CHAPTER IV."When? When? The action they wish to force on me becomes inevitable then? I shall be obliged, then, to face that brute?" George saw the hour approach with ungovernable dread. An insurmountable repugnance arose from the roots of his being at the very thought that he was going to find himself alone, in a closed room, in atête-à-tête, with that man.As the days passed, he felt increase his anxiety and humiliation, caused by culpable inertia. He felt that his mother, that his sister, that all the victims, expected from him, the first-born, some energetic action, some kind of protest—protection. Why, in fact, had he been summoned? Why had he come? From now on, it no longer seemed possible for him to leave without having done his duty. Without doubt, at the last minute, he could have escaped without saying good-by, and then written a letter justifying his conduct by any plausible pretext. When his distress was at its height, he ventured to think of this ignominious resource; he stopped to consider a way, to arrange the most trifling details, to picture the results. But, in the scenes conjured up, the unhappy and ravaged face of his mother awoke in him an intolerable remorse. The reflections which he made on his egotism and his weakness revolted him against himself: and he sought with puerile fury to find some particle of energy which he could excite and efficaciously employ against the greater part of his being, and which would permit him to triumph over it as over a cowardly brute. But this false energy did not last, did not serve in the least to press him to a manly resolution. Then he undertook to calmly examine his situation, and he deluded himself by the very vigor of his reasoning. He thought: "What good could I do? What evils could my intervention remedy? Will this unhappy effort which my mother and the rest demand from me yield any real advantage? And what advantage?" As he had not found in himself the energy necessary for the execution of the act, as he had not succeeded in provoking in himself a satisfactory revolt, he had recourse to the opposite method—he attempted to demonstrate to his own satisfaction the uselessness of the effort. "What would be the result of the interview? It would certainly have none. According to my father's humor or according to the trend of his conversation, he would be either violent or persuasive. In the first case, his violence and insults would take me by surprise. In the second case, my father would find a mass of arguments to prove to me either his innocence or the necessity of his faults, and I should be taken equally by surprise. The facts are irreparable. When vice is rooted in the intimate substance of a man, it becomes indestructible. Now, my father is at the age when vice can no longer be rooted out, when habits can no longer be changed. For years he has been associated with that woman and those children. Have I the slightest chance to convince him that he ought to break off all those ties? Yesterday, I saw the woman. It sufficed to see her, to guess that she will never let go her hold on the man whose flesh she holds in her clutches. She will dominate him until his death. The thing is now irremediable. And then, there are those children and those children's rights. Besides, after all that has occurred, would a reconciliation be possible between my father and mother? Never. All my attempts would then be fruitless. And then? There still remains the question of material damage, of money squandered, of dilapidation. But does it fall on me to put all this in order, since I live far away from the house? It would require constant vigilance to do that, and only Diego could do it. I will speak to Diego; I will arrange with him. In short, the most urgent matter just now is Camille's dowry. Albert frequently brings the subject up, and is even the most annoying of all my solicitors. Perhaps I shall be able to make some arrangement without difficulty."He intended to favor his sister by contributing towards her dowry; for, the heir of all his uncle Demetrius's fortune, he was rich, and already in possession of his property. The intention to perform this generous act raised him once more in his own conscience. He believed himself freed from all other duties, from any other disagreeable step, by the sacrifice which he consented to make of his money.When he turned his steps towards his mother's room he felt less uneasy, lighter, more comfortable. Moreover, he had learned that since morning his father had returned to the country place where he usually went in order to have more freedom in his actions. And it relieved him greatly to think that in the evening, at table, a certain place would be vacant."Ah! George, you have come just in time," cried his mother, directly she saw him enter.The angry voice gave him such a rude and unexpected shock that he stopped, and he looked at his mother with stupor, so transfigured by the transport of anger as to be almost unrecognizable. He also looked at Diego, not understanding; he looked at Camille, who stood still, mute and hostile."What is the matter?" stammered George, fixing his eyes once more on his brother, attracted by the bad expression which he saw for the first time on the young man's face."The strong box in which the silverware is kept is no longer in its place," said Diego, without raising his eyes, contracting his eyebrows and mumbling. "They charge me with having made away with it."A flood of bitter words fell from the unhappy woman's mouth."Yes, you—in league with your father. You are your father's accomplice. Oh! what infamy. And now this frightful thing! Now this frightful thing! The child who has nursed at my breast to turn against me! But you are the only one who resembles him. God has been more merciful with the others. O God, blessed be thy name, blessed forever, for having spared me that supreme misfortune! You are the only one who resembles him, the only one——"She turned towards George, who stood paralyzed, motionless, voiceless. Her chin trembled spasmodically; and she was so convulsed that one would have believed that she was going to sink down on the floor at any moment."Do you see now the life that we lead? Tell me, do you see it now? Every day, some new infamy. Every day, the same struggle to prevent the pillage of this unfortunate house. Are you convinced now that, if your father could, he would turn us into the streets, snatch the bread from our mouths? And it will come to that; we shall end by seeing that. You will see, you will see."She continued, panting, with a choking sob in her throat at every pause, giving vent at times to hoarse shrieks, which expressed an almost savage hate, a hate inconceivable in a creature apparently so delicate. And once more accusations fell from her lips. The man had no longer the slightest consideration, the slightest shame. He would stop at nothing and for nobody to make money. He had become insane; he seemed a prey to uncontrollable madness. He had ruined his real estate, cut down his woods, sold his herds at hazard, blindly, to the first comer, to the one who offered most. Now he began to despoil the house in which his children were born. For a long time he had had designs upon the silver, family silver, old and hereditary, piously guarded as a relic of the house of Aurispa, preserved intact until now. Hiding it had proved useless. Diego was in league with his father; and the two confederates, eluding the keenest vigilance, had taken it, to do with it God only knows what."Have you no shame?" she went on, turning towards Diego, who restrained with difficulty an explosion of his violence. "Are you not ashamed to take part with your father against me—against me, who have never refused you anything, who have always done as you wished? And yet you know, you know perfectly well, where the silver has gone And you are not ashamed? You've nothing to say? Won t you answer? Look, there's your brother. Tell me where the box has gone. I must know, do you hear?""I have already said that I don't know, that I haven't seen the box, and that I did not take it," cried Diego, unable to longer contain himself, with an explosion of brutality, and shaking his head; and the sombre flame which lit up his face made him resemble the absentee. "Do you understand?"The mother, pale as death, looked at George, to whom the look seemed to impart a similar color.Seized with a fit of trembling impossible to hide, the elder brother said to the younger:"Diego, leave the room.""I'll leave when it pleases me," replied Diego insolently, shrugging his shoulders, without, however, looking his brother in the face.Then a sudden exasperation seized George, one of those extreme exasperations which, in feeble and irresolute men, have such an excessive vehemence that they cannot manifest themselves by any external act, but cause to pass before the thwarted will flashes of criminal visions. The hatred between brothers, that odious hate which, since the creation, breeds secretly at the bottom of human nature to break out at the first discord, more ferocious than every other hate—that inexplicable hostility which exists, latent, between the males of the same blood, even though the customs and peace of the birthplace have created between them affectionate bonds; and, also, that horror which accompanies the execution or the thought of a crime, and which is perhaps only the vague sentiment of the law inscribed by secular heredity in the Christian conscience—all this surged confusedly in a sort of vertiginous whirl which, for a second, superseded all other sentiment in his soul, and gave him an aggressive impulse. The very aspect of Diego, his thick-set and sanguine body, his fallow head on the bull-like neck, the evident physical superiority of this robust, muscular fellow, the offence against his authority as the elder—all contributed to augment his fury. He would like to have had a prompt means of dominating, subjugating, felling this brute, without resistance and without a struggle. Instinctively he looked at his fists, those large, powerful fists, covered with a reddish down, which at dinner, employed in the service of a voracious appetite, had already caused him such a strong repulsion."Leave the room! Leave the room immediately!" he repeated in a higher and more commanding key; "or else ask my mother's pardon immediately."He advanced towards Diego, his hand extended as if to grasp an arm."I do not permit anyone to give me orders," cried Diego, at last looking his elder brother in the face.And, beneath his low forehead, his little gray eyes expressed a resentment which had been brooding for years."Take care, Diego!""You don't frighten me.""Take care!""Who are you, I'd like to know? What business have you here?" shouted Diego angrily. "You have no right to interfere. You are a stranger. I do not want to know you. What has been your rôle up to now? You have never done anything for anybody; you have always thought only of your comfort, and your interest. The caresses, the preferences, the adorations, have all been for you. What do you want now? Go back to Rome and squander your heritage as you choose; but don't meddle in what does not concern you."So he breathed out all his rancor, all his jealousy, all his envious hate against the fortunate brother who, in the great city yonder, lived a life of unknown pleasures, a stranger to his family, as though a being of another race, favored by a thousand privileges."Hold your tongue! Hold your tongue!"And the mother, beside herself, and throwing herself between them, slapped Diego's face."Leave the room! Not another word! Get out of here! Go to your father! I don't want to hear you any more! I don't even want to see you again!"Diego hesitated, shaken by the quivering of fury, perhaps only waiting for a gesture from his brother to fling himself on him."Go!" repeated the mother, at the end of her energy.And she fell fainting into Camille's arms, extended to receive her.Then Diego went out, livid with rage, muttering between his teeth a word which George did not understand, and they heard his heavy steps grow fainter as he passed through the gloomy enfilade of rooms in which the daylight was already dying.CHAPTER V.It was a rainy evening. Stretched out on his bed, George felt himself so broken physically, and so sad, that he had given up thinking, so to speak. His thoughts wavered, vague and incoherent; but his sadness was modified and exasperated by the influence of the slightest sensations—occasional words pronounced in the street by passersby, the tick-tick of the clock on the wall, the tinkling of a distant bell, the stamping of a horse, a whistle, the banging of a door. He felt alone, isolated from the rest of the world, separated from his own anterior existence by the abyss of incalculable time. His imagination represented to him, in an indistinct vision, the gesture with which his mistress had lowered her black veil after the last kiss; it represented to him the child with the crutch collecting the waxen tears. He thought: "There is nothing more left to me but to die." Without definite cause, his anguish increased all at once, and became unbearable. The palpitations of his heart choked him, as if in a nightmare. He threw himself from his bed and paced up and down his