IVTHE HEIR
SORROWS like these have their own modesty, and I throw a veil over mine....
I resume my story at the time when we resumed our ordinary life. The first meal by ourselves consecrated its permanence, after the comings and goings of relatives and friends were over, with all the confusion inseparable from a house of mourning. My brother Stephen, who had hastened from Rome, had gone back to complete his theological studies. Mélanie was doubtless finding expression for her own grief by more complete devotion to all the sorrows of the hospital, and Bernard, far away, had acknowledged the blow by a brief cablegram in which we could measure his affection. We others, who remained, could now count one another like the wounded after defeat.
The bell rang and we must go to the dining-room. Grandfather came in from his walk; he was bent and broken, he leant upon his cane, bemoaning himself about something, I can not tell what. Something had gone wrong, he himself could not quite understand.
“Ah!” he sighed, all out of breath. “I thought I should never get back to the house.”
He spoke as we used to speak when we were little. But had we ever left off saying The House? I saw him so old and weak and hardly realised that it was he who used to take me into the woods and on the lake, in those days when both of us used to sally forth in all tranquillity for the conquest of liberty. In my transformation, going to the other extreme, I gazed upon him now with an excessive pity which bordered upon contempt.
Yes, when the soldiers are on the ramparts the town may question and discuss, may they not? It questions and discusses the utility of arms and fortifications, their destruction appearing a slight thing. But what if there are no soldiers and the enemy is at the gates?
Thus in the old days we could talk of our desires and our dreams, of the commonwealth of the future, and above all, of our dear liberty. We could, then, and now we can no more, for there is no one defending us, and we are face to face with life, with our own destinies. He is no longer here, grandfather, who used to mount guard on the ramparts for the whole family.
Aunt Deen was putting finishing touches to the table. She was very old to impose so much labour upon herself, never stopping to rest from morning till night.
“Don’t, aunt, it is not your work.”
But she protested and muttered and began to weep aloud.
“You mustn’t prevent my working. I feel it less when I am working.”
Didn’t I know, too, that there was now no one in the kitchen but Mariette, because things were changed with us? Each of us must do his part, and Aunt Deen, as usual, began first.
Louise was no longer gay, as she used to be. She came in, leading her sister Nicola, as if to protect her. Why did I look more lovingly at their fair hair? Was I already thinking of the new uncertainties of their future? Jamie, left mostly to himself these latter days, had not been good, and my mother was reproving him. He probably thought that she would never think of scolding him, and all astonishment, he obeyed. And now we must take our seats around the table.
Mother had taken her old place in the middle, and I found in her manner, in her voice gentle as always, an indescribable new authority, inexplicable and yet to be felt. She turned to grandfather, who came next.
“It is for you to take his place,” she said indicating my father’s chair, opposite to hers.
“Oh, not I!” exclaimed grandfather with agitation. “Valentine, I can’t take that place. I am nothing now but an old beast.”
She urged, but in vain; nothing would induce him to yield. Then my mother turned to me with that expression, at once calm and frightened, which she had worn ever since—since she became a widow.
“It must be you,” she said.
Without a word I seated myself in my father’s place and for a few moments I found it impossible to speak. Why this emotion for so simple and natural a thing? So simple and so natural indeed was the transmission of authority.
I have compared the house to a kingdom, and the succession of heads of the family to a dynasty. And now this dynasty had come to me. My mother was exercising the regency, and I was wearing the crown. And now I learned at the same time its weight and its honour. As before this I had been born into sorrow and into death, I was now born into the sense of my responsibility in life. Indeed I do not know whether I can compare the feeling that took possession of me with any other emotion. It pierced my heart with that sharp and cruel dart which is generally attributed to love. And from my wound sprang up, as it were, a gush of red blood, the sense of exaltation which was to colour all my life—blood which, far from subtracting from life’s forces, would add to the eternal defences of our race.
Thus, before I had attained the age of man, I entered, by anticipation, upon the great struggle which without fail forms a part of every human existence, the struggle between liberty and acceptance, between the horror of servitude and the sacrifices which are the price of permanence. A delightful but dangerous teacher had early revealed to me the miraculous charm of nature, of that very love and pride withwhich we think to bring the earth into subjection, but this too sweet and enervating charm would never again entirely possess me. My life was henceforth fixed to an iron ring: it would no longer depend upon my own fancy. Toward the mirages of happiness I should henceforth reach out only fettered hands. But these fetters are those which every man must one day assume, whether he actually mounts a throne or whether his empire is only over an acre or a name. Like a king I was responsible for the decadence or the prosperity of the kingdom—The House.
A few days later, since I must begin my medical studies, I also was obliged to go away, for a time. This parting tore my heart: in the zeal of my new part, I would fain have believed my presence necessary to my mother, who must be quite crushed by the loss of him who was her life. Her calmness, however, surprised me, and also the clearness of her judgment, and that mysterious new authority that every one felt. At the time of the funeral Martinod had begged for the honour of making a speech, reminding all present of my father’s devotion to the public weal, but she had refused. I could not understand her repelling a repentant enemy, and would willingly have given a contrary opinion. But not long afterward we learned that Martinod, hoping to capture the Mayor’s office, had counted upon thus making use of the dead to regain his lost popularity. Aunt Deen’stheyhad not laid aside theirarms. They would never lay them aside. But the hearth-stone had its watchful guardians, neither to be duped nor lulled to sleep.
