VIIJEANNE SASSENAY
AT the trial, in obedience to her father’s instructions, Margaret Roquevillard gave evidence, under the head of information, as to the money from her trousseau funds which she had lent to Maurice the evening of his departure for Italy, as well as what she had sent to him at Orta. Her testimony over, she had gone home in all haste, as if the fuss made about her generosity filled her with shame. In a feeble way she was to have been of use in the defence of Maurice, and she reproached herself with having shown so much weakness, with having replied so timidly to the interrogations of the presiding judge. Her courage was of the inner kind, and ill adjusted itself to public show. She deplored her modesty now, for to herself it seemed like cowardice, and she was afraid of having impaired the force of her statements by the hesitating way in which she made them.
What had taken place in the court-room before she was led in and after her flight? She could not have told anything about it; she was only conscious of an invincible fear from her first brief contact with justice. She had been shut up in a room with the other witnesses, and had heard the bailiff’s voice calling them one by one, and had seen them go out, her great-uncle Stephen and her Aunt Thérèse just before her. Her turn came last, and she had been conducted to the bar trembling like a new recruit pushed out before the footlights. She had seen a great crowd facing her as she came in, upstairs and down on the floor and in the balcony, a multitude of eyes staring at her, wounding and overwhelming her. All Chambéry was there, spying pitilessly on a young girl’s fear, as they had spied eagerly of late on her family’s death agony. She found herself at last before three magistrates in their red robes, with the rows of jurors on their right. She had thought she should faint when she gave her name, but her father’s voice had caught her ears, that firm, warm voice which she knew so well. It had fortified her instantly, like a cordial. The old advocate was standing erect in front of Maurice, whom he seemed to be protecting, and his presence was so calm that she was at once surprised and quieted by the contagion of it. He put in quite simple terms the questions to be put to her. She had made barely audible replies, and then had fled like a poor bird fluttering off into the brushwood.
“Father will be displeased with me,” she thought in self-reproach. “What a command he has over himself! How he controls himself, and how they all fear him! He stood up twice, and each time I felt a deeper silence in the room. His eyes flashed fire. He seemed young again. He is our whole strength and will.”
At half-past twelve Mr. Roquevillard came home for lunch.
“Serve us quickly, Melanie,” he called out from the doorway. “I’ve not much time.”
The look of battle was in his eyes, a frown on his brow, his gaze direct and piercing. The muscles of his face were taut, and his recent sorrow and anxiety had made him look much older; but his commanding will checked for the time being the ravages of age and fatigue and trouble.
“Well, father?” inquired Margaret piteously.
He reassured her in a few words.
“The hearing reopens in two hours.”
“It’s not over yet?”
“No, no.”
“What’s happened?”
“Didn’t you see anything of it, little girl?”
“Oh, no, father. I came away. Tell me every thing. See, I’m still trembling.”
“You mustn’t tremble, Margaret. Be brave.”
At table, while he ate his lunch rapidly, but with no appetite, he went over the arguments for her.
“You didn’t understand very much, no doubt,” he said, “about the selection of the jury, the administering of the oath to them, the challenging, and the calling of the witnesses.”
“I was near you in the hall, father. When I heard my name I rose, and they led me into a room, where I found Uncle Stephen and Aunt Thérèse.”
“The room where the witnesses wait,” said her father. “Then the depositions began, after the reading of the bill of accusations and the written report made by the police commissioner, stating the theft of one hundred thousand francs. Then came the examination of Maurice. He declared his innocence, but all the time refused to accuse any one else, in spite of the president’s insistence. Of the witnesses for the prosecution, the chief clerk at the Frasne office was the most obstinate against us. He’s the one named Philippeaux, who must hate us, I don’t know why. He testified with a perfect mania for denouncing and compromising Maurice. He tried to make incontrovertible proofs out of presumptions which he inverted and perverted wickedly.”
“What presumptions, father?”
“Knowledge of the deposit of money in the safe, the possible, though not proven, discovery of the combination in a note-book, Maurice’s staying late in the office with the keys the evening of the theft, his lack of personal resources, his departure for foreign territory, the impossibility of imagining any other criminal, et cetera. The other clerks repeated his testimony like well-learned lessons, though with less details and certainty. Finally Mrs. Frasne’s former maid, whom they must have cajoled in some way, pretended that, in her master’s absence, her mistress never went into the offices. What does that prove? Would Mrs. Frasne have called in her maids to help her embezzle? But I mustn’t accuse her myself, either.”
