Chapter Sixteen.Father and Daughter.The country round Poissy, mellow with ripening grapes, sunned itself in broad luxuriance, and the river threaded it lazily, its silver length curving snake-like between green edges. Nathalie and her little son were by its side, she bareheaded, with only a white umbrella between her and the sun, which now and then caught the rich red-brown of hair and brightened it. Raoul, with his little closely-cropped head and dark dancing eyes, was engaged in plying a primitive fishing-line, formed of whip-cord fastened at one end to a long stick, and adorned at the other with a crooked pin and a small piece of meat. Every now and then a bit of weed caught the bait, and gave all the excitement of a bite, and this and the joy of getting his feet wet kept him perfectly content and happy. Occasionally a peasant passed them, always with the same remark, “Fine weather, madame, for the grapes;” but otherwise the sleepy silence of the place was undisturbed, and Nathalie liked it better than she had ever liked it before.She was happier, for one thing, though she blamed herself for the selfishness of her happiness, since evidently a cloud of uneasiness rested on Poissy. Mme. de Beaudrillart did not confide in her daughter-in-law; but a change had come over her since their departure for Paris; age seemed to have suddenly laid a grasping hand upon her; she was silent, grave, rigid. Léon’s moods varied from gloom to gaiety. Claire indulged in taunts as to the delights of Paris. Only Félicie’s small interests kept her busily occupied. Her own father’s advice had amazed Nathalie. From him she expected fighting counsels, whereas he wrote with a hesitation new to him, and talked temporisingly, with suggestions of possible arrangements. Moreover, they had been at home three days, and he had not come out, as she had expected, to see Léon on the matter, while she disliked leaving her husband for as many hours as would be required for driving into Tours.Yet she was happy. The bare shadow of doubt had not once fluttered across her mind. She could conceive that there were difficulties in the case, and that certain unfortunate circumstances might be difficult to get over; she had realised that M. Rodoin was not so sanguine at the end of his interview as at the beginning, and that Maître Barraud was taciturn; but her own conviction stood like a rock, and wanted no support, was troubled by no inconsistencies. And it was bliss to feel herself no longer shut out. Before, when Léon was in perplexity or trouble, he turned to his mother; now he turned to her. Perhaps he felt the influence of her implicit faith, a sun in which he might still plume himself. Presently he joined her.“I saw your white flag from the bank. Many fish caught!” Raoul was too much absorbed to answer, and his father watched him with amusement. “Upon my word, the monkey has such a good idea of throwing his line that I must get him a proper rod. I have just been talking to Jacques, and he tells me they begin the vintage to-morrow.”“And the weather so superb! It will be a good year for us all,” said Nathalie.“Oh, excellent! If only I had not this confounded business hanging over my head!”“Let us hope it will soon be ended.” She slipped her hand into his. “I think Monsieur Rodoin quite understood that there should be no delay, but perhaps you will have to go up again soon and hurry them.”“Not without you,” he said, quickly. Her heart bounded, and she sent him a smile for an answer. “The nuisance is, having to give evidence one’s self.”“Oh, you will be glad to do that,” she said, comfortingly. “No one can explain it all so well.”“That’s very fine!”—he spoke with irritation. “Who can explain, when those fellows are at one all round with their questions!”“What can they bring out but the truth!” said Nathalie. “And the more of that the better.”“It might go against me,” he hazarded.“You mean you may not establish the libel! I don’t see how it is possible; because they don’t deny having made the claim, and as they can’t support it, it must surely upset them.”“I wish you’d find out what your father thinks about it. Drive in to-morrow.”One of his fits of uneasiness was on him, as she perceived, and, to soothe him, she made the promise.“And get the boy a rod. Here, Raoul, tell your mother to go to Tours and buy you a proper fishing-rod.”Raoul came with a rush, and fell on his father. “As big as yours?”“Big enough for a black-eyed imp like you.”A pommelling match followed, ending by Raoul snatching off his father’s straw hat and flinging it into the river, where it sailed slowly down, Raoul shrieking with delight, and Léon running along the edge to rescue it at last with difficulty from a clump of flags. He came back threatening his son, who by this time was worked into wild unruliness, so that Nathalie was obliged to hold him fast in spite of his struggles. He grew quiet in time, and they went across the bridge to one or two of the nearest vineyards, where preparations had already begun, and where the finest bunch was gathered and offered to the master. The cloud had lifted again, and Léon was at his kindliest, with a smile and a cheery word for everybody. Who could wonder that Nathalie was happy?At the door of her father’s house she met Fanchon, who immediately fell to making mysterious signs with hand and head, implying cautious communications of importance. Nathalie, vaguely uneasy, inquired whether her father was ill.“Mademoiselle ought to know that he is not himself,” whispered Fanchon. “He sits there,”—signalling with her thumb over her right shoulder—“thinking, thinking, though the saints only know what he has got to think about! Don’t I make him his bouillon, and his salad, and his coffee, just as he likes them, and leave him to find fault as much as it pleases him, since that gives him an appetite? But there! ever since that morning when he left me in the midst of an omelette, and dashed off to Poissy, hiring a carriage and all—he that I never thought to see in a hired carriage, unless it was to be taken to his grave—he’s never been the same man. And not once has he been out to the door to look for mademoiselle—for madame, I should say—and Monsieur Raoul, though on the days he expected them he was always popping in and out. Well, I dare say it will do him good to see mademoiselle, and I shall be back in five minutes to hear what she thinks, for I am only going to run round to Madame Boucher, and show her what sort of an egg she sold me this morning.”M. Bourget, indeed, was unlike his usual turbulent self. He greeted his daughter without effusion, and did not even ask for Raoul, or show any disappointment at not seeing him. He was sitting near the window, a newspaper in his hand, but she fancied he had only just unfolded it to avoid the charge of idleness. He did not look ill, or she might have felt less uneasy; if it were possible to apply such a word to M. Bourget’s square personality, he looked crushed. Mme. Léon went quickly up to him and kissed him.“Have you been expecting us, dear father? I should have come at once on our return, but that Léon wanted some one to talk matters over with. I am afraid you have been anxious, and I wish now that I had written.”“Have you anything good to tell?” inquired M. Bourget, brusquely.He had fastened his eyes upon her determinedly, and bent forward.“I think so. Léon has agreed to bring an action against this man.”“What for? What for!”“For slander,” said Nathalie, surprised that he should put the question.“Then he’s got evidence to disprove it?”“His own word,” replied the wife, proudly.“Ah-h—!” M. Bourget’s ah-h—! was like a snarl; he fell into his original position, and fixed his eyes on the ground. She drew back a step, in her turn holding him with her eyes. “Father! You doubt him!”He sat silent, gloomy, slowly nodding.“Oh!” In the word was anger, scorn, incredulity. She had difficulty in commanding herself from uttering more; but the one exclamation was eloquent. Her father looked up at her.“Hum! I see you don’t. Well, prove it; prove that he’s innocent. That can’t be such a hard matter. Do you think I want it the other way? Why, I can’t even go for my coffee but that little imbecile Leroux flings a taunt in my face. I tell you that I—I!—after all these years—walk about the town in dread of what I shall hear.”He began almost inaudibly, ended loudly. There was no softening in her glance.“Oh!” she reiterated. “The shame of hearing you say this! You, who know him!”“Ask his mother,” he muttered. “She can’t deny it. She thinks the same. Do you know what he did! Gave her the receipt, as she supposed, to keep, and it was a blank sheet of paper.”She burst in: “What of that? She fretted him into it. She can fret, I tell you! He had no receipt; he has said so throughout Oh!”—she laughed—“and this is what has persuaded you!”“Well, I hope you are right.” But she could see he was not shaken.“Léon sent me to know what you thought about it all.”“Sit down, then, and let’s hear,” he said, gloomily. “There’s a chair.”She drew it back, sat down, and said, coldly: “What do you wish to hear!”“What line he takes—what he has to go upon.”She looked at him unflinchingly.“There is no line, as you call it, but the straight one of what happened. Monsieur de Cadanet lent the money to Léon, not very willingly, but after some persuasion. Léon thinks that perhaps when it got to this Lemaire’s ears, it enraged him, because he was so jealous; and that he caught hold of the trifling circumstance—that when Léon was in the street, he met Monsieur de Cadanet’s messenger, and glanced at the letters he carried—to make up his absurd story.”He raised bloodshot eyes and stared restlessly at her, meeting her own untroubled by a shadow of doubt. Then he bent his head again—“What does the lawyer say!”He did not believe one word of the story. Now that his faith was gone, it had sunk utterly, crumbled into dry dust, and he was only possessed with a dull rage against the man who had shattered the dream and delight of his life, and left him a laughing-stock to Leroux and his fellows. She tightened the lock of her hands, recognising his antagonism.“He urged Léon to take the initiative.”“Yes, yes; they will get something out of it!” he cried, wrathfully, and then muttered to himself, “Collapse, collapse!” She started to her feet.“Father, I cannot stay and listen to you! May God forgive you! Oh, my dear Léon, that it should be any one belonging to me that does you this dishonour! Father, one day you will be sorry—bitterly sorry. I think you must be mad—ill! Are you ill? Has anything happened to you! You have been sitting here alone, and letting yourself get confused. Look at me. I am his wife. Do you suppose I could stand and smile if I were not as sure—as sure of him as of my own life!”Her words fell on his heart as if it had been made of flint, rolling off the surface. He did not feel them. He did not even pity her. He said, brutally:“You had better ask what he was before you married him.”She did not shrink, as he expected. Her breath came quickly, but unshaken confidence was in her face.“I know my husband.”“Then, go!” He waved his hand. “Go!”“I am going, and I shall try not to be angry, because you are not yourself.”He looked up gloomily.“No; I am not myself. I don’t expect ever to be myself again. Before this, I have always held up my head; but now—” He drooped again into depression; and her heart smote her.“Father, fling away this horrible, unjust suspicion!” she cried, coming close, and laying her hands on his shoulders. “It does Léon such cruel harm! Only reflect what it means. One would suppose you were his enemy.” Then she knelt down by his side. “Father!”“Let him disprove it.”“So he will.”“Not with that cock-and-bull story. There, there, you’d better go. What’s the good of talking? I cannot pardon.” He was implacable. Self-love refused to waste pity on others when he suffered so much himself. Her steadfastness merely incensed him. He was granite. But at his words she rose up quickly.“Do not do him the wrong of supposing I am asking you to pardon him. May God forgive you!”“You’ve said that twice. Now, go.”She went out of the room, looking back. A sign of compunction would have taken her again to his side, but none came. Fanchon marched out of the kitchen, wiping the flour from her hands with a cloth.“But, Mademoiselle Nathalie, you are not going to leave monsieur so soon! As soon as ever I saw you, I said to myself, ‘There, now, here comes the best medicine for monsieur,’ and I made up my mind you’d stop a good bit, and that would cheer him up. Why, you’ve been here next to no time! And monsieur not even coming out to see you off! Well, that’s droll! I never knew him not come out.”“I do not think he is quite himself to-day,” said his daughter, catching at straws. “Has any one been here—any one to vex him?”“Holy Virgin! no, who should come? And as for vexing, there’s no one would dare. Something he’s eaten or drunk, but not of my getting, has just set the world upside-down with him. Oh, he’ll be better to-morrow, you’ll see! And Monsieur Raoul, the treasure, how is it with him?”Nathalie drove home, unshaken but thoughtful. The slander, then, was more serious in its effects than she had imagined, since her father, with all his pride in Poissy and the De Beaudrillarts, was affected by it. To her it had seemed only ludicrous; but she began to perceive that other people would expect absolute proof that the thing was not. By her own feelings she was sure this would be agony to Léon. She blamed herself for having treated his fits of depression too lightly, and promised herself to be more sympathetic. She would ask him, too, to explain the incident of the envelope.As for Mme. de Beaudrillart, that she could really have any doubt, was impossible, and she smiled again at the bare idea. She could imagine how it had been struck into her father’s mind by her mother-in-law’s impassive manner. Secure, as she would have been, she probably did not attempt to express her security, and, especially with M. Bourget in the room, would have been so coldly indifferent that he had misjudged her. Nathalie understood that her father would have expected indignation and protestations, and not meeting them, thrust their absence upon conviction of guilt. She tried to think calmly, justly of him. “Some chance word has stung him,” she thought, wondering that the clang of rumour had so soon reached the quiet town, and not understanding that it was M. Bourget’s own fear which had given chance words their imaginary force. She was only thankful that Léon had not accompanied her. If he had read distrust in M. Bourget’s manner, she could scarcely have borne it. They must be kept apart until the time when the force of the law obliged her father to admit the shamefulness of his distrust.Reaching Poissy, she heard that all, even Mme. de Beaudrillart, had gone down to one of the nearest vineyards. She knew that her husband would not have expected her to return so soon, and impulse made her long to be by his side. She lost no time in hurrying after them, crossing the river by the bridge, and finding them without difficulty, guided, as she was, by the vibration of voices in the clear air. From out of her anxious thoughts she came into the gayest of scenes. The grapes were being picked into great baskets; from a sky of clearest blue, the sun, now a little low, shone ripeningly upon the mellow clusters, the women’s white head-gear and bright dresses flitting here and there between the green vines; light, warmth, colour, and gaiety were everywhere. Raoul was the masterful head of the troop of children whom he had constituted his regiment, Léon in his grey suit was chatting familiarly with one of the oldest of his tenants, Mme. de Beaudrillart and Claire stood graciously regarding the busy scene, and eating from the beautiful bunch of grapes which had just been presented to them, while Félicie, with her small steps, moved about from group to group. Almost every one from the château, down to Jean Charpentier, was there, and in all fair France it would have been difficult to have lit upon a spot more peaceful, more sunny, and more secure.Nathalie drew a long breath as she stood for an instant watching it. This was her home, her peace, her security. Her husband caught sight of her, and came towards her with his easy smile upon his face.“Back already, chérie? A thousand welcomes! They say the vintage is splendid—better than it had been for years. No phyloxera, and magnificently ripened. Look how the light shoots through those bunches. Old Félix is delighted.”Surely, her security.
