IITHE CONFLICT
THE Roquevillards moved in from the country after the departure of their son Hubert, who was in garrison at Brest, and took up their winter quarters in Chambéry. They occupied the second story of an old mansion that lay across the end of Boigne Street, alongside the castle. October was drawing to a close, and the sittings of the various courts brought the lawyer back to work.
One day, after luncheon, at which his wife had not been present, owing to her indisposition, Mr. Roquevillard called to his daughter Margaret, while Maurice was absorbed in the newspapers.
“Come with me, Margaret. You can give me some advice,” he said.
“What about, father?”
He glanced toward Maurice, who, however, did not hear them.
“On a new arrangement for my study,” he said.
This study and work-room, conforming to the angle of the street, which widened out at this point, was a spacious room, with a very high ceiling, lighted by four windows. Two of these windows, in a way, framed a picture of Savoy an history. They gave a view of the castle of the former dukes, a great block of stone buildings, blackened with time, dating from the fourteenth century, of a flat and heavy style of architecture scarcely relieved by some carving in high relief. This old and ruinous habitation was flanked on the right by the head of the Sainte-Chapelle, a delicate Gothic flower, which seemed to uphold, like some solid shaft, the bases of the fortress. At the right it was dominated by the tower of the archives, covered with ivy and Virginia creeper, itself crowned by a turret freshly painted white and looking quite vainglorious, like an aigrette or plume. These edifices of different ages and characters, their construction delayed or hastened according to the financial resources and ambitions of the princely builders, though less orderly, are more eloquent than the unified structures of a single master. A long sequence of history, with its hours of happiness and sorrow, dwells in them. The two towers rose out of a confused mass of trees planted in two superimposed terraces, across which they seemed to intermingle. Beneath the plane trees of the lower level stood the recently erected monuments to Joseph and Xavier de Maistre. Thus, within a little space, dwelt the memories of many centuries. The place was as deserted as a tomb: only the past spoke there.
There is no such thing as getting accustomed to a beautiful view: one day of sunshine suffices to make it new again. When Mr. Roquevillard and his daughter came into this room, if the sun attacked the mournful façade without success, nevertheless it tinted with rose the fine gothic lace-work of the chapel, and above the lighter branches that had begun to lose their leaves, it endowed the vine on the tower of the archives with fresh splendour, and showed even the vainglorious little turret at its best.
“You’ve everything very comfortable for your work here,” said Margaret. “I’m glad, for you work so hard.”
“I should have liked your mother to take this room for her drawing-room,” said her father, “but she would not have it. But don’t you notice anything special, little girl?”
She looked all round the familiar walls, at the book-cases encumbered with works on law and jurisprudence, at the portraits of former judges, her ancestors, more rigid than their justice in the painstaking canvases of the mediocre artists, a view of the Lake of Bourget by Hugard, the best of the Savoyan landscapists, and finally the framed map of La Vigie in the place of honour.
“No, nothing,” she declared, after her inspection.
“That’s because you’re looking too high.”
She noticed then that the heavy oak table, large, enough to hold as many briefs as one could possibly desire, had made way for one that was smaller and more elegant, placed so that it had the best of both light and view.
“Oh,” she cried, “why do you put yourself back like this?”
“Why, to make room for your brother.”
“For Maurice? Is he leaving Mr. Frasne’s office?”
“Yes. He’s to have a place near the window here. See how autumn is shaking off the plane-tree leaves. I prefer the spring. There’s a Judas tree beneath the turret that’s a bright red then, and plum trees in blossom.”
Margaret hardly heard him, and looked quite downcast.
“It’s lovely for Maurice, yes,” she said; “but how about you?”
“Little girl, don’t you know a young man must have things pleasant round him? See if you can finish arranging that table for me. Put some flowers on it, for instance.”
“There’s hardly anything left, father. I’ve nothing but chrysanthemums.”
“Let’s, have some chrysanthemums then. One or two, not more, in a long vase. These young doctors of law come back from Paris with a taste for pretty things, and I’ve not the least bit myself. But you have taste and grace for all of us, and you’ll know how to help us keep him.”