room, distracted, agitated, incapable of containing his anguish. And his steps resounded in his brain."Who is there? Someone calling me?" The sound of a voice rang in his ear. He strained his ear to listen. He heard nothing more. He opened the door, walked in the corridor, and listened. All was silent. His aunt's room was open, and lit up. A strange fear seized him, a sort of panicky terror, as he thought that he might all at once see that old woman, with the mask of a cadaver, appear on the threshold. One doubt crossed his mind; she was perhaps dead, seated over there in her easy-chair, motionless, her chin on her bosom—dead. This vision had the clearness of reality, and froze him with veritable fright. He did not stir, no longer dared make a movement, standing still with a band of iron around his head, a band which, like some cold and elastic substance, expanded and contracted according to the pulsation of his arteries. His nerves tyrannized him, imposing on him the disorder, the excess, of their sensations. The old woman commenced to cough, and that made him start. Then he retired softly, quietly, on tiptoe, so as not to be heard."What is the matter with me this evening? I cannot stay any longer alone in this room. I must go down." Besides, he foresaw that, after the atrocious scene, it would be equally impossible for him to bear his mother's unhappy appearance. "I will go out. I will go to Christine's." What prompted him to make this visit was the recollection of the touching and sad hour spent with his sweet sister in the garden.It was a rainy evening. In the streets, already almost deserted, the few gas-jets threw out a dull glow. From a closed bakery came the voices of the bakers at work, and an odor of bread; from a cabaret came the sounds of a guitar and the refrain of a popular air. A band of wandering dogs ran by and was lost in the sombre alleys. The hour struck in the belfry.By degrees, the walk in the open air calmed his exaltation. He seemed to have freed himself from the phantasies which encumbered his conscience. His attention was attracted to all he saw and heard. He stopped to listen to the sounds of the guitar, to smell the odor of the bread. Someone passed in the shadow on the other side of the street, and he thought he recognized Diego. Meeting him caused him agitation; but he felt that all his rancor was gone, that no violence remained at the bottom of his sorrow. Certain of his brother's words came back to his memory. He thought: "Who knows if he did not speak the truth? I have never done anything for anybody; I have always lived for myself alone. Here I am a stranger. Everyone here judges me perhaps in the same way. My mother said: 'You see now the life we lead? You see now, don't you?' I might see all her tears flow, and still should not have the strength to save her." ...He arrived at the gate of the Celaia palace. He entered, and crossed the vestibule. As he traversed the court, he raised his eyes. Not a light was visible at any of the high windows; there was in the air an odor of rotten straw; the tap of a water-fountain dripped in an obscure angle; beneath the portico, beneath an image of the Virgin covered with a grating, a little lantern was burning, and through the grating, at the feet of the Virgin, could be seen a bouquet of artificial roses; the steps of the large stairway were hollowed in the centre by usage, like those of an antique altar, and every hollow in the stone shone with yellowish reflections. Everything expressed the melancholy of the old, hereditary house to which Don Bartolomeo Celaia, left to solitude, and arrived at the threshold of old age, had conducted his bride and in which he had begotten his heir.As he went upstairs, George saw with the eyes of his soul the young, pensive wife and the anæmic child; he saw them in the distance, at a chimerical distance, at the end of an out-of-the-way room to which nobody could penetrate. For a moment he had the idea to turn back, and he stopped, perplexed, in the middle of the high and silent white staircase. He was in a state of indefinable uneasiness. Once more he had lost the sense of the present reality; he felt himself once more under the influence of a vague terror, like a short time before in the corridor, when he had perceived the door open and the room empty. But, suddenly, he heard a noise, and a voice as if someone were chasing something; and a gray dog, a gaunt and dirty-looking mongrel, doubtless driven to enter the house by hunger, came flying down the stairway half a dozen steps at a time, and brushed by him. A servant, noisily chasing the fugitive, appeared on the landing."What is the matter?" asked George, visibly agitated by the surprise."Oh, nothing, sir. I am chasing a dog, an ugly, dirty beast, that gets into the house every night, no one knows how, just like a ghost."This trifling, insignificant fact, combined with the servant's words, aroused in him that inexplicable uneasiness which resembled the confused anguish of a superstitious presentiment. It was this anguish which prompted the question:"Is Luchino well?""Yes, sir; thanks to God.""Is he asleep?""No, sir; he has not yet gone to bed."Preceded by the domestic, he crossed the large rooms, which seemed almost empty, and in which the furniture, old-fashioned in design, was placed symmetrically. Nothing indicated the presence of inhabitants, as if the rooms had remained closed up to then. And he said to himself that Christine could not love this dwelling, since she had not shed over it the grace of her soul. Everything had remained there just as it was, in the same order in which the bride found it on entering on her wedding-day, in the same order left by the last of the wives of the house of Celaia.George's unexpected visit delighted his sister, who was alone and preparing to put the child to bed."Oh! George, how good you are to have come!" she exclaimed, with an effusion of sincere joy, pressing him in her arms, and kissing his forehead; and this tenderness had the immediate effect of dilating her brother's depressed heart. "Look, Luchino, look; there's your uncle George. Have you nothing to say to him? Come, give him a kiss."A feeble smile appeared upon the child's pale mouth; and as he had lowered his head, his long, blond eyelashes were lit up from above and threw their trembling shadow on his blanched cheeks.George took him in his arms, unable to prevent a sensation of profound emotion in feeling beneath his hands the leanness of the child's chest, in which beat so debilitated a heart. And he was almost afraid, as if his slight pressure were sufficient to extinguish the pitiful little life. He felt both fear and pity, as he used to do in his boyhood when he held a little scared bird prisoner in his hand."Light as a feather!" he said.The emotion which trembled in his voice did not escape Christine.He seated the child on his knees, caressed his head, and asked him:"Do you love me very much?"His heart was filled with unusual tenderness. He felt a melancholy desire to see the poor, sickly child smile, to see his cheeks tinted at least once a fleeting rouge, to see a light effusion of blood beneath the diaphanous skin."What have you here?" he asked, seeing a finger wrapped up in linen."He cut himself the other day," said Christine, whose attentive eyes followed her brother's slightest gestures. "A slight cut, but it is obstinate in healing.""Let me see, Luchino," said George, prompted by a painful curiosity, but smiling to call forth a smile. "I will cure it by blowing on it."The child, surprised, permitted the bandage to be removed from his finger. Watched anxiously by his sister, George took infinite precautions in untying it. The end of the linen had adhered to the slight wound, and he had not the heart to detach it; but at the edge exposed to view he saw appear a whitish drop, resembling whey. His lips trembled. He raised his eyes; he saw that the face of his sister, intent on his every movement, had undergone a change and was contracted by grief. He felt that at that moment the poor woman's soul was wholly concentrated in that little hand."It is nothing," he said. And he forced a smile, as he breathed on the cut, to give the illusion to the child, who was waiting for the miracle. Then he rebound the finger with infinite care. He thought once more of the strange anguish which had seized him on the deserted staircase, of the chase after the dog, of the servant's words, of the questions which a superstitious fear had suggested to him, of all his baseless anxiety.Noticing how absorbed he was, Christine said to him:"What are you thinking of?""Nothing."Then, all at once, without thinking, without having any other intention than to say something which would arouse the attention of the already sleepy child, he said:"Do you know, I met a dog on the staircase."The child opened wide his eyes."A dog which comes every night.""Yes," said Christine, "Gian spoke to me about it."But she stopped at the appearance of the dilated and terrified eyes of the child, who was on the point of bursting into sobs."No, no, Luchino; no, no, it's not true," she cried, lifting him from George's knees, and pressing him to her bosom. "No, it's not true. Your uncle said that for fun.""It's not true, it's not true," repeated George, rising in consternation at these tears, which no other child would weep, for they seemed to ravage the poor creature."Come, come," said the mother in a coaxing tone; "Luchino's going to bed now, isn't he?"She passed into the adjoining room, still caressing and rocking her weeping child."Come, too, George."While she undressed the child, George watched her. She undressed him slowly, with infinite precautions, as if she were afraid to break him; and each of his gestures showed sadly the wretchedness of his slender limbs, which already began to show the deformities of an incurable rachitis. The neck was long and flexible, like a withered stem; the breastplate, the ribs, the shoulder-blades, almost visible through the skin, making a projection which the shadows cast in the hollowed parts accentuated even more strongly; the enlarged knees appeared to be knotted; the abdomen somewhat swollen, the navel projecting, rendering still more prominent the angular leanness of the hips. When the child raised its arms while the mother changed its chemise, George felt a painful pity, almost an anguish, on perceiving the fragile little arm-pits, which, in this simple act, appeared to express the difficulty of an effort required to overcome the deathly languor in which this feeble life was on the point of being extinguished."Kiss him," said Christine to George. And she held the child out to him, before putting him beneath the bedclothes. Then she took the child's hands, carried that having the bandaged finger from the face to the chest, then from the left to the right shoulder, to make the sign of the cross; and then she joined them, saying: Amen.In all this there was a funereal solemnness. The child, in his long white night-shirt, had already the appearance of a little corpse."Sleep, now; sleep, my love. We will stay near you."The brother and sister, united once more in the same sorrow, sat down one on each side of his bed.They spoke no more. The odor of the medicines heaped together on a table near the bed pervaded the room. A fly detached itself from the wall, flew with a loud buzz towards the flame of the lamp, and alighted on the coverlid. A piece of furniture creaked in the heavy silence."He is falling asleep," said George in a low voice.Both were absorbed in the contemplation of the child's slumber, which suggested to both the image of death. A species of oppressive stupor dominated them, without their being able to distract their thoughts from the picture.An indefinite time passed.Suddenly the child gave a frightful cry, opened wide his eyes, raised himself on his pillow as if terrified by some horrible vision."Mamma! Mamma!""What is it, what is it, my love?""Mamma!""What is it, my love? I am here.""Chase it away! Chase it away!"CHAPTER VI.At supper, at which Diego had abstained from showing himself, had not Camilla repeated the accusation in a veiled form when she said, "When the eyes do not see the heart does not suffer"? And, in his mother's words,—oh, how quickly his mother had forgotten the tears with which the conversation at the window had ended,—even in his mother's words, had the accusation not cropped up several times?George thought, not without bitterness: "Everybody here judges me in the same way. In short, nobody forgives me either for my voluntary renunciation of my rights as the eldest, or for the inheritance left me by my uncle Demetrius. I ought to have stayed at home to look after the conduct of my father and my brother, to defend the domestic happiness! According to them, nothing would have happened if I had remained here. Consequently, I am the guilty one, and this is the expiation." The farther he advanced in the direction of the suburban villa to which the enemy had retired and towards which he had been pushed by extreme measures, by merciless cudgel blows, so to speak, the more he felt the weight of a kind of vexatious oppression, the indignation provoked by an unjust compulsion.He was, in fact, in his own eyes the victim of cruel and