Pierre replied contemptuously:
"For me! Oh, I shall make my way by hard work and learning."
But his mother insisted: "Yes, but I a.s.sure you that to be well lodged will be of use to you nevertheless."
About half-way through the meal he suddenly asked:
"How did you first come to know this man Marechal?"
Old Roland looked up and racked his memory:
"Wait a bit; I scarcely recollect. It is such an old story now. Ah, yes, I remember. It was your mother who made the acquaintance with him in the shop, was it not, Louise? He first came to order something, and then he called frequently. We knew him as a customer before we knew him as a friend."
Pierre, who was eating beans, sticking his fork into them one by one as if he were spitting them, went on:
"And when was it that you made his acquaintance?"
Again Roland sat thinking, but he could remember no more and appealed to his wife"s better memory.
"In what year was it, Louise? You surely have not forgotten, you who remember everything. Let me see--it was in--in--in fifty-five or fifty-six? Try to remember. You ought to know better than I."
She did in fact think it over for some minutes, and then replied in a steady voice and with calm decision:
"It was in fifty-eight, old man. Pierre was three years old. I am quite sure that I am not mistaken, for it was in that year that the child had scarlet fever, and Marechal, whom we knew then but very little, was of the greatest service to us."
Roland exclaimed:
"To be sure--very true; he was really invaluable. When your mother was half-dead with fatigue and I had to attend to the shop, he would go to the chemist"s to fetch your medicine. He really had the kindest heart!
And when you were well again, you cannot think how glad he was and how he petted you. It was from that time that we became such great friends."
And this thought rushed into Pierre"s soul, as abrupt and violent as a cannon-ball rending and piercing it: "Since he knew me first, since he was so devoted to me, since he was so fond of me and petted me so much, since I--_I_ was the cause of his great intimacy with my parents, why did he leave all his money to my brother and nothing to me?"
He asked no more questions and remained gloomy; absent-minded rather than thoughtful, feeling in his soul a new anxiety as yet undefined, the secret germ of a new pain.
He went out early, wandering about the streets once more. They were shrouded in the fog which made the night heavy, opaque, and nauseous.
It was like a pestilential cloud dropped on the earth. It could be seen swirling past the gas-lights, which it seemed to put out at intervals.
The pavement was as slippery as on a frosty night after rain, and all sorts of evil smells seemed to come up from the bowels of the houses--the stench of cellars, drains, sewers, squalid kitchens--to mingle with the horrible savour of this wandering fog.
Pierre, with his shoulders up and his hands in his pockets, not caring to remain out of doors in the cold, turned into Marowsko"s. The druggist was asleep as usual under the gas-light, which kept watch. On recognising Pierre for whom he had the affection of a faithful dog, he shook off his drowsiness, went for two gla.s.ses, and brought out the _Groseillette_.
"Well," said the doctor, "how is the liqueur getting on?"
The Pole explained that four of the chief cafes in the town had agreed to have it on sale, and that two papers, the _Northcoast Pharos_ and the _Havre Semaph.o.r.e_, would advertise it, in return for certain chemical preparations to be supplied to the editors.
After a long silence Marowsko asked whether Jean had come definitely into possession of his fortune; and then he put two or three other questions vaguely referring to the same subject. His jealous devotion to Pierre rebelled against this preference. And Pierre felt as though he could hear him thinking; he guessed and understood, read in his averted eyes and in the hesitancy of his tone, the words which rose to his lips but were not spoken--which the druggist was too timid or too prudent and cautious to utter.
At this moment, he felt sure, the old man was thinking: "You ought not to have suffered him to accept this inheritance which will make people speak ill of your mother."
Perhaps, indeed, Marows...o...b..lieved that Jean was Marechal"s son. Of course he believed it! How could he help believing it when the thing must seem so possible, so probable, self-evident? Why, he himself, Pierre, her son--had not he been for these three days past fighting with all the subtlety at his command to cheat his reason, fighting against this hideous suspicion?
And suddenly the need to be alone, to reflect, to discuss the matter with himself--to face boldly, without scruple or weakness, this possible but monstrous thing--came upon him anew, and so imperative that he rose without even drinking his gla.s.s of _Groseillette_, shook hands with the astounded druggist, and plunged out into the foggy streets again.
He asked himself: "What made this Marechal leave all his fortune to Jean?"
It was not jealousy now which made him dwell on this question, not the rather mean but natural envy which he knew lurked within him, and with which he had been struggling these three days, but the dread of an overpowering horror; the dread that he himself should believe that Jean, his brother, was that man"s son.
No. He did not believe it, he could not even ask himself the question which was a crime! Meanwhile he must get rid of this faint suspicion, improbable as it was, utterly and forever. He craved for light, for certainty--he must win absolute security in his heart, for he loved no one in the world but his mother. And as he wandered alone through the darkness he would rack his memory and his reason with a minute search that should bring out the blazing truth. Then there would be an end to the matter; he would not think of it again--never. He would go and sleep.
He argued thus: "Let me see: first to examine the facts; then I will recall all I know about him, his behaviour to my brother and to me. I will seek out the causes which might have given rise to the preference.
He knew Jean from his birth? Yes, but he had known me first. If he had loved my mother silently, unselfishly, he would surely have chosen me, since it was through me, through my scarlet fever, that he became so intimate with my parents. Logically, then, he ought to have preferred me, to have had a keener affection for me--unless it were that he felt an instinctive attraction and predilection for my brother as he watched him grow up."
Then, with desperate tension of brain and of all the powers of his intellect, he strove to reconst.i.tute from memory the image of this Marechal, to see him, to know him, to penetrate the man whom he had seen pa.s.s by him, indifferent to his heart during all those years in Paris.
But he perceived that the slight exertion of walking somewhat disturbed his ideas, dislocated their continuity, weakened their precision, clouded his recollection. To enable him to look at the past and at unknown events with so keen an eye that nothing should escape it, he must be motionless in a vast and empty s.p.a.ce. And he made up his mind to go and sit on the jetty as he had done that other night. As he approached the harbour he heard, out at sea, a lugubrious and sinister wail like the bellowing of a bull, but more long-drawn and steady. It was the roar of a fog-horn, the cry of a ship lost in the fog. A shiver ran through him, chilling his heart; so deeply did this cry of distress thrill his soul and nerves that he felt as if he had uttered it himself.
Another and a similar voice answered with such another moan, but farther away; then, close by, the fog-horn on the pier gave out a fearful sound in answer. Pierre made for the jetty with long steps, thinking no more of anything, content to walk on into this ominous and bellowing darkness.
When he had seated himself at the end of the breakwater he closed his eyes, that he might not see the two electric lights, now blurred by the fog, which make the harbour accessible at night, and the red glare of the light on the south pier, which was, however, scarcely visible.
Turning half-round, he rested his elbows on the granite and hid his face in his hands.
Though he did not p.r.o.nounce the words with his lips, his mind kept repeating: "Marechal--Marechal," as if to raise and challenge the shade.
And on the black background of his closed eyelids, he suddenly saw him as he had known him: a man of about sixty, with a white beard cut in a point and very thick eyebrows, also white. He was neither tall nor short, his manner was pleasant, his eyes gray and soft, his movements gentle, his whole appearance that of a good fellow, simple and kindly.
He called Pierre and Jean "my dear children," and had never seemed to prefer either, asking them both together to dine with him. And then Pierre, with the pertinacity of a dog seeking a lost scent, tried to recall the words, gestures, tones, looks, of this man who had vanished from the world. By degrees he saw him quite clearly in his rooms in the Rue Tronchet, where he received his brother and himself at dinner.
He was waited on by two maids, both old women who had been in the habit--a very old one, no doubt--of saying "Monsieur Pierre" and "Monsieur Jean." Marechal would hold out both hands, the right hand to one of the young men, the left to the other, as they happened to come in.
"How are you, my children?" he would say. "Have you any news of your parents? As for me, they never write to me."
The talk was quiet and intimate, of commonplace matters. There was nothing remarkable in the man"s mind, but much that was winning, charming, and gracious. He had certainly been a good friend to them, one of those good friends of whom we think the less because we feel sure of them.
Now, reminiscences came readily to Pierre"s mind. Having seen him anxious from time to time, and suspecting his student"s impecuniousness, Marechal had of his own accord offered and lent him money, a few hundred francs perhaps, forgotten by both, and never repaid. Then this man must always have been fond of him, always have taken an interest in him, since he thought of his needs. Well then--well then--why leave his whole fortune to Jean? No, he had never shown more marked affection for the younger than for the elder, had never been more interested in one than in the other, or seemed to care more tenderly for this one or that one.
Well then--well then--he must have had some strong secret reason for leaving everything to Jean--everything--and nothing to Pierre.
The more he thought, the more he recalled the past few years, the more extraordinary, the more incredible was it that he should have made such a difference between them. And an agonizing pang of unspeakable anguish piercing his bosom made his heart beat like a fluttering rag. Its springs seemed broken, and the blood rushed through in a flood, unchecked, tossing it with wild surges.
Then in an undertone, as a man speaks in a nightmare, he muttered: "I must know. My G.o.d! I must know."
He looked further back now, to an earlier time, when his parents had lived in Paris. But the faces escaped him, and this confused his recollections. He struggled above all to see Marechal, with light, or brown, or black hair. But he could not; the later image, his face as an old man, blotted out all others. However, he remembered that he had been slighter, and had a soft hand, and that he often brought flowers. Very often--for his father would constantly say: "What, another bouquet! But this is madness, my dear fellow; you will ruin yourself in roses." And Marechal would say: "No matter; I like it."
And suddenly his mother"s voice and accent, his mother"s as she smiled and said: "Thank you, my kind friend," flashed on his brain, so clearly that he could have believed he heard her. She must have spoken those words very often that they should remain thus graven on her son"s memory.
So Marechal brought flowers; he, the gentleman, the rich man, the customer, to the humble shop-keeper, the jeweller"s wife. Had he loved her? Why should he have made friends with these tradespeople if he had not been in love with the wife? He was a man of education and fairly refined tastes. How many a time had he discussed poets and poetry with Pierre. He did not appreciate these writers from an artistic point of view, but with sympathetic and responsive feeling. The doctor had often smiled at his emotions which had struck him as rather silly, now he plainly saw that this sentimental soul could never, never have been the friend of his father, who was so matter-of-fact, so narrow, so heavy, to whom the word "Poetry" meant idiocy.
This Marechal then, being young, free, rich, ready for any form of tenderness, went by chance into the shop one day, having perhaps observed its pretty mistress. He had bought something, had come again, had chatted, more intimately each time, paying by frequent purchases for the right of a seat in the family, of smiling at the young wife and shaking hands with the husband.
And what next--what next--good G.o.d--what next?
He had loved and petted the first child, the jeweller"s child, till the second was born; then, till death, he had remained impenetrable; and when his grave was closed, his flesh dust, his name erased from the list of the living, when he himself was quiet and forever gone, having nothing to scheme for, to dread or to hide, he had given his whole fortune to the second child! Why?
The man had all his wits; he must have understood and foreseen that he might, that he almost infallibly must, give grounds for the supposition that the child was his. He was casting obloquy on a woman. How could he have done this if Jean were not his son?