Sitting up in bed, propped up with pillows, to help my breathing, I looked at that Louis XIII furniture, whose model we had chosen at Bardié’s, while we were engaged, and which had been hers until the day when she had inherited her mother’s furniture. It was that bed, that sorrowful bed, of our resentments and our silences....
Hubert and Geneviève came in alone, while the others stayed outside. I realised that they could not get accustomed to my face in tears. They stood at my bedside: the brother looking incongruous in his evening dress in broad daylight; the sister a pillar of black from which a white handkerchief emerged, with her veil, thrown back, revealing a face like a round of boiled beef. Grief had unmasked us all, and we could not recognise one another.
They asked how I was feeling. Geneviève said:
“Nearly everybody came to the cemetery. She was very much loved.”
I inquired about the days that had preceded her attack of paralysis.
“She wasn’t feeling well....Perhaps, indeed, she had a presentiment; for, the day before she went to Bordeaux, she spent a lot of time in her room, burning a heap of letters. In fact, we thought the chimney was on fire.”
I interrupted her. A thought had struck me....Why had it not occurred to me before?...
“Geneviève, do you think my going away had anything to do with it?”
She answered me, with an air of satisfaction, that “no doubt it was a blow to her.”
“But you hadn’t said anything to her...you hadn’t told her about what you had discovered?...”
She questioned her brother with her eyes. Was she supposed to understand? I must have looked terrible at that moment, for they seemed frightened. While Geneviève helped me to sit up, Hubert replied hastily that their mother had fallen ill more than ten days after my departure, and that, during that period, they had decided to keep her out of these unhappy discussions. Was he telling the truth? He added, in a quavering voice:
“Indeed, if we had succumbed to the temptation of telling her, we should be the first to be responsible....”
He turned away a little, and I could see his shoulders moving convulsively. Somebody pushed the door ajar, and demanded to know if they were ever going to have lunch. I heard Phili’s voice: “What about it? I can’t help it if I’m starving....”
Geneviève asked me, through her tears, what I would like to eat. Hubert said that he would come back after lunch. The matter must be cleared up, once and for all, if I felt equal to it. I nodded acquiescence.
When they had gone, the nun helped me to get up, and I was able to have a bath and drink a bowl of beef-tea. I did not want to engage in this battle as a sick man whom the enemy would treat with chivalry and consideration.
When they came back, it was to find a different man from that old man who had aroused their pity. I had taken the necessary drugs. I was sitting straight up in my chair. I felt less oppressed, as I always do when I leave my bed.
Hubert had changed into a morning suit; but Geneviève was wrapped in an old dressing-gown of her mother’s. “I have nothing black to put on.” They sat down facing me; and, after a few conventional words, Hubert began.
“I have thought about this a good deal....”
He had carefully prepared his speech. He addressed me as though I were a meeting of shareholders, weighing every word carefully, anxious to avoid any unpleasantness.
“At my mother’s bedside, I made my examination of conscience. I forced myself to change my point of view and put myself in your place. A father who is obsessed with the idea of disinheriting his children—that is how we regard you, and that is what, in my eyes, justifies or at least excuses all our conduct. But we have given you a point against us by our lack of consideration in the struggle and by our....”
As he was hesitating over the right word, I suggested to him gently: “‘By our cowardly plots.”
His cheeks flamed. Geneviève protested.
“Why ‘cowardly? You are so much stronger than we are....”
“Come, come! A very ill old man against a young pack!...”
“A very ill old man,” Hubert retorted, “enjoys a privileged position in a house like ours. He does not leave his room, he remains on the watch there, he has nothing to do but observe the habits of the family and turn them to his advantage. He makes his plans by himself, and has leisure to prepare them. He knows everything about the others, who know nothing about him. He knows the listening-posts....”
Here I could not help smiling, and they smiled too.
