"No! For a long time I have been wanting to give you my whole mind!
you have given me an opening--so much the worse for you. I love the woman; you know it, and laugh her to scorn in my presence--so much the worse for you. But I will break your viper"s fangs, I tell you. I will make you treat me with respect."
"With respect--you?"
"Yes--me."
"Respect you? You who have brought shame on us all by your greed."
"You say--? Say it again--again."
"I say that it does not do to accept one man"s fortune when another is reputed to be your father."
Jean stood rigid, not understanding, dazed by the insinuation he scented.
"What? Repeat that once more."
"I say--what everybody is muttering, what every gossip is blabbing--that you are the son of the man who left you his fortune.
Well, then--a decent man does not take money which brings dishonor on his mother."
"Pierre! Pierre! Pierre! Think what you are saying. You? It is you who give utterance to this infamous thing?"
"Yes, I. It is I. Have you not seen me crushed with woe this month past, spending my nights without sleep and my days in lurking out of sight like an animal? I hardly know what I am doing or what will become of me, so miserable am I, so crazed with shame and grief; for first I guessed--and now I know it."
"Pierre! Be silent. Mother is in the next room. Remember she may hear--she must hear."
But Pierre felt that he must unburden his heart. He told Jean all his suspicions, his arguments, his struggles, his a.s.surance, and the history of the portrait--which had again disappeared. He spoke in short broken sentences almost without coherence--the language of a sleep-walker.
He seemed to have quite forgotten Jean, and his mother in the adjoining room. He talked as if no one were listening, because he must talk, because he had suffered too much and smothered and closed the wound too tightly. It had festered like an abscess and the abscess had burst, splashing every one. He was pacing the room in the way he almost always did, his eyes fixed on vacancy, gesticulating in a frenzy of despair, his voice choked with tearless sobs and revulsions of self-loathing; he spoke as if he were making a confession of his own misery and that of his nearest kin, as though he were casting his woes to the deaf, invisible winds which bore away his words.
Jean, distracted and almost convinced on a sudden by his brother"s blind vehemence, was leaning against the door behind which, as he guessed, their mother had heard them.
She could not get out, she must come through this room. She had not come; then it was because she dared not.
Suddenly Pierre stamped his foot:
"I am a brute," he cried, "to have told you this."
And he fled, bare-headed, down the stairs.
The noise of the front-door closing with a slam roused Jean from the deep stupor into which he had fallen. Some seconds had elapsed, longer than hours, and his spirit had sunk into the numb torpor of idiocy. He was conscious, indeed, that he must presently think and act, but he would wait, refusing to understand, to know, to remember, out of fear, weakness, cowardice. He was one of those procrastinators who put everything off till the morrow; and when he was compelled to come to a decision then and there, still he instinctively tried to gain a few minutes.
But the perfect silence which now reigned, after Pierre"s vociferations, the sudden stillness of walls and furniture, with the bright light of six wax candles and two lamps, terrified him so greatly that he suddenly longed to make his escape too.
Then he roused his brain, roused his heart, and tried to reflect.
Never in his life had he had to face a difficulty. There are men who let themselves glide onward like running water. He had been duteous over his tasks for fear of punishment, and had got through his legal studies with credit because his existence was tranquil. Everything in the world seemed to him quite natural and never aroused his particular attention. He loved order, steadiness, and peace, by temperament, his nature having no complications; and face to face with this catastrophe, he found himself like a man who has fallen into the water and cannot swim.
At first he tried to be incredulous. His brother had told a lie, out of hatred and jealousy. But yet, how could he have been so vile as to say such a thing of their mother if he had not himself been distraught by despair? Besides, stamped on Jean"s ear, on his sight, on his nerves, on the inmost fibers of his flesh, were certain words, certain tones of anguish, certain gestures of Pierre"s, so full of suffering that they were irresistibly convincing; as incontrovertible as certainty itself.
He was too much crushed to stir or even to will. His distress became unbearable; and he knew that behind the door was his mother who had heard everything and was waiting.
What was she doing? Not a movement, not a shudder, not a breath, not a sigh revealed the presence of a living creature behind that panel.
Could she have run away? But how? If she had run away--she must have jumped out of the window into the street. A shock of terror roused him--so violent and imperious that he drove the door in rather than opened it, and flung himself into the bedroom.
It was apparently empty, lighted by a single candle standing on the chest of drawers.
Jean flew to the window, it was shut and the shutters bolted. He looked about him, peering into the dark corners with anxious eyes, and he then noticed that the bed-curtains were drawn. He ran forward and opened them. His mother was lying on the bed, her face buried in the pillow which she had pulled up over her ears that she might hear no more.
At first he thought she had smothered herself. Then taking her by the shoulders, he turned her over without her leaving go of the pillow, which covered her face, and in which she had set her teeth to keep herself from crying out.
But the mere touch of this rigid form, of those arms so convulsively clenched, communicated to him the shock of her unspeakable torture.
The strength and determination with which she clutched the linen case full of feathers with her hands and teeth, over her mouth and eyes and ears, that he might neither see her nor speak to her, gave him an idea, by the turmoil it roused in him, of the pitch suffering may rise to, and his heart, his simple heart, was torn with pity. He was no judge, not he; not even a merciful judge; he was a man full of weakness and a son full of love. He remembered nothing of what his brother had told him; he neither reasoned nor argued, he merely laid his two hands on his mother"s inert body, and not being able to pull the pillow away, he exclaimed, kissing her dress:
"Mother, mother, my poor mother, look at me."
She would have seemed to be dead but that an almost imperceptible shudder ran through all her limbs, the vibration of a strained cord.
And he repeated:
"Mother, mother, listen to me. It is not true. I know that it is not true."
A spasm seemed to come over her, a fit of suffocation; then she suddenly began to sob into the pillow. Her sinews relaxed, her rigid muscles yielded, her fingers gave way and left go of the linen; and he uncovered her face.
She was pale, quite colorless; and from under her closed lids tears were stealing. He threw his arms round her neck and kissed her eyes, slowly, with long heart-broken kisses, wet with her tears; and he said again and again:
"Mother, my dear mother, I know it is not true. Do not cry; I know it.
It is not true."
She raised herself, she sat up, looked in his face, and with an effort of courage such as it must cost in some cases to kill one"s self, she said:
"No, my child; it is true."
And they remained speechless, each in the presence of the other. For some minutes she seemed again to be suffocating, craning her throat and throwing back her head to get breath; then she once more mastered herself and went on:
"It is true, my child. Why lie about it? It is true. You would not believe me if I denied it."
She looked like a crazy creature. Overcome by alarm, he fell on his knees by the bedside murmuring:
"Hush, mother, be silent." She stood up with terrible determination and energy.
"I have nothing more to say, my child. Good-by." And she went toward the door.
He threw his arms about her exclaiming:
"What are you doing, mother; where are you going?"
"I do not know. How should I know--There is nothing left for me to do, now that I am alone."
She struggled to be released. Holding her firmly, he could find only words to say again and again: