping-apartment when he was ill, ordinarily he only dressed

there. The walls, hung with dark green damask, ill-lighted by one

lamp, with a pink shade, placed upon a pedestal at some distance

from the bed, to avoid fatigue to the sick man's eyes, had for

their only ornament a likeness of my mother by Bonnat, one of his

first female portraits. The picture was hung between the two

windows, facing the bed, so that M. Termonde, when he slept in that

room, might turn his last look at night and his first look in the

morning upon the face whose long-descended beauty the painter had

very finely rendered. No less finely had he conveyed the something

half-theatrical which characterized that face, the slightly

affected set of the mouth, the far-off look in the eyes, the

elaborate arrangement of the hair.

First, I looked at this portrait; it confronted me on entering the

room; then my glance fell on my stepfather in the bed. His head,

with its white hair, and his thin yellow face were supported by the

large pillows, round his neck was tied a handkerchief of pale blue

silk which I recognized, for I had seen it on my mother's neck, and

I also recognized the red woollen coverlet that she had knitted for

him; it was exactly the same as one she had made for me; a pretty

bit of woman's work on which I had seen her occupied for hours,

ornamented with ribbons and lined with silk. Ever and always the

smallest details were destined to renew that impression of a shared

interest in my mother's life from which I suffered so much, and

more cruelly than ever now, by reason of my suspicion.

I felt that my looks must needs betray the tumult of such feelings,

and, while I seated myself by the side of the bed, and asked my

stepfather how he was, in a voice that sounded to me like that of

another person, I avoided meeting his eyes.

My mother had gone out immediately after announcing me, to attend

to some small matters relative to the well-being of her dear

invalid. My stepfather questioned me upon the ballot at the club

which he had assigned as a pretext for his wish to see me. I sat

with my elbow on the marble top of the table and my forehead

resting in my hand; although I did not catch his eye I felt that he

was studying my face, and I persisted in looking fixedly into the

half-open drawer where a small pocket-pistol, of English make, lay

side by side with his watch, and a brown silk purse, also made for

him by my mother. What were the dark misgivings revealed by the

presence of this weapon placed within reach of his hand and

probably habitually placed there? Did he interpret my thoughts

from my steady observation? Or had he, too, let his glance fall by

chance upon the pistol, and was he pursuing the ideas that it

suggested in order to keep up the talk it was always so difficult

to maintain between us? The fact is that he said, as though

replying to the question in my mind: "You are looking at that

pistol, it is a pretty thing, is it not?" He took it up, turned in

about in his hand, and then replaced it in the drawer, which he

closed. "I have a strange fancy, quite a mania; I could not sleep

unless I had a loaded pistol there, quite close to me. After all,

it is a habit which does no harm to anyone, and might have its

advantages. If your poor father had carried a weapon like that

upon him when he went to the Imperial Hotel, things would not have

gone so easily with the assassin."

This time I could not refrain from raising my eyes and seeking his.

How, if he were guilty, did he dare to recall this remembrance?

Why, if he were not, did his glance sink before mine? Was it

merely in following out an association of ideas that he referred

thus to the death of my father; was it for the purpose of

displaying his entire unconcern respecting the subject-matter of

our last interview; or was he using a probe to discover the depth

of my suspicion? After this allusion to the mysterious murder

which had made me fatherless, he went on to say:

"And, by-the-bye, have you seen M. Massol again?"

"No," said I, "not since the other day."

"He is a very intelligent man. At the time of that terrible

affair, I had a great deal of talk with him, in my capacity as the

intimate friend of both your father and mother. If I had known

that you were in the habit of seeing him latterly, I should have

asked you to convey my kind regards."

"He has not forgotten you," I answered. In this I lied; for M.

Massol had never spoken of my stepfather to me; but that frenzy

which had made me attack him almost madly in the conversation of

the other evening had seized upon me again. Should I never find

the vulnerable spot in that dark soul for which I was always

looking? This time his eyes did not falter, and whatever there was

of the enigmatical in what I had said, did not lead him to question

me farther. On the contrary, he put his finger on his lips. Used

as he was to all the sounds of the house, he had heard a step

approaching, and knew it was my mother's.