But there would be loneliness there, with only Nicola and Jamie. Grandfather would hardly count, for he was failing from day to day. He who had always had such horror of enclosures now asked almost every evening if the doors were locked and bolted. What did he fear? Once, arousing from a doze, he earnestly called for his father. Aunt Deen took him up almost roughly:
“You know very well that he has been dead these thirty years!”
To our stupefaction he quickly replied,
“No, no, not him, the other.”
“What other? What do you mean?”
“The one who was there a little while ago,” he said, pointing in the direction of the consulting room.
Then we understood that there was a confusion of generations in his brain. He felt that he had lost his support, and very naturally our father had become his.
Much affected by his confusion of mind, I became more just to him. Together we had lost the empire of liberty.
The evening before my departure I went to my mothers room. I had expected to lend her courage for our parting, and behold I was weaker and more agitated than she.
“I shall come back,” I said positively, “and I shall try to followhim.”
We never spoke of him otherwise, among ourselves.
“Yes,” she replied, “your turn has come.”
Then she had heard and understood. And as, my head on her shoulder, I expressed my sorrow at leaving her in her trouble, she comforted me.
“Listen; we must not be sad.”
Was it she who spoke thus? I raised my head in surprise and looked at her; her face, ravaged by trials, chiselled by the sorrow of the most ardent love, was almost colourless. All its expression centred in her eyes, so gentle, so pure, so limpid. She was changed and aged. And yet there was in her an indescribable firmness which she imparted to all around her, no one knew how.
“Don’t be surprised,” she said. “That first night I was so overwhelmed with despair that I prayed God to take me. I cried unto Him and He heard me. He sustained me, but in another way. I had not believed enough. Now I believe as we ought to believe. We are not parted, don’t you see?—We are going forward to meet again.”
A Book of Hours was lying on the work table beside her. I mechanically took it up. It opened of itself to a page which she must have read often.
“Read it aloud,” she said.
It was the prayer of the dying, to be recited during the approach of death:
“Leave this world, Christian soul, in the name of God the Father Almighty who created thee; in the name of Jesus Christ, Son of the living God who suffered for thee; in the name of Angels and Archangels, of Thrones and Dominations; in the name of Principalities and Powers, of Cherubim and Seraphim; in the name of the Patriarchs and Prophets, and of the Holy Apostles and Evangelists; in the name of the Holy Martyrs and Confessors, in the name of the holy Monks and Solitaries, in the name of the holy Virgins, and of all the Saints of God. May thy dwelling be this day in peace and thy habitation in the Holy Places!...”
“Leave this world, Christian soul, in the name of God the Father Almighty who created thee; in the name of Jesus Christ, Son of the living God who suffered for thee; in the name of Angels and Archangels, of Thrones and Dominations; in the name of Principalities and Powers, of Cherubim and Seraphim; in the name of the Patriarchs and Prophets, and of the Holy Apostles and Evangelists; in the name of the Holy Martyrs and Confessors, in the name of the holy Monks and Solitaries, in the name of the holy Virgins, and of all the Saints of God. May thy dwelling be this day in peace and thy habitation in the Holy Places!...”
All heaven assembled to receive the Soul to whom the portals of Life were opened.
We are not parted; we are going forward to meet again; I understood the meaning of her words.
In the silence that followed my reading, once more I heard the monotonous lament of the fountain in the court, and I recalled my father’s confidence when, about to speak, confidence had closed his lips. What could he have said to my mother which she would not know from him? She was still living with him. She would finish his work, and then she would go to join him. It was so simple; and this was why she was so at peace.
Her calmness communicated itself to Aunt Deen, always at work, and ever on the lookout for the most humiliating duties, polishing floors or blacking shoes, as if she would punish herself for having outlived her nephew. And when mother gently took her to task for her excessive devotion, she would protest with tears, as if begging a favour.
As at evening one sees the village lights come out, one by one, along the slopes, so I could see the lights of our house shining out even beyond our own horizon, to the ends of the world, and even beyond the world. They were shining for the absent as well as for the present, for Mélanie at the bedside of the poor, for Stephen at Rome, and for Bernard, soldier of the outposts in his far distant colony. And they were shining still higher.
And it seemed to me that the walls whose restrictions I had deplored during my years of youth, during my mad search for liberty, were opening of themselves to let me pass out. They no longer kept me a prisoner. How should they keep me a prisoner? Wherever I might henceforth go, I should carry with me a bit of earth, a bit of my earth, as if I had been made of its dust, as God made the first man.
That evening, the eve of my departure, my faith in The House became faith in The Eternal House where the dead live again in peace....
April, 1908—December, 1912.