IITHE FAMILY COUNCIL
“AM I in the way?” asked Margaret.
She stopped on the threshold of her father’s office, seeing such a numerous company gathered there.
“I was going to look for you,” said her father. “You belong here with us.”
A tall, withered old man, with his coat closely buttoned up, who was leaning on the mantelpiece, beneath which a bright fire was burning, threw out in a high head voice:
“In my time they didn’t admit women to the family councils.”
“It isn’t a woman that’s compromised the family, however,” came the brisk reply from the depths of an armchair, where sat a rather vigorous, well-matured lady dressed in black.
But it was purely a discussion of principles with both of them, for they promptly made truce and welcomed the girl with a good grace. Margaret greeted each member of the family circle in turn. First came her great-uncle Stephen Roquevillard, who, though older than Mr. Hamel, carried the burden of his eighty years quite lightly; then her aunt by marriage, Mrs. Camille Roquevillard; then her cousin Leo, the latter’s son, a young manufacturer at Pontcharra in Dauphiné; and finally Charles Marcellaz, who had arrived that morning from Lyons.
Outside the windows a heavy sky, charged with snow, seemed to hang low above the castle, almost crushing it. Already the clouds swung round the turret, and the leafless trees stretched their supplicating branches upward. Only the ivy on the tower of the archives preserved its tint of eternal spring. The room, in spite of its four windows, seemed filled with the bitterness of the day. The book-cases, the portraits, the landscape by Hugard, seemed to wear a look of sadness. The latest law reports, piled on a stand, had not been bound, like those of the preceding years. The big table, covered with briefs, one of them still open, displaying its citations and extracts from the statutes, showed a continuity of work which even the gravest cares had not interrupted; while a fresh bunch of chrysanthemums, placed before a photograph of Mrs. Valentine Roquevillard, revealed the daily care given it by a woman’s hand.
The lawyer begged his guests to be seated. He seemed to reflect a moment, his head bent. He had aged greatly in the past year. The hair of his head and his short, stiff moustache were turning grey. Two lines appeared around his mouth; his neck beneath his collar was thin and hollow. His cheeks were more dull in tint and the flesh less firm. All these signs of physical failing Margaret never saw without an aching at her heart. What a difference there was between the man who sat there now at his table, lost in his thoughts, and that other form robustly erect and joyful outlined against the sky on the hilltop at last summer’s vintage.
When he stood up, with a single gesture he was himself again. Beneath the deep arch of his eyebrows his gaze shone out imperiously as of old, difficult to withstand, fixing itself on the faces of his hearers with an embarrassing precision. The moment he began to speak his new attitude showed that he was the head and front of the family, not easily put down or overborne by many trials.
“I have called you together,” he began, “because our family is in danger. Now, we all bear the same name, excepting Charles Marcellaz, who stands in the place of a son to me because he represents my daughter Germaine. Felicie and Hubert are too far away to be consulted, but their lives testify to such self-sacrifice that their opinions need not be asked. I know they are disinterested.”
“You have good news of the captain?” inquired Mrs. Camille Roquevillard. Her nephew’s uniform had always impressed her favourably, and she was incapable of thinking of more than one person at a time.
Margaret answered her.
“No news for some time, and the last was not very good. He had come down with fever.”
“Court opens December 6th,” began Mr. Roquevillard again, “about three weeks from now. Maurice’s case comes up at the beginning of the session.”
“It’s only a formality,” said Leo, who was proud of managing a rather large factory at twenty-eight, and affected a practical and positive turn of mind that reduced everything to its net results. “An acquittal is certain.”
The old lawyer closed the young man’s mouth with a categorical “No!” His daughter shivered. The men looked at each other, surprised and anxious.
“How do you mean? Why is it ‘No’?”
“Since he’s not guilty.”
“Since it was Mrs. Frasne who took the money.”
The last remark came from Charles Marcellaz, mentioning the common foe by name.
“The wretch!” added the widow, raising her eyes to the ceiling, and inwardly regretting that Mrs. Frasne’s name had been uttered in Margaret’s presence. She divided women simply into two categories, the virtuous and the wanton, though she did not investigate the origin of the children that she rescued. Unlike so many intellectual and emancipated women of to-day, her horizon was limited, but not her charity or devotion.
“Acquittal is not certain,” resumed the head of the family, “on account of the conditions which my son imposes as to his defence. I have seen him several times in the gaol. His will is unshakable. He will not consent to any defence unless the name of Mrs. Frasne is kept out of it.”
With one accord the manufacturer and the old attorney rebelled against this:
“It’s impossible. He’s mad.”
“It’s treachery.”
“He ought not to be listened to.”
“So much the worse. Leave him to his fate.”
This last cowardly advice came from his cousin Leo. Mr. Roquevillard shut him up with a hurt and angry look, which melted promptly into one of sorrow. The family was in disaccord if one member of it repudiated the joint claims upon it. But in the silence which followed old Uncle Stephen remarked softly:
“Myself, I think Maurice is right.”
Mr. Roquevillard, upon this unexpected interjection, continued his explanations.
“This generosity might be understood by a jury selected from the ranks of the well-to-do. It won’t go down with simple farmers. The main point with them will be the disappearance of the money. It’s a sum the very figure of which will dazzle them. They are more alive to outrages against property than to those against persons. This sum, they will argue, could have been stolen only byhimorher. If by her, he would say so, and they should acquit him. In case of doubt, they would still acquit him. He doesn’t dare accuse her, therefore he himself is the thief. They have not the same conception of honour as ourselves.”
“Honour, honour!” repeated Leo twice over, the too evident disdain of his uncle at his remarks having irritated him. “It’s important, above all things, to avoid a verdict that will dishonour us, his family. I don’t admit any honour but that, myself, honour as recognised by the law.”
The oldest member of the family stared insolently at the young man from Lyons.
“I beg of you to say no more,” he murmured in a voice that whistled through his scanty row of teeth.
“Why?” objected the manufacturer, who showed no deference for age.
“Why,” said Uncle Stephen, “because you no longer understand the meaning of certain words.”
“Exactly. Words. Big words, when it’s you who are using them,” retorted Leo.
By way of conciliation, Charles Marcellaz contributed a legal explanation:
“Mrs. Frasne is guilty, but her act doesn’t come within the scope of the law. Theft committed by a wife to the injury of her husband doesn’t permit of any action. In accusing Mrs. Frasne, Maurice doesn’t expose her to any risk, and his testimony is strictly in accordance with the truth.”
But Uncle Stephen, whose far-away youth had been a stormy one, pronounced as a court of last resort:
“You don’t accuse a woman under any pretext, if you’ve been her lover. I recognise your son, Francis.”
The widow Roquevillard, since the beginning of the conference, had been chiding her son below her breath for the views he took. He got his downright intelligence from her, but not her kindness. She made up her mind now to support him openly against this old man who preached such a strange morality.
“Would you have us respect such creatures?” she asked.
The head of the family silenced the futile quarrel with a wave of his hand.
“Let me finish,” he said. “When the time comes I’ll ask you for your opinions. Maurice is opposed to any accusation against Mrs. Frasne. It does not concern us now whether he is right or wrong, because his mind is made up, and we can do nothing with him. If the defence goes beyond the limit he has set for it, he will take the blame upon himself, he says, rather than sanction her being named. He would rather charge himself with the crime than that. What will happen in these circumstances? That is the question, and nothing else. The jury, forced to accept the material fact of theft, which cannot be denied, impressed by the loss of so considerable an amount of money, will seek, I foresee it, a guilty party. Disarmed in the case of Mrs. Frasne, they will turn upon my son. Whether they admit extenuating circumstances for him or not, it’s disgrace.”