“Yes,” Hubert went on, “a family are always imprudent. We argue, we raise our voices. Everybody ends by shouting without realising it. We trusted too much to the thickness of the walls of this old house, forgetting that its ceilings are thin. And then there are open windows....”
These allusions created a kind of relaxation of tension between us. Hubert was the first to revert to a serious tone.
“I admit that we may have appeared to blame. I repeat that it would be child’s play for me to invoke the argument of legitimate defence; but I want to avoid anything which might embitter this discussion. Nor shall I seek to decide who was the aggressor in this unhappy quarrel. I will even agree to plead guilty to that. But you must understand....”
He stood up. He polished the lenses of his glasses. His eyes blinked in his lined, haggard face.
“You must understand that I was fighting for the honour, for the very life, of my children. You cannot imagine our position. You belong to another century. You have lived in that fabulous period when every prudent man invested in safe securities. I know very well that you were equal to circumstances, that you saw the storm coming before anybody else, that you realised in time....But it was just because you had retired, because you were outside the business—that’s the way to put it! You could estimate the situation in cold blood, you could master it, you were not in it up to the neck as I am....The awakening was too sudden....This is the first time that all the branches have given way at once. One can’t hold on to anything, get a grip on anything....”
How desperately he repeated: “anything...anything....”! How deeply was he committed? On the verge of what disaster was he struggling?
He was afraid that he had given himself away, and went back on his tracks and gave vent to the usual commonplaces: the specialisation of industrial equipment after the war, over-production, the crisis in consumption....What he said mattered little. It was to his attitude that I paid attention.
At that moment, I realised that my hatred was dead—and that my desire for revenge was dead with it. It had been dead, perhaps, for a long time. I had stoked up my resentment, I had spurred myself on. But what was the good of refusing to look facts in the face?
I experienced, in the presence of my son, a confused feeling in which curiosity was uppermost. The agitation of the poor fellow, his terror, his anxiety that I could relieve with a single word—how strange that seemed to me! I saw in my mind’s eye that fortune which had meant, apparently, everything in life to me; which I had sought to give away, to lose; which I had not even been free to dispose of as I liked—that thing from which quite suddenly, I felt myself detached, which did not interest me anymore, did not concern me anymore.
Hubert, now silent, peered at me through his glasses. What was I devising? What blow was I going to deal him? He was already setting his teeth, drawing himself up, half-raising his arm like a child protecting itself. He went on in a timid voice.
“All I ask of you is that you should straighten out my affairs. With what will be coming to me from Mamma, I shall not need”—he hesitated a moment before naming the sum—“more than a million francs. Once the ground is cleared, I can get on my feet again all right. Do what you like with the rest; I undertake to bow to your wishes....”
He swallowed his saliva; he looked at me furtively; but I maintained an impenetrable expression.
“But you, my daughter,” I said, turning to Geneviève, “you are all right? Your husband is a shrewd fel
low....”
Praise of her husband always irritated her. She protested that his business was finished. He had not been buying any rum for the past two years. In that way he was sure of not making a mistake! Of course they had enough to live on; but Phili was threatening to leave his wife, and was only waiting to make sure that the fortune was lost.
I muttered: “Good riddance!” and she went on quickly:
“Yes, he’s a rotter, we know that, and Janine knows it too...but, if he leaves her, it will kill her. You can’t understand that, Father. It’s not in your line. Janine knows more about Phili than we do ourselves. She has told me often that he’s worse than anything we can imagine. That won’t prevent her from dying if he leaves her. That may seem absurd to you. Things like that don’t exist for you. But, with your great intellect, you can understand things that you don’t feel.”
“You’re tiring Papa, Geneviève.”
Hubert was thinking that his heavy-handed sister was “making a bloomer,” and that I was hurt in my pride. He could see signs of pain in my face; but he could not possibly appreciate the cause of it. He did not know that Geneviève was opening an old wound and digging her fingers into it.
I sighed: “Lucky Phili!”
