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CHAPTER 1
"Tschah!" exclaimed old Roland suddenly, after he had remained
motionless for a quarter of an hour, his eyes fixed on the water,
while now and again he very slightly lifted his line sunk in the sea.
Mme. Roland, dozing in the stern by the side of Mme. Rosemilly, who
had been invited to join the fishing-party, woke up, and turning her
head to look at her husband, said:
"Well, well! Gerome."
And the old fellow replied in a fury:
"They do not bite at all. I have taken nothing since noon. Only men
should ever go fishing. Women always delay the start till it is too
late."
His two sons, Pierre and Jean, who each held a line twisted round his
forefinger, one to port and one to starboard, both began to laugh, and
Jean remarked:
"You are not very polite to our guest, father."
M. Roland was abashed, and apologized.
"I beg your pardon, Mme. Rosemilly, but that is just like me. I invite
ladies because I like to be with them, and then, as soon as I feel the
water beneath me, I think of nothing but the fish."
Mme. Roland was now quite awake, and gazing with a softened look at
the wide horizon of cliff and sea.
"You have had good sport, all the same," she murmured.
But her husband shook his head in denial, though at the same time he
glanced complacently at the basket where the fish caught by the three
men were still breathing spasmodically, with a low rustle of clammy
scales and struggling fins, and dull, ineffectual efforts, gasping in
the fatal air. Old Roland took the basket between his knees and tilted
it up, making the silver heap of creatures slide to the edge that he
might see those lying at the bottom, and their death-throes became
more convulsive, while the strong smell of their bodies, a wholesome
reek of brine, came up from the full depths of the creel. The old
fisherman sniffed it eagerly, as we smell at roses, and exclaimed:
"Cristi! But they are fresh enough!" and he went on: "How many did you
pull out, doctor?"
His eldest son, Pierre, a man of thirty, with black whiskers trimmed
square like a lawyer's, his mustache and beard shaved away, replied:
"Oh, not many; three or four."
The father turned to the younger. "And you, Jean?" said he.
Jean, a tall fellow, much younger than his brother, fair, with a full
beard, smiled and murmured:
"Much the same as Pierre--four or five."
Every time they told the same fib, which delighted father Roland. He
had hitched his line round a row-lock, and folding his arms he
announced:
"I will never again try to fish after noon. After ten in the morning
it is all over. The lazy brutes will not bite; they are taking their
siesta in the sun." And he looked round at the sea on all sides, with
the satisfied air of a proprietor.
He was a retired jeweller who had been led by an inordinate love of
seafaring and fishing to fly from the shop as soon as he had made
enough money to live in modest comfort on the interest of his savings.
He retired to le Havre, bought a boat, and became an amateur skipper.
His two sons, Pierre and Jean, had remained at Paris to continue their
studies, and came for the holidays from time to time to share their
father's amusements.
On leaving school, Pierre, the elder, five years older than Jean, had
felt a vocation to various professions and had tried half a dozen in
succession, but, soon disgusted with each in turn, he started afresh
with new hopes. Medicine had been his last fancy, and he had set to
work with so much ardour that he had just qualified after an unusually
short course of study, by a special remission of time from the
minister. He was enthusiastic, intelligent, fickle, but obstinate,
full of Utopias and philosophical notions.
Jean, who was as fair as his brother was dark, as deliberate as his
brother was vehement, as gentle as his brother was unforgiving, had
quietly gone through his studies for the law and had just taken his
diploma as a licentiate, at the time when Pierre had taken his in
medicine. So they were now having a little rest at home, and both
looked forward to settling in Havre if they could find a satisfactory
opening.
But a vague jealousy, one of those dormant jealousies which grow up
between brothers or sisters and slowly ripen till they burst, on the
occasion of a marriage perhaps, or of some good fortune happening to
one of them, kept them on the alert in a sort of brotherly and non-
aggressive animosity. They were fond of each other, it is true, but
they watched each other. Pierre, five years old when Jean was born,
had looked with the eyes of a little petted animal at that other
little animal which had suddenly come to lie in his father's and
mother's arms and to be loved and fondled by them. Jean, from his
birth, had always been a pattern of sweetness, gentleness, and good
temper, and Pierre had by degrees begun to chafe at ever-lastingly
hearing the praises of this great lad, whose sweetness in his eyes was
indolence, whose gentleness was stupidity, and whose kindliness was
blindness. His parents, whose dream for their sons was some
respectable and undistinguished calling, blamed him for so often
changing his mind, for his fits of enthusiasm, his abortive
beginnings, and all his ineffectual impulses towards generous ideas
and the liberal professions.
Since he had grown to manhood they no longer said in so many words:
"Look at Jean and follow his example," but every time he heard them
say "Jean did this--Jean does that," he understood their meaning and
the hint the words conveyed.
Their mother, an orderly person, a thrifty and rather sentimental
woman of the middle class, with the soul of a soft-hearted book-
keeper, was constantly quenching the little rivalries between her two
big sons to which the petty events of their life constantly gave rise.
Another little circumstance, too, just now disturbed her peace of
mind, and she was in fear of some complications; for in the course of
the winter, while her boys were finishing their studies, each in his
own line, she had made the acquaintance of a neighbour, Mme.
Rosemilly, the widow of a captain of a merchantman who had died at sea
two years before. The young widow--quite young, only three-and-twenty
--a woman of strong intellect who knew life by instinct as the free
animals do, as though she had seen, gone through, understood, and
weighted every conceivable contingency, and judged them with a
wholesome, strict, and benevolent mind, had fallen into the habit of
calling to work or chat for an hour in the evening with these friendly
neighbours, who would give her a cup of tea.
Father Roland, always goaded on by his seafaring craze, would question
their new friend about the departed captain; and she would talk of
him, and his voyages, and his old-world tales, without hesitation,
like a resigned and reasonable woman who loves life and respects
death.
The two sons on their return, finding the pretty widow quite at home
in the house, forthwith began to court her, less from any wish to
charm her than from the desire to cut each other out.
Their mother, being practical and prudent, sincerely hoped that one of
them might win the young widow, for she was rich; but then she would
have liked that the other should not be grieved.
Mme. Rosemilly was fair, with blue eyes, a mass of light waving hair,
fluttering at the least breath of wind, and an alert, daring,
pugnacious little way with her, which did not in the least answer to
the sober method of her mind.
She already seemed to like Jean best, attracted, no doubt, by an
affinity of nature. This preference, however, she betrayed only by an
almost imperceptible difference of voice and look and also by
occasionally asking his opinion. She seemed to guess that Jean's views
would support her own, while those of Pierre must inevitably be
different. When she spoke of the doctor's ideas on politics, art,
philosophy, or morals, she would sometimes say: "Your crotchets." Then
he would look at her with the cold gleam of an accuser drawing up an
indictment against women--all women, poor weak things.
Never till his sons came home had M. Roland invited her to join his
fishing expeditions, nor had he ever taken his wife; for he liked to
put off before daybreak, with his ally, Captain Beausire, a master
mariner retired, whom he had first met on the quay at high tides and
with whom he had struck up an intimacy, and the old sailor Papagris,
known as Jean Bart, in whose charge the boat was left.
But one evening of the week before, Mme. Rosemilly, who had been
dining with them, remarked, "It must be great fun to go out fishing."
The jeweller, flattered by her interest and suddenly fired with the
wish to share his favourite sport with her, and to make a convert
after the manner of priests, exclaimed: "Would you like to come?"
"To be sure I should."
"Next Tuesday?"
"Yes, next Tuesday."
"Are you the woman to be ready to start at five in the morning?"
She exclaimed in horror:
"No, indeed: that is too much."
He was disappointed and chilled, suddenly doubting her true vocation.
However, he said:
"At what hour can you be ready?"
"Well--at nine?"
"Not before?"
"No, not before. Even that is very early."
The old fellow hesitated; he certainly would catch nothing, for when
the sun has warmed the sea the fish bite no more; but the two brothers
had eagerly pressed the scheme, and organized and arranged everything
there and then.
So on the following Tuesday the Pearl had dropped anchor under the
white rocks of Cape la Heve; they had fished till midday, then they
had slept awhile, and then fished again without catching anything; and
then it was that father Roland, perceiving, rather late, that all that
Mme. Rosemilly really enjoyed and cared for was the sail on the sea,
and seeing that his lines hung motionless, had uttered in a spirit of
unreasonable annoyance, that vehement "Tschah!" which applied as much
to the pathetic widow as to the creatures he could not catch.