“Oh, father!” exclaimed Margaret involuntarily.
“The danger is very great. Do you take it all in? Now, I have thought perhaps of a way to avert this danger.”
The girl, whom her father had not instructed as to his plans before the family gathering, took heart again.
“Cost what it may, father, it must be done.”
“Here it is. In cases where abuse of confidence is involved, I have always found that restitution brings acquittal. A jury is especially sensitive to the loss of money. Suppress this loss and it’s scarcely necessary to indicate a guilty party. No prejudice, no sanction: no conviction, no sentence. It’s an association of ideas that’s habitual with a jury.”
His son-in-law summed things up:
“You want to restore to Mr. Frasne the money that his wife took away from him?”
“That’s it.”
“One hundred thousand francs!” cried Leo. “It’s quite a figure.”
And Charles Marcellaz protested at once:
“But it’s as much as to admit that Maurice did wrong. He pays the money back, therefore he was guilty of taking it.”
“No, not that. The man who goes bail for a debtor isn’t that debtor. Through his lawyer Maurice will explain to the jurors that, although he isn’t willing to accuse anybody, he intends to be beyond suspicion himself. If Mr. Frasne is reimbursed, there is no more theft. To leave Mr. Frasne uncovered is, I suspect, to free my son.”
“Good, Francis,” approved Uncle Stephen, shaking his head like a great bald bird.
This mark of esteem decided the widow upon a friendly demonstration.
“I don’t understand all these tricks very well,” she said, “but good repute is worth more than golden girdles, and my heart is with you, Francis.”
Her son was only reassured by the word “heart,” which committed one to nothing. He exchanged a look with young Charles Marcellaz which signified, “These old people treat money with a high hand; as if there were anything else that gives a family importance or a chance to grow.” Feeling that he was supported on this question, Charles inquired softly:
“One hundred thousand francs—can you pay back that much, father?”
“That’s another question,” replied Mr. Roquevillard, a little dryly, beginning to grow a bit weary of these preliminaries. “I shall come to that presently. First the principles, then the means of applying them.”
But of his own accord, being already decided, he reversed this order, by adding:
“If necessary I shall sell La Vigie.”
It was the last sacrifice of all. Margaret knew the heroism of it, and grew quite pale. Charles, divided between respect and self-interest, admiration and indignation, hesitated, hunted for a way out through this flood of contrary sentiments, and receiving an ironical glance of the eye from Leo, began to argue:
“Sell La Vigie! You haven’t time before December 6th. Or at best you’ll sell for a wretched price. La Vigie is worth one hundred and sixty thousand at the very lowest, without the woods that you bought four years ago in Saint Cassin.”
These objections the lawyer had doubtless put to himself already, for he was prepared with his answer:
“It’s possible,” he said simply. “And if not, then it can be mortgaged.”
“Yes, at five or four and one-half per cent. Five probably, if you want it immediately. Business men won’t fail to take advantage of you. And the land yields scarcely three, whereas you only need one frost or hail-storm to ruin your crops. You have too much experience, father, not to know that mortgaging is an incurable disease for land, a fatal one. Country property is a great risk nowadays for one who does not live off the land, or hasn’t a good income to insure him against loss from bad seasons or competition. It’s compromising the future irrevocably. And La Vigie is the family’s patrimony, sacred to the future, and ought not to be touched.”
Mr. Roquevillard let Charles finish his speech, though he had grown impatient under it.
