IIITHE END OF A REING
ALL night a high wind had been blowing, but by morning it had fallen. October was coming in badly. After breakfast I went out to see what damage the storm had wrought. Autumn had come suddenly. In the woods the oak leaves and beech leaves, leaves red and golden, torn from the trees where they had been glowing like flowers, rustled under my tread, and as in old times when I was little and used to steal out to gather forbidden nuts and crack them afterwards on the fire dogs, I let my feet drag, delighting in their crisp and plaintive chime.
Returning at nightfall I saw a cart standing before the door of the chalet. The headlight was not lighted and it was growing dark, so that I did not perceive till I was close by that it was our farmer’s cart. The horse had not been taken out, but no one was watching it, though some one had taken the precaution to put a blanket over its back.
“Well, Stephen,” said I, entering the kitchen where the farmer was warming himself, for it was already cold on the mountains, “what brings you here?”
We always called him by his first name, as is the custom in our country, although he was already old. His hands were outstretchedtoward the stove, but he turned his wrinkled, shaven face toward me, the lamp, that moment lighted, revealing it clearly to me.
His light eyes, faded through long service in all weathers, seemed not to see me clearly.
“Ah, Master Francis,” he murmured low, as he rose.
I can not tell why, but the meaningless exclamation gave me a painful impression.
“You haven’t come for us?” I asked.
He was about to reply when we were joined by my sister Louise, who had been told of his arrival. She greeted him in a friendly way and asked what news he brought from town. He seemed in no haste to reply.
“The news is,” he said at last, “that Madame wants you.”
“Madame?” asked Louise.
“Very well,” I observed, “and how soon?”
“To be sure it is too late for you to go down to-night. The beast is tired and it is already dark. To-morrow morning, very early.”
Why such haste? We should hardly have time for our packing. I was about to protest, but the farmer slipped away—he must put out the horse, and get the cart under cover. During his absence I protested against so hurried a departure. In fact the prospect of quitting this place filled me with sadness, and I again lived through the sense of desolation which had come over me in the wood, strewn with the deadleaves. Louise paid no attention and I saw that she was crying. Was she so sorry to go?
“I am afraid,” she said to me.
Afraid of what? Grandfather, being informed of our recall, showed as little enthusiasm as I.
“We weren’t so badly off here,” he said. “We could do as we chose.”
As if he hadn’t always done as he chose! But what was Louise afraid of? By degrees she told us. For the farmer to be sent for us, there must be some one sick at our house, some one gravely ill. He had said “Madame has sent for you.” Then it wasn’t mamma, it could be no one but father. This was what she conjectured, as she confessed to us.
We tried to smile at her fears, comparing her to Abbé Heurtevant who carried thunder about with him and set it off at the least provocation; but by degrees her fear became ours. We waited feverishly for the return of the farmer whom we at once questioned. It was Louise who spoke.
“Father is sick, isn’t he, Stephen?”
“Ah, Miss, it’s a great misfortune.”
“Has he taken the disease?”
“It isn’t the disease that he has taken; it’s a chill and fever.”
Poor Louise burst into tears, calling upon our father as if he could hear her. We had to comfort her, not without blaming her for giving way, the farmer himself joining in.
“The young lady is mistaken. Master Michael is strong. There’s many aone has had chills and fever who is fat and healthy to-day.”
The thought never occurred to me that there could be any real danger. My self absorption prevented my thinking so. What an absurd presentiment that poor Louise was torturing herself with! I could see my father there, before the entrance, just as the carriage started. His panama, slightly tilted, cast a shadow over half his face. The other, in full sunlight, was radiant with life. He was giving brief orders and hastening us into the vehicle because he was waited for at the mayor’s office. How well he could command, and how every one hastened to obey him! I was the only one who thought of withdrawing myself from his power, his ascendency. He held himself upright like an oak in the forest, one of those tall fine oaks that never shed their leaves till the new ones come, that the tempest can never shake, that seem to stand all the straighter and grow tougher by resistance. I could hear his voice ringing out, his voice saying Forward! as in battle. I could not admit that that strength could be overcome. I had counted upon that strength. I must needs count upon it, because later, when I judged best, and had achieved my liberty I wanted to go back, of my own free will, and show my father a little love.