“And yet Maurice is no longer opposed to your doing so, father.”
“I won’t do it, though. We have paid her ransom. Let her keep it and never come back again. I had called as witnesses for the defence, besides yourself, your great-uncle Stephen and my sister-in-law Thérèse to establish the fact that Maurice had not gone away without funds; also the employee of the Society of Credit, the one who made out for you, some time last October, the draft for eight thousand francs on the International Bank of Milan to Maurice’s order; finally Mr. Doudain, the notary.”
“Why was he called?”
“To corroborate the payment of one hundred thousand francs that I turned over to him for Mr. Frasne. He told also the name of the real purchaser of La Vigie. The president, after having conferred with Mr. Latache, president of the chamber of notaries, released him from his professional secret, and he had to tell the truth to the jurors about Mr. Frasne’s fruitful speculations.”
“Was it Mr. Frasne, then, who bought La Vigie?” asked the girl; “for himself, to go and live there instead of us?”
“Didn’t you know it?”
“I couldn’t believe it. There are so many things that I don’t understand. Even last year at the vintage he appeared to be going round making an inspection. He ferreted round everywhere.”
“Yes, little girl, he’s the one who takes the Roquevillards’ place there now, and carries on our traditions. The whole place is his, gratis.”
His voice sounded bitter for a moment, then he continued again with his story.
“His lawyer began speaking at eleven.”
“Who was his lawyer, father?”
“A Mr. Porterieux, from Lyons. There was no one of the bar in Chambéry who would take the case.”
“On your account, father?”
“No doubt.”
“And what did he dare to say about Maurice?”
“He’s a clever man, though, with a very insinuating manner and a kind of cold and calculated violence. He began by tracing a very unflattering portrait of Maurice—a modern young man whom nothing could check, very much imbued with the idea of individual rights; keen to develop his personality and achieve happiness in his own way, whether it trampled down other people’s or not; a young man who would not be bound by the rules of organised society; in short, one of those intellectual anarchists who pass so easily from words and ideas to deeds. ‘Ask his comrades,’ he went on, ‘his friends. They cannot deny that in his daily talk he disparages and tears to pieces the established order of things, and that his special admiration is the pernicious theories of a German philosopher for whom a superior type of humanity, the superman, builds his fortune on the ruin and sorrow of the common lot, the humble and the feeble. And it was not a secret from any one in Chambéry that he was not on good terms with his father, and chafed under his authority.’”
“He said that?” murmured Margaret, in a shocked voice.
“Yes; I’m giving you the tone of his address. Even from myself he drew an adverse argument. From our family he got another; the accused could not, he said, invoke the excuse of a bad education, a lack of instruction, a bad example, or the extenuating circumstances of an unhappy childhood, which might have spoiled his character forever. I pass over his premeditated and self-interested seduction of Mrs. Frasne.”
“Self-interested?”
“Yes, in his moral nihilism Maurice coveted at the same time both the wife and the money, unscrupulously. Having thus made the abuse of Mr. Frasne’s confidence seem probable, or believing he had, Mr. Porterieux took up the accusation, and what he did not hesitate to call its material proofs. Mrs. Frasne consented to run away, he said. Her husband was absent, the day propitious, the opportunity unique. Her lover, unprovided with any personal fortune, sought, and had to seek, for some way to defray the expenses of their voyage. He knew that a deposit had been made from the proceeds of the sale of Belvade; he discovered in a memorandum book the secret of the safe; he had the keys given to him, and arranged to be left alone in the office. He took the money and fled to foreign parts with his mistress. Not only was he guilty, but the only one guilty.”
“And Mrs. Frasne?”
“Mrs. Frasne? Let him accuse her, let him just dare to accuse her. He had nothing to say at the examination, he says nothing at the trial. ‘I defy him to incriminate her,’ concluded the advocate, perhaps imprudently informed by Mr. Battard of Maurice’s generous obstinacy: and this silence, too, which is virtually an admission, condemns him.”
From the dining-room they had passed into the study. Margaret, in this bitter and yet impartial review of the plaintiff’s argument which her father made, heard the rumble of her father’s fury and despair, and was upset by it completely.
“Father,” she murmured, “aren’t we lost? Have you still hope?”
“As if I hadn’t!”
“When will it be over?”
“At two o’clock, in forty minutes more, Mr. Porterieux will resume his argument.”