The country round Poissy, mellow with ripening grapes, sunned itself in broad luxuriance, and the river threaded it lazily, its silver length curving snake-like between green edges. Nathalie and her little son were by its side, she bareheaded, with only a white umbrella between her and the sun, which now and then caught the rich red-brown of hair and brightened it. Raoul, with his little closely-cropped head and dark dancing eyes, was engaged in plying a primitive fishing-line, formed of whip-cord fastened at one end to a long stick, and adorned at the other with a crooked pin and a small piece of meat. Every now and then a bit of weed caught the bait, and gave all the excitement of a bite, and this and the joy of getting his feet wet kept him perfectly content and happy. Occasionally a peasant passed them, always with the same remark, “Fine weather, madame, for the grapes;” but otherwise the sleepy silence of the place was undisturbed, and Nathalie liked it better than she had ever liked it before.
She was happier, for one thing, though she blamed herself for the selfishness of her happiness, since evidently a cloud of uneasiness rested on Poissy. Mme. de Beaudrillart did not confide in her daughter-in-law; but a change had come over her since their departure for Paris; age seemed to have suddenly laid a grasping hand upon her; she was silent, grave, rigid. Léon’s moods varied from gloom to gaiety. Claire indulged in taunts as to the delights of Paris. Only Félicie’s small interests kept her busily occupied. Her own father’s advice had amazed Nathalie. From him she expected fighting counsels, whereas he wrote with a hesitation new to him, and talked temporisingly, with suggestions of possible arrangements. Moreover, they had been at home three days, and he had not come out, as she had expected, to see Léon on the matter, while she disliked leaving her husband for as many hours as would be required for driving into Tours.
Yet she was happy. The bare shadow of doubt had not once fluttered across her mind. She could conceive that there were difficulties in the case, and that certain unfortunate circumstances might be difficult to get over; she had realised that M. Rodoin was not so sanguine at the end of his interview as at the beginning, and that Maître Barraud was taciturn; but her own conviction stood like a rock, and wanted no support, was troubled by no inconsistencies. And it was bliss to feel herself no longer shut out. Before, when Léon was in perplexity or trouble, he turned to his mother; now he turned to her. Perhaps he felt the influence of her implicit faith, a sun in which he might still plume himself. Presently he joined her.
“I saw your white flag from the bank. Many fish caught!” Raoul was too much absorbed to answer, and his father watched him with amusement. “Upon my word, the monkey has such a good idea of throwing his line that I must get him a proper rod. I have just been talking to Jacques, and he tells me they begin the vintage to-morrow.”
“And the weather so superb! It will be a good year for us all,” said Nathalie.
“Oh, excellent! If only I had not this confounded business hanging over my head!”
“Let us hope it will soon be ended.” She slipped her hand into his. “I think Monsieur Rodoin quite understood that there should be no delay, but perhaps you will have to go up again soon and hurry them.”
“Not without you,” he said, quickly. Her heart bounded, and she sent him a smile for an answer. “The nuisance is, having to give evidence one’s self.”
“Oh, you will be glad to do that,” she said, comfortingly. “No one can explain it all so well.”
“That’s very fine!”—he spoke with irritation. “Who can explain, when those fellows are at one all round with their questions!”
“What can they bring out but the truth!” said Nathalie. “And the more of that the better.”
“It might go against me,” he hazarded.
“You mean you may not establish the libel! I don’t see how it is possible; because they don’t deny having made the claim, and as they can’t support it, it must surely upset them.”
“I wish you’d find out what your father thinks about it. Drive in to-morrow.”
One of his fits of uneasiness was on him, as she perceived, and, to soothe him, she made the promise.
“And get the boy a rod. Here, Raoul, tell your mother to go to Tours and buy you a proper fishing-rod.”
Raoul came with a rush, and fell on his father. “As big as yours?”
“Big enough for a black-eyed imp like you.”
A pommelling match followed, ending by Raoul snatching off his father’s straw hat and flinging it into the river, where it sailed slowly down, Raoul shrieking with delight, and Léon running along the edge to rescue it at last with difficulty from a clump of flags. He came back threatening his son, who by this time was worked into wild unruliness, so that Nathalie was obliged to hold him fast in spite of his struggles. He grew quiet in time, and they went across the bridge to one or two of the nearest vineyards, where preparations had already begun, and where the finest bunch was gathered and offered to the master. The cloud had lifted again, and Léon was at his kindliest, with a smile and a cheery word for everybody. Who could wonder that Nathalie was happy?
At the door of her father’s house she met Fanchon, who immediately fell to making mysterious signs with hand and head, implying cautious communications of importance. Nathalie, vaguely uneasy, inquired whether her father was ill.
“Mademoiselle ought to know that he is not himself,” whispered Fanchon. “He sits there,”—signalling with her thumb over her right shoulder—“thinking, thinking, though the saints only know what he has got to think about! Don’t I make him his bouillon, and his salad, and his coffee, just as he likes them, and leave him to find fault as much as it pleases him, since that gives him an appetite? But there! ever since that morning when he left me in the midst of an omelette, and dashed off to Poissy, hiring a carriage and all—he that I never thought to see in a hired carriage, unless it was to be taken to his grave—he’s never been the same man. And not once has he been out to the door to look for mademoiselle—for madame, I should say—and Monsieur Raoul, though on the days he expected them he was always popping in and out. Well, I dare say it will do him good to see mademoiselle, and I shall be back in five minutes to hear what she thinks, for I am only going to run round to Madame Boucher, and show her what sort of an egg she sold me this morning.”
M. Bourget, indeed, was unlike his usual turbulent self. He greeted his daughter without effusion, and did not even ask for Raoul, or show any disappointment at not seeing him. He was sitting near the window, a newspaper in his hand, but she fancied he had only just unfolded it to avoid the charge of idleness. He did not look ill, or she might have felt less uneasy; if it were possible to apply such a word to M. Bourget’s square personality, he looked crushed. Mme. Léon went quickly up to him and kissed him.
“Have you been expecting us, dear father? I should have come at once on our return, but that Léon wanted some one to talk matters over with. I am afraid you have been anxious, and I wish now that I had written.”
“Have you anything good to tell?” inquired M. Bourget, brusquely.
He had fastened his eyes upon her determinedly, and bent forward.
“I think so. Léon has agreed to bring an action against this man.”
“What for? What for!”
“For slander,” said Nathalie, surprised that he should put the question.
“Then he’s got evidence to disprove it?”
“His own word,” replied the wife, proudly.
“Ah-h—!” M. Bourget’s ah-h—! was like a snarl; he fell into his original position, and fixed his eyes on the ground. She drew back a step, in her turn holding him with her eyes. “Father! You doubt him!”
He sat silent, gloomy, slowly nodding.
“Oh!” In the word was anger, scorn, incredulity. She had difficulty in commanding herself from uttering more; but the one exclamation was eloquent. Her father looked up at her.
“Hum! I see you don’t. Well, prove it; prove that he’s innocent. That can’t be such a hard matter. Do you think I want it the other way? Why, I can’t even go for my coffee but that little imbecile Leroux flings a taunt in my face. I tell you that I—I!—after all these years—walk about the town in dread of what I shall hear.”
He began almost inaudibly, ended loudly. There was no softening in her glance.
“Oh!” she reiterated. “The shame of hearing you say this! You, who know him!”
“Ask his mother,” he muttered. “She can’t deny it. She thinks the same. Do you know what he did! Gave her the receipt, as she supposed, to keep, and it was a blank sheet of paper.”
She burst in: “What of that? She fretted him into it. She can fret, I tell you! He had no receipt; he has said so throughout Oh!”—she laughed—“and this is what has persuaded you!”
“Well, I hope you are right.” But she could see he was not shaken.
“Léon sent me to know what you thought about it all.”
“Sit down, then, and let’s hear,” he said, gloomily. “There’s a chair.”
She drew it back, sat down, and said, coldly: “What do you wish to hear!”
“What line he takes—what he has to go upon.”
She looked at him unflinchingly.
“There is no line, as you call it, but the straight one of what happened. Monsieur de Cadanet lent the money to Léon, not very willingly, but after some persuasion. Léon thinks that perhaps when it got to this Lemaire’s ears, it enraged him, because he was so jealous; and that he caught hold of the trifling circumstance—that when Léon was in the street, he met Monsieur de Cadanet’s messenger, and glanced at the letters he carried—to make up his absurd story.”
He raised bloodshot eyes and stared restlessly at her, meeting her own untroubled by a shadow of doubt. Then he bent his head again—
“What does the lawyer say!”
He did not believe one word of the story. Now that his faith was gone, it had sunk utterly, crumbled into dry dust, and he was only possessed with a dull rage against the man who had shattered the dream and delight of his life, and left him a laughing-stock to Leroux and his fellows. She tightened the lock of her hands, recognising his antagonism.
“He urged Léon to take the initiative.”
“Yes, yes; they will get something out of it!” he cried, wrathfully, and then muttered to himself, “Collapse, collapse!” She started to her feet.
“Father, I cannot stay and listen to you! May God forgive you! Oh, my dear Léon, that it should be any one belonging to me that does you this dishonour! Father, one day you will be sorry—bitterly sorry. I think you must be mad—ill! Are you ill? Has anything happened to you! You have been sitting here alone, and letting yourself get confused. Look at me. I am his wife. Do you suppose I could stand and smile if I were not as sure—as sure of him as of my own life!”
Her words fell on his heart as if it had been made of flint, rolling off the surface. He did not feel them. He did not even pity her. He said, brutally:
“You had better ask what he was before you married him.”
She did not shrink, as he expected. Her breath came quickly, but unshaken confidence was in her face.
“I know my husband.”
“Then, go!” He waved his hand. “Go!”
“I am going, and I shall try not to be angry, because you are not yourself.”
He looked up gloomily.
“No; I am not myself. I don’t expect ever to be myself again. Before this, I have always held up my head; but now—” He drooped again into depression; and her heart smote her.
“Father, fling away this horrible, unjust suspicion!” she cried, coming close, and laying her hands on his shoulders. “It does Léon such cruel harm! Only reflect what it means. One would suppose you were his enemy.” Then she knelt down by his side. “Father!”
“Let him disprove it.”
“So he will.”
“Not with that cock-and-bull story. There, there, you’d better go. What’s the good of talking? I cannot pardon.” He was implacable. Self-love refused to waste pity on others when he suffered so much himself. Her steadfastness merely incensed him. He was granite. But at his words she rose up quickly.
“Do not do him the wrong of supposing I am asking you to pardon him. May God forgive you!”
“You’ve said that twice. Now, go.”
She went out of the room, looking back. A sign of compunction would have taken her again to his side, but none came. Fanchon marched out of the kitchen, wiping the flour from her hands with a cloth.