implacable persons, who were unwilling to spare him any kind of torture. And the recollection of certain phrases uttered by his mother in the embrasure of the window on the day of the funeral, amid their joint tears, augmented his bitterness, soured his irony: "No, George, no! It is not for you to suffer! I ought to have said nothing. I shouldn't have told you. Don't cry any more. I can't bear to see you cry." And, nevertheless, since that day no kind of torture had been spared him. That little scene had not made any change in his mother's attitude towards him. The following day, and ever since, she had been just as angry and violent; she had insisted on his listening over and over again to old and new accusations, aggravated by a thousand odious particulars; she had morally forced him to count on her face, one by one, the marks of the suffering endured; she had almost said to him: "See how my eyes are scorched by tears; how deep my wrinkles have become; how white my hair has grown at the temples And what would it be could I show you my heart?" What had been the good, therefore, of the grief of the other day? Was it necessary for his mother to see burning tears shed to be moved to pity? Then she did not appreciate the cruelty of the pain she inflicted uselessly on her son? "Oh, how rare on earth are those beings who know how to suffer in silence and accept the sacrifice with a smile!" Still disturbed and exasperated by the recent excesses of which he had been an involuntary witness, already pervaded by the horror of the decisive act which he was preparing to accomplish, he had thus come to despise his mother to the point of complaining that she did not know how to suffer with sufficient perfection.The farther he advanced on his way (he had not wished to take the carriage, and had started on foot, so as to be free to lengthen at his will the time of the journey, and perhaps, also, to have the possibility, at the last moment, of retracing his steps, or to lose himself on the country roads)—the farther he advanced, he felt grow that indomitable horror; so much so, that finally it surmounted every other sentiment and masked every other thought. The one image of his father occupied his mind, and with the relief of an actual figure. And he began to imagine the scene which would take place soon—he studied the countenance which he would assume, prepared his first sentences, lost himself in improbable hypotheses, explored the most distant memories of his childhood and adolescence, tried to represent the successive attitudes of his soul towards his father during the successive periods of his past life. He thought: "Perhaps I have never loved him." And, in fact, in not one of his clearest recollections did he find a spontaneous movement of confidence, or a warm effusion of tenderness, or an intimate and agreeable emotion. What he did find, in the memories of his early childhood, was a continual fear which oppressed all affection—the fear of corporal punishment, of cross words followed by blows. "I have never loved him." Demetrius had been his real father; he was his sole and only parent.And he appeared to his mind, a mild, meditative man, with a face full of a virile melancholy, and a single white curl in the centre of his forehead among the black hair, giving him an odd appearance.As always, the image of the dead man solaced him immediately and banished from his mind the things which had just preoccupied him. His uneasiness became composed, his bitterness disappeared, and his repugnance gave place to a new sensation of tranquil security. What had he to fear? Why did his imagination exaggerate so childishly the suffering which awaited him and which henceforth was inevitable? And once more he had the intimate consciousness that he had radically transported himself from his present life, from the present state of his being, from the contingencies which had most troubled him. Once more, under the influence that his uncle exercised on him from the depth of his tomb, he felt himself enveloped by a sort of isolating atmosphere, and lost the precise notion of what had occurred and what was still going to occur; the real events seemed to be divested of all significance as far as he was concerned, and to have but a momentary importance. It was like the resignation of a man whom fatality obliged to submit to a trial in order to attain the future deliverance of which his soul had already had the prevision and certitude. This interruption of internal care, this singular respite which he had obtained without effort and which did not surprise him, permitted his eyes to be opened finally to the spectacle of the solitary and magnificent landscape. The attention he gave to it was calm and serene. In the aspect of the country he believed he recognized a symbol of his own sentiments and a visible imprint of his thoughts.It was the afternoon. A clear and liquid sky bathed all the terrestrial objects in its own color, and appeared to subtilize all matter by an infinitely slow penetration. The various forms of vegetation, distinct close by, became effaced in the distance, lost by degrees their contours, appeared to evaporate at the top, tended to become combined into a single form, immense and confused, which a single rhythmic respiration would animate. Little by little, beneath a deluge of azure, the hills became equal in size, and the depths of the valley took on the appearance of a peaceful gulf which reflected the sky. From this united gulf the isolated mass of the mountain soared up, opposing to the liquid space the immovable solidity of its ridges, which the whiteness of the snows illumined with an almost supernatural light.CHAPTER VII.At last the villa appeared, between the trees, close by, with its two broad lateral terraces provided with balustrades supported by little stone pilasters, and ornamented with terra-cotta vases in the shape of busts representing kings and queens upon whose heads the sharp points of the aloes formed living crowns.The view of these coarse reddish figures, several of which stood out clearly outlined against the luminous azure, suddenly awakened in George new memories of his distant childhood, confused recollections of rural recreations, of sports, of races, of romances imagined concerning these motionless and deaf kings, in whose hearts of clay the tenacious plants had fastened their roots. He even recalled that he had long had a predilection for a queen whose thick and long hair was formed by the hanging foliage of a fertile plant, which, in Spring, dotted it with innumerable golden flowerets. He looked for her with curiosity, while in his mind he multiplied the images of the obscure and intense life with which his childish phantasy had animated her. As he recognized her on a corner pilaster, he smiled as if he had recognized a friend; and, for several seconds, all his soul inclined towards the irrevocable past with an agitation which was not without sweetness. Thanks to the final resolution which had assumed shape in him since his unexpected calmness in the midst of the pale green and silent country, he found now in his sensations a forgotten savor, and took pleasure in tracing, to its most remote sinuosities, the course of his own existence, so close, thenceforth, to the end determined upon. This curiosity for the manifestations, even the most fugitive, that his being had dispersed in the past, this agitated sympathy for the things with which he had formerly been in affinity, tended to change into a languishing, tearful, and almost feminine tenderness. But, when he heard voices near the railing, he shook off this languor; and when he perceived an open window at which the cage of a canary-bird hung between the white curtains, he came back to the sentiment of the present reality, and felt anew his previous anguish. The surroundings were calm, and one could distinctly hear the singing of the imprisoned bird."My visit is unexpected," he said to himself, his heart sinking. "If that woman should be with him?" Near the railing he saw the children playing in the sand; and, without having time to observe them, he guessed they were his adulterine brothers, the sons of the concubine. He advanced; and the two children turned round, began to gaze at him with astonishment, but without intimidation. Healthy, robust, flourishing, with cheeks crimson with health, they bore the manifest imprint of their origin. The sight of them upset him; an irresistible terror assailed him; he had the idea of hiding himself, to turn back, to flee; and he raised his eyes to the window, with the fear of perceiving between the curtains the face of his father or that of the odious woman of whose perfidies, covetousness, turpitudes, he had so often been told."Ah, you here, sir?"It was the voice of a domestic, who came to meet him. At the same time his father cried to him from the window:"Is that you, George? What a surprise!"He resummoned his courage, composed his face into a smile, and tried to assume an air of unconcern. He had felt that already, between his father and himself, had just been reëstablished those artificial relations, almost ceremonious in form, which they had used for several years towards one another in order to hide their embarrassment when they found themselves in immediate and inevitable contact. And he had felt, besides, that his will had just totally left him, and that he would never be capable to expose frankly the true motive of his unexpected visit."Aren't you coming up?" said his father to him, from the window."Yes, I am coming up."He would have liked to make believe that he had not noticed the two children. He started to go up by the open-air stairway leading to one of the large terraces. His father came to meet him. They embraced. There always was in his father's manner a manifest ostentation of affection."So you finally decided to come?""I wanted a walk, and it landed me here. I have not seen the place for so long! It's just as it always was, it seems."His eyes wandered over the asphalt-covered terrace; he examined the busts, one after the other, with more curiosity than was natural."You're almost always here now, aren't you?" he said, in order to say something, to escape the embarrassing intervals of silence which he foresaw would grow longer and more frequent."Yes; I come here often now, and stay here," replied his father, with a shade of sadness in his voice which surprised his son. "I believe the air does me good—since my heart began to trouble me.""Is your heart affected?" cried George, turning towards him with sincere emotion, struck by the unexpectedness of the news. "How? Since when? I never knew anything of it—nobody has ever breathed a word of it to me."He looked now at his father's face, in the strong light shed by the sun's oblique rays and reflected by the wall, and fancied he could detect the symptoms of the mortal malady. And it was with sympathetic compassion that he remarked the deep wrinkles, the swollen, worried-looking eyes, the white hairs that bristled on the unshaven cheeks and chin, his mustache and hair to which the dye gave an indefinite color between a greenish and a violet, the thick lips through which the respiration came like the gasping of asthma, the short neck which appeared to be colored by an extravasation of blood."Since when?" he repeated, without concealing his anxiety.And he felt his repugnance to this man diminish as a rapid succession of images, clear almost as the reality might be, represented him beneath the menace of death, disfigured by the death agony."Does one ever know when it begins?" answered his father, who, in the presence of his son's sincere emotion, exaggerated his suffering in order to sustain and increase a pity by which he might succeed perhaps in profiting. "Can one ever tell when it begins? These kind of maladies breed for years; and then, one fine day, suddenly make their presence felt. Then there is no remedy. One must be resigned, await the end from one minute to another——"Speaking in this strain, in a changed voice, he seemed to lose his hardness and massive brutality, to become older, more feeble, more of a physical and moral wreck. It was like a sudden dissolution of his entire person, yet with an artificiality, exaggeration, and theatricalism which did not escape George's perspicacity. And the young man thought instantly of those comedians who, on the stage, have the facility of instantly undergoing a metamorphosis, as they take off and replace a mask. He had even a sudden intuition of what was about to follow. Without doubt, his father had divined the motive of this unexpected visit; and now he sought to obtain some useful effect by the exhibition of his malady. Doubtless, too, he purposed to attain some definite object. What was that object? George felt no indignation, no internal anger; he made no preparation, either, to defend himself against the ambush which he foresaw with such certitude; on the contrary, his inertia increased in proportion to his lucidity. And he waited for the comedy to follow its course, ready to accept all that might happen, sad and resigned."Will you come in?" said his father."If you like.""Very well. Let us go in. I have some papers I wish to show you."The father passed in first, directing his steps towards the room