“No one loves and understands the land better than I,” he replied, raising his tone a little. “No one has listened to its counsels, put his ear to its breast when it has been sick, more truly than I have. And yet I am the one to be reproached with having forgotten it. Let me tell you then, if you don’t know it already, that in the human plan of things there is a divine order that must be respected. Over and above material legacies I place, for my part, the heritage of morality. It is not the patrimony that makes a family, but the long line of generations that have created and maintained the patrimony. If a family is dispossessed, it can found a new estate elsewhere. If it has lost its traditions, its faith, its joint responsibility, its honour, if it is reduced to an assemblage of individuals ruled by contrary interests and following their own destinies rather than the family’s, then it is a body emptied of its soul, a corpse that reeks of death, and the finest estates can never make it live again. A piece of land can be regained by purchase; the virtue of a race is not for sale. That is why the loss of La Vigie affects me less than the danger to my son and my name. But because La Vigie has been from one century to another the portion of the Roquevillards I was not willing to interrupt so continuous a transmission without warning, and consulting all of you. I have given you my own opinion first: I was wrong. Give me yours now as I call your names, honestly. I don’t say I shall follow your advice if it is opposed to mine. I am the head of the family and must take the responsibility myself. But a decision that with one blow shatters the work of so many generations is a grave one, and it will be a comfort to me to have the approval of our family council.”
By the silence that followed these words he realised that the group around him had seized the importance of the occasion. He glanced toward the map of La Vigie on the wall, with its notations of the new lands successively added to it, and the dates of the contracts under which they had been made. So often during the preparation of his cases his gaze had dwelt on this map, not to trace its lines and figures, but to summon up the vision of its woods and fields and vines, with their tillage and vintages. A bit of the land, with all its agricultural work and the movement of the seasons over it, lived in its narrow frame, the mere black lines of which were potent over his imagination.
He turned his eyes from it, and through the windows, under the lowering sky, could see the castle of the old dukes, built gradually through the various epochs of its history, half dismantled now, but still imposing in its guerdon of the past. Better than any documents or archives, than any manuals or chronologies, it made one stop and think, because of the very fact that it remained standing like a witness in the flesh. Of itself it called up memories of ancient Savoy, and the times of his ancestors and rude wars, while the pointed arches of the Sainte-Chapelle symbolised the pious impulses of their hearts. What is left of the dead, with all their acts and sentiments, if these material signs, through which they realise and recall themselves, do not exist for us? Did La Vigie, its lands cleared, subdued, added to and restored, count for nothing in the destiny of the Roquevillards? And when it should be abandoned, would not its mainstay, the visible scene of its continuity, be lacking to his race? In landed properties one generation hands on the spade to another as ancient couriers used to pass the torch. And here was the last chief letting it fall.
But the lawyer turned his head away, spurning all hesitation. The patrimony was not all the family any more than prayer was the church, or courage a prison cell. Hubert and Felicie carried far away from their native soil, to the Soudan or to China, the vital energy that tradition had handed down to them. Maurice, restored again to his normal life, would root out his fault with toil. And as for Margaret, the flame of a devoted life burned steadily in her.
He addressed himself first to his daughter, as the youngest of the company, thinking to hear his thoughts echoed in her reply.
“You, Margaret,” he said, “speak first.”
“I, father? Everything that you do will be all right. Save Maurice, I implore you. If you think the sale of La Vigie is necessary, don’t hesitate. We don’t need a fortune. In any case, take my share. Don’t worry about me. I need very little to live on, and I’ll pull through somehow.”
“I knew it,” said Mr. Roquevillard approvingly.
He caressed Margaret’s hand softly, while he questioned his nephew next.
“And you, Leo. Remember your father,” he added, mistrusting him a little.
The young man assumed the important manner of one who has arrived, a man who has accomplished things, but who will give you his receipt for success just the same. He would tell these ignorant old men something about the ways of modern life, and the new conditions that make it so swift and real and egotistical.