“But, Mademoiselle Nathalie, you are not going to leave monsieur so soon! As soon as ever I saw you, I said to myself, ‘There, now, here comes the best medicine for monsieur,’ and I made up my mind you’d stop a good bit, and that would cheer him up. Why, you’ve been here next to no time! And monsieur not even coming out to see you off! Well, that’s droll! I never knew him not come out.”
“I do not think he is quite himself to-day,” said his daughter, catching at straws. “Has any one been here—any one to vex him?”
“Holy Virgin! no, who should come? And as for vexing, there’s no one would dare. Something he’s eaten or drunk, but not of my getting, has just set the world upside-down with him. Oh, he’ll be better to-morrow, you’ll see! And Monsieur Raoul, the treasure, how is it with him?”
Nathalie drove home, unshaken but thoughtful. The slander, then, was more serious in its effects than she had imagined, since her father, with all his pride in Poissy and the De Beaudrillarts, was affected by it. To her it had seemed only ludicrous; but she began to perceive that other people would expect absolute proof that the thing was not. By her own feelings she was sure this would be agony to Léon. She blamed herself for having treated his fits of depression too lightly, and promised herself to be more sympathetic. She would ask him, too, to explain the incident of the envelope.
As for Mme. de Beaudrillart, that she could really have any doubt, was impossible, and she smiled again at the bare idea. She could imagine how it had been struck into her father’s mind by her mother-in-law’s impassive manner. Secure, as she would have been, she probably did not attempt to express her security, and, especially with M. Bourget in the room, would have been so coldly indifferent that he had misjudged her. Nathalie understood that her father would have expected indignation and protestations, and not meeting them, thrust their absence upon conviction of guilt. She tried to think calmly, justly of him. “Some chance word has stung him,” she thought, wondering that the clang of rumour had so soon reached the quiet town, and not understanding that it was M. Bourget’s own fear which had given chance words their imaginary force. She was only thankful that Léon had not accompanied her. If he had read distrust in M. Bourget’s manner, she could scarcely have borne it. They must be kept apart until the time when the force of the law obliged her father to admit the shamefulness of his distrust.
Reaching Poissy, she heard that all, even Mme. de Beaudrillart, had gone down to one of the nearest vineyards. She knew that her husband would not have expected her to return so soon, and impulse made her long to be by his side. She lost no time in hurrying after them, crossing the river by the bridge, and finding them without difficulty, guided, as she was, by the vibration of voices in the clear air. From out of her anxious thoughts she came into the gayest of scenes. The grapes were being picked into great baskets; from a sky of clearest blue, the sun, now a little low, shone ripeningly upon the mellow clusters, the women’s white head-gear and bright dresses flitting here and there between the green vines; light, warmth, colour, and gaiety were everywhere. Raoul was the masterful head of the troop of children whom he had constituted his regiment, Léon in his grey suit was chatting familiarly with one of the oldest of his tenants, Mme. de Beaudrillart and Claire stood graciously regarding the busy scene, and eating from the beautiful bunch of grapes which had just been presented to them, while Félicie, with her small steps, moved about from group to group. Almost every one from the château, down to Jean Charpentier, was there, and in all fair France it would have been difficult to have lit upon a spot more peaceful, more sunny, and more secure.
Nathalie drew a long breath as she stood for an instant watching it. This was her home, her peace, her security. Her husband caught sight of her, and came towards her with his easy smile upon his face.
“Back already, chérie? A thousand welcomes! They say the vintage is splendid—better than it had been for years. No phyloxera, and magnificently ripened. Look how the light shoots through those bunches. Old Félix is delighted.”
Surely, her security.
Chapter Seventeen.“I Love You!”Léon’s mood changed like a weathercock on a gusty English day. Extreme wrath with Charles Lemaire alternated with the fancy that it was a foolish charge which no one in their senses would believe. Nathalie, by her sturdy faith, helped to keep him in this fools’ paradise; and in his indignation at the accusation that the money had not been repaid, he quite lost sight of what he had really done. He groaned with disgust at Lemaire’s falsity, and feeling himself a martyr to a false charge, looked at the matter from heights of virtuous probity.His mother’s fears were in a measure quieted by the laughing explanation he gave of the envelope incident. There was no temptation to say anything but the truth, so that its probability impressed her, and only a latent uneasiness remained. M. de Cadanet had given no acknowledgment, and he was not the sort of man to worry on the subject. He did not want to press for it or to offend the old man. Mme. de Beaudrillart shook her head; but it was at the rashness, not its impossibility. Besides—and that there was a change in her was proved by this besides—if he had not felt secure he could not possibly have ventured himself on this action; nor would M. Rodoin have permitted it. She had a woman’s confidence in a lawyer’s far-sightedness.M. Bourget remained sternly apart, making no sign. His daughter thought of him with trouble, but could not bring herself to face him again. His attitude cut her to the heart, for she felt as if, through her father’s distrust, she herself had done her husband wrong. As for changing his opinion, once it had gripped him, she knew she was powerless, and she remained undutifully pitiless, even when reflecting upon that changed desolate figure by the window, thinking only of him as one who had failed Léon at a time when he wanted support.No one else had a thought to spare for anything except the vintage. There had been a threat of the fine weather breaking up, but the fear had passed, and the vines with their gnarled and twisted stems and transparent leaves, through which the sun struck golden, were gradually stripped, and the grapes carried off to the presses. There was a great deal of jollity and some drunkenness. All the talk was of the yield and condition of the vines. Bacchus reigned supreme.Félicie, meanwhile, was in a bubble of small excitement, preparing for the bishop’s visit. Bushels of pink roses were stored in one of the deep cupboards in the old walls; ribbons were knotted, banners arranged for the procession, little framed coloured prints prepared; the cottas of the boys trimmed with fresh lace, the vestments all carefully shaken out and looked over for moth, the bishop’s room provided with a prie-dieu and crucifix. Nothing was wanting except the last stitches to the abbé’s new cope, at which Félicie was toiling from morning till night. Claire mocked at the abundance of detail, but was half envious of her preoccupation. Mme. de Beaudrillart encouraged it, perhaps with a feverish hope that so much piety might avert threatened disaster, and Nathalie was impatient that Félicie had no thought for any other subject. She was growing uneasy because no letter came from M. Rodoin. The tone of his last communication had not seemed to her satisfactory. He had said that, so far, the other side had made no sign, and he was evidently uneasy that their confidence appeared unshaken. If it was an attempt to extort money, a bold front and a threat set in action would have probably been enough to make them retreat. The lawyer begged M. de Beaudrillart to search his papers yet more carefully, on the chance of finding some mention of the loan in a letter from M. de Cadanet.“But I have no letters from Monsieur de Cadanet!” cried Léon, pettishly tossing the letter to his wife.He had got into the habit now of turning to her in perplexity, and more than once it had even crossed his mind whether it would not be the better plan to tell her exactly what had happened, and let her clear wits help him if difficulties thickened. But, as yet, the satisfaction of her entire belief in him being greater than his need, he clung to it and to silence.She suggested that he should go to Paris, and see M. Rodoin.“There is nothing more to say, and it is delightful here just now. No. Let them arrange it among themselves.”Her strong convictions in the matter acquiesced in this, and then one morning he came to her, ghastly, an open letter in his hand, despair in his face.“Rodoin throws it up!” he cried, flinging the letter on the table, and dropping into a chair.“Léon!”“Read for yourself. Don’t ask me to explain. Read, read!” He thrust his hands through his hair, and stared haggardly at the floor.She took the letter. M. Rodoin wrote that he and Maître Barraud had been in daily consultation over M. de Beaudrillart’s case. He regretted exceedingly to inform him that they had arrived at the conclusion that it would be dishonest on their part to attempt to carry it on without more materials for the prosecution than were at their disposal. They had no evidence of any sort beyond the word of monsieur le baron, and satisfying as that would be to those who knew him, the courts would require further confirmation. The other side would plead that the libel was justified, and deeply as he lamented being obliged to point it out, if their plea could not be disproved the dismissal of the case would be followed by the immediate arrest of monsieur le baron, who would be placed in a worse position by the failure of his own case. M. Rodoin ventured to suggest that it might, under these circumstances, be advisable to attempt an amicable settlement with M. Lemaire, who undoubtedly had contrived to secure a strong position.Read, Nathalie’s strong fingers closed vice-like round the letter, a slow fire mounting to her eyes threatened scorching. She raised her look with difficulty, letting it rest upon the crouching figure of her husband, and made an impatient step towards him.“If one man has failed, we must find another. Let us go to Paris at once.”He murmured an inarticulate sound.“Do you hear, Léon? There is no time to lose. That Monsieur Rodoin has been half-hearted throughout; I saw it from the first. There are plenty of others—come.”His murmur resolved itself into muttered despair. They would all be the same; he should give it up. She did not understand.Curbing her impatience, she knelt down by his side, and brought her head on a level with his own.“Dear, you are doing just what this Lemaire wishes you to do, when the only fatal thing would be to yield to him. Do not be disheartened. I am quite certain that we can easily find a more able lawyer. Look at me; I am smiling, I am not in the least alarmed, for I am quite certain that truth must be stronger than slander, and that we shall come out all right.”He lifted a miserable face.“How dare he say that it was not repaid?”“Does he? I did not know that he said anything about the loan.”“Oh, it is all mixed up,” said Léon, impatiently; “only there is no use in telling you, because you do not understand.”“But, dear Léon, do you not think I could understand?” asked his wife, gently. “If I really do not, I think you would make me more useful by explaining it to me, and I would try very hard. Is there any point which might be more fully explained!”He writhed uneasily in the chair, but the impulse to tell her was strong upon him, now that the lawyer’s letter had reduced him to helpless pulp. She waited, expectant of some detail, perhaps legal, which had been withheld from her.“Well, you see,” he explained, running his hands again and again through his hair, “what was I to have done? Monsieur de Cadanet showed me the cheque done up, and then before my eyes directed it to that confounded villain. It was enough to make a man desperate—”He stopped. Nathalie, all the blood out of her face, but fire in her eyes, had risen, and was staring down upon him.“How can I explain to you if you look at me like that?” he said, pettishly. “You might guess what happened, and what ninety-nine men out of a hundred would have done, if they had had the chance. I had no thought of it till the thing was over, and I did not make any mystery about it, for I wrote and told the old count that I had taken the money as a loan. He had it all back again, with interest, and as for telling me that this scoundrel lost a penny by it—”If she could have taken in these last words, the awful numbness in her heart might have yielded, but the first blow had stunned her, and she stood like a dead woman—blind, dumb, deaf. Once having broken the barrier, Léon found relief in rambling on, accusing Lemaire, excusing himself. A sigh broke from her at last, the sigh of returning consciousness, her heart sending it forth as a cry. Then she shivered violently, and became aware that her husband was speaking.“Don’t, don’t!” she cried, thrusting out her hands.“Don’t what?” he said, irritably. “Do you think it is agreeable for me to talk about it? I haven’t even told my mother, but you spoke as if you could help one out of the scrape, and now can only stand and stare.”The blood surged violently into her face; she tottered, and mechanically caught at the table for support.“Good heavens, say something or other! Where am I to turn? What am I to do? Why, if nothing is done, I may be arrested as a thief!” he cried, with gathering excitement, springing up and pacing the room. “Nathalie, do you hear! Speak! I—Léon de Beaudrillart—arrested! Do you hear!” And with a sudden change he flung himself into a seat, arms and head on the table, and wept like a child.Nathalie shuddered. Then he began to moan:“Why did I tell her! She cares nothing for me; just because I am in trouble she has not a word to fling. And this is my wife, who talks of loving me—”“Oh, Léon, Léon, I love you!”It came like a cry from a distance, from death itself. She knelt down and flung her arm around him, and strained him passionately to her—“I love you, I love you, do you hear!” He clung to her as if he had been a child.“Help me, then, chérie, help me!”“Yes, yes,” she murmured, “courage. We will bear it together.”He went on, recovering himself as he spoke, and as buoyant as a bubble. “You are so clever, my Nathalie, your wits will certainly be able to think of some way out of it, and you cannot tell what a comfort it is to me that you should know all at last. A hundred times I have been on the very point of telling you, but there is something so disagreeable in explanations that my heart failed. Now you see the difficulty of the position, do you not! What do you think! Is there any use in applying to another lawyer!”She shook her head.“Still, one must do something. It is impossible to sit still and let that rascal come down on one. Something must be done. What, what?”He waited, wanting the suggestion to come from her. As she was silent, knowing that what she had to say would wound him to the quick, he rushed his words.“Money is all he is after, and I suppose we had better pay!”She repressed her inclination to cry out, and said, softly: “But it is a fact, is it not, that you repaid the sum!”“Every penny.”“To pay would be to acknowledge that you had not done so.”“That is true,” he said, gloomily.“A bribe would tell fearfully against you, you may be sure, for even if it stopped him from taking proceedings, he would contrive that it should all leak out.”He gazed at her bewilderingly. “But what else!—what remains? You are a poor comforter, Nathalie!”“If only I could bear it for you!” she cried, passionately, her hands closing on his with strong support.“Bear what? Bear what? What do you want me to do!”“To tell them the truth.” She flung her head back and fastened imploring eyes on his. “Let them know that you took it. Oh, Léon, it is true.”“Tell them!” He started back as if he had touched hot iron. Then he laughed. “Certainly this affair has turned your head.”She pressed her words.“It is the only noble, straightforward way, and all that you can do to atone. Shelter yourself behind the truth; it will not fail you. Then you can face the worst.”Muttering, “She is mad!” Léon pushed her from him. “Do you in the least understand what you are suggesting? It means that I should have to plead guilty. How could I ever prove that the money was repaid? You want to ruin me.”“You will be clear to your own soul, dearest—to your own soul, and to God.”“What, you mean it? You see where it leads, and yet mean it! You must suppose you are talking to some little bourgeois instead of to a De Beaudrillart!” he cried, scornfully. “We are not used to bear disgrace tamely. There are other ways of avoiding it.”She clasped him in her arms, terror clutching her heart. “Léon, Léon, not that! Promise me!”His moods, always variable, now ran up and down the scale of emotion.“Poor child,” he said, touching her cheek softly, “you mean well; but you don’t know the world. Perhaps my mother will be able to suggest something.”“Yes, go,” she said, releasing him, and letting her arms drop by her side.There was a clatter of small steps outside, an impatient rattle of the handle, and Raoul rushed in.“Father, there’s a monkey—a real monkey—in the court! I’ve given him a piece of melon, and he’s eaten that, and a bunch of nuts, and he’s cracked them; and now I want a sou, and his master says he’ll make a bow for it. Oh, I do wish I might have a monkey!”Léon, on his way to the door, pointed to the boy. “You propose that I should ruin him,” he said, and was gone.Poor mother! She caught her child in her arms, while he struggled impatiently.“Two sous, two sous, please, quick! Oh, it is the dearest little monkey! Don’t you think wecouldbuy it? Jean could take care of it, and it could sleep in my bed.”He went off with his two sous, and Nathalie dropped into a chair, the anguish of the moment in her eyes. What future lay before the boy? A tarnished name, a dishonoured father? Her thoughts travelled wildly round; she was like a wounded creature, seeking escape from the hunters. How confident she had been, how blind! Now the flitting distrust she had refused to see in the lawyer’s eyes stood before her alive and menacing. Was there any other way but that terrible one to which she had been forced to point? Could Léon ever endure it? What was it? What was it? She pressed her fingers on her quivering eyelids; trial, confession, perhaps a prison—the words printed themselves on her brain, and hung there like leaden weights. And she—oh, cruel, cruel!—she was the one to urge them upon him. God, must it be so? She slipped off the chair on her knees, her lips forming no petitions, because her whole being became a living prayer.How long she lay she never knew, but there Claire found her at last. Claire was white, rigid, fiercely wroth. She had been with her mother when Léon rushed in, so taken up with the burden of his misery that he poured it all out without hesitation. His first cry had been: “I am lost! Rodoin says he can do nothing, and that villain Lemaire is determined to ruin me. I ask you whether, after all my father did for Monsieur de Cadanet, I had not a right to the loan? He flourished it in my face. I believe he meant me to take it. And if I had not repaid it, then they might have the right to say something; but every farthing went back. What am I to do? Mother, unless you can suggest something, I shall go mad!”He might have rambled on, striking out blindly, if Claire had not angrily stopped him.“Do you wish to kill your mother?” For Mme. de Beaudrillart’s usual pallor had changed to a dull grey, and her eyes were vacant. The sight instantly recalled him; he put his arm round her neck and kissed her.“Don’t, mother! Don’t look like that!”She did not utter one word of disbelief, conviction had battered at her heart from the moment when she saw it written in M. Bourget’s eyes, and she did not reproach him; only sobs of helpless misery broke from her as she clung. Claire was different. Her eyes were dry and fierce, her voice bitter.“Do you mean that you have really done this shameful thing and brought all this disgrace upon us?”“Hush, Claire, hush!” moaned her mother.“No, mother, I shall speak; I have a right to speak. He has ruined us all. We can never face the world again. Oh, where can we hide ourselves? What will come next?”Anger, misery, choked her. She rushed from the room, and paced up and down the picture-gallery, darting lightning reproaches at Léon, at his wife, at herself. Her brain was in a whirl. Félicie, who was on her way down-stairs, trailing pink wreaths behind her, stopped and peeped in at the door, hearing sounds. She would have retired, but that Claire seized her.“Oh, Claire, gently, gently!” she cried, trying to shelter her precious roses. And then, to her horror, her sister snatched the wreath, tore it into fragments, and stamped on them.“You will drive me mad, I believe!” she said, in a terrible voice. “Do you care for nothing but this frippery? Will it disturb you at all to hear that it is likely Léon will be arrested—arrested, do you hear?—and tried for stealing two hundred thousand francs? Yes, I am not mad, I am telling you the truth.”“Léon! But what do you mean? I do not understand,” stammered poor Félicie, pale with dismay.“How should you? All this goes on while you make your paper wreaths, and think of nothing else.”“Oh, Claire, how cruel you are!” sobbed her sister. “You know I care for dear Léon as much as you—”“Then you hate him!” interjected Claire. “I have never before heard of a seigneur of Poissy who was a thief. Every one will point at us—at us!”“I do not think it can be possible,” said Félicie, drying her eyes, and mechanically trying to smooth out her damaged roses. Claire stood and stared at her; then flung herself away, and betook herself again to her passionate pacing. “No, I do not believe it, because you are always so violent when anything puts you out. What does mamma say? There is sure to be a mistake, for Léon has been so kind about the bishop that I am certain he could not have done the dreadful things you talk about. I dare say if he consults his Grandeur that he will give him some—”She stopped. Claire had caught her wrists.“If you speak about it to a soul, I shall kill you, Félicie. Do you hear!”“Pray, be quiet, Claire!” whimpered the other; “it is very wrong to be so violent, and whether we tell him or not, I am sure the bishop will bring us a blessing. You will see that things will come right.”“Oh, go away, go away!” cried her sister, pushing her. “Leave me in peace!”“Perhaps it will be a lesson to Nathalie. I always felt afraid that some punishment would come to her for reading those books,” said Félicie, gathering up the last remains of her wreath and departing.As her paroxysm of anger burned out into duller ashes of misery, Claire, at war with her sister, turned shudderingly towards Nathalie. She found herself wondering how the dreadful story affected her—what her intellect counselled. Suddenly she admitted her strength, and thought it possible that by her help means of extrication might be contrived. It might be he had not told her, from some weak notion of sparing her; Claire set her face like a rock against such mercy. From her she should know everything. Like an indomitable fate she walked towards her sister-in-law’s room, and there, as has been seen, found her unconscious on the floor. Nature forced her to go to her help, but as she knelt down she was full of contempt; for her own constitution was iron, and she held a collapse such as this a proof of miserable weakness. She read in it that Nathalie would never rise to the occasion, would suffer and make others suffer, and her own thoughts flew to plans for shielding Léon, or, at worst, of helping him to avoid the scandal.Meanwhile, when Nathalie opened her eyes she saw no one at first, for Claire was kneeling behind. She had one minute of wondering reprieve before intolerable pain, rushed into possession. Words, looks, confronted her again; she moaned once, and then called upon her ebbing strength to meet its foes gallantly. Raising herself on an elbow, and pushing the hair back from her forehead with her other hand, a sound made her glance round, and she met Claire’s gaze. The two women eyed each other silently. Claire was the first to say, briefly:“You know?”“Yes, I know.”They were mute again, each reflecting.“And you fainted?” Mlle. de Beaudrillart uttered the words like a judge. Nathalie simply answered:“I shall not do it again.”Their words were few, like the first feints of fencers. Both rose and stood upright, and Claire felt a momentary vexation that Nathalie was the taller. She said, presently:“There is no use in our talking. I shall never forgive Léon; but perhaps something can be arranged to hush it up, and prevent the disgrace becoming public. Whatever that costs, it must be done. I suppose money is always a strong weapon, and I imagine, under these circumstances, you cannot object to its being paid?”To the tone Nathalie was indifferent to the point of unconsciousness. But to the suggestion she replied: “I should object with all my might. Forgive me if I oppose you.”Claire flung out the taunt: “The sacrifice is too great?”“What sacrifice? What I feel is that to sin, and then to bribe to escape its consequences, is to sin twice.”The other stared at her.“What will you do, then?”Nathalie’s voice carried anguish. “I shall urge him to meet it.”Claire made a step towards her. “Meet it? Do you mean own that he has done it?”Nathalie encountered her eye, her voice, without quailing. She was vaguely sorry for these others who were suffering; but all her emotions fastened themselves upon her husband, and remembering some words he had let drop, she started. “Where is Léon?” she cried.“With his mother. You need not be afraid for him,” said Claire, scornfully; “he has always taken care of himself, and he will do so to his dying day. I don’t know why I was such a fool as to be alarmed at hearing the advice you are going to bestow upon him, for Léon will never face a disagreeable so long as he can find a means of slipping round it. You may do your worst. Of course, you can’t be expected to feel what we feel: the disgrace—the horrible shame—the—” She stopped, choked. Nathalie looked at her, neither assenting nor denying, and, after a moment’s pause, the other began again:“It must be crushed down, even if Poissy has to go. The name comes first. This man—it is true, is it not, that he will accept money!”“Do you know what you are saying!” said her sister-in-law, speaking in a low, even voice. “If Léon did what you demand, he would be owning himself the thief they call him. He took the money, but it was not to keep; he wrote to Monsieur de Cadanet and told him what he had done, and promised to pay it back, and did it. He owes nothing.”“You believe this!”“Yes. He has told me all, now,” she answered, in the same tone. There was something in it which for the moment impressed Claire; but she presently returned to her conviction.“If it is true, it is only a matter of degree,” she said, her eyes dilating.“It is everything,” rejoined Nathalie, firmly.“Take what comfort you can from it, then. What I think is that, true or not, unless Léon can prove it, it will be of no use in warding off the blow. That is the only thing which remains to us. It must not fall. Do you hear! It must not fall.”“God knows!” She turned away with a sigh, but there was no irresolution in her face. The sun still shone outside; above the grey stone the clear blue was beginning to whiten; so high as to be mere specks, the swallows circled. Suddenly Claire broke into a laugh—a high-pitched laugh, not good to hear.“A De Beaudrillart tried for theft!” she exclaimed. “In a common dock, I imagine! What a fine event for the world! Tours, too. Why, Tours would have something to talk about for quite a year.” Her voice changed again to something harsh, fierce. “You are not to tell your father, do you hear! Do you mean to say that you have done so already?”Nathalie looked at her gravely.“Hush!” she said. “There is no use in saying these things. My father has guessed it, and I think it is breaking his heart.”“Oh,” cried Claire, wildly, “it only wanted this! Monsieur Bourget knows, and it is breaking Monsieur Bourget’s heart! We Beaudrillarts can bear it, but Monsieur Bourget’s heart is breaking! Do you suppose that we are going to endure this degrading pity? I tell you that anything—death itself—would be better!”Her white face was distorted, changed; yet if any one had been there to make the comparison, they might have detected a deeper suffering behind Mme. Léon’s silence. She stood mute, her sad young eyes looking into the unknown, her delicate lips compressed. Claire suddenly felt the unconquerable power of calmness. Her taunts were useless. She turned and rushed from the room. Outside on the stairs were two men, and her first impression was that perhaps they were officers of justice come to seize Léon, until she saw that one was her brother himself and the other M. Georges.
Léon’s mood changed like a weathercock on a gusty English day. Extreme wrath with Charles Lemaire alternated with the fancy that it was a foolish charge which no one in their senses would believe. Nathalie, by her sturdy faith, helped to keep him in this fools’ paradise; and in his indignation at the accusation that the money had not been repaid, he quite lost sight of what he had really done. He groaned with disgust at Lemaire’s falsity, and feeling himself a martyr to a false charge, looked at the matter from heights of virtuous probity.