Now he contemplated the spoil--his fish--with the joyful thrill of a
miser; seeing as he looked up at the sky that the sun was getting low:
"Well, boys," said he, "suppose we turn homeward."
The young men hauled in their lines, coiled them up, cleaned the hooks
and stuck them into corks, and sat waiting.
Roland stood up to look out like a captain.
"No wind," said he. "You will have to pull, young 'uns."
And suddenly extending one arm to the northward, he exclaimed:
"Here comes the packet from Southampton."
Away over the level sea, spread out like a blue sheet, vast and sheeny
and shot with flame and gold, an inky cloud was visible against the
rosy sky in the quarter to which he pointed, and below it they could
make out the hull of the steamer, which looked tiny at such a
distance. And to southward other wreaths of smoke, numbers of them,
could be seen, all converging towards the Havre pier, now scarcely
visible as a white streak with the lighthouse, upright, like a horn,
at the end of it.
Roland asked: "Is not the Normandie due to-day?" And Jean replied:
"Yes, to-day."
"Give me my glass. I fancy I see her out there."
The father pulled out the copper tube, adjusted it to his eye, sought
the speck, and then, delighted to have seen it, exclaimed:
"Yes, yes, there she is. I know her two funnels. Would you like to
look, Mme. Rosemilly?"
She took the telescope and directed it towards the Atlantic horizon,
without being able, however, to find the vessel, for she could
distinguish nothing--nothing but blue, with a coloured halo round it,
a circular rainbow--and then all manner of queer things, winking
eclipses which made her feel sick.
She said as she returned the glass:
"I never could see with that thing. It used to put my husband in quite
a rage; he would stand for hours at the windows watching the ships
pass."
Old Roland, much put out, retorted:
"Then it must be some defect in your eye, for my glass is a very good
one."
Then he offered it to his wife.
"Would you like to look?"
"No, thank you. I know before hand that I could not see through it."
Mme. Roland, a woman of eight-and-forty but who did not look it,
seemed to be enjoying this excursion and this waning day more than any
of the party.
Her chestnut hair was only just beginning to show streaks of white.
She had a calm, reasonable face, a kind and happy way with her which
it was a pleasure to see. Her son Pierre was wont to say that she knew
the value of money, but this did not hinder her from enjoying the
delights of dreaming. She was fond of reading, of novels, and poetry,
not for their value as works of art, but for the sake of the tender
melancholy mood they would induce in her. A line of poetry, often but
a poor one, often a bad one, would touch the little chord, as she
expressed it, and give her the sense of some mysterious desire almost
realized. And she delighted in these faint emotions which brought a
little flutter to her soul, otherwise as strictly kept as a ledger.
Since settling at Havre she had become perceptibly stouter, and her
figure, which had been very supple and slight, had grown heavier.
This day on the sea had been delightful to her. Her husband, without
being brutal, was rough with her, as a man who is the despot of his
shop is apt to be rough, without anger or hatred; to such men to give
an order is to swear. He controlled himself in the presence of
strangers, but in private he let loose and gave himself terrible vent,
though he was himself afraid of every one. She, in sheer horror of the
turmoil, of scenes, of useless explanations, always gave way and never
asked for anything; for a very long time she had not ventured to ask
Roland to take her out in the boat. So she had joyfully hailed this
opportunity, and was keenly enjoying the rare and new pleasure.
From the moment when they started she surrendered herself completely,
body and soul, to the soft, gliding motion over the waves. She was not
thinking; her mind was not wandering through either memories or hopes;
it seemed to her as though her heart, like her body, was floating on
something soft and liquid and delicious which rocked and lulled it.
When their father gave the word to return, "Come, take your places at
the oars!" she smiled to see her sons, her two great boys, take off
their jackets and roll up their shirt-sleeves on their bare arms.
Pierre, who was nearest to the two women, took the stroke oar, Jean
the other, and they sat waiting till the skipper should say: "Give
way!" For he insisted on everything being done according to strict
rule.