“My dear uncle,” he began, “you are one of those old-timers who start up crusades everywhere and tilt at windmills. You don’t accomplish anything by ruining yourself. You ought to look at things in a more practical light. This very moment Maurice is blackmailing you with his ‘honour.’ Mrs. Frasne’s honour isn’t worth one hundred thousand francs. My nice cousin is blustering in his prison. When he comes into court he’ll sing smaller. I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve often read the accounts of criminal trials in the newspapers, as every one does now. Even the most obstinate prisoners will turn on their victim or accomplices at the last moment to save themselves. The fear of an unfavourable verdict is the beginning of wisdom for them. Maurice is an intelligent boy, with everything to live for: he’ll understand. If by any chance he doesn’t, well, so much the worse for him, after all. It’s a sad thing to say before you, uncle, and I’m very sorry for it; but he would have it so, and I know you like frankness. His danger is all his own. A family isn’t jointly and severally responsible for the faults of one member. That’s one of those absurd theories that have been definitely relegated to the past in our day. ‘Each one for himself,’ is the new motto. No account’s taken of another’s debts, whether it’s your father or your brother or your son. If I earn money, it’s mine, and my good and bad acts are mine. There’s plenty of work looking out for your own happiness, without adding the terrible weight of twenty generations to it. Advance Maurice’s share to him if you insist on it, but hold back his brothers’ and sisters’, and something for yourself in your old age. As for La Vigie, I’d sell it as a matter of fact, if you can get a good price for it, not to buy the jury’s sympathy with it, but because land’s no good any more except to some peasant who worries it like a rat. Industry, machines—that’s the future, for individuals and for society, too.”
Old Uncle Stephen, upon this harangue, let out a little sharp laugh, and mumbled:
“He talks well. A little long-winded, but he talks well.”
The widow, for her part, much agitated, put her hands together and implored the Lord’s assistance.
“You have finished?” asked Mr. Roquevillard, not without a hint of rudeness.
“I’m through.”
“If I’ve understood you correctly then, you’d be perfectly willing to throw Maurice overboard.”
“Excuse me, uncle; he jumps overboard. If he were reasonable, he could easily enough get out of the law’s clutches, safe and sound. But he doesn’t want to be reasonable. I’m always for being reasonable, myself.”
The head of the family turned toward his son-in-law.
“And you, Charles, are you also reasonable?”
Marcellaz hesitated before beginning his reply. He had always chafed a little at his father-in-law’s superiority; the superiority of his wife’s family over his own struck him on each comparison, and irritated him, especially since he had gone back again to the country of his origin. He was an industrious and economical young lawyer, building up his children’s future obstinately, and appeared jealous and watchful of his painfully acquired and moderate fortune. Business had absorbed him, making him limited and hard. But he loved Germaine, and if he mistrusted agitations and did not like to have his sensibilities stirred up, it was not because he did not have any. He hesitated, deploring the past, and hating this situation that did not solve itself.
“Why does Maurice prefer Mrs. Frasne to us even in gaol?” he began. “It’s absurd, since she doesn’t run any risk of punishment. He betrays his family for a false point of honour. One hundred thousand francs! To raise all that money, isn’t it beyond your power? You mustn’t attempt the impossible.”
“But suppose you must attempt the impossible to save him?” put in Margaret.
“Well, then,” concluded Mr. Roquevillard, who wanted a positive answer, “you also, Charles, advise me to desert my son?”
Marcellaz lowered his head, to avoid the ironical eyes of young Leo, and murmured shamefacedly:
“No, just the same.”
When he raised his head again he was surprised by the look in his father-in-law’s eyes. Their habitually masterful expression was veiled and tender, with an unaccustomed sweetness, as of one surprised by the flow of a stream whose humble source he has discovered beneath some bit of verdure.
“Your turn, Thérèse,” he said next.
The widow, since her son’s speech, had not heard a single word of what was said, and the question did not have to be repeated. She was governed by a sure instinct, and did not confuse herself with principles, which she applied better than she could define them. Like most women, she promptly substituted personalities for questions of theory, a method which at least had the merit of keeping abstract solutions at safe distance and scattering metaphysical mists. Throughout the debate she had retained but one word, but that one was a good one. She couldn’t speak to more than one person at a time, and so she laid hold on Leo, regardless of the other members of the assembly.