Did I deceive myself, or was there an entreaty that I would respect

the unsuspecting security of an innocent woman in the gesture by

which he enjoined silence?

Was I to translate the look that accompanied the sign into: "Do not

awaken suspicion in your mother's mind, she would suffer too much;"

and was his motive merely the solicitude of a man who desires to

save his wife from the revival of a sad remembrance.

She came in; with the same glance she saw us both, lighted by the

same ray from the lamp, and she gave us a smile, meant for both of

us in common, and fraught with the same tenderness for each. It

had been the dream of her life that we should be together thus, and

both of us with her, and, as she had told me at Compiegne, she

imputed the obstacles which had hindered the realization of her

dream to my moody disposition. She came towards us, smiling, and

carrying a silver tray with a glass of Vichy water upon it; this

she held out to my stepfather, who drank the water eagerly, and,

returning the glass to her, kissed her hand.

"Let us leave him to rest," she said, "his head is burning."

Indeed, in merely touching the tips of his fingers, which he placed

in mine, I could feel that he was highly feverish; but how was I to

interpret this symptom, which was ambiguous like all the others,

and might, like them, signify either moral or physical distress? I

had sworn to myself that I would KNOW; but how? how?

I had been surprised by my stepfather's having expressed a wish to

see me during his illness; but I was far more surprised when, a

fortnight later, my servant announced M. Termonde in person, at my

abode. I was in my study, and occupied in arranging some papers of

my father's which I had brought up from Compiegne. I had passed

these two weeks at my poor aunt's house, making a pretext of a

final settlement of affairs, but in reality because I needed to

reflect at leisure upon the course to be taken with respect to M.

Termonde, and my reflections had increased my doubts. At my

request, my mother had written to me three times, giving me news of

the patient, so that I was aware he was now better and able to go

out. On my return, the day before, I had selected a time at which

I was almost sure not to see anyone for my visit to my mother's

home. And now, here was my stepfather, who had not been inside my

door ten times since I had been installed in an apartment of my

own, paying me a visit without the loss of an hour. My mother, he

said, had sent him with a message to me. She had lent me two

numbers of a review, and she now wanted them back as she was

sending the yearly volume to be bound; so, as he was passing the

door, he had stepped in to ask me for them. I examined him closely

while he was giving this simple explanation of his visit, without

being able to decide whether the pretext did or did not conceal his

real motive. His complexion was more sallow than usual, the look

in his eyes was more glittering, he handled his hat nervously.

"The reviews are not here," I answered; "we shall probably find

them in the smoking-room."

It was not true that the two numbers were not there; I knew their

exact place on the table in my study; but my father's portrait hung

in the smoking-room, and the notion of bringing M. Termonde face to

face with the picture, to see how he would bear the confrontation,

had occurred to me. At first he did not observe the portrait at

all; but I went to the side of the room on which the easel

supporting it stood, and his eyes, following all my movements,

encountered it. His eyelids opened and closed rapidly, and a sort

of dark thrill passed over his face; then he turned his eyes

carelessly upon another little picture hanging upon the wall. I

did not give him time to recover from the shock; but, in pursuance

of the almost brutal method from which I had hitherto gained so

little, I persisted:

"Do you not think," said I, "that my father's portrait is

strikingly like me? A friend of mine was saying the other day

that, if I had my hair cut in the same way, my head would be

exactly like--"

He looked first at me, and then at the picture, in the most

leisurely way, like an expert in painting examining a work of art,

without any other motive than that of establishing its

authenticity. If this man had procured the death of him whose

portrait he studied thus, his power over himself was indeed

wonderful. But--was not the experiment a crucial one for him? To

betray his trouble would be to avow all? How ardently I longed to

place my hand upon his heart at that moment and to count its beats.

"You do resemble him," he said at length, "but not to that degree.

The lower part of the chin especially, the nose and the mouth, are

alike, but you have not the same look in the eyes, and the brows,

forehead, and cheeks are not the same shape."