His mother’s fears were in a measure quieted by the laughing explanation he gave of the envelope incident. There was no temptation to say anything but the truth, so that its probability impressed her, and only a latent uneasiness remained. M. de Cadanet had given no acknowledgment, and he was not the sort of man to worry on the subject. He did not want to press for it or to offend the old man. Mme. de Beaudrillart shook her head; but it was at the rashness, not its impossibility. Besides—and that there was a change in her was proved by this besides—if he had not felt secure he could not possibly have ventured himself on this action; nor would M. Rodoin have permitted it. She had a woman’s confidence in a lawyer’s far-sightedness.
M. Bourget remained sternly apart, making no sign. His daughter thought of him with trouble, but could not bring herself to face him again. His attitude cut her to the heart, for she felt as if, through her father’s distrust, she herself had done her husband wrong. As for changing his opinion, once it had gripped him, she knew she was powerless, and she remained undutifully pitiless, even when reflecting upon that changed desolate figure by the window, thinking only of him as one who had failed Léon at a time when he wanted support.
No one else had a thought to spare for anything except the vintage. There had been a threat of the fine weather breaking up, but the fear had passed, and the vines with their gnarled and twisted stems and transparent leaves, through which the sun struck golden, were gradually stripped, and the grapes carried off to the presses. There was a great deal of jollity and some drunkenness. All the talk was of the yield and condition of the vines. Bacchus reigned supreme.
Félicie, meanwhile, was in a bubble of small excitement, preparing for the bishop’s visit. Bushels of pink roses were stored in one of the deep cupboards in the old walls; ribbons were knotted, banners arranged for the procession, little framed coloured prints prepared; the cottas of the boys trimmed with fresh lace, the vestments all carefully shaken out and looked over for moth, the bishop’s room provided with a prie-dieu and crucifix. Nothing was wanting except the last stitches to the abbé’s new cope, at which Félicie was toiling from morning till night. Claire mocked at the abundance of detail, but was half envious of her preoccupation. Mme. de Beaudrillart encouraged it, perhaps with a feverish hope that so much piety might avert threatened disaster, and Nathalie was impatient that Félicie had no thought for any other subject. She was growing uneasy because no letter came from M. Rodoin. The tone of his last communication had not seemed to her satisfactory. He had said that, so far, the other side had made no sign, and he was evidently uneasy that their confidence appeared unshaken. If it was an attempt to extort money, a bold front and a threat set in action would have probably been enough to make them retreat. The lawyer begged M. de Beaudrillart to search his papers yet more carefully, on the chance of finding some mention of the loan in a letter from M. de Cadanet.
“But I have no letters from Monsieur de Cadanet!” cried Léon, pettishly tossing the letter to his wife.
He had got into the habit now of turning to her in perplexity, and more than once it had even crossed his mind whether it would not be the better plan to tell her exactly what had happened, and let her clear wits help him if difficulties thickened. But, as yet, the satisfaction of her entire belief in him being greater than his need, he clung to it and to silence.
She suggested that he should go to Paris, and see M. Rodoin.
“There is nothing more to say, and it is delightful here just now. No. Let them arrange it among themselves.”
Her strong convictions in the matter acquiesced in this, and then one morning he came to her, ghastly, an open letter in his hand, despair in his face.
“Rodoin throws it up!” he cried, flinging the letter on the table, and dropping into a chair.
“Léon!”
“Read for yourself. Don’t ask me to explain. Read, read!” He thrust his hands through his hair, and stared haggardly at the floor.
She took the letter. M. Rodoin wrote that he and Maître Barraud had been in daily consultation over M. de Beaudrillart’s case. He regretted exceedingly to inform him that they had arrived at the conclusion that it would be dishonest on their part to attempt to carry it on without more materials for the prosecution than were at their disposal. They had no evidence of any sort beyond the word of monsieur le baron, and satisfying as that would be to those who knew him, the courts would require further confirmation. The other side would plead that the libel was justified, and deeply as he lamented being obliged to point it out, if their plea could not be disproved the dismissal of the case would be followed by the immediate arrest of monsieur le baron, who would be placed in a worse position by the failure of his own case. M. Rodoin ventured to suggest that it might, under these circumstances, be advisable to attempt an amicable settlement with M. Lemaire, who undoubtedly had contrived to secure a strong position.
Read, Nathalie’s strong fingers closed vice-like round the letter, a slow fire mounting to her eyes threatened scorching. She raised her look with difficulty, letting it rest upon the crouching figure of her husband, and made an impatient step towards him.
“If one man has failed, we must find another. Let us go to Paris at once.”
He murmured an inarticulate sound.
“Do you hear, Léon? There is no time to lose. That Monsieur Rodoin has been half-hearted throughout; I saw it from the first. There are plenty of others—come.”
His murmur resolved itself into muttered despair. They would all be the same; he should give it up. She did not understand.
Curbing her impatience, she knelt down by his side, and brought her head on a level with his own.
“Dear, you are doing just what this Lemaire wishes you to do, when the only fatal thing would be to yield to him. Do not be disheartened. I am quite certain that we can easily find a more able lawyer. Look at me; I am smiling, I am not in the least alarmed, for I am quite certain that truth must be stronger than slander, and that we shall come out all right.”
He lifted a miserable face.
“How dare he say that it was not repaid?”
“Does he? I did not know that he said anything about the loan.”
“Oh, it is all mixed up,” said Léon, impatiently; “only there is no use in telling you, because you do not understand.”
“But, dear Léon, do you not think I could understand?” asked his wife, gently. “If I really do not, I think you would make me more useful by explaining it to me, and I would try very hard. Is there any point which might be more fully explained!”
He writhed uneasily in the chair, but the impulse to tell her was strong upon him, now that the lawyer’s letter had reduced him to helpless pulp. She waited, expectant of some detail, perhaps legal, which had been withheld from her.
“Well, you see,” he explained, running his hands again and again through his hair, “what was I to have done? Monsieur de Cadanet showed me the cheque done up, and then before my eyes directed it to that confounded villain. It was enough to make a man desperate—”
He stopped. Nathalie, all the blood out of her face, but fire in her eyes, had risen, and was staring down upon him.
“How can I explain to you if you look at me like that?” he said, pettishly. “You might guess what happened, and what ninety-nine men out of a hundred would have done, if they had had the chance. I had no thought of it till the thing was over, and I did not make any mystery about it, for I wrote and told the old count that I had taken the money as a loan. He had it all back again, with interest, and as for telling me that this scoundrel lost a penny by it—”
If she could have taken in these last words, the awful numbness in her heart might have yielded, but the first blow had stunned her, and she stood like a dead woman—blind, dumb, deaf. Once having broken the barrier, Léon found relief in rambling on, accusing Lemaire, excusing himself. A sigh broke from her at last, the sigh of returning consciousness, her heart sending it forth as a cry. Then she shivered violently, and became aware that her husband was speaking.
“Don’t, don’t!” she cried, thrusting out her hands.
“Don’t what?” he said, irritably. “Do you think it is agreeable for me to talk about it? I haven’t even told my mother, but you spoke as if you could help one out of the scrape, and now can only stand and stare.”
The blood surged violently into her face; she tottered, and mechanically caught at the table for support.
“Good heavens, say something or other! Where am I to turn? What am I to do? Why, if nothing is done, I may be arrested as a thief!” he cried, with gathering excitement, springing up and pacing the room. “Nathalie, do you hear! Speak! I—Léon de Beaudrillart—arrested! Do you hear!” And with a sudden change he flung himself into a seat, arms and head on the table, and wept like a child.
Nathalie shuddered. Then he began to moan:
“Why did I tell her! She cares nothing for me; just because I am in trouble she has not a word to fling. And this is my wife, who talks of loving me—”
“Oh, Léon, Léon, I love you!”
It came like a cry from a distance, from death itself. She knelt down and flung her arm around him, and strained him passionately to her—“I love you, I love you, do you hear!” He clung to her as if he had been a child.
“Help me, then, chérie, help me!”
“Yes, yes,” she murmured, “courage. We will bear it together.”
He went on, recovering himself as he spoke, and as buoyant as a bubble. “You are so clever, my Nathalie, your wits will certainly be able to think of some way out of it, and you cannot tell what a comfort it is to me that you should know all at last. A hundred times I have been on the very point of telling you, but there is something so disagreeable in explanations that my heart failed. Now you see the difficulty of the position, do you not! What do you think! Is there any use in applying to another lawyer!”
She shook her head.
“Still, one must do something. It is impossible to sit still and let that rascal come down on one. Something must be done. What, what?”
He waited, wanting the suggestion to come from her. As she was silent, knowing that what she had to say would wound him to the quick, he rushed his words.
“Money is all he is after, and I suppose we had better pay!”
She repressed her inclination to cry out, and said, softly: “But it is a fact, is it not, that you repaid the sum!”
“Every penny.”
“To pay would be to acknowledge that you had not done so.”
“That is true,” he said, gloomily.
“A bribe would tell fearfully against you, you may be sure, for even if it stopped him from taking proceedings, he would contrive that it should all leak out.”
He gazed at her bewilderingly. “But what else!—what remains? You are a poor comforter, Nathalie!”
“If only I could bear it for you!” she cried, passionately, her hands closing on his with strong support.
“Bear what? Bear what? What do you want me to do!”
“To tell them the truth.” She flung her head back and fastened imploring eyes on his. “Let them know that you took it. Oh, Léon, it is true.”
“Tell them!” He started back as if he had touched hot iron. Then he laughed. “Certainly this affair has turned your head.”
She pressed her words.
“It is the only noble, straightforward way, and all that you can do to atone. Shelter yourself behind the truth; it will not fail you. Then you can face the worst.”
Muttering, “She is mad!” Léon pushed her from him. “Do you in the least understand what you are suggesting? It means that I should have to plead guilty. How could I ever prove that the money was repaid? You want to ruin me.”
“You will be clear to your own soul, dearest—to your own soul, and to God.”
“What, you mean it? You see where it leads, and yet mean it! You must suppose you are talking to some little bourgeois instead of to a De Beaudrillart!” he cried, scornfully. “We are not used to bear disgrace tamely. There are other ways of avoiding it.”
She clasped him in her arms, terror clutching her heart. “Léon, Léon, not that! Promise me!”
His moods, always variable, now ran up and down the scale of emotion.
“Poor child,” he said, touching her cheek softly, “you mean well; but you don’t know the world. Perhaps my mother will be able to suggest something.”
“Yes, go,” she said, releasing him, and letting her arms drop by her side.
There was a clatter of small steps outside, an impatient rattle of the handle, and Raoul rushed in.
“Father, there’s a monkey—a real monkey—in the court! I’ve given him a piece of melon, and he’s eaten that, and a bunch of nuts, and he’s cracked them; and now I want a sou, and his master says he’ll make a bow for it. Oh, I do wish I might have a monkey!”
Léon, on his way to the door, pointed to the boy. “You propose that I should ruin him,” he said, and was gone.
Poor mother! She caught her child in her arms, while he struggled impatiently.
“Two sous, two sous, please, quick! Oh, it is the dearest little monkey! Don’t you think wecouldbuy it? Jean could take care of it, and it could sleep in my bed.”
He went off with his two sous, and Nathalie dropped into a chair, the anguish of the moment in her eyes. What future lay before the boy? A tarnished name, a dishonoured father? Her thoughts travelled wildly round; she was like a wounded creature, seeking escape from the hunters. How confident she had been, how blind! Now the flitting distrust she had refused to see in the lawyer’s eyes stood before her alive and menacing. Was there any other way but that terrible one to which she had been forced to point? Could Léon ever endure it? What was it? What was it? She pressed her fingers on her quivering eyelids; trial, confession, perhaps a prison—the words printed themselves on her brain, and hung there like leaden weights. And she—oh, cruel, cruel!—she was the one to urge them upon him. God, must it be so? She slipped off the chair on her knees, her lips forming no petitions, because her whole being became a living prayer.
How long she lay she never knew, but there Claire found her at last. Claire was white, rigid, fiercely wroth. She had been with her mother when Léon rushed in, so taken up with the burden of his misery that he poured it all out without hesitation. His first cry had been: “I am lost! Rodoin says he can do nothing, and that villain Lemaire is determined to ruin me. I ask you whether, after all my father did for Monsieur de Cadanet, I had not a right to the loan? He flourished it in my face. I believe he meant me to take it. And if I had not repaid it, then they might have the right to say something; but every farthing went back. What am I to do? Mother, unless you can suggest something, I shall go mad!”
He might have rambled on, striking out blindly, if Claire had not angrily stopped him.