Simultaneously, as if by a single effort, they dipped the oars, and
lying back, pulling with all their might, began a struggle to display
their strength. They had come out easily, under sail, but the breeze
had died away, and the masculine pride of the two brothers was
suddenly aroused by the prospect of measuring their powers. When they
went out alone with their father they plied the oars without any
steering, for Roland would be busy getting the lines ready, while he
kept a lookout in the boat's course, guiding it by a sign or a word:
"Easy, Jean, and you, Pierre, put your back into it." Or he would say,
"Now, then, number one; come, number two--a little elbow grease." Then
the one who had been dreaming pulled harder, the one who had got
excited eased down, and the boat's head came round.
But to-day they meant to display their biceps. Pierre's arms were
hairy, somewhat lean but sinewy; Jean's were round and white and rosy,
and the knot of muscles moved under the skin.
At first Pierre had the advantage. With his teeth set, his brow knit,
his legs rigid, his hands clinched on the oar, he made it bend from
end to end at every stroke, and the Pearl was veering landward. Father
Roland, sitting in the bows, so as to leave the stern seat to the two
women, wasted his breath shouting, "Easy, number one; pull harder,
number two!" Pierre pulled harder in his frenzy, and "number two"
could not keep time with his wild stroke.
At last the skipper cried: "Stop her!" The two oars were lifted
simultaneously, and then by his father's orders Jean pulled alone for
a few minutes. But from that moment he had it all his own way; he grew
eager and warmed to his work, while Pierre, out of breath and
exhausted by his first vigorous spurt, was lax and panting. Four times
running father Roland made them stop while the elder took breath, so
as to get the boat into her right course again. Then the doctor,
humiliated and fuming, his forehead dropping with sweat, his cheeks
white, stammered out:
"I cannot think what has come over me; I have a stitch in my side. I
started very well, but it has pulled me up."
Jean asked: "Shall I pull alone with both oars for a time?"
"No, thanks, it will go off."
And their mother, somewhat vexed, said:
"Why, Pierre, what rhyme or reason is there in getting into such a
state. You are not a child."
And he shrugged his shoulders and set to once more.
Mme. Rosemilly pretended not to see, not to understand, not to hear.
Her fair head went back with an engaging little jerk every time the
boat moved forward, making the fine wayward hairs flutter about her
temples.
But father Roland presently called out:
"Look, the Prince Albert is catching us up!"
They all looked round. Long and low in the water, with her two raking
funnels and two yellow paddle-boxes like two round cheeks, the
Southampton packet came ploughing on at full steam, crowded with
passengers under open parasols. Its hurrying, noisy paddle-wheels
beating up the water which fell again in foam, gave it an appearance
of haste as of a courier pressed for time, and the upright stem cut
through the water, throwing up two thin translucent waves which glided
off along the hull.
When it had come quite near the Pearl, father Roland lifted his hat,
the ladies shook their handkerchiefs, and half a dozen parasols
eagerly waved on board the steamboat responded to this salute as she
went on her way, leaving behind her a few broad undulations on the
still and glassy surface of the sea.
There were other vessels, each with its smoky cap, coming in from
every part of the horizon towards the short white jetty, which
swallowed them up, one after another, like a mouth. And the fishing
barks and lighter craft with broad sails and slender masts, stealing
across the sky in tow of inconspicuous tugs, were coming in, faster
and slower, towards the devouring ogre, who from time to time seemed
to have had a surfeit, and spewed out to the open sea another fleet of
steamers, brigs, schooners, and three-masted vessels with their
tangled mass of rigging. The hurrying steamships flew off to the right
and left over the smooth bosom of the ocean, while sailing vessels,
cast off by the pilot-tugs which had hauled them out, lay motionless,
dressing themselves from the main-mast to the fore-tops in canvas,
white or brown, and ruddy in the setting sun.
Mme. Roland, with her eyes half-shut, murmured: "Good heavens, how
beautiful the sea is!"
And Mme. Rosemilly replied with a long sigh, which, however, had no
sadness in it:
"Yes, but it is sometimes very cruel, all the same."
Roland exclaimed:
"Look, there is the Normandie just going in. A big ship, isn't she?"
Then he described the coast opposite, far, far away, on the other side
of the mouth of the Seine--that mouth extended over twenty kilometres,
said he. He pointed out Villerville, Trouville, Houlgate, Luc,
Arromanches, the little river of Caen, and the rocks of Calvados which
make the coast unsafe as far as Cherbourg. Then he enlarged on the
question of the sand-banks in the Seine, which shift at every tide so
that even the pilots of Quilleboeuf are at fault if they do not survey
the channel every day. He bid them notice how the town of Havre
divided Upper from Lower Normandy. In Lower Normandy the shore sloped
down to the sea in pasture-lands, fields, and meadows. The coast of
Upper Normandy, on the contrary, was steep, a high cliff, ravined,
cleft and towering, forming an immense white rampart all the way to
Dunkirk, while in each hollow a village or a port lay hidden: Etretat,
Fecamp, Saint-Valery, Treport, Dieppe, and the rest.
The two women did not listen. Torpid with comfort and impressed by the
sight of the ocean covered with vessels rushing to and fro like wild
beasts about their den, they sat speechless, somewhat awed by the
soothing and gorgeous sunset. Roland alone talked on without end; he
was one of those whom nothing can disturb. Women, whose nerves are
more sensitive, sometimes feel, without knowing why, that the sound of
useless speech is as irritating as an insult.
Pierre and Jean, who had calmed down, were rowing slowly, and the
Pearl was making for the harbour, a tiny thing among those huge
vessels.
When they came alongside of the quay, Papagris, who was waiting there,
gave his hand to the ladies to help them out, and they took the way
into the town. A large crowd, the crowd which haunts the pier every
day at high tide--was also drifting homeward. Mme. Roland and Mme.
Rosemilly led the way, followed by the three men. As they went up the
Rue de Paris they stopped now and then in front of a milliner's or a
jeweller's shop, to look at a bonnet or an ornament; then after making
their comments they went on again. In front of the Place de la Bourse
Roland paused, as he did every day, to gaze at the docks full of
vessels--the /Bassin du Commerce/, with other docks beyond, where the
huge hulls lay side by side, closely packed in rows, four or five
deep. And masts innumerable; along several kilometres of quays the
endless masts, with their yards, poles, and rigging, gave this great
gap in the heart of the town the look of a dead forest. Above this
leafless forest the gulls were wheeling, and watching to pounce, like
a falling stone, on any scraps flung overboard; a sailor boy, fixing a
pulley to a cross-beam, looked as if he had gone up there bird's-
nesting.
"Will you dine with us without any sort of ceremony, just that we may
end the day together?" said Mme. Roland to her friend.
"To be sure I will, with pleasure; I accept equally without ceremony.
It would be dismal to go home and be alone this evening."
Pierre, who had heard, and who was beginning to be restless under the
young woman's indifference, muttered to himself: "Well, the widow is
taking root now, it would seem." For some days past he had spoken of
her as "the widow." The word, harmless in itself, irritated Jean
merely by the tone given to it, which to him seemed spiteful and
offensive.
The three men spoke not another word till they reached the threshold
of their own house. It was a narrow one, consisting of a ground-floor
and two floors above, in the Rue Belle-Normande. The maid, Josephine,
a girl of nineteen, a rustic servant-of-all-work at low wages, gifted
to excess with the startled animal expression of a peasant, opened the
door, went up stairs at her master's heels to the drawing-room, which
was on the first floor, and then said:
"A gentleman called--three times."
Old Roland, who never spoke to her without shouting and swearing,
cried out:
"Who do you say called, in the devil's name?"
She never winced at her master's roaring voice, and replied:
"A gentleman from the lawyer's."
"What lawyer?"
"Why, M'sieu 'Canu--who else?"
"And what did this gentleman say?"
"That M'sieu 'Canu will call in himself in the course of the evening."
Maitre Lecanu was M. Roland's lawyer, and in a way his friend,
managing his business for him. For him to send word that he would call
in the evening, something urgent and important must be in the wind;
and the four Rolands looked at each other, disturbed by the
announcement as folks of small fortune are wont to be at any
intervention of a lawyer, with its suggestions of contracts,
inheritance, lawsuits--all sorts of desirable or formidable
contingencies. The father, after a few moments of silence, muttered:
"What on earth can it mean?"