"Do you think," said I, "that the resemblance is strong enough for

me to startle the murderer if he were to meet me suddenly here, and

thus?"--I advanced upon him, looking into the depths of his eyes as

though I were imitating a dramatic scene. "Yes," I continued,

"would the likeness of feature enable me to produce the effect of a

specter, on saying to the man, 'Do you recognize the son of him

whom you killed?"'

"Now we are returning to our former discussion," he replied,

without any farther alteration of his countenance; "that would

depend upon the man's remorse, if he had any, and on his nervous

system."

Again we were silent. His pale and sickly but motionless face

exasperated me by its complete absence of expression. In those

minutes--and how many such scenes have we not acted together since

my suspicion was first conceived--I felt myself as bold and

resolute as I was the reverse when alone with my own thoughts. His

impassive manner drove me wild again; I did not limit myself to

this second experiment, but immediately devised a third, which

ought to make him suffer as much as the two others, if he were

guilty. I was like a man who strikes his enemy with a broken-

handled knife, holding it by the blade in his shut hand; the blow

draws his own blood also. But no, no; I was not exactly that man;

I could not doubt or deny the harm that I was doing to myself by

these cruel experiments, while he, my adversary, hid his wound so

well that I saw it not. No matter, the mad desire TO KNOW overcame

my pain.

"How strange those resemblances are," I said. "My father's

handwriting and mine are exactly the same. Look here."

I opened an iron safe built into the wall, in which I kept papers

which I especially valued, and took out first the letters from my

father to my aunt which I had selected and placed on top of the

packet. These were the latest in date, and I held them out to him,

just as I had arranged them in their envelopes. The letters were

addressed to "Mademoiselle Louise Cornelis, Compiegne;" they bore

the postmark and the quite legible stamp of the days on which they

were posted in the April and May of 1864. It was the former

process over again. If M. Termonde were guilty, he would be

conscious that the sudden change of my attitude towards himself,

the boldness of my allusions, the vigor of my attacks were all

explained by these letters, and also that I had found the documents

among my dead aunt's papers. It was impossible that he should not

seek with intense anxiety to ascertain what was contained in those

letters that had aroused such suspicions in me. When he had the

envelopes in his hands I saw him bend his brows, and I had a

momentary hope that I had shattered the mask that hid his true

face, that face in which the inner workings of the soul are

reflected. The bent brow was, however, merely a contraction of the

muscles of the eye, caused by regarding an object closely, and it

cleared immediately. He handed me back the letters without any

question as to their contents.

"This time," said he simply, "there really is an astonishing

resemblance." Then, returning to the ostensible object of his

visit--"And the reviews?" he asked.

I could have shed tears of rage. Once more I was conscious that I

was a nervous youth engaged in a struggle with a resolutely self-

possessed man. I locked up the letters in the safe, and I now

rummaged the small bookcase in the smoking-room, then the large one

in my study, and finally pretended to be greatly astonished at

finding the two reviews under a heap of newspapers on my table.

What a silly farce! Was my stepfather taken in by it? When I had

handed him the two numbers, he rose from the chair that he had sat

in during my pretended search in the chimney-corner of the smoking-

room, with his back to my father's portrait. But, again, what did

this attitude prove? Why should he care to contemplate an image

which could not be anything but painful to him, even if he were

innocent?

"I am going to take advantage of the sunshine to have a turn in the

Bois," said he. "I have my coupe; will you come with me?"

Was he sincere in proposing this tete-a-tete drive which was so

contrary to our habits? What was his motive: the wish to show me

that he had not even understood my attack, or the yearning of the

sick man who dreads to be alone?

I accepted the offer at all hazards, in order to continue my

observation of him, and a quarter of an hour afterwards we were

speeding towards the Arc de Triomphe in that same carriage in which

I had seen him pass by me, beaten, broken, almost killed, after our

first interview.

This time, he looked like another man. Warmly wrapped in an

overcoat lined with seal fur, smoking a cigar, waving his hand to

this person or that through the open window, he talked on and on,

telling me anecdotes of all sorts, which I had either heard or not

heard previously, about people whose carriages crossed ours. He

seemed to be talking before me and not with me, so little heed did

he take of whether he was telling what I might know, or apprising

me of what I did not know. I concluded from this--for, in certain

states of mind, every mood is significant--that he was talking thus

in order to ward off some fresh attempt on my part. But I had not

the courage to recommence my efforts to open the wound in his heart

and set it bleeding afresh so soon. I merely listened to him, and

once again I remarked the strange contrast between his private

thoughts and the rigid doctrines which he generally professed. One

would have said that in his eyes the high society, whose principles

he habitually defended, was a brigand's cave. It was the hour at

which women of fashion go out for their shopping and their calls,

and he related all the scandals of their conduct, false or true.

He dwelt on all these stories and calumnies with a horrid pleasure,

as though he rejoiced in the vileness of humanity. Did this mean

the facile misanthropy of a profligate, accustomed to such

conversations at the club, or in sporting circles, during which

each man lays bare his brutal egotism, and voluntarily exaggerates

the depth of his own disenchantment that he may boast more largely

of his experience? Was this the cynicism of a villain, guilty of

the most hideous of crimes, and glad to demonstrate that others

were less worthy than he? To hear him laugh and talk thus threw me

into a singular state of dejection.

We had passed the last houses in the Avenue de Bois, and were

driving along an alley on the right in which there were but few

carriages. On the bare hedgerows a beautiful light shone, coming

from that lofty, pale blue sky which is seen only over Paris.

He continued to sneer and chuckle, and I reflected that perhaps he

was right, that the seamy side of the world was what he depicted

it. Why not? Was not I there, in the same carriage with this man,

and I suspected him of having had my father murdered! All the

bitterness of life filled my heart with a rush. Did my stepfather

perceive, by my silence and my face, that his gay talk was

torturing me? Was he weary of his own effort?

He suddenly left off talking, and as we had reached a forsaken

corner of the Bois, we got out of the carriage to walk a little.

How strongly present to my mind is that by-path, a gray line

between the poor spare grass and the bare trees, the cold winter

sky, the wide road at a little distance with the carriage advancing

slowly, drawn by the bay horse, shaking its head and its bit, and

driven by a wooden-faced coachman--then, the man. He walked by my

side, a tall figure in a long overcoat. The collar of dark brown

fur brought out the premature whiteness of his hair. He held a

cane in his gloved hand, and struck away the pebbles with it

impatiently. Why does his image return to me at this hour with an

unendurable exactness? It is because, as I observed him walking

along the wintry road, with his head bent forward, I was struck as

I had never been before with the sense of his absolute unremitting

wretchedness. Was this due to the influence of our conversation of

that afternoon, to the dejection which his sneering, sniggering

talk had produced in me, or to the death of nature all around us?

For the first time since I knew him, a pang of pity mingled with my

hatred of him, while he walked by my side, trying to warm himself

in the pale sunshine, a shrunken, weary, lamentable creature.

Suddenly he turned his face, which was contracted with pain, to me,

and said:

"I do not feel well. Let us go home." When we were in the

carriage, he said, putting his sudden seizure upon the pretext of

his health:

"I have not long to live, and I suffer so much that I should have

made an end of it all years ago, had it not been for your mother."

Then he went on talking of her with the blindness that I had

already remarked in him. Never, in my most hostile hours, had I

doubted that his worship of his wife was perfectly sincere, and

once again I listened to him, as we drove rapidly into Paris in the

gathering twilight, and all that he said proved how much he loved

her. Alas! his passion rated her more highly than my tenderness.

He praised the exquisite tact with which my mother discerned the

things of the heart, to me, who knew so well her want of feeling!

He lauded the keenness of her intelligence to me, whom she had so

little understood! And he added, he who had so largely contributed

to our separation:

"Love her dearly; you will soon be the only one to love her."

If he were the criminal I believed him to be, he was certainly

aware that in thus placing my mother between himself and me he was

putting in my way the only barrier which I could never, never break

down, and I on my side understood clearly, and with bitterness of

soul, that the obstacles so placed would be stronger than even the

most fatal certainty. What, then, was the good of seeking any

further? Why not renounce my useless quest at once? But it was

already too late.