He smiled, with a little constrained smile that begged approval. He moved nearer to the girl and put his hand on her fine dark chestnut hair, unheeding whether he disarranged it.
“You will be leaving us soon, Margaret. Are you glad you’re going to be married?”
Instead of replying to him, she leant against her father and began to weep with a heavy heart. She looked like Mr. Roquevillard, though with a different expression of countenance. With a figure rather tall and vigorous, a slightly arched nose, a straight chin, she gave one, like him, an impression of security and loyalty, an impression to which large brown eyes, the eyes of her mother, added a profound sweetness, whereas her father’s eyes, deep-set and small, threw a flame so sharp that one could hardly bear their gaze.
He was distressed by her sudden burst of tears.
“Why do you cry? Isn’t this marriage all right for you? Raymond Bercy is a good boy, and comes of a good family. He’s finished his medical course, and now is definitely settled here in the city. Have you anything against him? You must not marry him if you don’t love him.”
She stifled her sobs long enough to murmur:
“Oh, I’ve nothing to reproach him with, except——”
“There, there, now, little girl, go on.”
She turned admiring eyes upon her father.
“Except that he isn’t a man like you.”
“You’re absurd, Margaret.” But she began to explain herself further as she grew more calm.
“I don’t know why I’m crying. I ought to be happy. Have I not always been happy here? My childhood comes back to me, with all its joys and sunlight. And I feel quite sorrowful at the thought of going away.”
He comforted her seriously.
“Don’t look backward, Margaret. Let your mother and me do I that. You must think of your woman’s life to come. Prepare yourself for your future, and be strong.”
She tried to smile.
“My future is my family.”
“The family you are going to found for yourself, yes.”
“You have often told me, father, in all our winter walks together, to cherish the traditions of our family.”
“But traditions, young logician, are not cherished in a wardrobe, after the manner of our neighbour in the country. Look at old Viscount de la Mortellerie. He shuts himself up with his heraldry and genealogies, and is surprised when his farmers make so bold as to steal his wine. Tradition is not fostered even in an old mansion, or on an old estate, important as it is to guard our patrimony. Tradition is part and parcel of our daily life, our sentiments; gives support to it, makes it lasting and rich in values.”
Again she looked at him with her big, enthusiastic eyes, and sighed:
“I am too much attached to this home of ours.”
“No, no,” protested her father firmly; “you must not say that. There is always something of the unknown in marriage; I know how the prospect of such a change in your life must make you stop and think. But since neither your heart nor your reason finds serious objections, you must be brave and gay in leaving us. You have been happy with us, that’s my reward. But you can be happy, you must be, even away from us. Go find the flowers for me, and send Maurice.”
“Yes, father.”
She came back in a few moments, carrying quite a sheaf of flowers in her arms. With deft hands she transformed the table intended for her brother, and made it look attractive.
“I had some roses after all, the very last. There! In that vase that changes colour in the sun like an opal. They’re very pretty.”
Mr. Roquevillard repeated good-naturedly:
“Very pretty, indeed.”
But it was his daughter that he praised. She laughed and ran off, saying:
“Now I’ll go and warn Maurice.”
The young man came in promptly after his sister had gone for him.
“You have something to say to me?” he asked as he entered, his hat and cane in his hand, as if he had only a little while to stay.
He was tall, like his father, but thinner and more polished. More elegant in manner, too, and in appearance, he, nevertheless, did not, like his father, bear the same signs of grandeur in his face and attitude, a natural majesty which Mr. Roquevillard at this particular moment tried to tone down, assuming instead an air of affectionate comradeship.
“See how Margaret has arranged your table,” he began.
“My table?”
“Yes, this one, with the roses. You see the castle from it and there’s a good light. Wouldn’t you like to complete your reading with me, Maurice?”
A ray of sunlight touched the flowers, and outside the tower of the archives and the turret were bathed in light. The day made itself an accomplice with Mr. Roquevillard, courting his son with touching awkwardness. But only long afterward do sons appreciate their fathers’ patience with them, and then only through the apprenticeship of their own paternity.
“Then I’m not to return to Mr. Frasne’s office?” asked Maurice.
“No, it’s not necessary. You know enough now of the laws of succession. You can get an idea of business better here, and can attend court oftener. If you like, you can spend some months with your brother-in-law, Charles, who will initiate you into the fine points of procedure. He’s one of our busiest attorneys. Eventually you will make your début at the bar. If you want it, I’ve a very pretty case to offer you. It’s a very interesting point of law. It turns on the validity of a bill of sale.”
Never had he pleaded with such care and condescension. But the young man let him talk. He reflected.
“I thought it was understood,” he said, “that I should spend six months in Frasne’s office.”
“Well, then, the six months have almost rolled by. You began there in June, and here we are at the end of October.”
“But I took my vacation at the beginning of August, and it’s only a little while since I began again. And I’ve been examining some important liquidations these last days.”
“We shall find plenty of liquidations for you in the law courts,” replied Mr. Roquevillard bluntly. “They come up oftenest of anything at trials. I have a number of unusual pieces of business for the reopening this time. You shall help me. Go get your papers from Frasne’s office and install yourself here.”
“Mr. Frasne is away. It would be more courteous to wait till he gets back.”
He piled up objections, but his father paid no heed to any of them.
“He’s expected back to-morrow. Besides, I warned him about this before he went.”
At this news, Maurice, who had been waiting for the excuse, grew refractory.
“You warned him without saying anything to me about it? I shall never be anything but a little boy here, then. I am disposed of as if I were an object. But I don’t see why my independence must be sacrificed. I am free, and I expect at least to be consulted, even if I can’t have my own way.”
In the face of this revolt, which he had expected, and of which he guessed the secret cause, Mr. Roquevillard preserved his calm, despite the disrespectful tone the conversation was taking on. He knew that thoroughbreds were the most difficult steeds to manage, as the most tempered characters required the most skilful handling.
“Little boy or big boy, you are my son,” he said simply, “and I shall help you in the arrangements for your future.”
But the young man pitched squarely upon the difficulty which both of them until then had kept in the background.
“What’s the use in dissimulation? I know perfectly well why you are taking me away from Frasne’s office.”
His father’s presence of mind nearly warded off the blow:
“Will things be so bad for you, then, in my study, and can you so lightly disdain my guidance? Will your independence be in danger because you benefit by my professional experience, my forty years at the bar? I don’t understand you.”
Seeing his son begin to give way, he thought to complete his victory by a little tenderness.
“Your mother is sick. Your sister is going to leave us. If you stay, I shall be less lonely.”
For a moment he hoped that he had warded off the storm. Maurice hesitated a little while, for at the bottom of his heart he really admired his father; then, persuading himself that he was scoring a victory over hypocrisy, he threw himself headlong again into the offensive.
“Yes, people have taken occasion to warn you against me and Mrs. Frasne. What have they been saying to you? I want to know, and I have the right to know. Bah! This provincial life is so impossible. One is watched and spied on, guarded, bound down. The noblest sentiments are travestied by all the envious hypocrisy and pious venom the village can muster up. But you, father, I won’t admit that you would listen to such low slanders, slanders that don’t hesitate to attack the most virtuous of women.”
Mr. Roquevillard could no longer shun the issue.
“I’ve let you talk, Maurice. Now listen to me. I don’t bother myself with gossip, and I don’t ask you whether it is true that you are more often in your chief’s drawing-room than in his office during his numerous absences on business. All the reasons I gave you for coming here were true ones. But since you cross-question me in this way, I won’t dodge the debate. I’ll admit that on Mrs. Frasne’s account, too, I asked you to finish your studies with me, the natural thing to do anyway. And I don’t need to lend an ear to every calumny. I’ve seen enough with my own eyes.”
“And what then?”
“There’s no use telling you. Don’t insist.”
“You’ve threatened me. Now I should like to know.”
“Very well, then. When your mother, at your request, receives your guests, you should at least respect your own roof. You know what I’m alluding to.”
But Maurice, made tactless by his anger, for the second time, went too far in his argumentative eagerness to justify his passion.
“My personal life deserves respect, too. I don’t want people to meddle with it. I have given you satisfaction on all the points as to which my father has any right to ask a reckoning.”
“Maurice!”