Yet I recalled to mind the day when I had heard him utter in mother’s room a lament over me: “That child is no longer ours....”
But I would not dwell on that. No, no, I must exaggerate nothing. Mother had recalled us because the abating epidemic no longer threatened danger, and because father, being ill, would be glad to see us; she had sent for us for these reasons and for none other....
We went down early next morning, Louise and I in the farmer’s cart, grandfather and the children a little later by the diligence which after all was more comfortable. I turned around many times to imprint upon my memory the picture of that valley, where in solitude I had met so many emotions created by myself, as it were a sort of happiness in which the others had no part. Seated beside me Louise never spoke except to lean toward our old Stephen and ask him gently,
“Couldn’t you go a little faster?”
“Yes, Miss, we’ll try. Biquette is a little like me, she’s not very young.”
He let his whip play around the mare’s flanks, without actually touching her. As we drew nearer to the town my sister’s anxiety increased, and at last affected me. She repeated her contagious “I’m afraid,” and only the fine October sunshine, warming us on our seat, helped me to repel so absurd a presentiment.
We reached the gate at last. No one was waiting for us. How many times had I found father at that place, gazing down the road, and as soon as he saw us hailing us with word and gesture, with all the paternalgladness of his heart! I looked up at the window. The usual shadow was not there, behind the curtain, and for the first time I knew that sorrow threatened us all.
Mother, as soon as she was informed of our arrival, came down to meet us. Louise threw herself into her arms without a word. By a natural intuition those kindred souls understood one another. I remained apart, determined not to understand, refusing to admit even the possibility of a calamity which would leave me no time to play, at my own convenience, the drama of the return of the prodigal son. Mother came to me:
“He talks of you most of all,” she said. “In his delirium he was calling for you.”
I was thunderstruck at this pre-eminence. Why did he talk most of me? Why was I his chief preoccupation, and—my mind leaping forward, even while awestricken at the sacrilegious thought,—perhaps his last?
“Mamma,” I cried, “it isn’t possible!”
But I at once regretted the involuntary exclamation. My mother was the living proof that there was no danger, at least not yet. Of course I remarked the circles round her eyes and her white cheeks, the tokens of nights of watching. But though weariness was evident in her every feature, it was as if it did not exist: one felt a higher will dominating it, or utilising it so long as might be necessary. And by a strange phenomenon, there was now in her manner of speaking, andof treating us, something—I could not say what, but I knew it was there—something of my father’s authority. Visibly, without knowing it, she was replacing him. But if there had been any danger she would have shown her woman’s weakness, she who was so quick to be anxious, and often about nothing at all, she so prompt to hear the approaching thunderstorm and light the blessed candle for our safety! I did not even see the holy light that always when night came down kept watch in her eyes like the little altar lamp in the sanctuary. No, no, if there had been any danger she would have asked for our help, and I would have sustained her with my youthful strength.
“Is what possible?” she replied to my question—thus completely reassuring me. She made no other reply, as if she hadn’t quite heard, but quite simply, in a gentle voice which endeavoured not to give pain, she went on to tell us what had taken place in our long absence.
“He is resting just now. Your Aunt Deen is with him. She has helped me much in nursing him. I’ll take you to his room presently. You can not imagine the effort which these last months have required of him. That is the cause of his illness, after he had overcome the pestilence, when his task was finished. Until then, I had never been able to get him to spare himself. Day and night he would be sent for, appealed to, as if there were no one but he. The whole town waited on his orders, begged for his help. His commands were the only ones that inspiredconfidence, but the demands were more than human strength could endure, and he did in fact go beyond human strength. They never gave him a moment’s respite—they thought him stronger than the stones that bear up the house, but even stones will break under too heavy a burden. One evening, just six days ago, he came home with a heavy chill. And almost immediately fever appeared. Oh, if he had not so overtaxed himself!”
She checked herself without completing her thought,—or did she not follow it out when she added after a moment’s reflection,
“I have notified Stephen, in Rome. Last evening he telegraphed me that he was setting out. I am glad that his Superior has permitted him to leave—it is a very long journey: we must give him almost twenty-four hours. I write every day to Bernard who is so far away. And Mélanie is praying for us.”
Thus she was gathering the family around its head. I asked,
“Why does not Mélanie come?”
