VIITHE FIRST DEPARTURE
A FEW days after this disappointing walk—perhaps even the next day—I went to my mother’s room to get a forgotten school book. I was already turning the latch of the door when I heard two voices. One, my mother’s, was familiar to my ear, but its tones were almost new to me, by reason of the firmness now mingled with its habitual gentleness; when we were little she had sometimes spoken to us in that tone to require more attention and earnestness in our little duties, or our lessons. As for the other, it must have been that of a stranger, even of some one asking for alms, for it came to my ear hushed, veiled, melancholy. What visitor was this whom my mother received in her room and not in the drawing-room? I dared neither go in nor let go of the latch, lest in falling it should betray my presence. Hooted to the spot, at once by timidity and curiosity, I listened to the dialogue going on within.
“I am sure you are mistaken,” my mother was saying. “The child is going through a crisis, but he is not different from his brothers and sisters; he is not estranged from us.”
“The chasm is deeper than you think, Valentine,” replied the other voice. “I feel that I am losing him. If you had seen him at Malpas, how inflexible he was, how he resisted my exhortations, almost my entreaties.”
“He is only a child.”
“Too mature a child. I can not yet be sure what it is that estranges him from us, but I shall find out. Ah, poor dear, there is no use in trying to reassure me; three years ago my father completed his cure by keeping him out of doors, but he did not give back to us the same child that we had entrusted to him: he has changed his heart, and it is in childhood that the heart is formed. This child is no longer ours.”
This child is no longer ours. The statement lifted me up with a sort of vanity. I belonged to no one. I was free. That liberty which grandfather had not been able to command, even in the blood of the days of June, had all of a sudden become mine!
I had recognised my father’s voice, and my parents were talking of me. But why had they so interchanged their attitudes that I had not at first recognised them? I had always supposed that they could not change. Mother was always anxious about nothing at all—when the wind blew or the thunder growled, even far away, she never failed to light the blessed candle; or her shadow behind her chamber window told us that she was watching for the return of the absent ones. She was neverwholly at peace, unless we were all grouped around her, except, indeed, when praying, for she lived very near to God. It sometimes happened that father would laugh at her for her endless anxieties. During my illness, and longer ago, when the house had been put up for sale, it was he, always he, who kept up her woman’s courage, who assured her of the future, reminded her of the constant protection of Providence. I had never imagined them otherwise, and now behold they had changed parts,—it was mother who was uplifting father in his discouragement.
I should have been disgusted with myself if I had listened at doors. Urged by self-esteem, mingled with a sense of honour, I should not have hesitated to enter the room but for the next words, which were uttered by my father, and which nailed me to the spot, the latch still in my hand, powerless to go in or to draw back, so greatly was I impressed and captivated.
“The same thing took place between him and me that long ago took place between me and my father—the same family tragedy.”
“Oh, Michel, what do you mean?”
“Yes, my father was right when he recalled it the day that I found Francis in his room, the day when Francis took his part against me—unhappy child! When I was little, I, too, had felt the influence of my grandfather. Only it was exercised in the other direction. He had been president of the Chamber at the Court. Returning home at the ageof retirement, he amused himself with cultivating the garden. It was he who planted the rose-garden. He taught me the importance, the beauty, yes, the beauty of the order to which man may subject not only himself, but nature. Perhaps it is to him that I owe it that I have been able to direct my life, to dominate it. But my father, who was interested only in his music and his utopias, used to laugh at us. ‘He will turn that child into a geometrician,’ he used to say. It is he who has turned my child into a rebel.”
He added, bitterly, “A father, in his own house, should never yield his own authority to any one. To withdraw Francis from that influence which has gained the upper hand of mine, I should not hesitate even to send him to boarding school. It would only be anticipating by a year or two the method we adopted for the older children. And in fact our school is hardly advanced enough for him now.”
“It would be one more expense,” objected mother.
“Money is a small thing compared with education.”
Thus I learned that they were proposing to arrange my future without consulting me! Boarding school—prison—was to punish me for my independence. For the moment I was crushed,—then, in my pride I refused to admit that I was crushed. Would not that be to admit the attractions of the house? Since they were considering the possibilityof sending me away I would get ahead of them, and would myself ask to go. Yes, that should be the punishment I would inflict upon my parents. Upon my parents only?
But I could not remain there at the door and be surprised—and besides, I was ashamed! I therefore finally turned the latch and went in. I went in like an important personage, steeling myself against the emotion which was getting the better of me.
“I have come for my book,” said I, by way of justifying my entrance.
Father and mother, sitting opposite one another, looked at me and then exchanged a glance. I found my book—which a careful hand had put in order upon the table, seized it hastily and turned to go.
“Francis,” said my mother.
I turned to her with an expressionless face, put on to keep back the tears.
“Listen, my child,” she said,—and when she called me “child” I drew myself up—“you must always obey your father.”
Obey! the word was odious to me. “Why, I always listen to him,” I said.
Father fixed me with his piercing eyes that hurt as if I felt the points of their rays. He seemed to hesitate; no doubt he did hesitate between his desire to explain and the sense of its uselessness. Recovering his natural—and by that very fact, authoritative—voice, he simply gave me a proof of confidence.
“We were talking of you just now,” he said.
“Yes, of you,” repeated mother, somewhat anxiously.
Then came a sort of interrogatory:
“What do you think of being when you are grown?” asked father. “You think about it sometimes, don’t you? What sort of life would you prefer? You have your own tastes and preferences. Have you chosen your vocation, like your brothers?”
My vocation! Just what I expected! Vocations were often talked about at our house, and how every one ought faithfully to fulfil his own. During my illness, and in the early days of my convalescence, before my walks with grandfather, I had often thought, and even announced, that when I was grown up I would be a doctor, too. I could not imagine a finer career. I had talked in the kitchen with the peasants who came for the doctor, their faces all drawn with pain, and on the staircase I had met the train of patients who came for consultation with dolorous faces, and went away cheered. Though I had ceased to talk about it it was understood at our house that I was to be my father’s successor.
“I don’t know,” I replied, turning away.
“Ah!” he exclaimed, in a surprised and disappointed tone. “I thought you wanted to be a doctor.”
“Oh, no!” I replied, suddenly making up my mind in a spirit of opposition.
He said nothing more of this hope which had been dear to him, but went on:
“Oh, well, you have plenty of time to choose. Lawyer, perhaps? There are noble causes to defend. Or architect? Building houses, restoring old ones, constructing schools and churches—we have no good architects about here; there is a vacancy for one.”
Thus by turns he extolled the various professions which might keep me in my native town. As he spoke the dastardly thought came to me of separating myself entirely from the house, of achieving the conquest of my own liberty. I sought about in my mind for a calling which would oblige me to leave home. In our part of the country there were no mines nor any metallurgical establishments.
“I want to be an engineer,” I said.
I had but just made the discovery, and knew but vaguely the nature of the profession. There had been some talk about it in the family for Stephen.
“Really?” said my father, without pursuing the subject. “We will talk about it another time.”
“Only,” I said, hanging my head and averting my eyes, somewhat surprised to find how one thing followed another, “only I should need another preparation than that of this school.”
“Your school isn’t sufficient?”
“Oh, the teachers are good fellows,” I replied contemptuously, “but as for lessons, they are far from brilliant.”
Father said “ah!” and was silent. Raising my eyes I saw how surprised he was, and that was as joyful to me as a victory. Perhaps there was also in his countenance another expression than one of surprise. I was giving him an opportunity to get rid of me, as I was pleased to think was his wish; why did he not make the most of it? He turned to mother, who seemed grieved.
“This requires reflection,” he said.
How could one, at such an early age, find pleasure in tormenting those who loved him? Perhaps the picture in my Bible representing the return of the Prodigal Son had taught me the inexhaustible resources of paternal love. My father seemed to me so strong that I could have no fear of hurting him. All through life it is those upon whom one most depends whom one uses and misuses without mercy, not so much as thinking that they may be weary, since they never complain. And counting on their energy and health one always persuades oneself that there will be plenty of time to make it up to them, in case of need.
And yet I had discerned my father’s sorrow as I stood at the door, and the altered tone of his voice had revealed to me its depth. I am asking myself now if that very confession of sorrow, far from touching me did not lessen him in my eyes, accustomed as I had been to consider him an invincible hero—whether it did not change for me that picture of himwhich he had imprinted upon me from my earliest intelligence.
The long vacation did not bring its usual gaiety and diversions, that year. Mélanie’s departure for the convent, and that of Stephen, young as he was, for the Seminary had been finally decided upon. They were merely waiting for the month of October; then father would take his daughter to Paris and at the same time would place me in the school where my two elder brothers had finished their preparatory studies—for I had gained my point—and mother would go to Lyons with Stephen. This knowledge cast over our games and our gatherings a shade of sadness, which those concerned tried in vain to clear away. Aunt Deen, who was growing a little heavier, climbed the stairs more slowly, blew her nose noisily, prayed very loud and with a certain impetuosity which must have shaken the saints in Paradise, and murmured Thy will be done in a tone that could hardly pass for one of submission. Grandfather shut himself up in his tower, playing his violin with hands that trembled, adding other notes than those of the score, went out for his walk at nightfall without a word to any one, and seemed to be living in ignorance and indifference concerning all that was going on in the family. When he met me he would simply make the remark, accompanied with his little laugh,
“Ah, there you are!” while he never spoke to either of my brothers or sisters as he passed them. But his laugh did not ring true; my ear was quick to perceive that our separation weighed upon him. I would gladly have rushed to him if he had not had an air of thinking lightly of all the vexations in the world. The shadow of my father was always between us. I had had no orders to avoid him; our alienation was by tacit consent. We had never dared to confess to any complicity. One day, however, he added:
“So, you are going to Paris?”
“Yes, grandfather, when schools open.”
“You are in luck. One feels more free in Paris than anywhere else. You will see.”
Was he jesting again? For me Paris meant boarding school, prison. And besides, had he not often told me that large cities are baneful, that real happiness was to be found only in the fields? But grandfather cared little enough for logic.
My approaching departure—that departure which I had proudly demanded, and which inspired within me a secret repulsion against which I hardened myself, made but small stir in the house—a fact that greatly irritated my self-love—being lost in that of Mélanie and my brothers, as a small boat is lost in the wake of a great vessel. Bernard, who had graduated from Saint-Cyr with a high grade that put him in the marine infantry, would go to Toulon, whence he would shortly embark for Tonkin. Now his first word, on his return home had been—I heard himsay it to Aunt Deen, who had hastened, breathless, to open the door,
“You can’t imagine the pleasure with which I ring this bell.”
Then why did he ask to go to China? Mélanie and Stephen, too, exchanged mystifying confidences.
“Do you really want to go?” Stephen asked his sister. “We are so happy here. As for me, there are days when I am not sure.”
Mélanie, with illumined eyes, replied:
“I must, indeed, since God calls me,” adding, almost gaily,
“But I shall carry a lot of handkerchiefs, a dozen at least, for I feel sure that I shall cry all the tears that are in me.”
Why, oh why, then, that craze to go away when they said they were so happy at home? And I, too, why was I suffering in advance at the thought of leaving the house, since I had discovered that I was misunderstood and forlorn, and since I was determined to go?
One evening toward the end of August our friend Abbé Heurtevant came to see us, with a lenten face, so long and dolorous that we all expected to hear of some catastrophe. Mother hastily spoke for us all.
“Monsieur l’Abbé, for the love of God what has happened?”
“Ah, madame, Monseigneur is dead!”
I was the only one, except grandfather, who supposed him to be speaking of his ecclesiastical superior. But all the others understood, and bewailed the death of the Count de Chambord, who was known to have had an affection of the stomach for several days, or rather, as our abbé declared, to have been poisoned by strawberries. Aunt Deen burst out in tumultuous despair, my sisters endeavouring to console her, and father uttered a short obituary address which to me seemed lacking in heart.
“It is a misfortune for France, which he would have governed wisely. Monseigneur the Count of Paris succeeds him: the two princes had become reconciled, and that was the crown of a noble life. But what is the matter with you, Abbé?”
The abbé appeared to be even more inconsolable than Aunt Deen. Grandfather, who since the affair of the electoral lists had said less and less concerning his political opinions, could not control his tongue on this occasion:
“Why, don’t you see that his prophecies are choking him? He is thinking of the Abbey of Orval and of Sister Rose-Colombe. No hope now of hoisting his ‘young prince’ to the throne. There he is, dead from eating too much fruit. And the new Pretender isn’t much younger than the old one.”
“Father, I beg!” protested father.
The abbé, crushed and crumpled in the depths of an easy chair, suddenly started up, drew up the long lines of his body till one might have thought he had climbed upon something in order to orate, and in athundering voice made confession of his faith:
“The King is dead. Long live the King! And the lilies will bloom again!”
“They will bloom again,” repeated Aunt Deen, with conviction.
His public life checked, father was evidently transferring his ambition to our future: he was fulfilling himself in us. I alone withdrew myself from his solicitude, my suspicions having been aroused by Martinod’s insinuations. It was not difficult for me to accumulate causes of vexation. Thus I refused to consider my departure—that departure which was my own doing—as any less important than that of Bernard for the colonies, Stephen for the Seminary, or Mélanie for the convent in the rue du Bac where the Sisters of Charity pass the time of their novitiate. Mélanie’s going away especially wronged me, because it coincided with my own. The people who came to visit my mother on account of my sister’s “holocaust” as Mlle Tapinois called it, exasperated me; they never alluded to me, no one condoled with my parents for losing me, no one noticed me, and yet I was going away, too. Even grandfather made not the slightest effort to keep me at home—nor so much as expressed any regret.
The day of separation came, a grey, rainy day, in harmony with the sadness that hung over the house. The laughing Louise followed, weeping, every step of Mélanie, who clung closely to mother. Every onesaid insignificant nothings—no one had any appropriate words, and the time was slipping away. We must start for the station. We had begun to think of it long before the time, and mother added to her other anxieties her fear that we should be too late.
Neither grandfather nor Aunt Deen was to be of the escorting party. The former dreaded emotional exhibitions, and Aunt Deen excused herself to Mélanie; she simply could not weep silently, and she preferred to remain in solitude where she could give way to her grief without making a disturbance; having said which she began loudly to bewail herself.
I went up to the tower chamber with my sister.
“Till we meet again, grandfather,” murmured Mélanie.
“Adieu, rather, little girl.”
“No, grandfather; till we meet again in heaven, where we are all going.”
He made a vague gesture which said only too plainly, “I won’t spoil your illusions,” adding,
“You are carrying out your own idea. You are right. Till we meet again, then, in the valley of Jehoshaphat.”
He showed himself no more moved over me.
“Well, well, my boy; may Paris be good to you!”
We went out together, last of all. Mélanie kissed old Mariette, who murmured, “Can it be possible!” and stepped across the threshold. Twice she turned again toward the house, and the second time she made thesign of the cross. We could hear Aunt Deen’s cries from her closed room.
We were too early at the station, and had to drag out the time in the waiting-room and on the platform. Father busied himself with the tickets and the baggage. A few family friends who had come to bid us good-bye joined us with doleful faces and words of sympathy. Thus we had to endure Mlle Tapinois,—whom I could never think of except in her night dress with a candle in her hand, since I had recognised her in the aged dove in “Scenes of Animal Life”—and Abbé Heurtevant, who since the death of his monarch had grown bent, and could predict nothing but misfortune. Nothing could take place in our town without the whole population mixing in. Marriage, departure or death, the public claimed its share. Mother was politely thanking all these people whose presence so distressed her—she would fain have been alone with her daughter, and I could see that she was enduring martyrdom. The last moments of our being together were flying. Louise, Nicola and James clung to Mélanie—Bernard was trying to brighten the conversation, but his pleasantries fell wide of the mark. As for Stephen, absorbed, he was doubtless thinking that it would soon be his turn, or perhaps he was praying.
When the moment came, mother wanted to be the last to say good-bye; she clasped her daughter to her breast without a word, then, relinquishingher hold she whispered low,
“My child, I bless thee.”
I was beside her, waiting for my turn to say good-bye. I used to imagine to myself a parent’s blessing as a solemn act, such as I had seen it in pictures; but here it was given in the twinkling of an eye, and without so much as the lifting of a hand.
But for the demonstrations of Mlle Tapinois, the abbé and several other persons who made a point of uttering memorable words, one might have thought that ours was just any ordinary going away. The train started. Having got in last, I was nearest the door. My father invited me to give that place to my sister. The invitation wounded me, for it sounded too much like an order. Of course I ought to have thought first of getting out of the way.
Mélanie extended her head from the window with no heed to the falling rain. She waved her arm—then as the train rounded a curve she turned back to the compartment with red eyes, but only to hasten to the other window. I knew that she was looking for the house, which was visible from that side. After that she sat down covering her face with her hands. As she remained thus, without moving, father gently took her in his arms.
“You know, my child, if it makes you too unhappy, I shall take you home again.”
She raised her head, tears raining down her cheeks, and with a heart-broken smile replied,
“Oh, father, it is truly my vacation. Only I have been so happy at home,—and never again to see our mother, nor the house—it is hard?”
“And for us?” said my father.
He turned away his head. Perhaps if I had better appreciated his grief, I should have suffered less, in my corner, from thinking myself forgotten. But as he controlled himself, I was free to torment myself to my heart’s content. My sister was going away to carry out her own idea, as grandfather had said, whereas I was being sent to prison. I quite forgot that I had myself asked to be sent. But had I not been a prisoner already, at our house? And in my rebellion, working myself up with the thought of Nazzarena on the high road, the sun shining through her hair and her teeth parted in her smile, I repeated to myself the phrase which chimed with the movement of the train,
“I want to be free! I want to be free!”