“I passed my examinations, and brilliantly, too. I came back after six years in Paris without a single debt. What blame have I ever deserved from you? You can’t reproach me even with one of those low Latin Quarter intrigues that are so common among the students.”
“I’ve not reproached you with anything. But, my poor child——”
“I’m not a child.”
“You’ll always be a child to your father; Don’t you understand that just because work and pride and family traditions have protected your youth with their sense of order and discipline, this woman, who’s older than you are, and whose name I’ve not been the first to mention here, is all the more a danger for you? Do you so much as know who she is?”
“Don’t talk about her!” cried Maurice.
“I will talk about her, though,” said Mr. Roquevillard, in a tone that had become abrupt and imperious. “Am I the head of the family, or am I not? By what right do you tell me to keep still? Are you afraid I am going to use undignified arguments with you? You know that would not be like me.”
“Mrs. Frasne is a good woman,” repeated the young man.
“Yes, one of those good women who have to play with fire to distract themselves, who are never satisfied unless they monopolise all the men in a drawing-room, even the old ones. One of those virtuous women of to-day, who have read everything except the Gospel, who understand everything except their duty, who excuse everything except virtue, who take advantage of every privilege but that of doing good, which is always open to them. Why are they virtuous? You can’t tell. Neither faith nor shame deters them, and as for honour, that’s a religion for men alone. They are all rebels. In their youth they are content with words. When youth threatens to take wing, believe me, they want realities. This woman here, the young wife of a man already well on in years, ought at least to remember that he houses and feeds her, for he married her without a cent.”
“That’s not true. She had a dot of one hundred thousand francs.”
“Who told you so?”
“She did, herself.”
“I hope so. However, my informant is my old friend Clairval, who introduced the Frasnes to us when his successor was installed here, and he does not speak lightly. Between her dread of poverty, or at least of coming down a long way in the world, and of her husband, whose grim face is not very reassuring, I’ll admit, if she still prefers her husband, that’s as much sense as could be expected of her.”
Quite trembling with this contemptuous treatment of his idol, Maurice took a step forward.
“Enough, father, I beg of you. Don’t accuse her of any baseness. Don’t challenge her courage. I can assure you that you would be wrong. I don’t want to hear her defamed any more, and so I’m going.”
“I forbid you to set foot again in Frasne’s offices.”
“Take care that I don’t refuse ever to set foot in yours.”
This last threat was launched by Maurice from the threshold.
“Maurice!” called Mr. Roquevillard in a changed voice, with a tone more of appeal than of command.
He followed after the boy hastily: only to find that the vestibule was empty, the young man already half-way down the outer steps.
Alone in the great bare study, the father looked at the little table, where the sun fell gently on the roses, all the fine preparations of welcome he had made under the approval of the old portraits, with the country of the past showing through the windows, and he felt himself abandoned like the leader of an army in the evening of his defeat.
“Can a son so rebel against his father?” he reflected. “I spoke gently to him in the beginning. He grew irritable almost at once. How potent that woman is with him, and how I should like to break her! He’ll come back. It’s impossible that he should not. I’ll go and find him, in case——I was too distant with him perhaps. I wounded him unnecessarily. He loves her, poor child. He believes what she tells him. With her siren’s voice and her eyes of fire and all her pretty looks, she has cajoled him, and plays with him. Yes, I was wrong to defy them. Their scorn of hypocrisy and their revolt against society make these women more dangerous than those of other days.... He has run off to her, no doubt. She’ll stir him up against me, against his father. Against your father, Maurice, who, in his love for you, tried to keep you in the right track....”
But he was not a man for useless lamentation. Searching some decision to be made, he went to his wife’s room, for it was there he customarily repaired for counsel in difficult moments. But he found the curtains drawn and Mrs. Roquevillard sleeping. Afflicted with a slow consumption, which had grown more pronounced as she grew older, she suffered often now from a facial neuralgia that completely exhausted her. Many a time, for years, he had opened her door like this, counting on her calm judgment and clear vision, and had had to steal away again without making any noise, thrown back on his own resources. He always felt less confidence in himself when she was depressed or laid low. He was worrying about their son: mothers are more close and have more influence than fathers. She could perhaps have conjured away this peril that threatened Maurice.