“The Sisters of Charity never go back to their homes.”
“They nurse strangers and may not nurse their father!”
“It is the rule, Francis.”
Since it was the rule she had no recriminations to make; she bowed to it, accepted it, while I,—as soon as it became the rule, my firstimpulse was to rebel. Timorous as she was when he was there, now with unfaltering presence of mind she was preparing all that would be needed in case of misfortune, without ever ceasing to bend all her energies to ward it off. I felt shame for not having shared her anxieties and for having sought to separate myself from the community of sorrow.
“The fever has diminished,” she went on, going over all the encouraging symptoms for our sakes and her own. “The first days he was delirious much of the time. He has been more calm since yesterday. He himself keeps track of the progress of his disease. I see, but he says nothing about it. This morning he asked for a priest. Abbé Heurtevant, whom he cured, came.”
He himself keeps track of the progress of his disease, and he asked for a priest; the poor woman did not connect the two, so natural did it seem to her to ask the help of God. But I—how could I not connect them? And for the third time I distinctly felt the danger.
We heard Aunt Deen’s step at the head of the stairs; it was growing heavy. She calledValentine! in a subdued voice and we all hastened to the staircase.
“Oh, he is doing well,” she explained, “but he is awake, and he always asks for you if you are not there.”
“You may go with me,” mother said to Louise, then turning to me sheadded that she would call me next; it wasn’t well for too many to enter the room at once, lest our presence should agitate the sufferer.
As soon as we were alone Aunt Deen, who must greatly have held herself in during her hours of watching, exploded:
“Ah, my boy, if you knew! ‘They’ have killed him—killed him without mercy! The whole town was infected and had no hope except in him. I have seen it, I tell you, those people with their dirty pustules all over their bodies. They would be crying like lost souls, and when your father entered the hospital they would be silent because he had ordered it, but they would hold out their arms to him. How many he has cured! It’s he who saved them all, he and no one else. And the fountains closed, and the water analysed, and the clothing of the dead burned, and the lazaretto set up, all sorts of hygienic measures. Indeed, the very best there are. You should have seen how he commanded everything! Monsieur Mayor, it’s impossible! ‘It must be done by to-morrow.’ But for him there wouldn’t be a person in the streets to-day. And now, now, it’s as much as ever if any one comes to ask how he is! The rumour has spread that he has caught the typhus,—the last one. They are afraid and they abandon him—the wretches!”
Thus she pictured the general cowardice and ingratitude. My father stood out above this disorderly crowd. But Aunt Deen had begun onanother subject.
“Your mother is admirable. She has not gone to bed once since his illness. And she keeps calm. You have seen how calm she is. For my part I can’t understand her.”
As she had just left the room above I tried to get at the truth of the case.
“Well, Aunt, is he—”
But I could not go on, and she caught up my inquiry, the impiety of which had burned my lips, as if I had spoken against the Holy Ark.
“Oh, no, no, no! God will protect us! What would become of us, my poor child, what would become of us! A man such as there are not two of in the world!”
Just then Louise, coming softly down, joined us, all in tears. Father was expecting me.
At the door of his room I paused, heavy of heart. By that oppression I saw clearly that he was the essential actor in the inner drama of my childhood and youth, my short but already so important life. I had lived by him but I was living in opposition to him. From the day when I had withdrawn myself from his influence, through all the exaltation which had transported me and yet left me in a state of uneasiness, I had felt myself free, but out of my frame. In what condition should I find him? I was afraid, and that is why I paused for a time before opening the door. On leaving home, after having seen him cheered bythe whole town, I had carried away with me the picture of my father leaning against the house, assured victor over the pestilence as long ago he had been victor over those dreaded mole-crickets, cheerfully bearing the burden of a city in distress, counting upon the future as on the past, in a word, immortal,—one to whom in his authority I could therefore give pain without scruple,—and now, in a second, I should see him—how? He was there, on the other side of that door, motionless, laid low, humiliated, no longer leading every one like a flock, fighting on his own account against the insidious disease that was consuming him. I felt a sort of terror of this inevitable contrast, mingled, I have to confess, with a personal horror of the sight of humiliation.