the open window of which shed over the entire villa the singing of the canary-bird. George followed him, without looking around. He perceived that his father had also changed his walk, so as to simulate fatigue; and it gave him a poignant chagrin to think of the degrading impostures of which he would soon be the spectator and the victim. He felt in the house the presence of the concubine; he was sure that she was hidden in some room, that she was listening, that she was spying. He thought: "What papers is he going to show me? What does he expect to get from me? He doubtless wants money. He is taking advantage of the opportunity." And he thought he could still hear certain of his mother's invectives; he recalled certain and almost unbelievable particularities which he had learned from her. "What shall I do? What shall I say?"The canary in its cage sang in a limpid and strong voice, varying its modulations; and the white curtains puffed out like two sails, permitting a view of the distant azure. The breeze disturbed some of the papers that littered the table; and on this table George perceived, in a crystal disk which served as a paper-weight, a licentious vignette."What a bad day I have had to-day," murmured his father, who, affecting to be tormented by palpitation of the heart, dropped heavily into a chair, half-closed his eyelids, and began to breathe like an asthmatic."Are you suffering?" said George, almost timidly, not knowing if the suffering were real or simulated, nor what face he should put upon the matter."Yes—but it will pass in a moment. As soon as I have the slightest excitement, the least anxiety, I feel worse. I need quiet and rest. And, on the contrary——"He began again to speak in that mournful, complaining tone which, owing to a vague resemblance in accent, awoke in George the recollection of his aunt Joconda, the poor idiot, when she tried to excite his pity in order to get sweetmeats. The feint was now so evident, so vulgar, so ignoble, and, in spite of all, there was so much human misery in the condition of this man, reduced to such base means to satisfy his implacable vice, there was so much true suffering in the expression of his lying face, that it appeared to George that not one of the sorrows of his past life was comparable with the horrible anguish of that present moment."On the contrary?" he echoed, to encourage his father to continue, as if to hasten the end of his own torture."On the contrary, for some time everything has been going from bad to worse, and catastrophes succeed one another without cease. I have had considerable losses. Three bad consecutive years, the failure of the vines, the devastated flocks, the rents reduced by half, the taxes increased in enormous proportions— Look here. Here are the papers I wished to show you."And he took from the table a bundle of papers, spread them out before his son's eyes, began to explain confusedly a number of very involved business matters relative to unpaid landed taxes which had accumulated during several months. It was absolutely necessary that he make a settlement at once, in order to avoid incalculable injury. Their effects had already been attached, and at any moment the bills of sale might be posted. What could be done to remove the momentary embarrassment in which he found himself without any fault of his own? The amount involved was considerable. What could be done?George was silent, his eyes fixed on the papers which his father was turning over in his puffed-up, almost monstrous hand, with its visible pores, and white with a pallor that made a singular contrast with his sanguine face. At intervals he lost the sound of the words; but in his ear still sounded the monotony of that voice in contrast with the shrill singing of the canary and the intermittent cries which rose from the path where the two little bastards were still doubtless playing in the sand. The curtains stirred in the windows when an unusually strong breeze swelled their folds. And all these voices, all these sounds, bore an inexpressible expression of sadness for the silent visitor, who regarded with a sort of stupor these bailiffs' wits over which passed that swollen, pale hand, with its small, apparent scars left by blood-letting. An image surged through his memory, a strangely distinct remembrance of his childhood: his father was near a window, his face grave, his shirt-sleeve rolled up on one arm, which he held plunged in a basin of water; and the water was reddened by the flow of blood from the open vein; and by his side stood the surgeon, watching the flow of blood and holding the bandages ready for the ligature. One image recalled another. He saw the bright lances in the green leather case; he saw his mother carrying from the room a basin full of blood; he saw the hand held in a sling by a black ribbon which was crossed on his fleshy, soft back, sinking into it a little. Noticing his pensiveness, his father asked him:"Are you listening to me?""Yes, I am listening."At that moment, the father perhaps expected a spontaneous offer. Disappointed, he made a slight pause; then, surmounting his embarrassment, said:"Bartolomeo could save me if he gave me the amount."He hesitated, and his physiognomy took on an indefinable expression in which the son believed he recognized the last symptom of a modesty vanquished by the almost desperate necessity of attaining his object."He would give me this sum for a note, but—I believe he would require your signature."At last the trap was sprung."Ah! my signature," stammered George, embarrassed, not at the demand, but at the odious name of this brother-in-law, whom the maternal accusations had already presented to him as a bird of ill omen, eager to prey upon the remains of the house of the Aurispas.And as he remained perplexed and gloomy, without saying anything, the father, fearing a refusal, laid aside all reserve, and had recourse to supplications.That was the only way now to avoid a disastrous judicial sale which would certainly determine all his other creditors to swoop down on him. Disaster would be inevitable. Did his son wish to be a witness of his ruin? Or, did he not understand that, by interposing in this instance, he would act for his own interest and protect a heritage which was soon to come to his brother and himself?"Oh! It won't be so long; it will come from one day to the other, perhaps to-morrow!"And he began again to speak of his incurable malady, of the continual peril that threatened him, of his worries and troubles that were hastening the hour of his death.At the end of his strength, unable to stand longer that voice and this scene, yet restrained nevertheless by the thought of his other executioners—those who had forced him to this place and who now awaited him to demand an account of his mission—George stammered:"But will you really use this money for the purpose you have stated?""So! you too, you too!" cried his father, who, beneath an apparent explosion of sorrow, repressed clumsily one of his violent fits. "So they have been telling you, too, what is always being gossiped about everywhere—that I am a monster, that I have committed every crime, that I am capable of every infamy. And you have believed it, too! Why, why do they hate me to this extent, in that house yonder? Why do they desire my death? Oh! you don't know how much your mother hates me! If you went back to her now and told her that you had left me in my death agony, she would kiss you and say, 'God be praised!' Oh! you don't know."In the brutality of his tone, in the peculiar expression of his mouth, which added bitterness to his words, in the vehement respiration which dilated his nostrils, in the irritated redness of his eyes, the real man was exposed in spite of himself; and against this man the son felt a new impulse of his primitive aversion, an impulse so sudden and so impetuous that, without reflecting, by a desire to appease his father and to be freed from him, he interrupted him, saying in a convulsed voice:"No, no; I know nothing. Tell me, what must I do? Where must I sign?"And he arose dismayed, approached the window, returned to his father. He saw him seek something in a drawer, with a species of nervous impatience; he saw him lay on the table a promissory note not yet made out."Here. Place your signature here; that will do——"And with his enormous index, whose flat nail sank into the folds of flesh, he pointed to the place for the signature.Without sitting down, without having a clear consciousness of what he was doing, George took a pen and signed rapidly. He would have liked to be already free and away from that room, to run in the open air, to go far away, to be alone. But when he saw his father take the note examine the signature, dry it by sprinkling it with a pinch of sand, then replace it and lock the drawer; when he remarked in everyone of these acts the ignoble joy, badly dissimulated, of a man who had succeeded in an evil purpose; when, in his soul, he felt the certitude that he had permitted himself to be duped into a shameful fraud, when he thought of the interrogations that awaited him in the other house-then the useless regret for his act upset him so, that he was on the point of giving play to his extreme indication, and to finally revolt with all his power against the scoundrel, in defence of himself, his family, and of the violated rights of his mother and sister. "Ah! it was true, then—all that his mother had told him was true! This man had not a shadow of shame, not a trace of self-respect. He recoiled from nothing and before nobody when it was a question of getting money." And he felt once more the presence of the concubine, of the rapacious, insatiable woman who was certainly hidden in an adjoining room, eavesdropping, spying, waiting for her share of the plunder.Without succeeding in repressing the tremor that shook him, he said:"You promise that this money will not be used—for any other purpose?""Why, yes; of course," replied his father, allowing his son to see now how much this insistance annoyed him, and who had manifestly changed countenance since it was no longer necessary for him to beg and feign in order to obtain."Take care! I shall know," added George, who had become very pale, and in a choking voice betraying an effort to restrain the outburst of indignation which increased in proportion as the man appeared more truly in his odious aspect, in proportion as the consequences of the precipitate step that he had taken became more clearly defined. "Take care! I do not wish to become your accomplice against my mother."Affecting to be hurt by this suspicion, suddenly raising his voice as if to intimidate his son, who was undergoing torture while compelling himself to look him in the face, the father roared:"What do you mean to insinuate? When will that viper of a mother of yours cease spitting her venom? When will she finish? Does she want me to close her mouth forever? Very well! I'll do it one of these days. Ah! what a woman! For fifteen years, yes, fifteen years, she has not given me one minute's peace. She has poisoned my life, she is killing me by slow fire. If I am ruined, it is her fault. Do you understand? It is her fault!""Be silent!" cried George, beside himself, unrecognizable, pale as death, trembling in all his limbs, seized by a fury like that which he had already felt against Diego. "Be silent! Do not speak her name! You are not worthy to kiss her feet. I came here to speak to you of her. I allowed myself to be played upon by your comedy. I permitted myself to be caught in a trap. What you wanted was a present for your ribald companion, and you succeeded. Oh! what shame! And you have the heart to insult my mother!"His voice failed him; he choked; a veil covered his eyes; his knees shook beneath him as if all his strength was about to abandon him."Now, good-by! I am going. Act as you like. I am your son no longer. I never want to see you or know anything of you. I will take my mother away; I will take her away with me to some distant place. Farewell!"He went out tottering, a shadow before his eyes. As he passed through the rooms to reach the terrace, he heard thefrou-frouof skirts, and a door which closed, as if behind someone retiring in haste, in order not to be surprised.As soon as he was in the open air, outside the railings, he felt a mad desire to weep, to cry, to run across the fields, to knock his head against a rock, to seek a precipice where all would end. His nerves trembled painfully in his head, and caused him cruel twinges as if they were being broken one after the other. And he thought, with a terror that the dying day rendered more atrocious: "Where shall I go? Shall I go backtherethis evening?" The house seemed to him to be moved back an infinite distance; the length of the road appeared impossible to traverse; all that was not immediate and absolute cessation of his frightful torture seemed to him inadmissible.
CHAPTER IV.
"When? When? The action they wish to force on me becomes inevitable then? I shall be obliged, then, to face that brute?" George saw the hour approach with ungovernable dread. An insurmountable repugnance arose from the roots of his being at the very thought that he was going to find himself alone, in a closed room, in atête-à-tête, with that man.