“I am alone,” he thought sadly, standing by her sick bed.
Quietly as a cat he stole out of the room. In the drawing-room he found Margaret writing, and from her serene presence drew, as always, some reassurance.
“Here’s the one to help me,” he said to himself. “There’s no sister more devoted.”
He went nearer to her, forcing himself to dissemble his anxiety as she raised her head and smiled.
“What are you doing, little girl? I’ll wager you’re ordering something for your trousseau from some fine shop.”
“Father, you’re nowhere near it.”
“You’re writing to some of your school friends, then, to tell them of your engagement.”
“No nearer.”
“Then you’re reminding your fiancé that he dines here this evening.”
“There’s no need of that.”
She held out the pages in which she had been writing, and he recognised the Roquevillard Book of the Family. According to old-fashioned custom, the Roquevillards kept one of those common-sense books in which our ancestors used to note down, side by side with the management of their estate, certain important facts of private life, such as marriages and deaths, births and honours, expenses, contracts, etc.—books which evoke the past with the impressiveness of old wills, and teach confidence in the future to any one who can draw inspiration from his forebears’ lives or wants to grow up worthy of them.
“I’m bringing it down to date,” added the girl. “Maurice’s return and Hubert’s decoration haven’t been entered in it yet.”
Mr. Roquevillard turned over the leaves of this book that bore such patient witness to the energy of his race, not without pride.
“Who will keep it up after you, Margaret?”
“But I shall go on with it myself, father.”
“No, a woman must belong to her new home.”
She blushed like a school-girl discovered in some fault.
“I’m afraid I shall make a very bad wife,” she said, “for I shall always remain attached to the old home. Everything that goes on here is very dear to me, dwells in my very heart.”
He could not keep from murmuring:
“Dear child!”
“And Maurice,” she replied. “Is he pleased with his new place, my roses and the window? If I were he, I should be enchanted to work near you.”
She had a way of following him in his preoccupations and preparing the way for confidences.
“It was about Maurice I came to talk with you. We had a discussion together just now. I was perhaps a little quick.”
“You, father?”
“As a matter of fact, I clashed with him. He left the house in anger, and anger is a bad counsellor. Go and find him, Margaret. You’ll know how to bring him back.”
She rose briskly without the slightest hesitation.
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps at Frasne’s office. Anyway, the town is not large. You’ll run across him. God forbid that you shouldn’t.”
“I’ll go there first.”
“You understand,” added Mr. Roquevillard quietly, “I couldn’t go myself.”
“Oh, no; not you. He isn’t worth it. He’s been too funny for quite a while. You’d almost say he didn’t like us as much as he used to.”
Father and daughter looked at each other and understood, but did not pursue the subject further.
She put on her hat and jacket hastily, and vanished in pursuit of Maurice. In the street she turned her back to the castle, went down Boigne Street, and by one of those numerous side passages that make a network of Chambéry, she reached the City Hall Square. It was the old Place de Lans, where the commercial life of the city flowed in other days. Some crooked buildings, one of those Italian houses ornamented with veranda and loggia, which may be decorative in photographs and postal cards, but which in reality are dirty, worm-eaten and forlorn, did not succeed in imparting any interest to it. On the wall of a building that had been restored, a black marble tablet was let in, bearing this inscription:
IN THIS HOUSEWERE BORNJOSEPH DE MAISTRE, APRIL 1ST, 1758ANDXAVIER DE MAISTRE, NOVEMBER 8TH, 1763
IN THIS HOUSEWERE BORNJOSEPH DE MAISTRE, APRIL 1ST, 1758ANDXAVIER DE MAISTRE, NOVEMBER 8TH, 1763
Below, a gilded shield announced a lawyer’s office. Margaret Roquevillard searched for the historic landmark with her eyes and mounted the staircase. Her heart beating, for her hurried walk had taxed her strength, she knocked on the door of the Frasne office, entered and accosted the first clerk she saw, demanding:
“My brother, Mr. Maurice Roquevillard, please.”
“He’s not here, mademoiselle,” said the young man, rising with great politeness. “He’s not been here this afternoon.”
But behind a desk, another clerk, whom she did not see, threw out, in a sour voice that betrayed a long-accumulating grudge:
“Go and ask Mrs. Frasne.”