Mme. Rosemilly began to laugh.
"Why, a legacy, of course. I am sure of it. I bring good luck."
But they did not expect the death of any one who might leave them
anything.
Mme. Roland, who had a good memory for relationships, began to think
over all their connections on her husband's side and on her own, to
trace up pedigrees and the ramifications of cousin-ship.
Before even taking off her bonnet she said:
"I say, father" (she called her husband "father" at home, and
sometimes "Monsieur Roland" before strangers), "tell me, do you
remember who it was that Joseph Lebru married for the second time?"
"Yes--a little girl named Dumenil, a stationer's daughter."
"Had they any children?"
"I should think so! four or five at least."
"Not from that quarter, then."
She was quite eager already in her search; she caught at the hope of
some added ease dropping from the sky. But Pierre, who was very fond
of his mother, who knew her to be somewhat visionary and feared she
might be disappointed, a little grieved, a little saddened if the news
were bad instead of good, checked her:
"Do not get excited, mother; there is no rich American uncle. For my
part, I should sooner fancy that it is about a marriage for Jean."
Every one was surprised at the suggestion, and Jean was a little
ruffled by his brother's having spoken of it before Mme. Rosemilly.
"And why for me rather than for you? The hypothesis is very
disputable. You are the elder; you, therefore, would be the first to
be thought of. Besides, I do not wish to marry."
Pierre smiled sneeringly:
"Are you in love, then?"
And the other, much put out, retorted: "Is it necessary that a man
should be in love because he does not care to marry yet?"
"Ah, there you are! That 'yet' sets it right; you are waiting."
"Granted that I am waiting, if you will have it so."
But old Roland, who had been listening and cogitating, suddenly hit
upon the most probable solution.
"Bless me! what fools we are to be racking our brains. Maitre Lecanu
is our very good friend; he knows that Pierre is looking out for a
medical partnership and Jean for a lawyer's office, and he has found
something to suit one of you."
This was so obvious and likely that every one accepted it.
"Dinner is ready," said the maid. And they all hurried off to their
rooms to wash their hands before sitting down to table.
Ten minutes later they were at dinner in the little dining-room on the
ground-floor.
At first they were silent; but presently Roland began again in
amazement at this lawyer's visit.
"For after all, why did he not write? Why should he have sent his
clerk three times? Why is he coming himself?"
Pierre thought it quite natural.
"An immediate decision is required, no doubt; and perhaps there are
certain confidential conditions which it does not do to put into
writing."
Still, they were all puzzled, and all four a little annoyed at having
invited a stranger, who would be in the way of their discussing and
deciding on what should be done.
They had just gone upstairs again when the lawyer was announced.
Roland flew to meet him.
"Good-evening, my dear Maitre," said he, giving his visitor the title
which in France is the official prefix to the name of every lawyer.
Mme. Rosemilly rose.
"I am going," she said. "I am very tired."
A faint attempt was made to detain her; but she would not consent, and
went home without either of the three men offering to escort her, as
they always had done.
Mme. Roland did the honours eagerly to their visitor.
"A cup of coffee, monsieur?"
"No, thank you. I have just had dinner."
"A cup of tea, then?"
"Thank you, I will accept one later. First we must attend to
business."
The deep silence which succeeded this remark was broken only by the
regular ticking of the clock, and below stairs the clatter of
saucepans which the girl was cleaning--too stupid even to listen at
the door.
The lawyer went on:
"Did you, in Paris, know a certain M. Marechal--Leon Marechal?"
M. and Mme. Roland both exclaimed at once: "I should think so!"
"He was a friend of yours?"
Roland replied: "Our best friend, monsieur, but a fanatic for Paris;
never to be got away from the boulevard. He was a head clerk in the
exchequer office. I have never seen him since I left the capital, and
latterly we had ceased writing to each other. When people are far
apart you know----"
The lawyer gravely put in:
"M. Marechal is deceased."
Both man and wife responded with the little movement of pained
surprise, genuine or false, but always ready, with which such news is
received.