As the days passed, he felt increase his anxiety and humiliation, caused by culpable inertia. He felt that his mother, that his sister, that all the victims, expected from him, the first-born, some energetic action, some kind of protest—protection. Why, in fact, had he been summoned? Why had he come? From now on, it no longer seemed possible for him to leave without having done his duty. Without doubt, at the last minute, he could have escaped without saying good-by, and then written a letter justifying his conduct by any plausible pretext. When his distress was at its height, he ventured to think of this ignominious resource; he stopped to consider a way, to arrange the most trifling details, to picture the results. But, in the scenes conjured up, the unhappy and ravaged face of his mother awoke in him an intolerable remorse. The reflections which he made on his egotism and his weakness revolted him against himself: and he sought with puerile fury to find some particle of energy which he could excite and efficaciously employ against the greater part of his being, and which would permit him to triumph over it as over a cowardly brute. But this false energy did not last, did not serve in the least to press him to a manly resolution. Then he undertook to calmly examine his situation, and he deluded himself by the very vigor of his reasoning. He thought: "What good could I do? What evils could my intervention remedy? Will this unhappy effort which my mother and the rest demand from me yield any real advantage? And what advantage?" As he had not found in himself the energy necessary for the execution of the act, as he had not succeeded in provoking in himself a satisfactory revolt, he had recourse to the opposite method—he attempted to demonstrate to his own satisfaction the uselessness of the effort. "What would be the result of the interview? It would certainly have none. According to my father's humor or according to the trend of his conversation, he would be either violent or persuasive. In the first case, his violence and insults would take me by surprise. In the second case, my father would find a mass of arguments to prove to me either his innocence or the necessity of his faults, and I should be taken equally by surprise. The facts are irreparable. When vice is rooted in the intimate substance of a man, it becomes indestructible. Now, my father is at the age when vice can no longer be rooted out, when habits can no longer be changed. For years he has been associated with that woman and those children. Have I the slightest chance to convince him that he ought to break off all those ties? Yesterday, I saw the woman. It sufficed to see her, to guess that she will never let go her hold on the man whose flesh she holds in her clutches. She will dominate him until his death. The thing is now irremediable. And then, there are those children and those children's rights. Besides, after all that has occurred, would a reconciliation be possible between my father and mother? Never. All my attempts would then be fruitless. And then? There still remains the question of material damage, of money squandered, of dilapidation. But does it fall on me to put all this in order, since I live far away from the house? It would require constant vigilance to do that, and only Diego could do it. I will speak to Diego; I will arrange with him. In short, the most urgent matter just now is Camille's dowry. Albert frequently brings the subject up, and is even the most annoying of all my solicitors. Perhaps I shall be able to make some arrangement without difficulty."
He intended to favor his sister by contributing towards her dowry; for, the heir of all his uncle Demetrius's fortune, he was rich, and already in possession of his property. The intention to perform this generous act raised him once more in his own conscience. He believed himself freed from all other duties, from any other disagreeable step, by the sacrifice which he consented to make of his money.
When he turned his steps towards his mother's room he felt less uneasy, lighter, more comfortable. Moreover, he had learned that since morning his father had returned to the country place where he usually went in order to have more freedom in his actions. And it relieved him greatly to think that in the evening, at table, a certain place would be vacant.
"Ah! George, you have come just in time," cried his mother, directly she saw him enter.
The angry voice gave him such a rude and unexpected shock that he stopped, and he looked at his mother with stupor, so transfigured by the transport of anger as to be almost unrecognizable. He also looked at Diego, not understanding; he looked at Camille, who stood still, mute and hostile.
"What is the matter?" stammered George, fixing his eyes once more on his brother, attracted by the bad expression which he saw for the first time on the young man's face.
"The strong box in which the silverware is kept is no longer in its place," said Diego, without raising his eyes, contracting his eyebrows and mumbling. "They charge me with having made away with it."
A flood of bitter words fell from the unhappy woman's mouth.
"Yes, you—in league with your father. You are your father's accomplice. Oh! what infamy. And now this frightful thing! Now this frightful thing! The child who has nursed at my breast to turn against me! But you are the only one who resembles him. God has been more merciful with the others. O God, blessed be thy name, blessed forever, for having spared me that supreme misfortune! You are the only one who resembles him, the only one——"
She turned towards George, who stood paralyzed, motionless, voiceless. Her chin trembled spasmodically; and she was so convulsed that one would have believed that she was going to sink down on the floor at any moment.
"Do you see now the life that we lead? Tell me, do you see it now? Every day, some new infamy. Every day, the same struggle to prevent the pillage of this unfortunate house. Are you convinced now that, if your father could, he would turn us into the streets, snatch the bread from our mouths? And it will come to that; we shall end by seeing that. You will see, you will see."
She continued, panting, with a choking sob in her throat at every pause, giving vent at times to hoarse shrieks, which expressed an almost savage hate, a hate inconceivable in a creature apparently so delicate. And once more accusations fell from her lips. The man had no longer the slightest consideration, the slightest shame. He would stop at nothing and for nobody to make money. He had become insane; he seemed a prey to uncontrollable madness. He had ruined his real estate, cut down his woods, sold his herds at hazard, blindly, to the first comer, to the one who offered most. Now he began to despoil the house in which his children were born. For a long time he had had designs upon the silver, family silver, old and hereditary, piously guarded as a relic of the house of Aurispa, preserved intact until now. Hiding it had proved useless. Diego was in league with his father; and the two confederates, eluding the keenest vigilance, had taken it, to do with it God only knows what.
"Have you no shame?" she went on, turning towards Diego, who restrained with difficulty an explosion of his violence. "Are you not ashamed to take part with your father against me—against me, who have never refused you anything, who have always done as you wished? And yet you know, you know perfectly well, where the silver has gone And you are not ashamed? You've nothing to say? Won t you answer? Look, there's your brother. Tell me where the box has gone. I must know, do you hear?"
"I have already said that I don't know, that I haven't seen the box, and that I did not take it," cried Diego, unable to longer contain himself, with an explosion of brutality, and shaking his head; and the sombre flame which lit up his face made him resemble the absentee. "Do you understand?"
The mother, pale as death, looked at George, to whom the look seemed to impart a similar color.
Seized with a fit of trembling impossible to hide, the elder brother said to the younger:
"Diego, leave the room."
"I'll leave when it pleases me," replied Diego insolently, shrugging his shoulders, without, however, looking his brother in the face.
Then a sudden exasperation seized George, one of those extreme exasperations which, in feeble and irresolute men, have such an excessive vehemence that they cannot manifest themselves by any external act, but cause to pass before the thwarted will flashes of criminal visions. The hatred between brothers, that odious hate which, since the creation, breeds secretly at the bottom of human nature to break out at the first discord, more ferocious than every other hate—that inexplicable hostility which exists, latent, between the males of the same blood, even though the customs and peace of the birthplace have created between them affectionate bonds; and, also, that horror which accompanies the execution or the thought of a crime, and which is perhaps only the vague sentiment of the law inscribed by secular heredity in the Christian conscience—all this surged confusedly in a sort of vertiginous whirl which, for a second, superseded all other sentiment in his soul, and gave him an aggressive impulse. The very aspect of Diego, his thick-set and sanguine body, his fallow head on the bull-like neck, the evident physical superiority of this robust, muscular fellow, the offence against his authority as the elder—all contributed to augment his fury. He would like to have had a prompt means of dominating, subjugating, felling this brute, without resistance and without a struggle. Instinctively he looked at his fists, those large, powerful fists, covered with a reddish down, which at dinner, employed in the service of a voracious appetite, had already caused him such a strong repulsion.
"Leave the room! Leave the room immediately!" he repeated in a higher and more commanding key; "or else ask my mother's pardon immediately."
He advanced towards Diego, his hand extended as if to grasp an arm.
"I do not permit anyone to give me orders," cried Diego, at last looking his elder brother in the face.
And, beneath his low forehead, his little gray eyes expressed a resentment which had been brooding for years.
"Take care, Diego!"
"You don't frighten me."
"Take care!"
"Who are you, I'd like to know? What business have you here?" shouted Diego angrily. "You have no right to interfere. You are a stranger. I do not want to know you. What has been your rôle up to now? You have never done anything for anybody; you have always thought only of your comfort, and your interest. The caresses, the preferences, the adorations, have all been for you. What do you want now? Go back to Rome and squander your heritage as you choose; but don't meddle in what does not concern you."
So he breathed out all his rancor, all his jealousy, all his envious hate against the fortunate brother who, in the great city yonder, lived a life of unknown pleasures, a stranger to his family, as though a being of another race, favored by a thousand privileges.
"Hold your tongue! Hold your tongue!"
And the mother, beside herself, and throwing herself between them, slapped Diego's face.
"Leave the room! Not another word! Get out of here! Go to your father! I don't want to hear you any more! I don't even want to see you again!"
Diego hesitated, shaken by the quivering of fury, perhaps only waiting for a gesture from his brother to fling himself on him.
"Go!" repeated the mother, at the end of her energy.
And she fell fainting into Camille's arms, extended to receive her.
Then Diego went out, livid with rage, muttering between his teeth a word which George did not understand, and they heard his heavy steps grow fainter as he passed through the gloomy enfilade of rooms in which the daylight was already dying.
CHAPTER V.
It was a rainy evening. Stretched out on his bed, George felt himself so broken physically, and so sad, that he had given up thinking, so to speak. His thoughts wavered, vague and incoherent; but his sadness was modified and exasperated by the influence of the slightest sensations—occasional words pronounced in the street by passersby, the tick-tick of the clock on the wall, the tinkling of a distant bell, the stamping of a horse, a whistle, the banging of a door. He felt alone, isolated from the rest of the world, separated from his own anterior existence by the abyss of incalculable time. His imagination represented to him, in an indistinct vision, the gesture with which his mistress had lowered her black veil after the last kiss; it represented to him the child with the crutch collecting the waxen tears. He thought: "There is nothing more left to me but to die." Without definite cause, his anguish increased all at once, and became unbearable. The palpitations of his heart choked him, as if in a nightmare. He threw himself from his bed and paced up and down his room, distracted, agitated, incapable of containing his anguish. And his steps resounded in his brain.