X

At the beginning of the summer, six months after my aunt's death, I

was in exactly the same position with respect to my stepfather as

on that already distant day when, maddened with suspicion by my

father's letters, I entered his study, to play the part of the

physician who examines a man's body, searching with his finger for

the tender spot that is probably a symptom of a hidden abscess.

I was full of intuitions now, just as I was at the moment when he

passed me in his carriage with his terrible face, but I did not

grasp a single certainty. Would I have persisted in a struggle in

which I felt beforehand that I must be beaten?

I cannot tell; for, when I no longer expected any solution to the

problem set before me for my grief, a grief, too, that was both

sterile and mortal, a day came on which I had a conversation with

my mother so startling and appalling that to this hour my heart

stands still when I think of it. I have spoken of dates; among

them is the 25th of May, 1879.

My stepfather, who was on the eve of his departure for Vichy, had

just had a severe attack of liver-complaint, the first since his

illness after our terrible conversation in the month of January. I

know that I counted for nothing--at least in any direct or positive

way--in this acute revival of his malady. The fight between us,

which went on without the utterance of a word on either side, and

with no witnesses except ourselves, had not been marked by any

fresh episode; I therefore attributed this complication to the

natural development of the disease under which he labored.

I can exactly recall what I was thinking of on the 25th of May, at

five o'clock in the evening, as I walked up the stairs in the hotel

on the Boulevard de Latour-Marbourg. I hoped to learn that my

stepfather was better, because I had been witnessing my mother's

distress for a whole week, and also--I must tell all--because to

know he was going to the watering-place was a great relief to me,

on account of the separation it would bring about. I was so tired

of my unprofitable pain! My wretched nerves were in such a state

of tension that the slightest disagreeable impression became a

torment. I could not sleep without the aid of narcotics, and such

sleep as these procured was full of cruel dreams in which I walked

by my father's side, while knowing and feeling that he was dead.

One particular nightmare used to recur so regularly that it

rendered my dread of the night almost unbearable. I stood in a

street crowded with people and was looking into a shop window; on a

sudden I heard a man's step approaching, that of M. Termonde. I

did not see him, and yet I was certain it was he. I tried to move

on, but my feet were leaden; to turn my head, but my neck was

immovable. The step drew nearer, my enemy was behind me, I heard

his breathing, and knew that he was about to strike me. He passed

his arm over my shoulder. I saw his hand, it grasped a knife, and

sought for the spot where my heart lay; then it drove the blade in,

slowly, slowly, and I awoke in unspeakable agony.

So often had this nightmare recurred within a few weeks, that I had

taken to counting the days until my stepfather's departure, which

had been at first fixed for the 21st, and then put off until he

should be stronger. I hoped that when he was absent I should be at

rest at least for a time. I had not the courage to go away myself,

attracted as I was every day by that presence which I hated, and

yet sought with feverish eagerness; but I secretly rejoiced that

the obstacle was of his raising, that his absence gave me

breathing-time, without my being obliged to reproach myself with

weakness.

Such were my reflections as I mounted the wooden staircase, covered

with a red carpet, and lighted by stained-glass windows, that led

to my mother's favorite hall. The servant who opened the door

informed me in answer to my question that my stepfather was better,

and I entered the room with which my saddest recollections were

connected, more cheerfully than usual. Little did I think that the

dial hung upon one of the walls was ticking off in minutes one of

the most solemn hours of my life!

My mother was seated before a small writing-table, placed in a

corner of the deep glazed projection which formed the garden-end of

the hall. Her left hand supported her head, and in the right,

instead of going on with the letter she had begun to write, she

held her idle pen, in a golden holder with a fine pearl set in the

top of it (the latter small detail was itself a revelation of her

luxurious habits). She was so lost in reverie that she did not

hear me enter the room, and I looked at her for some time without

moving, startled by the expression of misery in her refined and

lovely face. What dark thought was it that closed her mouth,

furrowed her brow, and transformed her features? The alteration in

her looks and the evident absorption of her mind contrasted so

strongly with the habitual serenity of her countenance that it at

once alarmed me. But, what was the matter? Her husband was

better; why, then, should the anxiety of the last few days have

developed into this acute trouble? Did she suspect what had been

going on close to her, in her own house, for months past? Had M.