“Each one for himself, did you say?” she began. “If your uncle here had practised that fine maxim, my boy, you would not this moment be at the head of a factory that brings you in hundreds and hundreds of francs.”
“Mother, you’re laughing at me,” interrupted Leo, his self-esteem wounded by this sally.
But the good lady was off, and nothing could stop her.
“No, no, you know what I mean to say. I’ve already told you the story, and if you’ve forgotten it I’ll refresh your memory. Fifteen years ago your father invested all his savings in the factory he was starting, and then the orders stopped coming in and there came a day when he had to suspend payments. The industry was a new one in the district, and no one had any confidence in it. He went to see your Uncle Francis, here, and explained his danger to him. Francis lent him at once without interest the twenty thousand francs he needed, and needed so badly that we were threatened with being closed out. That’s how we were saved, my boy. From that evil hour I’ve had a great horror of poverty. May God forgive me, if that’s what has made you selfish and mistrustful.”
“Well, well, I didn’t remember,” admitted Leo, with an ill grace.
His mother was filled full of her subject, and was not to be wheedled by this concession, though ordinarily she always yielded to her son’s arguments after a little fussing. When two people live much with each other they don’t pay much attention to themselves, and are quite surprised sometimes, when some grave matter supplies occasion, to find themselves at variance. Nowadays it is a difference which is more and more frequent between one generation and the next, on account of the loosening of family ties and the rapid transformation of ideas.
The gist of her next remarks was ostensibly intended for her brother-in-law.
“I’m only related to you by marriage, Francis, but I bear the same name, and am mindful of it. I’ll put twenty thousand francs at your disposal if you need it in your turn. I don’t understand a bit of your histories, but I know you’re in misfortune. As for Mrs. Frasne, she’s a hussy!”
“Dear aunty, I love you,” said Margaret.
And Mr. Roquevillard added:
“Thank you, Thérèse. I shall probably not need it. I’m happy to think I can count on you if necessary.”
Last of all, old Uncle Stephen outlined his opinion in a slow but firm voice, which cracked like an old bell every now and then as he tried to force it.
“The father is the arbiter of his family and property, Francis. You have all the responsibility, you needn’t ask leave from any one. I was younger than your father. We were orphans at an early age, and he brought us children up and helped us in every way, for he was the heir and head of the family. In those days—it was under the Sardinian rule, before the annexation—daughters received only their legal share, and they were not married for their money. The patrimony went all to one member of the family, and its obligations could not be neglected by the one who inherited it. He had to look out for the younger ones, endowing and establishing them in life, besides seeing to the infirm and needy and the old folk. These young people to-day don’t know what the patrimony meant then, when it was the material force of the family, the whole family grouped about one head, assured of living and enduring because it held together. To-day what use is there in keeping an estate together? If you don’t sell it, the law will take a hand and scatter it when you die. With a forced division of estates there is no more patrimony. What with each one being for himself on the one hand, and the continuous prying and meddling of the state, on the other hand, in all the doings of one’s life, there is no more family. We shall see what this society of individuals subject to the state will make of things.”
He gave a circumspect and scornful little laugh, and ended up with less general considerations.
“However, you’re right to set our honour above money. You’re right, too, to give us warning. We were with you in your prosperity. Fate strikes you down, and we must be with you there, too. I haven’t very much for my part. Outside my legal pension I’ve scarcely more than twenty-five or thirty thousand francs in securities, the income of which helps me to get along. I’m already very old. After I’m gone it’s yours—it’s yours now if you want it.”
Mr. Roquevillard, much moved, replied simply:
“I’m proud of your approval, uncle, and touched by your support. My work will now be easier to carry through. This sacrifice of money will mean Maurice’s acquittal: my experience makes me believe that firmly. I don’t see how I can save La Vigie. Counting up everything, I am worth——”
“This doesn’t concern us further,” said Uncle Stephen, rising.