"Who is there? Someone calling me?" The sound of a voice rang in his ear. He strained his ear to listen. He heard nothing more. He opened the door, walked in the corridor, and listened. All was silent. His aunt's room was open, and lit up. A strange fear seized him, a sort of panicky terror, as he thought that he might all at once see that old woman, with the mask of a cadaver, appear on the threshold. One doubt crossed his mind; she was perhaps dead, seated over there in her easy-chair, motionless, her chin on her bosom—dead. This vision had the clearness of reality, and froze him with veritable fright. He did not stir, no longer dared make a movement, standing still with a band of iron around his head, a band which, like some cold and elastic substance, expanded and contracted according to the pulsation of his arteries. His nerves tyrannized him, imposing on him the disorder, the excess, of their sensations. The old woman commenced to cough, and that made him start. Then he retired softly, quietly, on tiptoe, so as not to be heard.
"What is the matter with me this evening? I cannot stay any longer alone in this room. I must go down." Besides, he foresaw that, after the atrocious scene, it would be equally impossible for him to bear his mother's unhappy appearance. "I will go out. I will go to Christine's." What prompted him to make this visit was the recollection of the touching and sad hour spent with his sweet sister in the garden.
It was a rainy evening. In the streets, already almost deserted, the few gas-jets threw out a dull glow. From a closed bakery came the voices of the bakers at work, and an odor of bread; from a cabaret came the sounds of a guitar and the refrain of a popular air. A band of wandering dogs ran by and was lost in the sombre alleys. The hour struck in the belfry.
By degrees, the walk in the open air calmed his exaltation. He seemed to have freed himself from the phantasies which encumbered his conscience. His attention was attracted to all he saw and heard. He stopped to listen to the sounds of the guitar, to smell the odor of the bread. Someone passed in the shadow on the other side of the street, and he thought he recognized Diego. Meeting him caused him agitation; but he felt that all his rancor was gone, that no violence remained at the bottom of his sorrow. Certain of his brother's words came back to his memory. He thought: "Who knows if he did not speak the truth? I have never done anything for anybody; I have always lived for myself alone. Here I am a stranger. Everyone here judges me perhaps in the same way. My mother said: 'You see now the life we lead? You see now, don't you?' I might see all her tears flow, and still should not have the strength to save her." ...
He arrived at the gate of the Celaia palace. He entered, and crossed the vestibule. As he traversed the court, he raised his eyes. Not a light was visible at any of the high windows; there was in the air an odor of rotten straw; the tap of a water-fountain dripped in an obscure angle; beneath the portico, beneath an image of the Virgin covered with a grating, a little lantern was burning, and through the grating, at the feet of the Virgin, could be seen a bouquet of artificial roses; the steps of the large stairway were hollowed in the centre by usage, like those of an antique altar, and every hollow in the stone shone with yellowish reflections. Everything expressed the melancholy of the old, hereditary house to which Don Bartolomeo Celaia, left to solitude, and arrived at the threshold of old age, had conducted his bride and in which he had begotten his heir.
As he went upstairs, George saw with the eyes of his soul the young, pensive wife and the anæmic child; he saw them in the distance, at a chimerical distance, at the end of an out-of-the-way room to which nobody could penetrate. For a moment he had the idea to turn back, and he stopped, perplexed, in the middle of the high and silent white staircase. He was in a state of indefinable uneasiness. Once more he had lost the sense of the present reality; he felt himself once more under the influence of a vague terror, like a short time before in the corridor, when he had perceived the door open and the room empty. But, suddenly, he heard a noise, and a voice as if someone were chasing something; and a gray dog, a gaunt and dirty-looking mongrel, doubtless driven to enter the house by hunger, came flying down the stairway half a dozen steps at a time, and brushed by him. A servant, noisily chasing the fugitive, appeared on the landing.
"What is the matter?" asked George, visibly agitated by the surprise.
"Oh, nothing, sir. I am chasing a dog, an ugly, dirty beast, that gets into the house every night, no one knows how, just like a ghost."
This trifling, insignificant fact, combined with the servant's words, aroused in him that inexplicable uneasiness which resembled the confused anguish of a superstitious presentiment. It was this anguish which prompted the question:
"Is Luchino well?"
"Yes, sir; thanks to God."
"Is he asleep?"
"No, sir; he has not yet gone to bed."
Preceded by the domestic, he crossed the large rooms, which seemed almost empty, and in which the furniture, old-fashioned in design, was placed symmetrically. Nothing indicated the presence of inhabitants, as if the rooms had remained closed up to then. And he said to himself that Christine could not love this dwelling, since she had not shed over it the grace of her soul. Everything had remained there just as it was, in the same order in which the bride found it on entering on her wedding-day, in the same order left by the last of the wives of the house of Celaia.
George's unexpected visit delighted his sister, who was alone and preparing to put the child to bed.
"Oh! George, how good you are to have come!" she exclaimed, with an effusion of sincere joy, pressing him in her arms, and kissing his forehead; and this tenderness had the immediate effect of dilating her brother's depressed heart. "Look, Luchino, look; there's your uncle George. Have you nothing to say to him? Come, give him a kiss."
A feeble smile appeared upon the child's pale mouth; and as he had lowered his head, his long, blond eyelashes were lit up from above and threw their trembling shadow on his blanched cheeks.
George took him in his arms, unable to prevent a sensation of profound emotion in feeling beneath his hands the leanness of the child's chest, in which beat so debilitated a heart. And he was almost afraid, as if his slight pressure were sufficient to extinguish the pitiful little life. He felt both fear and pity, as he used to do in his boyhood when he held a little scared bird prisoner in his hand.
"Light as a feather!" he said.
The emotion which trembled in his voice did not escape Christine.
He seated the child on his knees, caressed his head, and asked him:
"Do you love me very much?"
His heart was filled with unusual tenderness. He felt a melancholy desire to see the poor, sickly child smile, to see his cheeks tinted at least once a fleeting rouge, to see a light effusion of blood beneath the diaphanous skin.
"What have you here?" he asked, seeing a finger wrapped up in linen.
"He cut himself the other day," said Christine, whose attentive eyes followed her brother's slightest gestures. "A slight cut, but it is obstinate in healing."
"Let me see, Luchino," said George, prompted by a painful curiosity, but smiling to call forth a smile. "I will cure it by blowing on it."
The child, surprised, permitted the bandage to be removed from his finger. Watched anxiously by his sister, George took infinite precautions in untying it. The end of the linen had adhered to the slight wound, and he had not the heart to detach it; but at the edge exposed to view he saw appear a whitish drop, resembling whey. His lips trembled. He raised his eyes; he saw that the face of his sister, intent on his every movement, had undergone a change and was contracted by grief. He felt that at that moment the poor woman's soul was wholly concentrated in that little hand.
"It is nothing," he said. And he forced a smile, as he breathed on the cut, to give the illusion to the child, who was waiting for the miracle. Then he rebound the finger with infinite care. He thought once more of the strange anguish which had seized him on the deserted staircase, of the chase after the dog, of the servant's words, of the questions which a superstitious fear had suggested to him, of all his baseless anxiety.
Noticing how absorbed he was, Christine said to him:
"What are you thinking of?"
"Nothing."
Then, all at once, without thinking, without having any other intention than to say something which would arouse the attention of the already sleepy child, he said:
"Do you know, I met a dog on the staircase."
The child opened wide his eyes.
"A dog which comes every night."
"Yes," said Christine, "Gian spoke to me about it."
But she stopped at the appearance of the dilated and terrified eyes of the child, who was on the point of bursting into sobs.
"No, no, Luchino; no, no, it's not true," she cried, lifting him from George's knees, and pressing him to her bosom. "No, it's not true. Your uncle said that for fun."
"It's not true, it's not true," repeated George, rising in consternation at these tears, which no other child would weep, for they seemed to ravage the poor creature.
"Come, come," said the mother in a coaxing tone; "Luchino's going to bed now, isn't he?"
She passed into the adjoining room, still caressing and rocking her weeping child.
"Come, too, George."
While she undressed the child, George watched her. She undressed him slowly, with infinite precautions, as if she were afraid to break him; and each of his gestures showed sadly the wretchedness of his slender limbs, which already began to show the deformities of an incurable rachitis. The neck was long and flexible, like a withered stem; the breastplate, the ribs, the shoulder-blades, almost visible through the skin, making a projection which the shadows cast in the hollowed parts accentuated even more strongly; the enlarged knees appeared to be knotted; the abdomen somewhat swollen, the navel projecting, rendering still more prominent the angular leanness of the hips. When the child raised its arms while the mother changed its chemise, George felt a painful pity, almost an anguish, on perceiving the fragile little arm-pits, which, in this simple act, appeared to express the difficulty of an effort required to overcome the deathly languor in which this feeble life was on the point of being extinguished.
"Kiss him," said Christine to George. And she held the child out to him, before putting him beneath the bedclothes. Then she took the child's hands, carried that having the bandaged finger from the face to the chest, then from the left to the right shoulder, to make the sign of the cross; and then she joined them, saying: Amen.
In all this there was a funereal solemnness. The child, in his long white night-shirt, had already the appearance of a little corpse.
"Sleep, now; sleep, my love. We will stay near you."
The brother and sister, united once more in the same sorrow, sat down one on each side of his bed.
They spoke no more. The odor of the medicines heaped together on a table near the bed pervaded the room. A fly detached itself from the wall, flew with a loud buzz towards the flame of the lamp, and alighted on the coverlid. A piece of furniture creaked in the heavy silence.
"He is falling asleep," said George in a low voice.
Both were absorbed in the contemplation of the child's slumber, which suggested to both the image of death. A species of oppressive stupor dominated them, without their being able to distract their thoughts from the picture.
An indefinite time passed.
Suddenly the child gave a frightful cry, opened wide his eyes, raised himself on his pillow as if terrified by some horrible vision.
"Mamma! Mamma!"
"What is it, what is it, my love?"
"Mamma!"
"What is it, my love? I am here."
"Chase it away! Chase it away!"
CHAPTER VI.
At supper, at which Diego had abstained from showing himself, had not Camilla repeated the accusation in a veiled form when she said, "When the eyes do not see the heart does not suffer"? And, in his mother's words,—oh, how quickly his mother had forgotten the tears with which the conversation at the window had ended,—even in his mother's words, had the accusation not cropped up several times?
George thought, not without bitterness: "Everybody here judges me in the same way. In short, nobody forgives me either for my voluntary renunciation of my rights as the eldest, or for the inheritance left me by my uncle Demetrius. I ought to have stayed at home to look after the conduct of my father and my brother, to defend the domestic happiness! According to them, nothing would have happened if I had remained here. Consequently, I am the guilty one, and this is the expiation." The farther he advanced in the direction of the suburban villa to which the enemy had retired and towards which he had been pushed by extreme measures, by merciless cudgel blows, so to speak, the more he felt the weight of a kind of vexatious oppression, the indignation provoked by an unjust compulsion.
He was, in fact, in his own eyes the victim of cruel and implacable persons, who were unwilling to spare him any kind of torture. And the recollection of certain phrases uttered by his mother in the embrasure of the window on the day of the funeral, amid their joint tears, augmented his bitterness, soured his irony: "No, George, no! It is not for you to suffer! I ought to have said nothing. I shouldn't have told you. Don't cry any more. I can't bear to see you cry." And, nevertheless, since that day no kind of torture had been spared him. That little scene had not made any change in his mother's attitude towards him. The following day, and ever since, she had been just as angry and violent; she had insisted on his listening over and over again to old and new accusations, aggravated by a thousand odious particulars; she had morally forced him to count on her face, one by one, the marks of the suffering endured; she had almost said to him: "See how my eyes are scorched by tears; how deep my wrinkles have become; how white my hair has grown at the temples And what would it be could I show you my heart?" What had been the good, therefore, of the grief of the other day? Was it necessary for his mother to see burning tears shed to be moved to pity? Then she did not appreciate the cruelty of the pain she inflicted uselessly on her son? "Oh, how rare on earth are those beings who know how to suffer in silence and accept the sacrifice with a smile!" Still disturbed and exasperated by the recent excesses of which he had been an involuntary witness, already pervaded by the horror of the decisive act which he was preparing to accomplish, he had thus come to despise his mother to the point of complaining that she did not know how to suffer with sufficient perfection.
The farther he advanced on his way (he had not wished to take the carriage, and had started on foot, so as to be free to lengthen at his will the time of the journey, and perhaps, also, to have the possibility, at the last moment, of retracing his steps, or to lose himself on the country roads)—the farther he advanced, he felt grow that indomitable horror; so much so, that finally it surmounted every other sentiment and masked every other thought. The one image of his father occupied his mind, and with the relief of an actual figure. And he began to imagine the scene which would take place soon—he studied the countenance which he would assume, prepared his first sentences, lost himself in improbable hypotheses, explored the most distant memories of his childhood and adolescence, tried to represent the successive attitudes of his soul towards his father during the successive periods of his past life. He thought: "Perhaps I have never loved him." And, in fact, in not one of his clearest recollections did he find a spontaneous movement of confidence, or a warm effusion of tenderness, or an intimate and agreeable emotion. What he did find, in the memories of his early childhood, was a continual fear which oppressed all affection—the fear of corporal punishment, of cross words followed by blows. "I have never loved him." Demetrius had been his real father; he was his sole and only parent.
And he appeared to his mind, a mild, meditative man, with a face full of a virile melancholy, and a single white curl in the centre of his forehead among the black hair, giving him an odd appearance.
As always, the image of the dead man solaced him immediately and banished from his mind the things which had just preoccupied him. His uneasiness became composed, his bitterness disappeared, and his repugnance gave place to a new sensation of tranquil security. What had he to fear? Why did his imagination exaggerate so childishly the suffering which awaited him and which henceforth was inevitable? And once more he had the intimate consciousness that he had radically transported himself from his present life, from the present state of his being, from the contingencies which had most troubled him. Once more, under the influence that his uncle exercised on him from the depth of his tomb, he felt himself enveloped by a sort of isolating atmosphere, and lost the precise notion of what had occurred and what was still going to occur; the real events seemed to be divested of all significance as far as he was concerned, and to have but a momentary importance. It was like the resignation of a man whom fatality obliged to submit to a trial in order to attain the future deliverance of which his soul had already had the prevision and certitude. This interruption of internal care, this singular respite which he had obtained without effort and which did not surprise him, permitted his eyes to be opened finally to the spectacle of the solitary and magnificent landscape. The attention he gave to it was calm and serene. In the aspect of the country he believed he recognized a symbol of his own sentiments and a visible imprint of his thoughts.
It was the afternoon. A clear and liquid sky bathed all the terrestrial objects in its own color, and appeared to subtilize all matter by an infinitely slow penetration. The various forms of vegetation, distinct close by, became effaced in the distance, lost by degrees their contours, appeared to evaporate at the top, tended to become combined into a single form, immense and confused, which a single rhythmic respiration would animate. Little by little, beneath a deluge of azure, the hills became equal in size, and the depths of the valley took on the appearance of a peaceful gulf which reflected the sky. From this united gulf the isolated mass of the mountain soared up, opposing to the liquid space the immovable solidity of its ridges, which the whiteness of the snows illumined with an almost supernatural light.
CHAPTER VII.
At last the villa appeared, between the trees, close by, with its two broad lateral terraces provided with balustrades supported by little stone pilasters, and ornamented with terra-cotta vases in the shape of busts representing kings and queens upon whose heads the sharp points of the aloes formed living crowns.
The view of these coarse reddish figures, several of which stood out clearly outlined against the luminous azure, suddenly awakened in George new memories of his distant childhood, confused recollections of rural recreations, of sports, of races, of romances imagined concerning these motionless and deaf kings, in whose hearts of clay the tenacious plants had fastened their roots. He even recalled that he had long had a predilection for a queen whose thick and long hair was formed by the hanging foliage of a fertile plant, which, in Spring, dotted it with innumerable golden flowerets. He looked for her with curiosity, while in his mind he multiplied the images of the obscure and intense life with which his childish phantasy had animated her. As he recognized her on a corner pilaster, he smiled as if he had recognized a friend; and, for several seconds, all his soul inclined towards the irrevocable past with an agitation which was not without sweetness. Thanks to the final resolution which had assumed shape in him since his unexpected calmness in the midst of the pale green and silent country, he found now in his sensations a forgotten savor, and took pleasure in tracing, to its most remote sinuosities, the course of his own existence, so close, thenceforth, to the end determined upon. This curiosity for the manifestations, even the most fugitive, that his being had dispersed in the past, this agitated sympathy for the things with which he had formerly been in affinity, tended to change into a languishing, tearful, and almost feminine tenderness. But, when he heard voices near the railing, he shook off this languor; and when he perceived an open window at which the cage of a canary-bird hung between the white curtains, he came back to the sentiment of the present reality, and felt anew his previous anguish. The surroundings were calm, and one could distinctly hear the singing of the imprisoned bird.
"My visit is unexpected," he said to himself, his heart sinking. "If that woman should be with him?" Near the railing he saw the children playing in the sand; and, without having time to observe them, he guessed they were his adulterine brothers, the sons of the concubine. He advanced; and the two children turned round, began to gaze at him with astonishment, but without intimidation. Healthy, robust, flourishing, with cheeks crimson with health, they bore the manifest imprint of their origin. The sight of them upset him; an irresistible terror assailed him; he had the idea of hiding himself, to turn back, to flee; and he raised his eyes to the window, with the fear of perceiving between the curtains the face of his father or that of the odious woman of whose perfidies, covetousness, turpitudes, he had so often been told.
"Ah, you here, sir?"
It was the voice of a domestic, who came to meet him. At the same time his father cried to him from the window:
"Is that you, George? What a surprise!"
He resummoned his courage, composed his face into a smile, and tried to assume an air of unconcern. He had felt that already, between his father and himself, had just been reëstablished those artificial relations, almost ceremonious in form, which they had used for several years towards one another in order to hide their embarrassment when they found themselves in immediate and inevitable contact. And he had felt, besides, that his will had just totally left him, and that he would never be capable to expose frankly the true motive of his unexpected visit.
"Aren't you coming up?" said his father to him, from the window.
"Yes, I am coming up."
He would have liked to make believe that he had not noticed the two children. He started to go up by the open-air stairway leading to one of the large terraces. His father came to meet him. They embraced. There always was in his father's manner a manifest ostentation of affection.
"So you finally decided to come?"
"I wanted a walk, and it landed me here. I have not seen the place for so long! It's just as it always was, it seems."
His eyes wandered over the asphalt-covered terrace; he examined the busts, one after the other, with more curiosity than was natural.
"You're almost always here now, aren't you?" he said, in order to say something, to escape the embarrassing intervals of silence which he foresaw would grow longer and more frequent.
"Yes; I come here often now, and stay here," replied his father, with a shade of sadness in his voice which surprised his son. "I believe the air does me good—since my heart began to trouble me."
"Is your heart affected?" cried George, turning towards him with sincere emotion, struck by the unexpectedness of the news. "How? Since when? I never knew anything of it—nobody has ever breathed a word of it to me."
He looked now at his father's face, in the strong light shed by the sun's oblique rays and reflected by the wall, and fancied he could detect the symptoms of the mortal malady. And it was with sympathetic compassion that he remarked the deep wrinkles, the swollen, worried-looking eyes, the white hairs that bristled on the unshaven cheeks and chin, his mustache and hair to which the dye gave an indefinite color between a greenish and a violet, the thick lips through which the respiration came like the gasping of asthma, the short neck which appeared to be colored by an extravasation of blood.
"Since when?" he repeated, without concealing his anxiety.
And he felt his repugnance to this man diminish as a rapid succession of images, clear almost as the reality might be, represented him beneath the menace of death, disfigured by the death agony.
"Does one ever know when it begins?" answered his father, who, in the presence of his son's sincere emotion, exaggerated his suffering in order to sustain and increase a pity by which he might succeed perhaps in profiting. "Can one ever tell when it begins? These kind of maladies breed for years; and then, one fine day, suddenly make their presence felt. Then there is no remedy. One must be resigned, await the end from one minute to another——"
Speaking in this strain, in a changed voice, he seemed to lose his hardness and massive brutality, to become older, more feeble, more of a physical and moral wreck. It was like a sudden dissolution of his entire person, yet with an artificiality, exaggeration, and theatricalism which did not escape George's perspicacity. And the young man thought instantly of those comedians who, on the stage, have the facility of instantly undergoing a metamorphosis, as they take off and replace a mask. He had even a sudden intuition of what was about to follow. Without doubt, his father had divined the motive of this unexpected visit; and now he sought to obtain some useful effect by the exhibition of his malady. Doubtless, too, he purposed to attain some definite object. What was that object? George felt no indignation, no internal anger; he made no preparation, either, to defend himself against the ambush which he foresaw with such certitude; on the contrary, his inertia increased in proportion to his lucidity. And he waited for the comedy to follow its course, ready to accept all that might happen, sad and resigned.