Termonde made up his mind to complain to her, in order to procure

the cessation of the torture inflicted upon him by my assiduity?

No. If he had divined my meaning from the very first day, as I

thought he had, unless he were sure he could not have said to her:

"Andre suspects me of having had his father killed." Or had the

doctor discerned dangerous symptoms behind this seeming improvement

in the invalid?

Was my stepfather in danger of death?

At the idea, my first feeling was joy, my second was rage--joy that

he should disappear from my life, and for ever; rage that, being

guilty, he should die without having felt my full vengeance.

Beneath all my hesitation, my scruples, my doubts, there lurked

that savage appetite for revenge which I had allowed to grow up in

me, revenge that is not satisfied with the death of the hated

object unless it be caused by one's self. I thirsted for revenge

as a dog thirsts for water after running in the sun on a summer

day. I wanted to roll myself in it, as the dog in question rolls

himself in the water when he comes to it, were it the sludge of a

swamp. I continued to gaze at my mother without moving. Presently

she heaved a deep sigh and said aloud: "Oh, me, oh, me! what misery

it is!" Then lifting up her tear-stained face, she saw me, and

uttered a cry of surprise. I hastened towards her.

"You are in trouble, mother," I said. "What ails you?"

Dread of her answer made my voice falter; I knelt down before her

as I used to do when a child, and, taking both her hands, I covered

them with kisses. Again, at this solemn hour, my lips were met by

that golden wedding-ring which I hated like a living person; yet

the feeling did not hinder me from speaking to her almost

childishly. "Ah," I said, "you have troubles, and to whom should

you tell them if not to me? Where will you find anyone to love you

more? Be good to me," I went on; "do you not feel how dear you are

to me?"

She bent her head twice, made a sign that she could not speak, and

burst into painful sobs.

"Has your trouble anything to do with me?" I asked.

She shook her head as an emphatic negative, and then said in a

half-stifled voice, while she smoothed my hair with her hands, as

she used to do in the old times:

"You are very nice to me, my Andre."

How simple those few words were, and yet they caught my heart and

gripped it as a hand might do. How had I longed for some of those

little words which she had never uttered, some of those gracious

phrases which are like the gestures of the mind, some of her

involuntary tender caresses. Now I had what I had so earnestly

desired, but at what a moment and by what means! It was,

nevertheless, very sweet to feel that she loved me. I told her so,

employing words which scorched my lips, so that I might be kind to

her.

"Is our dear invalid worse?"

"No, he is better. He is resting now," she answered, pointing in

the direction of my stepfather's room.

"Mother, speak to me," I urged, "trust yourself to me; let me

grieve with you, perhaps I may help you. It is so cruel for me

that I must take you by surprise in order to see your tears."

I went on, pressing her by my questions and my complaining. What,

then, did I hope to tear from those lips which quivered but yet

kept silence? At any price I WOULD know; I was in no state to

endure fresh mysteries, and I was certain that my stepfather was

somehow concerned in this inexplicable trouble, for it was only he

and I who so deeply moved that woman's heart of hers. She was not

thus troubled on account of me, she had just told me so; the cause

of her grief must have reference to him, and it was not his health.

Had she, too, made any discovery? Had the terrible suspicion

crossed her mind also? At the mere idea a burning fever seized

upon me; I insisted and insisted again. I felt that she was

yielding, if it were only by the leaning of her head towards me,

the passing of her trembling hand over my hair, and the quickening

of her breath.

"If I were sure," said she at length, "that this secret would die

with you and me."

"Oh, mother!" I exclaimed, in so reproachful a tone that the blood

flew to her cheeks. Perhaps this little betrayal of shame decided

her; she pressed a lingering kiss on my forehead, as though she

would have effaced the frown which her unjust distrust had set

there.

"Forgive me, my Andre," she said, "I was wrong. In whom should I

trust, to whom confide this thing, except to you? From whom ask

counsel?" And then she went on as though she were speaking to

herself, "If he were ever to apply to him?"