Well, there was neither humiliation nor contrast. I went in and saw him. Stretched at full length upon the bed he seemed even taller than when standing—that was indisputable. His head was lying back upon the bolster and I was especially struck with the forehead, that broad forehead luminous with the light that sifted through the curtains. The unwonted thinness only emphasised the nobility of the features. There was no trace either of anxiety or fear, and as for suffering, if its mark was there it had brought with it no inferiority. His eyes were closed, but at times he opened them wide, almost startlingly. When had I thus seen them take on the imprint of the things at which he was gazing? Before Mélanie’s last farewell they used so to fix themselvesupon my sister, upon my sister who was to go away for always, and whom he would never see again.
His whole attitude, his whole expression was gathering itself together, or rather was fixing itself in its highest character: he had not ceased to command. And my first word, my only word, was a consent to his command.
“Father,” I said, standing beside the bed.
I did not utter the word in the sense of filial piety, but because his ascendency subjugated me, overawed me. Yes, in this dimly lighted chamber, heavy with the odour of medicines, suffering and fever, that complex odour which is as it were the advance herald of death, I mechanically came back into subordination, as a soldier about to desert returns to his place in the ranks under the eye of his chief. I was aware of this change in myself. That mysticism in which I had so revelled and which isolated me from all the universe, melted away like clouds before the first rays of dawn. I recognised my dependence, and all the truth of my childish thoughts when they used to begin by making the tour of the house, and the antiquity and the justice of the power still held in those weakening hands, which clasped with pale rigid fingers a little crucifix which at first I had not observed.
I thought I had spoken aloud, but he could not have heard me, for he did not turn toward me. I could hear his low voice—that voice that I remembered so ringing—whispering as if he were, reciting a litany.
“What is he saying?” I asked softly of my mother, who drew near.
“Your names,” she murmured. “Listen!”
Yes, one after another he was naming us all. Those of the three elder had already passed his lips: he pronounced that of Louise. It was my turn, but he passed it and named Nicola, then James. The omission hurt me cruelly, but I had hardly had time to feel it when I heard my name, last of all, detached and set apart. Suddenly I remembered Martinod’s odious insinuations as to his preference for one of my brothers; and I understood that no one of us was the favourite, but that just because of the anxiety I had given I had been the object of a special solicitude. The irresistible desire swept over me to reveal to him, in a word, the change that had suddenly taken place in me. He used to dwell with such interest and even such respect upon our vocation—believing that it would be the basis of our whole life—I had systematically put aside mine, to make sure of my liberty. Now, with full conviction, I had recovered it. Taking a step forward I said firmly:
“Father, I am here. It is I. Upon the mountain I reflected. Don’t you know? I want to be a doctor, like you.”
On the mountain? That was not true, but did not piety command me to conceal the cause of my change of mind? He did not show the joy that Iexpected—perhaps he could no longer show joy over anything. Perhaps another work, the last, that of detachment, was going on in him. He lifted to me his almost terrifying eyes.
“Francis,” he repeated.
He tried to raise his hand to lay it upon my head. Though I leaned low over him he could not do it, and his arm fell back. I kneeled, that he might do it with less effort. He did not even try, as I had hoped, but in that low voice in which he had named us one by one, he said distinctly:
“Your turn has come.”
My mother, who was a little behind, drew near to ask me the same question that I had asked her:
“What is he saying?”
I made an instinctive movement as if to say that I did not precisely know—yet I had clearly heard him, and after a moment of hesitation, the expression ceased to be mysterious to me. I could see in it an evidence of confidence in the past. My father had not admitted my treachery, my enfranchisement, he had been sure that I would return to him; he counted upon me. But in its form as from beyond the tomb the utterance had a still deeper significance, which completely overcame me; my father was tendering to my weakness the royal crown of the family, inviting me to wear it after him, because I should be, at home, his successor, his heir. I had never thought of that.
Did my mother understand the emotion which bowed and shattered me? Shereminded me that I needed food after my long journey in the cold air, and went with me to the door.
“Valentine,” murmured the sick man.
“I am not leaving you, dear.” And she turned from me to hurry back to him.
I did not leave the room, but remained and witnessed a scene which almost without words, apparently obscure and far away, was only all the more clear to me.