"Will you come in?" said his father.
"If you like."
"Very well. Let us go in. I have some papers I wish to show you."
The father passed in first, directing his steps towards the room the open window of which shed over the entire villa the singing of the canary-bird. George followed him, without looking around. He perceived that his father had also changed his walk, so as to simulate fatigue; and it gave him a poignant chagrin to think of the degrading impostures of which he would soon be the spectator and the victim. He felt in the house the presence of the concubine; he was sure that she was hidden in some room, that she was listening, that she was spying. He thought: "What papers is he going to show me? What does he expect to get from me? He doubtless wants money. He is taking advantage of the opportunity." And he thought he could still hear certain of his mother's invectives; he recalled certain and almost unbelievable particularities which he had learned from her. "What shall I do? What shall I say?"
The canary in its cage sang in a limpid and strong voice, varying its modulations; and the white curtains puffed out like two sails, permitting a view of the distant azure. The breeze disturbed some of the papers that littered the table; and on this table George perceived, in a crystal disk which served as a paper-weight, a licentious vignette.
"What a bad day I have had to-day," murmured his father, who, affecting to be tormented by palpitation of the heart, dropped heavily into a chair, half-closed his eyelids, and began to breathe like an asthmatic.
"Are you suffering?" said George, almost timidly, not knowing if the suffering were real or simulated, nor what face he should put upon the matter.
"Yes—but it will pass in a moment. As soon as I have the slightest excitement, the least anxiety, I feel worse. I need quiet and rest. And, on the contrary——"
He began again to speak in that mournful, complaining tone which, owing to a vague resemblance in accent, awoke in George the recollection of his aunt Joconda, the poor idiot, when she tried to excite his pity in order to get sweetmeats. The feint was now so evident, so vulgar, so ignoble, and, in spite of all, there was so much human misery in the condition of this man, reduced to such base means to satisfy his implacable vice, there was so much true suffering in the expression of his lying face, that it appeared to George that not one of the sorrows of his past life was comparable with the horrible anguish of that present moment.
"On the contrary?" he echoed, to encourage his father to continue, as if to hasten the end of his own torture.
"On the contrary, for some time everything has been going from bad to worse, and catastrophes succeed one another without cease. I have had considerable losses. Three bad consecutive years, the failure of the vines, the devastated flocks, the rents reduced by half, the taxes increased in enormous proportions— Look here. Here are the papers I wished to show you."
And he took from the table a bundle of papers, spread them out before his son's eyes, began to explain confusedly a number of very involved business matters relative to unpaid landed taxes which had accumulated during several months. It was absolutely necessary that he make a settlement at once, in order to avoid incalculable injury. Their effects had already been attached, and at any moment the bills of sale might be posted. What could be done to remove the momentary embarrassment in which he found himself without any fault of his own? The amount involved was considerable. What could be done?
George was silent, his eyes fixed on the papers which his father was turning over in his puffed-up, almost monstrous hand, with its visible pores, and white with a pallor that made a singular contrast with his sanguine face. At intervals he lost the sound of the words; but in his ear still sounded the monotony of that voice in contrast with the shrill singing of the canary and the intermittent cries which rose from the path where the two little bastards were still doubtless playing in the sand. The curtains stirred in the windows when an unusually strong breeze swelled their folds. And all these voices, all these sounds, bore an inexpressible expression of sadness for the silent visitor, who regarded with a sort of stupor these bailiffs' wits over which passed that swollen, pale hand, with its small, apparent scars left by blood-letting. An image surged through his memory, a strangely distinct remembrance of his childhood: his father was near a window, his face grave, his shirt-sleeve rolled up on one arm, which he held plunged in a basin of water; and the water was reddened by the flow of blood from the open vein; and by his side stood the surgeon, watching the flow of blood and holding the bandages ready for the ligature. One image recalled another. He saw the bright lances in the green leather case; he saw his mother carrying from the room a basin full of blood; he saw the hand held in a sling by a black ribbon which was crossed on his fleshy, soft back, sinking into it a little. Noticing his pensiveness, his father asked him:
"Are you listening to me?"
"Yes, I am listening."
At that moment, the father perhaps expected a spontaneous offer. Disappointed, he made a slight pause; then, surmounting his embarrassment, said:
"Bartolomeo could save me if he gave me the amount."
He hesitated, and his physiognomy took on an indefinable expression in which the son believed he recognized the last symptom of a modesty vanquished by the almost desperate necessity of attaining his object.
"He would give me this sum for a note, but—I believe he would require your signature."
At last the trap was sprung.
"Ah! my signature," stammered George, embarrassed, not at the demand, but at the odious name of this brother-in-law, whom the maternal accusations had already presented to him as a bird of ill omen, eager to prey upon the remains of the house of the Aurispas.
And as he remained perplexed and gloomy, without saying anything, the father, fearing a refusal, laid aside all reserve, and had recourse to supplications.
That was the only way now to avoid a disastrous judicial sale which would certainly determine all his other creditors to swoop down on him. Disaster would be inevitable. Did his son wish to be a witness of his ruin? Or, did he not understand that, by interposing in this instance, he would act for his own interest and protect a heritage which was soon to come to his brother and himself?
"Oh! It won't be so long; it will come from one day to the other, perhaps to-morrow!"
And he began again to speak of his incurable malady, of the continual peril that threatened him, of his worries and troubles that were hastening the hour of his death.
At the end of his strength, unable to stand longer that voice and this scene, yet restrained nevertheless by the thought of his other executioners—those who had forced him to this place and who now awaited him to demand an account of his mission—George stammered:
"But will you really use this money for the purpose you have stated?"
"So! you too, you too!" cried his father, who, beneath an apparent explosion of sorrow, repressed clumsily one of his violent fits. "So they have been telling you, too, what is always being gossiped about everywhere—that I am a monster, that I have committed every crime, that I am capable of every infamy. And you have believed it, too! Why, why do they hate me to this extent, in that house yonder? Why do they desire my death? Oh! you don't know how much your mother hates me! If you went back to her now and told her that you had left me in my death agony, she would kiss you and say, 'God be praised!' Oh! you don't know."
In the brutality of his tone, in the peculiar expression of his mouth, which added bitterness to his words, in the vehement respiration which dilated his nostrils, in the irritated redness of his eyes, the real man was exposed in spite of himself; and against this man the son felt a new impulse of his primitive aversion, an impulse so sudden and so impetuous that, without reflecting, by a desire to appease his father and to be freed from him, he interrupted him, saying in a convulsed voice:
"No, no; I know nothing. Tell me, what must I do? Where must I sign?"
And he arose dismayed, approached the window, returned to his father. He saw him seek something in a drawer, with a species of nervous impatience; he saw him lay on the table a promissory note not yet made out.
"Here. Place your signature here; that will do——"
And with his enormous index, whose flat nail sank into the folds of flesh, he pointed to the place for the signature.
Without sitting down, without having a clear consciousness of what he was doing, George took a pen and signed rapidly. He would have liked to be already free and away from that room, to run in the open air, to go far away, to be alone. But when he saw his father take the note examine the signature, dry it by sprinkling it with a pinch of sand, then replace it and lock the drawer; when he remarked in everyone of these acts the ignoble joy, badly dissimulated, of a man who had succeeded in an evil purpose; when, in his soul, he felt the certitude that he had permitted himself to be duped into a shameful fraud, when he thought of the interrogations that awaited him in the other house-then the useless regret for his act upset him so, that he was on the point of giving play to his extreme indication, and to finally revolt with all his power against the scoundrel, in defence of himself, his family, and of the violated rights of his mother and sister. "Ah! it was true, then—all that his mother had told him was true! This man had not a shadow of shame, not a trace of self-respect. He recoiled from nothing and before nobody when it was a question of getting money." And he felt once more the presence of the concubine, of the rapacious, insatiable woman who was certainly hidden in an adjoining room, eavesdropping, spying, waiting for her share of the plunder.
Without succeeding in repressing the tremor that shook him, he said:
"You promise that this money will not be used—for any other purpose?"
"Why, yes; of course," replied his father, allowing his son to see now how much this insistance annoyed him, and who had manifestly changed countenance since it was no longer necessary for him to beg and feign in order to obtain.
"Take care! I shall know," added George, who had become very pale, and in a choking voice betraying an effort to restrain the outburst of indignation which increased in proportion as the man appeared more truly in his odious aspect, in proportion as the consequences of the precipitate step that he had taken became more clearly defined. "Take care! I do not wish to become your accomplice against my mother."
Affecting to be hurt by this suspicion, suddenly raising his voice as if to intimidate his son, who was undergoing torture while compelling himself to look him in the face, the father roared:
"What do you mean to insinuate? When will that viper of a mother of yours cease spitting her venom? When will she finish? Does she want me to close her mouth forever? Very well! I'll do it one of these days. Ah! what a woman! For fifteen years, yes, fifteen years, she has not given me one minute's peace. She has poisoned my life, she is killing me by slow fire. If I am ruined, it is her fault. Do you understand? It is her fault!"
"Be silent!" cried George, beside himself, unrecognizable, pale as death, trembling in all his limbs, seized by a fury like that which he had already felt against Diego. "Be silent! Do not speak her name! You are not worthy to kiss her feet. I came here to speak to you of her. I allowed myself to be played upon by your comedy. I permitted myself to be caught in a trap. What you wanted was a present for your ribald companion, and you succeeded. Oh! what shame! And you have the heart to insult my mother!"
His voice failed him; he choked; a veil covered his eyes; his knees shook beneath him as if all his strength was about to abandon him.
"Now, good-by! I am going. Act as you like. I am your son no longer. I never want to see you or know anything of you. I will take my mother away; I will take her away with me to some distant place. Farewell!"
He went out tottering, a shadow before his eyes. As he passed through the rooms to reach the terrace, he heard thefrou-frouof skirts, and a door which closed, as if behind someone retiring in haste, in order not to be surprised.
As soon as he was in the open air, outside the railings, he felt a mad desire to weep, to cry, to run across the fields, to knock his head against a rock, to seek a precipice where all would end. His nerves trembled painfully in his head, and caused him cruel twinges as if they were being broken one after the other. And he thought, with a terror that the dying day rendered more atrocious: "Where shall I go? Shall I go backtherethis evening?" The house seemed to him to be moved back an infinite distance; the length of the road appeared impossible to traverse; all that was not immediate and absolute cessation of his frightful torture seemed to him inadmissible.