“I ought to tell you, on the contrary. I want you all to know in case La Vigie goes out of the Roquevillards’ hands one day that it hasn’t been without sorrow, or because there was no necessity. You are my witnesses. La Vigie is worth at least one hundred and sixty thousand francs. My Saint Cassinwoods are appraised at twenty thousand. Germaine had a dot of sixty thousand francs.”
“Ought I to return it all to you or only part of it?” inquired Charles Marcellaz timidly, his generosity the more to be commended because regrets, remorse and hesitation went with it. “It is invested at a certain figure in a share of the law practice I bought at Lyons.”
“By no means, my dear Charles. It belongs to you and Germaine outright, and you have three children to look out for. When Felicie went into the convent we bought annuities for her with twenty thousand francs, and we had reserved a like sum for Margaret’s dot. Of this she has already had eight thousand francs, which she sent to her brother.”
“One hundred and eight thousand,” counted up Leo, who had been sulking, beneath his breath. “He comes high.”
He was not aware as yet of the little loans from their sinking funds of which his own mother and the old magistrate had been guilty the preceding year.
“Father,” said Margaret, “dispose of my dot. I shall never marry.”
“Women are meant to be married,” declared the widow.
But Margaret added resolutely: “I have my diploma. I shall work. I’ll start a school.”
“Women oughtn’t to inherit, according to my ideas,” put in Uncle Stephen, “but I’ll moderate my principles in Margaret’s favour. She shall have my forty thousand francs when I die.”
“Thirty thousand,” corrected Leo, appraising his loss.
“No, forty,” replied the old man, suppressing his avarice definitely but painfully in the common crisis. “I put it lower just now inadvertently. It’s as much as forty-five, to be done with it. I’ll make a new will. I had made you my heir, Francis.”
“I thank you for Margaret, uncle. But I shall not touch her dot, which isn’t enough anyway, unless it’s impossible to realise on La Vigie promptly and at good terms. It will be better to sell the estate, if possible, than to mortgage it. I’ve thought it all out. The returns from land nowadays are precarious. With modern transportation facilities there is competition from such a distance that we can’t any longer count on profits. I prefer to make Margaret’s future sure, and let my sons arrange their own schemes of life. If I can’t find any one to buy, then the land can always be given as security for a loan.”
“We can give you good security, too,” the widow assured him.
“Exactly,” acquiesced Uncle Stephen.
The family council was over. Friendly farewells were exchanged by all excepting Leo, who still showed a little coldness to his uncle.
“It’s always the security that is lost,” he observed to his mother on the staircase.
“I’d pay it gladly,” said the latter flatly.
“Oh, you. You’re too good,” retorted her son.
“And you’re too ungrateful,” said his mother.
“It was my father that was helped out of a hole. Not I.”
“You or your father. Doesn’t it come to the same thing?”
“No.”
Charles escorted Mr. Stephen Roquevillard home, and Maurice’s father was left alone with his daughter. Outside the house the light was growing dim. Mist was cloaking the turret and the tower of the archives, as with an evening mantle. The office was filled with the special sadness that comes with the end of a winter’s day. Margaret put another log on the fire.
“I’m glad it’s over,” said her father. “It passed off well, I thought.”
But Margaret thought indignantly of her cousin Leo.
“That Leo is bad,” she said. “I detest him.”
“His mother is a fine woman,” was her father’s comment.
They were silent. Then both of them glanced at the map of La Vigie on the wall. Instead of a faded sheet of paper, they saw a vision of the place again under the beautiful sunlight of the vintage time, with all its golden vines, the harvested fields, the pastures ready to be tilled, the great comfortable house. The estate which they had sentenced to be sold was making its last appeal to them.
Like Maurice on the Calvary of Lemenc, before he had gone away from them, but with a different sort of love, a love from which all selfish thought of happiness was purged, they said good-bye to La Vigie.