"He! Whom?"

"Andre, will you swear to me by your love for me, that you will

never, you understand me, never, make the least illusion to what I

am going to tell you?"

"Mother!" I replied, in the same tone of reproach, and then added

at once, to draw her on, "I give you my word of honor!"

"Nor--" she did not pronounce a name, but she pointed anew to the

door of the sick man's room.

"Never."

"You have heard of Edmond Termonde, his brother?" Her voice was

lowered, as though she were afraid of the words she uttered, and

now her eyes only were turned towards the closed door, indicating

that she meant the brother of her husband. I had a vague knowledge

of the story; it was of this brother I had thought when I was

reviewing the mental history of my stepfather's family. I knew

that Edmond Termonde had dissipated his share of the family

fortune, no less than 1,200,000 francs, in a few years; that he had

been enlisted, that he had gone on leading a debauched life in his

regiment; that, having no money to come into from any quarter, and

after a heavy loss at cards, he had been tempted into committing

both theft and forgery. Then, finding himself on the brink of

being detected, he had deserted. The end was that he did justice

on himself by drowning himself in the Seine, after he had implored

his brother's forgiveness in terms which proved that some sense of

moral decency still lingered in him. The stolen money was made

good by my stepfather; the scandal was hushed up, thanks to the

scoundrel's disappearance. I had reconstructed the whole story in

my mind from the gossip of my good old nurse, and also from certain

traces of it which I had found in some passages of my father's

correspondence. Thus, when my mother put her question to me in so

agitated a way, I supposed she was about to tell me of family

grievances on the part of her husband which were totally

indifferent to me, and it was with a feeling of disappointment that

I asked her:

"Edmond Termonde? The man who killed himself?"

She bent her head to answer, yes, to the first part of my question;

then, in a still lower voice, she said:

"He did not kill himself, he is still alive."

"He is still alive," I repeated mechanically, and without a notion

of what could be the relation between the existence of this brother

and the tears which I had seen her shed.

"Now you know the secret of my sorrow," she resumed, in a firmer,

almost a relieved tone. "This infamous brother is a tormentor of

my Jacques; he puts him to death daily by the agonies which he

inflicts upon him. No; the suicide never took place. Such men as

he have not the courage to kill themselves. Jacques dictated that

letter to save him from penal servitude after he had arranged

everything for his flight, and given him the wherewithal to lead a

new life, if he would have done so. My poor love, he hoped at

least to save the integrity of his name out of all the terrible

wreck. Edmond had, of course, to renounce the name of Termonde, to

escape pursuit, and he went to America. There he lived--as he had

lived here. The money he took with him was soon exhausted, and

again he had recourse to his brother. Ah! the wretch knew well

that Jacques had made all these sacrifices to the honor of his

name, and when my husband refused him the money he demanded, he

made use of the weapon which he knew would avail.

"Then began the vilest persecution, the most atrocious levying of

black-mail. Edmond threatened to return to France; between going

to the galleys here or starving in America, he said, he preferred

the galleys here and Jacques yielded the first time--he loved him;

after all, he was his only brother. You know when you have once

shown weakness in dealing with people of this sort you are lost.

The threat to return had succeeded, and the other has since used it

to extort sums of which you have no idea.

"This abominable persecution has been going on for years, but I

have only been aware of it since the war. I saw that my husband

was utterly miserable about something; I knew that a hidden trouble

was preying on him, and then, one day, he told me all. Would you

believe it? It was for me that he was afraid. 'What can he

possibly do to me?' I asked my Jacques. 'Ah,' he said, 'he is

capable of anything for the sake of revenge. And then he saw me so

overwhelmed by distress at his fits of melancholy, and I so

earnestly entreated him, that at length he made a stand. He

positively refused to give any more money. We have not heard of

the wretch for some time--he has kept his word--Andre he is in

Paris!"