Maitre Lecanu went on:
"My colleague in Paris has just communicated to me the main item of
his will, by which he makes your son Jean--Monsieur Jean Roland--his
sole legatee."
They were all too much amazed to utter a single word. Mme. Roland was
the first to control her emotion and stammered out:
"Good heavens! Poor Leon--our poor friend! Dear me! Dear me! Dead!"
The tears started to her eyes, a woman's silent tears, drops of grief
from her very soul, which trickle down her cheeks and seem so very
sad, being so clear. But Roland was thinking less of the loss than of
the prospect announced. Still, he dared not at once inquire into the
clauses of the will and the amount of the fortune, so to work round to
these interesting facts he asked:
"And what did he die of, poor Marechal?"
Maitre Lecanu did not know in the least.
"All I know is," said he, "that dying without any direct heirs, he has
left the whole of his fortune--about twenty thousand francs a year
($3,840) in three per cents--to your second son, whom he has known
from his birth up, and judges worthy of the legacy. If M. Jean should
refuse the money, it is to go to the foundling hospitals."
Old Roland could not conceal his delight and exclaimed:
"Sacristi! It is the thought of a kind heart. And if I had had no heir
I would not have forgotten him; he was a true friend."
The lawyer smiled.
"I was very glad," he said, "to announce the event to you myself. It
is always a pleasure to be the bearer of good news."
It had not struck him that this good news was that of the death of a
friend, of Roland's best friend; and the old man himself had suddenly
forgotten the intimacy he had but just spoken of with so much
conviction.
Only Mme. Roland and her sons still looked mournful. She, indeed, was
still shedding a few tears, wiping her eyes with her handkerchief,
which she then pressed to her lips to smother her deep sobs.
The doctor murmured:
"He was a good fellow, very affectionate. He often invited us to dine
with him--my brother and me."
Jean, with wide-open, glittering eyes, laid his hand on his handsome
fair beard, a familiar gesture with him, and drew his fingers down it
to the tip of the last hairs, as if to pull it longer and thinner.
Twice his lips parted to utter some decent remark, but after long
meditation he could only say this:
"Yes, he was certainly fond of me. He would always embrace me when I
went to see him."
But his father's thoughts had set off at a gallop--galloping round
this inheritance to come; nay, already in hand; this money lurking
behind the door, which would walk in quite soon, to-morrow, at a word
of consent.
"And there is no possible difficulty in the way?" he asked. "No
lawsuit--no one to dispute it?"
Maitre Lecanu seemed quite easy.
"No; my Paris correspondent states that everything is quite clear. M.
Jean has only to sign his acceptance."
"Good. Then--then the fortune is quite clear?"
"Perfectly clear."
"All the necessary formalities have been gone through?"
"All."
Suddenly the old jeweller had an impulse of shame--obscure,
instinctive, and fleeting; shame of his eagerness to be informed, and
he added:
"You understand that I ask all these questions immediately so as to
save my son unpleasant consequences which he might not foresee.
Sometimes there are debts, embarrassing liabilities, what not! And a
legatee finds himself in an inextricable thorn-bush. After all, I am
not the heir--but I think first of the little 'un."
They were accustomed to speak of Jean among themselves as the "little
one," though he was much bigger than Pierre.
Suddenly Mme. Roland seemed to wake from a dream, to recall some
remote fact, a thing almost forgotten that she had heard long ago, and
of which she was not altogether sure. She inquired doubtingly:
"Were you not saying that our poor friend Marechal had left his
fortune to my little Jean?"
"Yes, madame."
And she went on simply:
"I am much pleased to hear it; it proves that he was attached to us."
Roland had risen.
"And would you wish, my dear sir, that my son should at once sign his
acceptance?"
"No--no, M. Roland. To-morrow, at my office to-morrow, at two o'clock,
if that suits you."
"Yes, to be sure--yes, indeed. I should think so."
Then Mme. Roland, who had also risen and who was smiling after her
tears, went up to the lawyer, and laying her hand on the back of his
chair while she looked at him with the pathetic eyes of a grateful
mother, she said:
"And now for that cup of tea, Monsieur Lecanu?"
"Now I will accept it with pleasure, madame."
