XXXA SERIOUS ACCIDENT
DURING the first days of December an excited correspondence about me began between my father and my grandmother, which increased in violence. She declared she would not consent to my staying away until Christmas; that she had been deprived of my presence too long; that I was her sole reason for living, and that she insisted on my returning to her at the end of the week we had just begun.
“If you do not send her back to me,” wrote grandmother, “I shall alter my will; you will have nothing, and Juliette can wait for thedotyou will save up for her.”
This was my father’s answer:
“I am preparing her to marry a workman!”
When my father told me his answer, I said to him:
“That is a joke, is it not?”
“No,” he answered, “it is my dearest wish.”
“It is not mine!” I answered curtly. “I would give up my life for our cause, but I have no taste for the slow torture of married life out of my own sphere.”
“Juliette!”
“It is true, papa, and I will never, never marry a man who is my inferior.”
“Well, where is your theory of equality?”
“Equality of rights—yes, papa, I believe in that with all my heart, but equality in manners and ways of life—no, never!”
My father was angry and I was sulky.
During the day a cartload of wood was brought to the door, and, fearing a fall of snow, my father, my mother, and myself helped to carry in the logs. As I stooped to pick some up in my arms, my father, taking up one of the logs, gave me such a blow that I screamed with pain. I stood up and found the blood flowing from my temple and left eye. My father, under the impression that he had destroyed my eye, had one of his fits of madness. His only fault was his extreme violence of temper. In one of his rages he had killed a dog of whom he was very fond. In another, because his brother-in-law, a man as tall and as strong as himself, had somewhat roughly treated his wife, my father’s sister, he would have killed him also, if they had not been separated.
He brandished his log of wood furiously, and cried out:
“I would rather see my daughter dead than livingwith only one eye! I shall kill her and myself afterwards!”
My mother tried in vain to hold him back. The gardener endeavoured to wrest the log from him. I suffered intensely. I was half blinded, and I, too, thought my eye was gone. I was not afraid of death; I was only afraid that my father would commit the crime of killing himself and me.
It was a horrible moment. I was paralysed, but, seeing that my father was on the point of escaping from my mother and the gardener, I rushed into the house, and with all my might held the door shut which separated my father from the crime he was about to commit.
My mother kept crying out to him that he would end on the scaffold and dishonour his family. Blattier, the gardener, besought him, saying: “Monsieur Lambert, as good as you are, you are surely not going to do such a dreadful thing!”
I mastered myself, and said to my father in calm tones, through the door:
“Very well, papa, you mean to kill me, but let me first go upstairs for a minute to wash my eye and see whether it is really gone.”
I let go the door—it did not open. My father, who was struggling against their terrified supplications,was dumfounded at the sound of my calm voice. He let fall his log of wood, and leaned against the wall, and, from my little room, where I was bathing my eye, I could hear his sobs and cries of grief.
My heart stood still when I turned up my eyelid. My eyebrow was cut open, but I could see. I folded a wet handkerchief over the wound with one hand, and ran to my father. I looked angrily at him. I was furious with him for not knowing how to master his violent temper, and I felt that but for my calmness, the presence of mind of a mere child, he would have killed me.
“You see,” I said, coldly, “my eye is not put out. It would have been useless to kill me. Only my eyebrow is cut, and I am going to Decaisne’s to have it dressed.”
“Juliette!” cried both of my parents. I did not heed them, but ran to Decaisne. I told him I had hurt myself and that my father was so nervous about it he was unable to treat the wound.
Grandmother arrived next day to take me away. I had not spoken a single word to my father, or answered any of his questions, for I thought that he deserved severe blame.
Grandmother never guessed anything of the truth about this lamentable event, but she thoughtme feverish. I told her quite naturally before my father, how I had hurt myself, and she never gave a second thought to such a simple fact as the sudden shutting of a door on me, which was the version I gave her. My father winced under my protecting lies. I think he would have much preferred a scene of violent reproach to my calm indulgence.
I kissed him coldly as I left. Tears ran down his face, which induced grandmother to give him a passionate embrace.
“Come, my son,” she said, “we will divide her, and each take half, for she belongs solely to us.”
My mother at these words grew angry with me.
“You are clever enough to make yourself beloved,” she said in my ear, kissing me coldly, “but I do not see what you gain by the exaggerated love you inspire. Remember the log of wood!”
Grandmother got into the carriage. My father heard my mother’s last words, and was about to give way once more to his violent temper, but calmed himself, and said to me, kissing me with all his heart:
“Juliette, my darling child, forgive me!”