"Georges, Georges, it is I. What is the matter?"
His wife stood before him, his wife who now waited for him every night, watching anxiously for his return from the club, for she still believed that he pa.s.sed his evenings there. That night she had heard him walking very late in his room. At last her child fell asleep, and Claire, hearing the father sob, ran to him.
Oh! what boundless, though tardy remorse overwhelmed him when he saw her before him, so deeply moved, so lovely and so loving! Yes, she was in very truth the true companion, the faithful friend. How could he have deserted her? For a long, long time he wept upon her shoulder, unable to speak. And it was fortunate that he did not speak, for he would have told her all, all. The unhappy man felt the need of pouring out his heart--an irresistible longing to accuse himself, to ask forgiveness, to lessen the weight of the remorse that was crushing him.
She spared him the pain of uttering a word:
"You have been gambling, have you not? You have lost--lost heavily?"
He moved his head affirmatively; then, when he was able to speak, he confessed that he must have a hundred thousand francs for the day after the morrow, and that he did not know how to obtain them.
She did not reproach him. She was one of those women who, when face to face with disaster, think only of repairing it, without a word of recrimination. Indeed, in the bottom of her heart she blessed this misfortune which brought him nearer to her and became a bond between their two lives, which had long lain so far apart. She reflected a moment. Then, with an effort indicating a resolution which had cost a bitter struggle, she said:
"Not all is lost as yet. I will go to Savigny tomorrow and ask my grandfather for the money."
He would never have dared to suggest that to her. Indeed, it would never have occurred to him. She was so proud and old Gardinois so hard! Surely that was a great sacrifice for her to make for him, and a striking proof of her love.
"Claire, Claire--how good your are!" he said.
Without replying, she led him to their child"s cradle.
"Kiss her," she said softly; and as they stood there side by side, their heads leaning over the child, Georges was afraid of waking her, and he embraced the mother pa.s.sionately.
CHAPTER XX. REVELATIONS
"Ah! here"s Sigismond. How goes the world, Pere Sigismond? How is business? Is it good with you?"
The old cashier smiled affably, shook hands with the master, his wife, and his brother, and, as they talked, looked curiously about. They were in a manufactory of wallpapers on Faubourg Saint-Antoine, the establishment of the little Procha.s.sons, who were beginning to be formidable rivals. Those former employees of the house of Fromont had set up on their own account, beginning in a very, small way, and had gradually succeeded in making for themselves a place on "Change. Fromont the uncle had a.s.sisted them for a long while with his credit and his money; the result being most friendly relations between the two firms, and a balance--between ten or fifteen thousand francs--which had never been definitely adjusted, because they knew that money was in good hands when the Procha.s.sons had it.
Indeed, the appearance of the factory was most rea.s.suring. The chimneys proudly shook their plumes of smoke. The dull roar of constant toil indicated that the workshops were full of workmen and activity. The buildings were in good repair, the windows clean; everything had an aspect of enthusiasm, of good-humor, of discipline; and behind the grating in the counting-room sat the wife of one of the brothers, simply dressed, with her hair neatly arranged, and an air of authority on her youthful face, deeply intent upon a long column of figures.
Old Sigismond thought bitterly of the difference between the house of Fromont, once so wealthy, now living entirely upon its former reputation, and the ever-increasing prosperity of the establishment before his eyes. His stealthy glance penetrated to the darkest corners, seeking some defect, something to criticise; and his failure to find anything made his heart heavy and his smile forced and anxious.
What embarra.s.sed him most of all was the question how he should approach the subject of the money due his employers without betraying the emptiness of the strongbox. The poor man a.s.sumed a jaunty, unconcerned air which was truly pitiful to see. Business was good--very good. He happened to be pa.s.sing through the quarter and thought he would come in a moment--that was natural, was it not? One likes to see old friends.
But these preambles, these constantly expanding circ.u.mlocutions, did not bring him to the point he wished to reach; on the contrary, they led him away from his goal, and imagining that he detected surprise in the eyes of his auditors, he went completely astray, stammered, lost his head, and, as a last resort, took his hat and pretended to go. At the door he suddenly bethought himself:
"Ah! by the way, so long as I am here--"
He gave a little wink which he thought sly, but which was in reality heartrending.
"So long as I am here, suppose we settle that old account."
The two brothers and the young woman in the counting-room gazed at one another a second, unable to understand.
"Account? What account, pray?"
Then all three began to laugh at the same moment, and heartily too, as if at a joke, a rather broad joke, on the part of the old cashier. "Go along with you, you sly old Pere Pla.n.u.s!" The old man laughed with them!
He laughed without any desire to laugh, simply to do as the others did.
At last they explained. Fromont Jeune had come in person, six months before, to collect the balance in their hands.
Sigismond felt that his strength was going. But he summoned courage to say:
"Ah! yes; true. I had forgotten. Sigismond Pla.n.u.s is growing old, that is plain. I am failing, my children, I am failing."
And the old man went away wiping his eyes, in which still glistened great tears caused by the hearty laugh he had just enjoyed. The young people behind him exchanged glances and shook their heads. They understood.
The blow he had received was so crushing that the cashier, as soon as he was out-of-doors, was obliged to sit down on a bench. So that was the reason why Georges did not come to the counting-room for money. He made his collections in person. What had taken place at the Procha.s.sons" had probably been repeated everywhere else. It was quite useless, therefore, for him to subject himself to further humiliation. Yes, but the notes, the notes!--that thought renewed his strength. He wiped the perspiration from his forehead and started once more to try his luck with a customer in the faubourg. But this time he took his precautions and called to the cashier from the doorway, without entering:
"Good-morning, Pere So-and-So. I want to ask you a question."
He held the door half open, his hand upon the k.n.o.b.
"When did we settle our last bill? I forgot to enter it."
Oh! it was a long while ago, a very long while, that their last bill was settled. Fromont Jeune"s receipt was dated in September. It was five months ago.
The door was hastily closed. Another! Evidently it would be the same thing everywhere.
"Ah! Monsieur Chorche, Monsieur Chorche," muttered poor Sigismond; and while he pursued his journey, with bowed head and trembling legs, Madame Fromont Jeune"s carriage pa.s.sed him close, on its way to the Orleans station; but Claire did not see old Pla.n.u.s, any more than she had seen, when she left her house a few moments earlier, Monsieur Chebe in his long frock-coat and the ill.u.s.trious Delobelle in his stovepipe hat, turning into the Rue des Vieilles-Haudriettes at opposite ends, each with the factory and Risler"s wallet for his objective point. The young woman was much too deeply engrossed by what she had before her to look into the street.
Think of it! It was horrible. To go and ask M. Gardinois for a hundred thousand francs--M. Gardinois, a man who boasted that he had never borrowed or loaned a sou in his life, who never lost an opportunity to tell how, on one occasion, being driven to ask his father for forty francs to buy a pair of trousers, he had repaid the loan in small amounts. In his dealings with everybody, even with his children, M.
Gardinois followed those traditions of avarice which the earth, the cruel earth, often ungrateful to those who till it, seems to inculcate in all peasants. The old man did not intend that any part of his colossal fortune should go to his children during his lifetime.
"They"ll find my property when I am dead," he often said.
Acting upon that principle, he had married off his daughter, the elder Madame Fromont, without one sou of dowry, and he never forgave his son-in-law for having made a fortune without a.s.sistance from him. For it was one of the peculiarities of that nature, made up of vanity and selfishness in equal parts, to wish that every one he knew should need his help, should bow before his wealth. When the Fromonts expressed in his presence their satisfaction at the prosperous turn their business was beginning to take, his sharp, cunning, little blue eye would smile ironically, and he would growl, "We shall see what it all comes to in the end," in a tone that made them tremble. Sometimes, too, at Savigny, in the evening, when the park, the avenues, the blue slates of the chateau, the red brick of the stables, the ponds and brooks shone resplendent, bathed in the golden glory of a lovely sunset, this eccentric parvenu would say aloud before his children, after looking about him:
"The one thing that consoles me for dying some day is that no one in the family will ever be rich enough to keep a chateau that costs fifty thousand francs a year to maintain."
And yet, with that latter-day tenderness which even the sternest grandfathers find in the depths of their hearts, old Gardinois would gladly have made a pet of his granddaughter. But Claire, even as a child, had felt an invincible repugnance for the former peasant"s hardness of heart and vainglorious selfishness. And when affection forms no bonds between those who are separated by difference in education, such repugnance is increased by innumerable trifles. When Claire married Georges, the grandfather said to Madame Fromont:
"If your daughter wishes, I will give her a royal present; but she must ask for it."
But Claire received nothing, because she would not ask for anything.
What a bitter humiliation to come, three years later, to beg a hundred thousand francs from the generosity she had formerly spurned, to humble herself, to face the endless sermons, the sneering raillery, the whole seasoned with Berrichon jests, with phrases smacking of the soil, with the taunts, often well-deserved, which narrow, but logical, minds can utter on occasion, and which sting with their vulgar patois like an insult from an inferior!
Poor Claire! Her husband and her father were about to be humiliated in her person. She must necessarily confess the failure of the one, the downfall of the house which the other had founded and of which he had been so proud while he lived. The thought that she would be called upon to defend all that she loved best in the world made her strong and weak at the same time.
It was eleven o"clock when she reached Savigny. As she had given no warning of her visit, the carriage from the chateau was not at the station, and she had no choice but to walk.
It was a cold morning and the roads were dry and hard. The north wind blew freely across the arid fields and the river, and swept unopposed through the leafless trees and bushes. The chateau appeared under the low-hanging clouds, with its long line of low walls and hedges separating it from the surrounding fields. The slates on the roof were as dark as the sky they reflected; and that magnificent summer residence, completely transformed by the bitter, silent winter, without a leaf on its trees or a pigeon on its roofs, showed no life save in its rippling brooks and the murmuring of the tall poplars as they bowed majestically to one another, shaking the magpies" nests hidden among their highest branches.