“Do you wish to kill your mother?” For Mme. de Beaudrillart’s usual pallor had changed to a dull grey, and her eyes were vacant. The sight instantly recalled him; he put his arm round her neck and kissed her.
“Don’t, mother! Don’t look like that!”
She did not utter one word of disbelief, conviction had battered at her heart from the moment when she saw it written in M. Bourget’s eyes, and she did not reproach him; only sobs of helpless misery broke from her as she clung. Claire was different. Her eyes were dry and fierce, her voice bitter.
“Do you mean that you have really done this shameful thing and brought all this disgrace upon us?”
“Hush, Claire, hush!” moaned her mother.
“No, mother, I shall speak; I have a right to speak. He has ruined us all. We can never face the world again. Oh, where can we hide ourselves? What will come next?”
Anger, misery, choked her. She rushed from the room, and paced up and down the picture-gallery, darting lightning reproaches at Léon, at his wife, at herself. Her brain was in a whirl. Félicie, who was on her way down-stairs, trailing pink wreaths behind her, stopped and peeped in at the door, hearing sounds. She would have retired, but that Claire seized her.
“Oh, Claire, gently, gently!” she cried, trying to shelter her precious roses. And then, to her horror, her sister snatched the wreath, tore it into fragments, and stamped on them.
“You will drive me mad, I believe!” she said, in a terrible voice. “Do you care for nothing but this frippery? Will it disturb you at all to hear that it is likely Léon will be arrested—arrested, do you hear?—and tried for stealing two hundred thousand francs? Yes, I am not mad, I am telling you the truth.”
“Léon! But what do you mean? I do not understand,” stammered poor Félicie, pale with dismay.
“How should you? All this goes on while you make your paper wreaths, and think of nothing else.”
“Oh, Claire, how cruel you are!” sobbed her sister. “You know I care for dear Léon as much as you—”
“Then you hate him!” interjected Claire. “I have never before heard of a seigneur of Poissy who was a thief. Every one will point at us—at us!”
“I do not think it can be possible,” said Félicie, drying her eyes, and mechanically trying to smooth out her damaged roses. Claire stood and stared at her; then flung herself away, and betook herself again to her passionate pacing. “No, I do not believe it, because you are always so violent when anything puts you out. What does mamma say? There is sure to be a mistake, for Léon has been so kind about the bishop that I am certain he could not have done the dreadful things you talk about. I dare say if he consults his Grandeur that he will give him some—”
She stopped. Claire had caught her wrists.
“If you speak about it to a soul, I shall kill you, Félicie. Do you hear!”
“Pray, be quiet, Claire!” whimpered the other; “it is very wrong to be so violent, and whether we tell him or not, I am sure the bishop will bring us a blessing. You will see that things will come right.”
“Oh, go away, go away!” cried her sister, pushing her. “Leave me in peace!”
“Perhaps it will be a lesson to Nathalie. I always felt afraid that some punishment would come to her for reading those books,” said Félicie, gathering up the last remains of her wreath and departing.
As her paroxysm of anger burned out into duller ashes of misery, Claire, at war with her sister, turned shudderingly towards Nathalie. She found herself wondering how the dreadful story affected her—what her intellect counselled. Suddenly she admitted her strength, and thought it possible that by her help means of extrication might be contrived. It might be he had not told her, from some weak notion of sparing her; Claire set her face like a rock against such mercy. From her she should know everything. Like an indomitable fate she walked towards her sister-in-law’s room, and there, as has been seen, found her unconscious on the floor. Nature forced her to go to her help, but as she knelt down she was full of contempt; for her own constitution was iron, and she held a collapse such as this a proof of miserable weakness. She read in it that Nathalie would never rise to the occasion, would suffer and make others suffer, and her own thoughts flew to plans for shielding Léon, or, at worst, of helping him to avoid the scandal.
Meanwhile, when Nathalie opened her eyes she saw no one at first, for Claire was kneeling behind. She had one minute of wondering reprieve before intolerable pain, rushed into possession. Words, looks, confronted her again; she moaned once, and then called upon her ebbing strength to meet its foes gallantly. Raising herself on an elbow, and pushing the hair back from her forehead with her other hand, a sound made her glance round, and she met Claire’s gaze. The two women eyed each other silently. Claire was the first to say, briefly:
“You know?”
“Yes, I know.”
They were mute again, each reflecting.
“And you fainted?” Mlle. de Beaudrillart uttered the words like a judge. Nathalie simply answered:
“I shall not do it again.”
Their words were few, like the first feints of fencers. Both rose and stood upright, and Claire felt a momentary vexation that Nathalie was the taller. She said, presently:
“There is no use in our talking. I shall never forgive Léon; but perhaps something can be arranged to hush it up, and prevent the disgrace becoming public. Whatever that costs, it must be done. I suppose money is always a strong weapon, and I imagine, under these circumstances, you cannot object to its being paid?”
To the tone Nathalie was indifferent to the point of unconsciousness. But to the suggestion she replied: “I should object with all my might. Forgive me if I oppose you.”
Claire flung out the taunt: “The sacrifice is too great?”
“What sacrifice? What I feel is that to sin, and then to bribe to escape its consequences, is to sin twice.”
The other stared at her.
“What will you do, then?”
Nathalie’s voice carried anguish. “I shall urge him to meet it.”
Claire made a step towards her. “Meet it? Do you mean own that he has done it?”
Nathalie encountered her eye, her voice, without quailing. She was vaguely sorry for these others who were suffering; but all her emotions fastened themselves upon her husband, and remembering some words he had let drop, she started. “Where is Léon?” she cried.
“With his mother. You need not be afraid for him,” said Claire, scornfully; “he has always taken care of himself, and he will do so to his dying day. I don’t know why I was such a fool as to be alarmed at hearing the advice you are going to bestow upon him, for Léon will never face a disagreeable so long as he can find a means of slipping round it. You may do your worst. Of course, you can’t be expected to feel what we feel: the disgrace—the horrible shame—the—” She stopped, choked. Nathalie looked at her, neither assenting nor denying, and, after a moment’s pause, the other began again:
“It must be crushed down, even if Poissy has to go. The name comes first. This man—it is true, is it not, that he will accept money!”
“Do you know what you are saying!” said her sister-in-law, speaking in a low, even voice. “If Léon did what you demand, he would be owning himself the thief they call him. He took the money, but it was not to keep; he wrote to Monsieur de Cadanet and told him what he had done, and promised to pay it back, and did it. He owes nothing.”
“You believe this!”
“Yes. He has told me all, now,” she answered, in the same tone. There was something in it which for the moment impressed Claire; but she presently returned to her conviction.
“If it is true, it is only a matter of degree,” she said, her eyes dilating.
“It is everything,” rejoined Nathalie, firmly.
“Take what comfort you can from it, then. What I think is that, true or not, unless Léon can prove it, it will be of no use in warding off the blow. That is the only thing which remains to us. It must not fall. Do you hear! It must not fall.”
“God knows!” She turned away with a sigh, but there was no irresolution in her face. The sun still shone outside; above the grey stone the clear blue was beginning to whiten; so high as to be mere specks, the swallows circled. Suddenly Claire broke into a laugh—a high-pitched laugh, not good to hear.
“A De Beaudrillart tried for theft!” she exclaimed. “In a common dock, I imagine! What a fine event for the world! Tours, too. Why, Tours would have something to talk about for quite a year.” Her voice changed again to something harsh, fierce. “You are not to tell your father, do you hear! Do you mean to say that you have done so already?”
Nathalie looked at her gravely.
“Hush!” she said. “There is no use in saying these things. My father has guessed it, and I think it is breaking his heart.”
“Oh,” cried Claire, wildly, “it only wanted this! Monsieur Bourget knows, and it is breaking Monsieur Bourget’s heart! We Beaudrillarts can bear it, but Monsieur Bourget’s heart is breaking! Do you suppose that we are going to endure this degrading pity? I tell you that anything—death itself—would be better!”
Her white face was distorted, changed; yet if any one had been there to make the comparison, they might have detected a deeper suffering behind Mme. Léon’s silence. She stood mute, her sad young eyes looking into the unknown, her delicate lips compressed. Claire suddenly felt the unconquerable power of calmness. Her taunts were useless. She turned and rushed from the room. Outside on the stairs were two men, and her first impression was that perhaps they were officers of justice come to seize Léon, until she saw that one was her brother himself and the other M. Georges.
Chapter Eighteen.A Different Standpoint.In his present mood Léon would have avoided any visitor, and M. Georges perhaps most of all; for to go over the estates, point out improvements and changes, and listen to the cautious encouraging admiration of his guest was almost unendurable. He had fallen upon him by chance, running down the stairs from his mother’s room just as a parley with M. Georges was being held at the door, and the kindliness of his nature prevented him from shaking him off, as he longed to do. But he hailed his sister as a means of escape, and though it was contrary to all etiquette to leave her to entertain him unassisted, this was an hour of anguish, in which everything not immediately connected with the matter in hand sank to insignificance. To Claire, too, under the exhaustion of her passion and her fears, the sight of M. Georges’s quiet, every-day respectful face gave an immediate and pleasurable sense of repose; and she was not sorry to second her brother when he explained that Mme. de Beaudrillart was ailing, that he himself had a pressing engagement, and that therefore he would ask his sister to go over the place, and show M. Georges anything that he would like to see.“Mademoiselle will indeed do me too much honour,” murmured M. Georges, blushing, and clasping his straw hat and bowing to the ground. “If it is an inconvenience, permit me to choose some other time.”“No, no!” cried Léon, hastily but kindly, for his heart had always reproached him with his treatment of his intendant, “you have had a long walk, and must certainly see what you came to see. Claire, be sure to show Monsieur Georges the new presses and the rick-yard.”He waved his hand and went away. M. Georges, who was gazing after him, ventured to remark that monsieur le baron did not look so well as he had hoped to find him.“No,” said Claire, abruptly; “he has his troubles. Who has not?”“Ah, mademoiselle,” said M. Georges, simply, “I hoped that the troubles of Poissy were over.”Mlle. de Beaudrillart, too, was altered. To him, she had been less dignified than to others, finding some sort of expansion in speaking to a man who, with all his indecision, was intelligent and had ideas. To-day she struck him as sharper and more angular; but he had always nursed a respectful admiration for Mlle. de Beaudrillart, who had often protected him from her mother’s criticisms. In the course of their walk round the estate he more than once suggested that he feared he was taking her from other occupations, to which she merely shook her head. Once he made an unfortunate allusion.“Ah, here is the wall which has been strengthened, of which Monsieur Bourget was telling me the other day. He is a marvellous man, Monsieur Bourget!”“Oh, do not talk of him!” said Claire, impatiently.“No?” Little M. Georges glanced at her with nervousness. “Possibly one may admit that occasionally he expresses himself with too much force; but he is solid, and knows what he is speaking about.” He added, conscience demanding the tribute: “And he is devoted to his family.” They were advancing towards the château when he stopped, and said, supplicatingly, “Would mademoiselle permit me to beg for one favour? I have never had the honour of seeing Monsieur Raoul.”The homage in his tone soothed poor Claire’s wounded spirit. She exclaimed, impulsively:“Ah, Monsieur Georges, you served my brother very faithfully! I wish he still had such a good friend by his side!”“You do me too much honour, mademoiselle,” he said, much touched; “the more so, because I have always been painfully aware of my own deficiencies at a critical time, and I have seen for myself to-day that Monsieur de Beaudrillart has done better without me. And I do not doubt that he has an excellent adviser in his wife.”“In his wife? Oh no; she does not understand the exigencies of the family, and how should she? She looks at everything from a totally different standpoint to ours. But there she is, and Raoul with her.”They were standing on the small stone balcony which clung to the wall outside Nathalie’s room, feeding the pigeons in the court, and, at Claire’s call, came down the steps and across the sun-smitten court. M. Georges, who had never seen her since her marriage, stared amazedly at this pale, noble-looking woman, with dark circles round her eyes, and the shadow of a great trouble resting upon her. He swept the ground with his hat, as Raoul marched up, put his hand into that of the visitor, and said, with sturdy precision: “How do you do, Monsieur Georges?” Mme. Léon also put out her hand.“Léon desired me to tell you,” she said, turning to her sister-in-law, “that Félicie has coffee ready, and he hopes that Monsieur Georges will have that or anything else he may prefer.”“Of course,” said Claire, shortly. “Are you coming?”