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, embarra.s.sing 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."