Margaret blushed up to her ears, but thanked him, and without further delay went, in fact, and rang the bell of Mrs. Frasne’s apartment. She was told that madame had gone out. She was relieved for a moment by this news, but after a few steps, regretted it, for her best chance of finding her brother had been there. Where should she discover him now? She went next to Favre Street, to Mrs. Marcellaz, her sister-in-law, who was just coming back from a walk with her three children. Little Julian threw himself upon his aunt, and would not let himself be separated from her, while her sister replied, indifferently:
“No, Maurice is not here. He scarcely ever comes to see me.”
A bump that Adrienne had given herself and was fretting over took up all her further attention.
After these checks, Margaret began to search first one place, then another, in the town, without much hope, walking very fast, as if fear were at her heels. Underneath the Porticoes she passed her fiancé, who made a movement as if to stop her; she passed beyond him, then turned and came back to him a moment.
“Good-day, Raymond,” she said, without a moment to lose. “Haven’t you seen Maurice anywhere?”
“No, Margaret. Are you looking for him?”
“Yes.”
“Shall I help you?”
“No, thanks. I’ll see you this evening.”
Raymond turned and watched her as she walked briskly off.
“She’s not very amiable,” he was thinking. “She’s always so reserved with me.”
But he followed her with his eyes until she was out of sight.
Margaret, pursuing her futile search, was accosted before the Cathedral by a young friend, Jeanne Sassenay, who was passing with her maid. She was a little girl of sixteen or seventeen years, young for her age, with blonde braids down her back, and a quite pretty mobile little face. She fell upon Miss Roquevillard, whom she admired very much.
“Miss Margaret, you are in a great hurry,” she cried.
“Good-day, Jeanne.”
“You’re copying your brother, who passed me in the street without saying a word. I’m old enough to be bowed to just the same.”
And lowering her head a little, she gave a downward glance, as if to lengthen the bottom of her skirt.
“Evidently,” conceded Margaret. “But where did you meet Maurice?”
“On the Reclus bridge.”
“Just now?”
“Oh, no. It was before my music lesson, an hour or two ago.”
“Where was he going?”
“I’ve not the slightest idea. You tell him for me that he’s not very nice.”
“I’ll tell him so most assuredly. With my friends especially it was unpardonable of him.”
“I forgive him just the same,” averred Jeanne Sassenay, bursting into a laugh, which showed a row of white and hearty little teeth.
Left alone again, Margaret saw the open door of the church, and stepped inside the holy place a moment. At this hour there were only two or three forms bent in prayer here and there beneath the vaulted ceiling. But for herself she had great difficulty in saying any prayers: sometimes her thoughts would run on what a charming wife this young girl, so lively and gay and yet serious, too, would make for her brother Maurice in two or three years: sometimes she would recall her father’s anxious face as she had left him. Of herself she did not think at all. At the threshold it struck her all at once that her meditations had not been for herself or her fiancé.
With new resolution she returned again to the Frasne offices, but with no more success than before. This time she did not ring Mrs. Frasne’s bell, but for the sake of peace resigned herself at last to defeat. As she went up Boigne Street again in the fading daylight, the tower of the archives and the castle turret opposite her were outlined against a reddened sky. In the flaming sunset these witnesses of the past rose up in all their glory, as if to show their splendour one last time before they crumbled down. It was one of those evenings of apotheosis that come in autumn, with a glory all the more moving for being fragile—one of those moments of grandeur that are the prelude to decay.
She was struck with these proud shadows etched on the conflagration of the sky, but instead of walking the more slowly to take in the spectacle, she cleared the old familiar porch at one bound.
“Has Mr. Maurice come in yet?” she asked at the very door.
“No, miss, not yet,” explained the maid. “Mr. Roquevillard is waiting for you.”
Her father had heard her, and was already opening the door of his study to let her in.
“Well, Margaret?”
“Father, I couldn’t find him.”
They said little, but, nevertheless, both father and daughter felt all the secret suspense and anguish of some menaced evil—an evil greater than those which youth is usually guilty of, they felt, for they had a foreboding fear of the strength of Mrs. Frasne.