“No, Léon wants me. Good-bye, Monsieur Georges. If you see my father, will you beg him to come and see us?” She moved away, and he stared, open-mouthed, after her. There was a tender dignity in her face, a composure in her manner, which, after all he had heard, left him amazed. And, though his perceptions were slow, he read in her eyes that she was a very sorrowful woman. What could threaten Poissy? What had humbled Mlle. Claire? Even Félicie, whom they found with the coffee, had red and swollen eyes, although she brightened and became enthusiastic in her descriptions of the preparations for monseigneur, and of all that she and the Abbé Nisard had to organise. She even ran to fetch some of her cherished decorations, and when it appeared that a yard or two of coloured calico was wanting, and M. Georges offered to procure it in Tours, her little inexpressive face became radiant.“Would you really be so kind? We should be most grateful, for I did not know where to turn, and to have failed in the effect just on account of two or three yards of stuff would have been too dreadful! Is it possible that you have never heard monseigneur preach! How much you would be edified! Instead of going to those terrible clubs where the Church is shut out, and the most dreadful doctrines are taught, you must come here and listen to him. You must indeed!”M. Georges, whose talk at clubs had been always most innocent, was highly gratified.“Mademoiselle is only too good,” he reiterated. “If I might be permitted—”“But certainly,” cried Félicie, enchanted at a possible convert. “Monseigneur arrives on Monday—the day after to-morrow—and the function will be on Tuesday.”“Félicie,” said her sister, warningly, “it is possible that we may not be able to receive monseigneur.”Félicie nodded her head in full confidence.“Ah, but I have spoken to Léon, and he wishes no change to be made; but everything to go on as was settled.”“Perhaps—” hesitated M. Georges, “if Madame Léon wishes to see her father, Monsieur Bourget and I might come out together?”“Monsieur Bourget!” Félicie was aghast. “Oh, for pity’s sake, do not bring him here! I am convinced that he is both a republican and a freethinker. He is really too dreadful! I believe he would be capable of shocking the bishop, and saying something insulting to the Church. Pray, pray, Monsieur Georges!”“For all our sakes, I think you may forget that message,” said Claire, significantly.But M. Georges could not so soon put aside his recollection of Mme. Léon’s earnest face and the sad sorrow in her eyes. After he got back to Tours, he was going in pursuit of M. Bourget, when he met him in the street, and uttered some little jest about the reversal of their positions.“It is I who have now returned from Poissy,” he said, smiling.“Well?”The word shot out so sharply that it startled the hearer.“The visit was exceedingly gratifying to me,” he returned, “although Monsieur de Beaudrillart was unfortunately a good deal occupied. But his sister kindly showed me the improvements, and it afforded me immense pleasure to see your grandson—and Madame Léon,” he added.M. Bourget’s face softened.“Did—did she say anything?” he demanded.“She desired me to beg you to come out.”“She wants me—eh?” Her father’s chin drooped on his chest, but he straightened himself by an effort, and inquired if she were well. M. Georges hesitated.“To tell you the truth, I am afraid some bad news had reached the family. Nothing was said, but you know how an impression fixes itself upon the mind. Still, I may be mistaken. Mademoiselle Félicie, who is very amiable, appeared much interested in a visit which the bishop is to pay them on Monday. It is astonishing how much she contrives to do for the Church!”M. Bourget paid no attention to his words, and when they had parted, M. Georges reflected that there had been a good deal of exaggeration in what Leroux and others had told him about the ex-builder’s mania on the subject of Poissy. Instead of descanting on the theme by the hour, as his victims represented, he had been as curt and silent as if the very name of the place were repugnant, and M. Georges, whose honest fealty had all come back that afternoon, made up his mind that jealousy probably lay at the bottom of the reports which had come to his ears. He walked away extremely well satisfied with himself, recalling Mlle. de Beaudrillart’s unusual condescension, and giving himself immense pains to match the coloured calico and despatch it.On Sunday afternoon M. Bourget, in his Sunday clothes, with a stick. And very conspicuous watch-chain festooned with seals in front, presented himself at the château and demanded his daughter. He was shown to her room, and there had to wait for some time, as Mme. Léon was in the grounds with her husband. When she came at last, she advanced quickly to meet him, but stopped, checked by the gloom in his face.“You see,” he said, briefly.She moved forward then; her eyes softened with a divine pity.“Yes,” she said, quietly.“And what is he going to do, this rascal of a husband of yours?”Her face flushed swiftly. “You must not speak of him like that.”“Why, what else is he? Didn’t he take the money?”“Yes, he took it. There he sinned. But he wrote to Monsieur de Cadanet by that day’s post, and told him what he had done, and promised to repay it—as he did.”M. Bourget groaned. “And you believe this story! I’ve been thinking, Nathalie, as I came along, and there’s nothing for it but money, money. The amount must be raised, the saints know how! but somehow, and the black business hushed up. It’s the only thing to be done for the boy—for all of us; and the quicker the better. Look here, I must see your husband. I’ll keep my hands off him, if I can, but that letter will have to be written to-day.” He groaned again. “It will leave me a beggar. Oh, the villain, to have brought his good name to this!”Nathalie’s face was white; but her eyes shone, and she confronted her father bravely.“And you would drag it in the dust! You would make him own to what he never did! Raoul’s father! Oh, shame, father, shame! I sent for you because I knew you were an honest man, and I believed you would counsel my poor Léon honestly. This is not honesty, and you shall not see him—you shall not disgrace yourself and me.”He flung angry glances at her.“Mighty fine!” he said, ironically. “Pray, what better plan have you for keeping him out of prison?”The light faded from her eyes, she locked her hands tightly one in the other, and was silent. He repeated, tauntingly,—“Come, now, what?”Thus cruelly pressed, her lips parted, she gasped rather than spoke the one word: “None.”M. Bourget was too angry for pity. “Perhaps you would like to put him there?”Silence.“Don’t deceive yourself, my girl. If you don’t pay, that is where he goes.”Her voice had come back to her.“I cannot help it. He must tell the truth.”He started to his feet with a violent exclamation of rage.“So you have no consideration for me? How can I ever show my face again in Tours? And Raoul! You mean him to grow up to be pointed at as the son of a man who has been in prison, all for the sake of a story which is only another lie! Yes, a lie! Do you tell me you believe it?”“I know it.”“Then you are a fool!” he cried, fiercely. “You will be telling me next that you still care for him.”“Ah, do I not!” she cried, her steadfast eyes shining.“Will you let me see him?” he exclaimed, imperiously.“No; I will not. He wants help, and you will not help him.”He marched to the door in a rage, but came back again, and stood with his great hands resting on the table, palms downward.“You are a woman, a foolish woman, and talk of things you don’t understand. You suppose that no one will have the heart to hurt your dear Léon; and that when they hear that fine story of his, judge and jury will be so much impressed that it will require no more to make them acquit him. A baron, the Baron de Beaudrillart, the master of Poissy, one of the oldest names in the country—you flatter yourself, no doubt, that all this will prepossess them in his favour, to say nothing of a weeping wife, clasping her hands and crying, ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen, for the love of Heaven!’ You know nothing at all, my girl. Baron, and Beaudrillart, and Poissy, and descent—all this grandeur—is exactly what will tell against him. In these days it is a fine thing for a miserable little tallow-chandler, or a creature like Leroux, to sit in the jury-box, and feel, ‘Now it is my turn. Down with these seigneurs and their accursed pride!’ If he were an upstart of a washer-woman’s son, picked out of the gutter, he would have a chance, but as it is,”—he stopped and blew out a whiff of air—“there! That is what his is worth! And as for the love of Heaven—peste! few of them will think twice of that.”Till these last words, Nathalie had bent her head before the pitiless storm. Now she raised it confidently.“Yet it will not fail us,” she said. “If Léon does what is right, I do not fear.”His anger was on the point of overpowering him, but he mastered it by a great effort so far as to mutter:“Perhaps it is as well I should not see your husband, lest I should lose patience. But you had better let him hear my opinion. He can send in and let me know, if it isn’t too late.”“Will you not have the carriage?”He refused curtly, and, without listening to the words with which she tried to thank him, took himself out of the room, down the stairs, and out into the broad sweep. Poissy had never looked more beautiful. It was one of those grey, languorous days in which thunder threatens, and the dark, rich tones of a cloudy sky threw the mellow stone-work and its delicate ornamentation into high relief. The court side was the more picturesque and broken, but the noble simplicity of the lines of the front had always powerfully affected M. Bourget, and he was ready to vow that nothing could exceed the grace of the chimneys or the fine proportion of the windows. And now, as he looked, the pride with which he had dwelt upon it broke forth in an angry snort, which was really a groan. Unfortunately for himself, Jean Charpentier was on his way round the house. It was very well known in the household how the father of Mme. Léon was regarded by Mme. de Beaudrillart and her daughters, and Jean held, if possible, yet stouter aristocratic opinions. The sight, therefore, of M. Bourget’s square and sturdy figure, planted on the drive, and tragically gesticulating, stretched his face into a broad grin, which he took no pains to hide. In a moment he found himself in the clutch of the avenger. M. Bourget, gripping his collar, rained down blows upon him with his cane until he roared for mercy, and the ex-builder, wrathfully sending him staggering, expressed a hope that the castigation would have a good and much-needed effect upon his manners.At any rate, this little incident had a soothing influence upon M. Bourget. It made him hot, but it restored his sense of power, and he went on his way home with a feeling that his visit had not been all in vain. Jean ran into the house, smarting for revenge, but it was an unlucky day for him, as the first person he fell upon was his father. Jacques listened to the tale, spluttered out between threats of vengeance, and when it was ended took his son by the ear.“I’ll wager you’ve had no more than you earned; and see here, if you talk about it, you’ll come in for another dose. Ay, you’d best look out. Let me catch you venturing to be insolent to Madame Léon or her father!” And as Jean went off in wholesome dread of threats which he knew his father too well to doubt would be carried out, Jacques remained looking doubtfully at the ground and scratching his head. “There’s trouble in the air, and I’m fearful it has to do with Monsieur Léon,” he reflected. “Madame has eaten next to nothing these two days, and as for Madame Léon, she is a ghost. It must be serious, for I’ve seen nothing like it since Monsieur Léon married; and if it’s an old story wakening up, why, all the worse! Monsieur Bourget, too; he will have been put out about something to give Jean a thrashing, and to go without so much as seeing Monsieur Raoul. A bad sign—a very bad sign.”And Jacques went off mournfully to the gardens.
In his present mood Léon would have avoided any visitor, and M. Georges perhaps most of all; for to go over the estates, point out improvements and changes, and listen to the cautious encouraging admiration of his guest was almost unendurable. He had fallen upon him by chance, running down the stairs from his mother’s room just as a parley with M. Georges was being held at the door, and the kindliness of his nature prevented him from shaking him off, as he longed to do. But he hailed his sister as a means of escape, and though it was contrary to all etiquette to leave her to entertain him unassisted, this was an hour of anguish, in which everything not immediately connected with the matter in hand sank to insignificance. To Claire, too, under the exhaustion of her passion and her fears, the sight of M. Georges’s quiet, every-day respectful face gave an immediate and pleasurable sense of repose; and she was not sorry to second her brother when he explained that Mme. de Beaudrillart was ailing, that he himself had a pressing engagement, and that therefore he would ask his sister to go over the place, and show M. Georges anything that he would like to see.
“Mademoiselle will indeed do me too much honour,” murmured M. Georges, blushing, and clasping his straw hat and bowing to the ground. “If it is an inconvenience, permit me to choose some other time.”
“No, no!” cried Léon, hastily but kindly, for his heart had always reproached him with his treatment of his intendant, “you have had a long walk, and must certainly see what you came to see. Claire, be sure to show Monsieur Georges the new presses and the rick-yard.”
He waved his hand and went away. M. Georges, who was gazing after him, ventured to remark that monsieur le baron did not look so well as he had hoped to find him.
“No,” said Claire, abruptly; “he has his troubles. Who has not?”
“Ah, mademoiselle,” said M. Georges, simply, “I hoped that the troubles of Poissy were over.”
Mlle. de Beaudrillart, too, was altered. To him, she had been less dignified than to others, finding some sort of expansion in speaking to a man who, with all his indecision, was intelligent and had ideas. To-day she struck him as sharper and more angular; but he had always nursed a respectful admiration for Mlle. de Beaudrillart, who had often protected him from her mother’s criticisms. In the course of their walk round the estate he more than once suggested that he feared he was taking her from other occupations, to which she merely shook her head. Once he made an unfortunate allusion.