“Hasn’t he done enough harm to us?”
“It appears not. He has one more argument to enlarge on.”
“What is it?”
“The new admission that comes, according to him, from my making restitution of the one hundred thousand francs. By three o’clock I suppose my turn comes. At four or four-thirty I shall be done.”
And he added, in an easy tone, to reassure her:
“Charles’s train gets in at one. Your brother-in-law ought to be here now.”
A little later, in fact, Charles rang the bell.
“What news, my dear father?” he asked as he came in. “Germaine cried this morning when she said good-bye to me, and the three children imitated her. Your telegram last night caused us so much sorrow. Poor Hubert!”
“I was waiting for you, Charles. Your place is by my side. Margaret will talk to you about things while she gets your lunch. Let me be by myself a few minutes. Be ready at five minutes to two.”
“I’ll be ready. And oh, I must warn you that I’ve made my arrangements for restoring half of Germaine’s dot to you. Later you shall have it all.”
The young lawyer made this announcement with rather an ill grace, being a man little accustomed to benevolence, and trying to disguise it. He, too, had been overborne by sympathy for the common cause; but as his mind followed his heart protestingly, he did not like to advertise his defeat.
“I won’t accept it, my dear Charles,” replied Mr. Roquevillard. He was more moved by this cooperation than the opposition that he had been prepared to combat, and he added:
“Embrace me, Charles.”
Thus family ties were stronger than ever in misfortune.
The advocate shut himself up for a quarter of an hour to gather up the threads of his arguments. The review he had made for Margaret, under the influence of high nervous excitement, had served as an outlet for the anger and shame that had been accumulating in him all morning as he listened to the infamous accusations made against his son. Now his nerves relaxed, and the pounding of his heart grew calm, like the sea when the wind falls. When the moment came for going back to the court-house Margaret saw that his face was less stormy, and that his glance had again the serenity which his visit last evening to La Vigie had given him.
“Until to-night, father,” she said. “May God help you.”
On the doorstep he replied briskly: “Until to-night, little girl—with Maurice.”
The girl had just shut herself in her room to pray when Jeanne Sassenay called at the house.
“Miss Margaret, if you please,” she demanded of the servant who opened the door.
The maid, more rigid and circumspect since Raymony Bercy’s invasion, dismissed this inopportune question in a peremptory tone.
“Miss Margaret is tired. She is seeing no one.”
“So much the worse. I’ll come in, nevertheless.”
And passing by the frightened servant before she had time to bar the way, Jeanne went through the hall on a run, as far as her friend’s room, which she knew of old. She knocked smartly, entered and threw herself into Margaret’s arms.
“It’s I, Margaret,” she said. “Don’t send me away. It’s not Melanie’s fault.”
“You, Jeanne? Why are you here?”
“Because you are alone and tired. Such a lot of people have gone to the hearing, just as if it were a party. And so I—well, I thought my place was here with you. I love you so much.”
Margaret patted her friend’s cheek.
“You are good, Jeanne.”
“Oh, no. It’s just that I’ve so much friendship for you. When I was quite little even, I admired you. And I should like so much to be like you.”
Then in a mysterious tone she changed the subject abruptly.
“Just imagine,” she said, “those ladies all dressed themselves up so for the court-house. As carefully as if they were going to a matinée.”
“Who?”
“Oh, all of them.”
“Yes,” said Miss Roquevillard bitterly. “It’s a question of our honour—quite a spectacle.”
Jeanne Sassenay took her hand.
“I’m not anxious, myself,” she said; and in a learned tone she cut the whole debate short: “On the whole, what do they reproach your brother with that’s so serious? That he ran away with some one? That’s nothing.”
In spite of her sadness Margaret could not keep back a smile, and Jeanne took this for encouragement to go on.
“You know quite well a woman doesn’t let herself be removed as if she were a spot on your clothes. If any one tried to carry me off I’d scratch and bite and hurt him frightfully.... Unless I was going away with him anyway.”
“Keep still, Jeanne.”
“Oh, you never can tell. When you’re in love you’ll do anything. To be in love—it’s something terrible.”
“Jeanne, what do you know about being in love?”
“Why shouldn’t I know? I’m not a little girl any more.”
Thereupon Miss Sassenay gave a poke to her hat, which was losing its balance on her blonde hair, verified the curls that fell over her forehead, and assumed an air of great detachment, to hide her blushing, as she asked:
“He doesn’t love that bad woman any more, does he?”