I had listened to my mother with growing attention. At any period

of my life, I, who had not the same notions of my stepfather's

sensitiveness of feeling which my dear mother entertained, would

have been astonished at the influence exercised by this disgraced

brother. There are similar pests in so many families, that it is

plainly to the interest of society to separate the various

representatives of the same name from each other. At any time I

should have doubted whether M. Termonde, a bold and violent man as

I knew him to be, had yielded under the menace of a scandal whose

real importance he would have estimated quite correctly. Then I

would have explained this weakness by the recollections of his

childhood, by a promise made to his dying parents; but now, in the

actual state of my mind, full as I was of the suspicions which had

been occupying my thoughts for weeks, it was inevitable that

another idea should occur to me. And that idea grew, and grew,

taking form as my mother went on speaking. No doubt my face

betrayed the dread with which the notion inspired me, for she

interrupted her narrative to ask me:

"Are you feeling ill, Andre?"

I found strength to answer, "No; I am upset by having found you in

tears. It is nothing."

She believed me; she had just seen me overcome by her emotion; she

kissed me tenderly, and I begged her to continue. She then told me

that one day in the previous week a stranger, coming ostensibly

from one of their friends in London, had asked to see my

stepfather. He was ushered into the hall, and into her presence,

and she guessed at once by the extraordinary agitation which M.

Termonde displayed that the man was Edmond. The two brothers went

into my stepfather's private room, while my mother remained in the

hall, half dead with anxiety and suspense, every now and then

hearing the angry tones of their voices, but unable to distinguish

any words. At length the brother came out, through the hall, and

looked at her as he passed by with eyes that transfixed her with

fear.

"And the same evening," she went on, "Jacques took to his bed.

Now, do you understand my despair? Ah, it is not our name that I

care for. I wear myself out with repeating, 'What has this to do

with us? How can we be spattered by this mud?' It is his health,

his precious health! The doctor says that every violent emotion is

a dose of poison to him. Ah!" she cried, with a gesture of

despair, "this man will kill him."

To hear that cry, which once again revealed to me the depth of her

passion for my stepfather, to hear it at this moment, and to think

what I was thinking!

"You saw him?" I asked, hardly knowing what I said. "Have I not

told you that he passed by me, there?" and with terror depicted in

her face, she showed me the place on the carpet.

"And you are sure that the man was his brother?"

"Jacques told me so in the evening; but I did not require that; I

should have recognized him by the eyes. How strange it is! Those

two brothers, so different; Jacques so refined, so distinguished,

so noble-minded, and the other, a big, heavy, vulgar lout, common-

looking, and a rascal--well, they have the same look in their

eyes."

"And under what name is he in Paris?"

"I do not know. I dare not speak of him any more. If he knew that

I have told you this, with his ideas! But then, dear, you would

have heard it at some time or other; and besides," she added with

firmness, "I would have told you long ago about this wretched

secret if I had dared! You are a man now, and you are not bound by

this excessively scrupulous fraternal affection. Advise me, Andre;

what is to be done?"

"I do not understand you."

"Yes, yes. There must be some means of informing the police and

having this man arrested without its being talked of in the

newspapers or elsewhere. Jacques would not do this, because the

man is his brother; but if we were to act, you and I, on our own

side? I have heard you say that you visit M. Massol, whom we knew

at the time of our great misfortune; suppose I were to go to him

and ask his advice? Ah! I must keep my husband alive--he must be

saved! I love him too much!"

Why was I seized with a panic at the idea that she might carry out

this project, and apply to the former Judge of Instruction--I, who

had not ventured to go to his house since my aunt's death for fear

he should divine my suspicions merely by looking at me? What was

it that I saw so clearly, that made me implore her to abandon her

idea in the very name of the love she bore her husband?

"You will not do this," I said; "you have no right to do it. He

would never forgive you, and he would have just cause; it would be

betraying him."

"Betraying him! It would be saving him!"

"And if his brother's arrest were to strike him a fresh blow? If

you were to see him ill, more ill than ever, on account of what you

had done?"

I had used the only argument that could have convinced her.

Strange irony of fate! I calmed her, I persuaded her not to act--

I, who had suddenly conceived the monstrous notion that the doer of

the murderous deed, the docile instrument in my stepfather's hands,

was this infamous brother--that Edmond Termonde and Rochdale were

one and the same man!