“Ah, here is the wall which has been strengthened, of which Monsieur Bourget was telling me the other day. He is a marvellous man, Monsieur Bourget!”
“Oh, do not talk of him!” said Claire, impatiently.
“No?” Little M. Georges glanced at her with nervousness. “Possibly one may admit that occasionally he expresses himself with too much force; but he is solid, and knows what he is speaking about.” He added, conscience demanding the tribute: “And he is devoted to his family.” They were advancing towards the château when he stopped, and said, supplicatingly, “Would mademoiselle permit me to beg for one favour? I have never had the honour of seeing Monsieur Raoul.”
The homage in his tone soothed poor Claire’s wounded spirit. She exclaimed, impulsively:
“Ah, Monsieur Georges, you served my brother very faithfully! I wish he still had such a good friend by his side!”
“You do me too much honour, mademoiselle,” he said, much touched; “the more so, because I have always been painfully aware of my own deficiencies at a critical time, and I have seen for myself to-day that Monsieur de Beaudrillart has done better without me. And I do not doubt that he has an excellent adviser in his wife.”
“In his wife? Oh no; she does not understand the exigencies of the family, and how should she? She looks at everything from a totally different standpoint to ours. But there she is, and Raoul with her.”
They were standing on the small stone balcony which clung to the wall outside Nathalie’s room, feeding the pigeons in the court, and, at Claire’s call, came down the steps and across the sun-smitten court. M. Georges, who had never seen her since her marriage, stared amazedly at this pale, noble-looking woman, with dark circles round her eyes, and the shadow of a great trouble resting upon her. He swept the ground with his hat, as Raoul marched up, put his hand into that of the visitor, and said, with sturdy precision: “How do you do, Monsieur Georges?” Mme. Léon also put out her hand.
“Léon desired me to tell you,” she said, turning to her sister-in-law, “that Félicie has coffee ready, and he hopes that Monsieur Georges will have that or anything else he may prefer.”
“Of course,” said Claire, shortly. “Are you coming?”
“No, Léon wants me. Good-bye, Monsieur Georges. If you see my father, will you beg him to come and see us?” She moved away, and he stared, open-mouthed, after her. There was a tender dignity in her face, a composure in her manner, which, after all he had heard, left him amazed. And, though his perceptions were slow, he read in her eyes that she was a very sorrowful woman. What could threaten Poissy? What had humbled Mlle. Claire? Even Félicie, whom they found with the coffee, had red and swollen eyes, although she brightened and became enthusiastic in her descriptions of the preparations for monseigneur, and of all that she and the Abbé Nisard had to organise. She even ran to fetch some of her cherished decorations, and when it appeared that a yard or two of coloured calico was wanting, and M. Georges offered to procure it in Tours, her little inexpressive face became radiant.
“Would you really be so kind? We should be most grateful, for I did not know where to turn, and to have failed in the effect just on account of two or three yards of stuff would have been too dreadful! Is it possible that you have never heard monseigneur preach! How much you would be edified! Instead of going to those terrible clubs where the Church is shut out, and the most dreadful doctrines are taught, you must come here and listen to him. You must indeed!”
M. Georges, whose talk at clubs had been always most innocent, was highly gratified.
“Mademoiselle is only too good,” he reiterated. “If I might be permitted—”
“But certainly,” cried Félicie, enchanted at a possible convert. “Monseigneur arrives on Monday—the day after to-morrow—and the function will be on Tuesday.”
“Félicie,” said her sister, warningly, “it is possible that we may not be able to receive monseigneur.”
Félicie nodded her head in full confidence.
“Ah, but I have spoken to Léon, and he wishes no change to be made; but everything to go on as was settled.”
“Perhaps—” hesitated M. Georges, “if Madame Léon wishes to see her father, Monsieur Bourget and I might come out together?”
“Monsieur Bourget!” Félicie was aghast. “Oh, for pity’s sake, do not bring him here! I am convinced that he is both a republican and a freethinker. He is really too dreadful! I believe he would be capable of shocking the bishop, and saying something insulting to the Church. Pray, pray, Monsieur Georges!”
“For all our sakes, I think you may forget that message,” said Claire, significantly.
But M. Georges could not so soon put aside his recollection of Mme. Léon’s earnest face and the sad sorrow in her eyes. After he got back to Tours, he was going in pursuit of M. Bourget, when he met him in the street, and uttered some little jest about the reversal of their positions.
“It is I who have now returned from Poissy,” he said, smiling.
“Well?”
The word shot out so sharply that it startled the hearer.
“The visit was exceedingly gratifying to me,” he returned, “although Monsieur de Beaudrillart was unfortunately a good deal occupied. But his sister kindly showed me the improvements, and it afforded me immense pleasure to see your grandson—and Madame Léon,” he added.
M. Bourget’s face softened.
“Did—did she say anything?” he demanded.
“She desired me to beg you to come out.”
“She wants me—eh?” Her father’s chin drooped on his chest, but he straightened himself by an effort, and inquired if she were well. M. Georges hesitated.
“To tell you the truth, I am afraid some bad news had reached the family. Nothing was said, but you know how an impression fixes itself upon the mind. Still, I may be mistaken. Mademoiselle Félicie, who is very amiable, appeared much interested in a visit which the bishop is to pay them on Monday. It is astonishing how much she contrives to do for the Church!”
M. Bourget paid no attention to his words, and when they had parted, M. Georges reflected that there had been a good deal of exaggeration in what Leroux and others had told him about the ex-builder’s mania on the subject of Poissy. Instead of descanting on the theme by the hour, as his victims represented, he had been as curt and silent as if the very name of the place were repugnant, and M. Georges, whose honest fealty had all come back that afternoon, made up his mind that jealousy probably lay at the bottom of the reports which had come to his ears. He walked away extremely well satisfied with himself, recalling Mlle. de Beaudrillart’s unusual condescension, and giving himself immense pains to match the coloured calico and despatch it.
On Sunday afternoon M. Bourget, in his Sunday clothes, with a stick. And very conspicuous watch-chain festooned with seals in front, presented himself at the château and demanded his daughter. He was shown to her room, and there had to wait for some time, as Mme. Léon was in the grounds with her husband. When she came at last, she advanced quickly to meet him, but stopped, checked by the gloom in his face.
“You see,” he said, briefly.
She moved forward then; her eyes softened with a divine pity.
“Yes,” she said, quietly.
“And what is he going to do, this rascal of a husband of yours?”
Her face flushed swiftly. “You must not speak of him like that.”
“Why, what else is he? Didn’t he take the money?”
“Yes, he took it. There he sinned. But he wrote to Monsieur de Cadanet by that day’s post, and told him what he had done, and promised to repay it—as he did.”
M. Bourget groaned. “And you believe this story! I’ve been thinking, Nathalie, as I came along, and there’s nothing for it but money, money. The amount must be raised, the saints know how! but somehow, and the black business hushed up. It’s the only thing to be done for the boy—for all of us; and the quicker the better. Look here, I must see your husband. I’ll keep my hands off him, if I can, but that letter will have to be written to-day.” He groaned again. “It will leave me a beggar. Oh, the villain, to have brought his good name to this!”
Nathalie’s face was white; but her eyes shone, and she confronted her father bravely.
“And you would drag it in the dust! You would make him own to what he never did! Raoul’s father! Oh, shame, father, shame! I sent for you because I knew you were an honest man, and I believed you would counsel my poor Léon honestly. This is not honesty, and you shall not see him—you shall not disgrace yourself and me.”
He flung angry glances at her.
“Mighty fine!” he said, ironically. “Pray, what better plan have you for keeping him out of prison?”
The light faded from her eyes, she locked her hands tightly one in the other, and was silent. He repeated, tauntingly,—
“Come, now, what?”
Thus cruelly pressed, her lips parted, she gasped rather than spoke the one word: “None.”
M. Bourget was too angry for pity. “Perhaps you would like to put him there?”
Silence.
“Don’t deceive yourself, my girl. If you don’t pay, that is where he goes.”
Her voice had come back to her.
“I cannot help it. He must tell the truth.”
He started to his feet with a violent exclamation of rage.
“So you have no consideration for me? How can I ever show my face again in Tours? And Raoul! You mean him to grow up to be pointed at as the son of a man who has been in prison, all for the sake of a story which is only another lie! Yes, a lie! Do you tell me you believe it?”
“I know it.”
“Then you are a fool!” he cried, fiercely. “You will be telling me next that you still care for him.”
“Ah, do I not!” she cried, her steadfast eyes shining.
“Will you let me see him?” he exclaimed, imperiously.
“No; I will not. He wants help, and you will not help him.”
He marched to the door in a rage, but came back again, and stood with his great hands resting on the table, palms downward.
“You are a woman, a foolish woman, and talk of things you don’t understand. You suppose that no one will have the heart to hurt your dear Léon; and that when they hear that fine story of his, judge and jury will be so much impressed that it will require no more to make them acquit him. A baron, the Baron de Beaudrillart, the master of Poissy, one of the oldest names in the country—you flatter yourself, no doubt, that all this will prepossess them in his favour, to say nothing of a weeping wife, clasping her hands and crying, ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen, for the love of Heaven!’ You know nothing at all, my girl. Baron, and Beaudrillart, and Poissy, and descent—all this grandeur—is exactly what will tell against him. In these days it is a fine thing for a miserable little tallow-chandler, or a creature like Leroux, to sit in the jury-box, and feel, ‘Now it is my turn. Down with these seigneurs and their accursed pride!’ If he were an upstart of a washer-woman’s son, picked out of the gutter, he would have a chance, but as it is,”—he stopped and blew out a whiff of air—“there! That is what his is worth! And as for the love of Heaven—peste! few of them will think twice of that.”
Till these last words, Nathalie had bent her head before the pitiless storm. Now she raised it confidently.
“Yet it will not fail us,” she said. “If Léon does what is right, I do not fear.”
His anger was on the point of overpowering him, but he mastered it by a great effort so far as to mutter:
“Perhaps it is as well I should not see your husband, lest I should lose patience. But you had better let him hear my opinion. He can send in and let me know, if it isn’t too late.”
“Will you not have the carriage?”
He refused curtly, and, without listening to the words with which she tried to thank him, took himself out of the room, down the stairs, and out into the broad sweep. Poissy had never looked more beautiful. It was one of those grey, languorous days in which thunder threatens, and the dark, rich tones of a cloudy sky threw the mellow stone-work and its delicate ornamentation into high relief. The court side was the more picturesque and broken, but the noble simplicity of the lines of the front had always powerfully affected M. Bourget, and he was ready to vow that nothing could exceed the grace of the chimneys or the fine proportion of the windows. And now, as he looked, the pride with which he had dwelt upon it broke forth in an angry snort, which was really a groan. Unfortunately for himself, Jean Charpentier was on his way round the house. It was very well known in the household how the father of Mme. Léon was regarded by Mme. de Beaudrillart and her daughters, and Jean held, if possible, yet stouter aristocratic opinions. The sight, therefore, of M. Bourget’s square and sturdy figure, planted on the drive, and tragically gesticulating, stretched his face into a broad grin, which he took no pains to hide. In a moment he found himself in the clutch of the avenger. M. Bourget, gripping his collar, rained down blows upon him with his cane until he roared for mercy, and the ex-builder, wrathfully sending him staggering, expressed a hope that the castigation would have a good and much-needed effect upon his manners.
At any rate, this little incident had a soothing influence upon M. Bourget. It made him hot, but it restored his sense of power, and he went on his way home with a feeling that his visit had not been all in vain. Jean ran into the house, smarting for revenge, but it was an unlucky day for him, as the first person he fell upon was his father. Jacques listened to the tale, spluttered out between threats of vengeance, and when it was ended took his son by the ear.
“I’ll wager you’ve had no more than you earned; and see here, if you talk about it, you’ll come in for another dose. Ay, you’d best look out. Let me catch you venturing to be insolent to Madame Léon or her father!” And as Jean went off in wholesome dread of threats which he knew his father too well to doubt would be carried out, Jacques remained looking doubtfully at the ground and scratching his head. “There’s trouble in the air, and I’m fearful it has to do with Monsieur Léon,” he reflected. “Madame has eaten next to nothing these two days, and as for Madame Léon, she is a ghost. It must be serious, for I’ve seen nothing like it since Monsieur Léon married; and if it’s an old story wakening up, why, all the worse! Monsieur Bourget, too; he will have been put out about something to give Jean a thrashing, and to go without so much as seeing Monsieur Raoul. A bad sign—a very bad sign.”
And Jacques went off mournfully to the gardens.