The maid, on being summoned, brought in first some dry biscuits in
deep tin boxes, those crisp, insipid English cakes which seem to have
been made for a parrot's beak, and soldered into metal cases for a
voyage round the world. Next she fetched some little gray linen
doilies, folded square, those tea-napkins which in thrifty families
never get washed. A third time she came in with the sugar-basin and
cups; then she departed to heat the water. They sat waiting.
No one could talk; they had too much to think about and nothing to
say. Mme. Roland alone attempted a few commonplace remarks. She gave
an account of the fishing excursion, and sang the praises of the Pearl
and of Mme. Rosemilly.
"Charming, charming!" the lawyer said again and again.
Roland, leaning against the marble mantel-shelf as if it were winter
and the fire burning, with his hands in his pockets and his lips
puckered for a whistle, could not keep still, tortured by the
invincible desire to give vent to his delight. The two brothers, in
two arm-chairs that matched, one on each side of the centre-table,
stared in front of them, in similar attitudes full of dissimilar
expressions.
At last the tea appeared. The lawyer took a cup, sugared it, and drank
it, after having crumbled into it a little cake which was too hard to
crunch. Then he rose, shook hands, and departed.
"Then it is understood," repeated Roland. "To-morrow, at your place,
at two?"
"Quite so. To-morrow, at two."
Jean had not spoken a word.
When their guest had gone, silence fell again till father Roland
clapped his two hands on his younger son's shoulders, crying:
"Well, you devilish lucky dog! You don't embrace me!"
Then Jean smiled. He embraced his father, saying:
"It had not struck me as indispensable."
The old man was beside himself with glee. He walked about the room,
strummed on the furniture with his clumsy nails, turned about on his
heels, and kept saying:
"What luck! What luck! Now, that is really what I call luck!"
Pierre asked:
"Then you used to know this Marechal well?"
And his father replied:
"I believe! Why, he used to spend every evening at our house. Surely
you remember he used to fetch you from school on half-holidays, and
often took you back again after dinner. Why, the very day when Jean
was born it was he who went for the doctor. He had been breakfasting
with us when your mother was taken ill. Of course we knew at once what
it meant, and he set off post-haste. In his hurry he took my hat
instead of his own. I remember that because we had a good laugh over
it afterward. It is very likely that he may have thought of that when
he was dying, and as he had no heir he may have said to himself: 'I
remember helping to bring that youngster into the world, so I will
leave him my savings.'"
Mme. Roland, sunk in a deep chair, seemed lost in reminiscences once
more. She murmured, as though she were thinking aloud:
"Ah, he was a good friend, very devoted, very faithful, a rare soul in
these days."
Jean got up.
"I shall go out for a little walk," he said.
His father was surprised and tried to keep him; they had much to talk
about, plans to be made, decisions to be formed. But the young man
insisted, declaring that he had an engagement. Besides, there would be
time enough for settling everything before he came into possession of
his inheritance. So he went away, for he wished to be alone to
reflect. Pierre, on his part, said that he too was going out, and
after a few minutes followed his brother.
As soon as he was alone with his wife, father Roland took her in his
arms, kissed her a dozen times on each cheek, and, replying to a
reproach she had often brought against him, said:
"You see, my dearest, that it would have been no good to stay any
longer in Paris and work for the children till I dropped, instead of
coming here to recruit my health, since fortune drops on us from the
skies.
She was quite serious.
"It drops from the skies on Jean," she said. "But Pierre?"
"Pierre? But he is a doctor; he will make plenty of money; besides,
his brother will surely do something for him."
"No, he would not take it. Besides, this legacy is for Jean, only for
Jean. Pierre will find himself at a great disadvantage."
The old fellow seemed perplexed: "Well, then, we will leave him rather
more in our will."
"No; that again would not be quite just."
"Drat it all!" he exclaimed. "What do you want me to do in the matter?
You always hit on a whole heap of disagreeable ideas. You must spoil
all my pleasures. Well, I am going to bed. Good-night. All the same, I
call it good luck, jolly good luck!"
And he went off, delighted in spite of everything, and without a word
of regret for the friend so generous in his death.
Mme. Roland sat thinking again in front of the lamp which was burning
out.
Content of CHAPTER 1 [Guy De Maupassant's short novel: Pierre and Jean]
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