“Maurice? I don’t believe so.”
“Are you sure?”
“He never speaks of her.”
“She’s never seen him again?”
“No.”
“So much the better. I detest her. In the first place, she wasn’t so good-looking as all that. Fine eyes, yes, but she used them a little too much. And her smiles, and her sly looks, and her grimaces! She was always balancing her head, and craning her neck, and heaving her shoulders and wriggling her hips.”
She got out of her chair quickly and walked across the room in imitation of Mrs. Frasne, caricaturing the gestures and the constant play of movement by which the woman’s inner restlessness was betrayed.
“Jeanne, please stop,” cried Margaret.
“No, no,” continued the girl, fairly launched now. “I tell you brunettes can’t be compared with blondes, for colouring or for grace either. You, Margaret, with your chestnut hair, have the beauty of them all, but you don’t do anything to help yourself.... And then, I detest her anyway....”
“Detest whom, Jeanne?”
“Mrs. Frasne, of course. She’s a fatal woman, and brings bad luck. Your brother has been well punished. She has made him unhappy. She didn’t love him. She’s the one they should have put in jail. As for your brother, they’ll acquit him. You know papa and mamma are for him. Papa looked glum about it at first, but I scolded him. I should have liked to go and see the acquittal. You must congratulate him for me. It must be fine to be acquitted.”
She was babbling on without stopping. Margaret gently interrupted her.
“Will you pray with me, Jeanne?” she asked.
“If you wish.”
The two girls knelt side by side. But scarcely had they begun their orisons before some one knocked at the door.
“It’s the postman,” said the maid, handing some letters to Margaret.
“Will you permit me?” the latter asked of her companion. “It was Hubert’s day.... Oh, a letter from him.... I half expected one.”
With trembling hands she unsealed the envelope, which was postmarked from the Soudan. From the other side of the gates of Death the young officer was taking his part in the family drama. There are few sensations so poignant as that of receiving tidings from those who are no more. Margaret, whose shy patience had hitherto been like calm, let a long moan escape her as she read. Jeanne, discreet and much moved herself, did not dare console her. By her own force of will the girl controlled herself. This was not the time to be weak or give way. Had not her father shown her the proper way to act?
“Hubert!” she murmured.
She seemed to hesitate a moment what to do.
“I must—I think I must go to the court-house, at once,” she said.
“Why?” asked Jeanne.
“Oh, because Hubert, too, has thought of us.”
“Hubert?”
“Yes. He knew he was going to die. In the first part of his letter he tries to deceive us, to cheer us up. And then—and then he writes—there, wait a moment. God help me! I can’t see any more. He writes: ‘If, however, I must stay here always, I offer my life in sacrifice for the honour of our name, for Maurice’s salvation....’ You see, he gives me my orders. I must go.”
Jeanne burst into tears. Already Margaret, in an uplifted mood, was putting on her hat and veil. “I am sure father needs this letter. I can’t hesitate about it.”
Some mysterious connivance seemed at work in the family, between the living and the dead, something that mysteriously made them work together and united them across space and time.
“I’ll go with you,” said her friend, as resolute as she.
“Yes, come,” said Margaret. “I shall be braver if you come with me.”
And the two girls hurried out, passing along by the castle, its glowing walls warm in the winter sunshine; they took a short route through little streets, and beyond the market reached the court-house in a few minutes.
“The court-room, sir?” asked Margaret humbly of the doorkeeper.
“There, madame, on the ground floor. But the hall is full. You can’t get in.”
“But we must go in,” Jeanne Sassenay interrupted, with great assurance. “We have a letter, a very important one, to give to the lawyer for the defence, A very important document.”
“Impossible, ladies. The argument is going on. It’s too late. Who are you?”
The sister of the accused raised her veil.
“Miss Roquevillard.”
“Oh, very good. Follow me.”
Impressed by this name, he led them as far as the door reserved for the use of witnesses.
“You can just open the door, miss. The lawyer’s bench will be before you, a little to the left. Afterwards you can go out that way, or maybe you can find a seat.”
And being a prudent and timid functionary, he added, as he left the two girls:
“But be sure and don’t say it was me who let you in.”
Margaret, who went first, put her hand on the latch. She could hear the voice of some one speaking on the other side. It was not her father’s voice. Behind this door, the destiny of her brother, Maurice, the fate of all the Roquevillards, was running its course at this hour. On behalf of Hubert she was bringing up the last reserves.