My father began by saying:
“Listen!” He was looking at no one at the moment; his eyes were fixed on the ceiling above him. He made no haste to speak, he was gathering himself together. An indescribable anguish swept over me. I divined that my presence had shaken him, and that he was collecting his thoughts as to the future of the family. What he had to say to my mother was doubtless his last wish on the subject. Had I not a right to hear, sincemy turn had come?
Perhaps my mother, too, understood. She was at the bedside, leaning over, and the sheet which hung out against her knee shook slightly. I am sure I saw it shake—was it the trembling of her knee? And then I saw nothing except one face.
My father was still silent. I could hear the monotonous moan of the fountain in the court. Mother urged him tenderly:
“My love, my dear love ...”
His mind was entirely lucid. He hadhimself followed the progressof his disease, he knew precisely how he was. At her words he seemed to emerge from the thoughts in which he was plunged; he turned his head slightly and looked at my mother with his almost awe-inspiring gaze, which penetrated deeply into her heart.
“Valentine,” he repeated, simply.
“You had something to say to me?”
With infinite gentleness he murmured: “Oh, no, Valentine. I have nothing to say to you.”
I am sure that he had meant to confide to her the future of the house, and one gaze had been enough to silence him. That gaze alone had told him that there was no need. She who was there, close beside him, was she not his flesh and his heart? All those years together, day by day, without one difference of opinion, one cloud, had made them indissolubly one. What could one utterance add to all that? Was ever greater evidence of love given to wife than that silence, that confidence, that peace! ...
After those high moments I was overpowered by the human cowardice which finds a sort of solace in absence from the scene of calamity. I left the room. Grandfather was getting down from the diligence with Nicola, already a big girl, growing serious, and Jamie, lighter minded, whose twelve years were not yet troubled by any presentiment. Grandfather was anxiously superintending the transportation of his violin case and his almanacs; his collection of pipes was not to be entrusted to anyhands but his own. Aunt Deen attended in person to the heavy luggage. Notwithstanding her years and declining strength, she still took upon herself a servant’s duties. Physical effort alone could relieve her mind; with her, sorrow expressed itself in increased activity.
Once in the house, grandfather wandered about like a soul in pain. He hovered around the sick room without venturing to enter. He dared not ask questions, and in his uncertainty he made his moan to any one whom he saw:
“I am getting old. I am old.”
They saw one another, but I was not present. It was not necessary to be present to realise what it must have been, and that the son, inevitably, supported and comforted the father. If life does not draw from a religious heart the fervour of a constant upward progress, one must always remain what one has been. For some the burden, for others the looking on. And even the approach of death does not change things.
As evening drew on, grandfather, who was dragging himself from room to room, bemoaning himself, timidly proposed that we should take a walk.
“That’s a good idea,” said Aunt Deen, who understood him. “There are two or three errands at the chemist’s and the grocer’s.”
He manifested a childish joy at being made useful and I did not refuse to go with him. After the solitude of the mountain, with its silentnights, we found a secret pleasure in the lighted streets and the coming and going of people. The epidemic had been completely checked; the sanitary measures which had been ordered left not the slightest danger to be feared. Awakened from its nightmare, the town was giving itself over to transports of joy the reaction from terror. I had seen it in its consternation rushing with loud cries to seek salvation in one man, and I found it now in all the heyday and thoughtlessness of a festival. The autumn softness floated like a perfume over all. The shops were lighted up. The pavements were crowded with people and the cafés overflowed to the very street. The women were in light dresses which they had not been able to wear all summer, and jaunty in their fresh costumes transformed the season into a belated spring. After so much mourning life was sweet, and funerals were relegated to the background.
I was the son of their saviour. I expected tokens of popular favour, and behold people avoided us, as I was not slow to see. The sight of that old man and that youth forced upon them the thought of their benefactor, and recalled the evil days through which they had passed. Evidently no one wanted to think of them. We should have liked to talk over all the troubles, but no one gave us an opportunity.
Finally, some one spoke to us. It was Martinod, Martinod with his pursed-up mouth and sleek beard who, without giving me time to shake him off, began to talk of my father admiringly, eloquently,enthusiastically, awarding him full and entire justice, celebrating his courage, his organising ability, his medical skill, his marvellous art of directing men. I had resolved, on seeing him, to turn my back upon him with contempt, and here I was, full of gratitude, drinking in his words—forgetting his calumnies, his base manœuvres, his secret plots, which had so nearly destroyed the unity of our family. I ought to have been seeking upon his face the mark imprinted by my father’s hand, and here I was listening to his brazen encomiums. I was still too simple minded to imagine what he was designing.
Gallus and Merinos, who next met us, were quite ready to descant upon themselves and the cruel trials from which they had fortunately emerged. We tried to speak of poor Casenave and the unlucky Galurin, but they changed the subject by informing us that one of them was composing a Funeral March and the other aDanse Macabre, in commemoration of the historic typhus. I have never learned that either was finished.
When we returned home, somewhat cheered up by the change, we met Mariette at the door, full of indignant wrath. She had served us for more than twenty years, and never thought of controlling herself in our presence. The little doctor who had long ago visited me in my attack of pleurisy had attempted to slip a gold piece into her hand, begging her to give his name and address to the patients who continued to crowd toour house, and with an emphatic gesture she had thrown his gold at his head.
“The wretched creature!” exclaimed Aunt Deen, who had witnessed the incident from the staircase. “Ah!theyare all just alike!”
And I ceased to deny the existence of those who surrounded us, “they,” and knew that calamity was impending over us.
A little later in the evening, just before the dinner hour, as the bell rang I went myself to the door, thinking that it might be my brother Stephen, arriving from Rome, whence he had been recalled the previous evening. I saw before me in the shadow, for the vestibule lamp but feebly lighted the doorstep, one of our poor people, old Yes-Yes, with his ever-nodding head. I knew that he was still alive, though Zeeze Million had carried her dreams of fortune with her to the grave. Why did he come on another day than Saturday, the regular day of the poor?
“Wait,” I said. “I’ll go for some money.”
But he caught my arm almost familiarly.
“Yes, yes,” he began, “that’s not it.”
“What then?”
“Yes, yes, he cured me, you understand. So it’s to learn, yes, to learn how he is.”
Full of gratitude he had come for information. I spoke more gently, as I replied:
“Always the same, friend.”
“Ah, ah! yes, yes, so much the worse.”
I wondered why he did not go. Did he after all, hope for a little money? Suddenly, like a stammerer who has succeeded in getting hold of his words, and makes the most of it, he thrust his face close to mine, exclaiming:
“He—he—he was a man! Yes, yes.”
And he at once disappeared in the darkness. I gazed into the shadows which had swallowed him up, and then suddenly closed the door;—but too late, for it seemed to me that some one had come in, an invisible some one who took his way up the stairs, through the passage, to the room. I tried to cry out, but my lips uttered no sound; and I thought to myself that if I had cried out they would have thought me crazy. I stood there paralysed, knowing that some one had come into the house before me, and that I could not drive out him who was there, before me, who would not go out, who was noiselessly going up the stairs, his actual presence unsuspected by all but me.
Now I understood the true, the irreparable meaning of what I had vaguely seen without admitting that I saw it. That poor stammering creature had said “He was a man,” speaking of my father in the past tense, speaking of my father as if my father was no longer living. Then that invisible presence which had come in by the open door was Death. For the first time it seemed to me an active thing, for the first time Death seemed to me—there is no other word—alive. Until thatmoment I had attached no importance to its acts. And in my horror and impotence, I stood there, my arms hanging helpless at my sides.
Long ago, when we had been in danger of losing the house, I had been born into the unknown sense of grief; now I was born into the sense of death. And I felt all the cruelty of the parting, before it had come to pass.
As in that long ago time, I fled into the garden and threw myself upon the grass. The night was there before me; the earth was cold and seemed to repel me. The wind which had risen was wrenching the branches of the chestnut trees, and they groaned, uttering lamentations. Especially one of them, the one of the breach in the wall, never ceased moaning, and I thought to see it fall. I recalled to mind some that I had seen in the forest of the Alpette after a storm, prone upon the ground, at such length that the eye was astonished on measuring them from root to tip. And I recalled, too, that picture in my Bible of the tall cedars of Lebanon lying on the ground—those that were destined to be used in building the Temple in Jerusalem.
The beams of the roof seemed to be complaining, like the trees, and I expected to see the house fall into a heap. What would there be to wonder at, if the house did fall, since my father was dying?