My children exchanged a glance of astonishment. In all sincerity, they had always regarded me as half-mad. Perhaps they would have had me put away with quite easy consciences.
“A bad lot,” groaned Hubert, “and he’s got us.”
“His father-in-law is more indulgent than you are,” I said. “Alfred often says that Phili ‘isn’t such a bad kind of idiot’.”
Geneviève flared up.
“He’s got Alfred, too. The son-in-law has corrupted the father-in-law. It’s well known in the town. People often meet them together, going about with girls....What a disgrace! That was one of the things that worried Mamma....”
Geneviève dabbed at her eyes. Hubert thought that I was trying to distract their attention from the essential thing.
“But that’s not what we are talking about, Geneviève,” he said, in a tone of irritation. “One would think that there was nobody but you and your family in the world.”
She protested furiously that she “would like to know who was the more selfish of the two of them.” She added:
“Naturally we all think of our own children first. I have done everything for Janine, and I’m proud of it, just as Mamma did everything for us. I’d throw myself into the fire....”
Her brother interrupted her, in that sharp tone which I recognised as my own, to say that she “would throw other people too.”
How such a dispute would once have amused me! I should have hailed with joy the signs foreshadowing a merciless battle over the few bits of heritage which I could not succeed in snatching from them. But I felt rather disgusted, rather bored....Let this question be settled once and for all! Let them leave me to die in peace!
“It is strange, my children,” I said to them, “that I should end by doing what always seemed to me the greatest folly....”
Oh, they did not think about squabbling any longer! They turned hard, distrustful eyes towards me. They waited. They put themselves on guard.
“I, who had always kept before my eyes the example of the old peasant, deprived of his property, whom his offspring allow to die of hunger....And, when he is too slow about it, they pile eiderdowns on him, cover him right up to his mouth....”
“Father, I beg of you....”
They protested with an expression of horror which was not assumed. I changed my tone suddenly.
“You are going to be busy, Hubert. Sharing-up will be a difficult business. I have deposits all over the place, here, in Paris, abroad. And then the land, the buildings....”
At every word their eyes grew rounder and rounder; but they refused to believe me. I saw Hubert’s thin hands open wide and close again.
“Everything must be finished before my death, at the same time as you divide up what comes to you from your mother. I reserve for myself the use of Calèse, the house and the park—maintenance and repairs to be at your expense. About the vineyards, you can do what you like. A monthly income, of which the amount remains to be settled, will be paid to me by the lawyer....Pass me my note-case...yes, in the left-hand pocket of my jacket.”
Hubert passed it to me with a hand that trembled. I took an envelope out of it.
“You will find here some notes about the whole of my fortune. You may take it to Arcam, the lawyer....No, better still, telephone to him to come here. I will give it to him myself, and confirm my dispositions in your presence.”
Hubert took the envelope, and asked me, with a look of anxiety:
“You’re not playing the fool with us, are you?”
“Go and telephone to the lawyer. You’ll soon see whether I am playing the fool with you....”
He hastened to the door; then he stopped.
“No,” he said, “it would hardly be the thing to do today....We ought to wait for a week.”
He passed his hand over his eyes. Clearly he was ashamed; he was forcing himself to think of his mother. He turned the envelope over and over.
“All right,” I interjected, “open it and read it; I give you permission.”
He went quickly over to the window and slit open the envelope. He read as though he were eating. Geneviève, unable to restrain herself any longer, got up and stretched over her brother’s shoulder a greedy head.
I looked at that fraternal couple. There was nothing there for me to regard with horror. A business man threatened with ruin, the father and the mother of a family, had suddenly rediscovered millions which they had thought lost. No, they did not strike me as horrible.
But my own indifference astonished me. I resembled a patient coming out of an operation, who awakens and says to himself that he has felt nothing. I had torn out of myself something to which I was attached, so I thought, by the deepest roots. But I felt nothing but relief, a physical lightening. I breathed more easily.
After all, what had I been doing, for years, except trying to get rid of that fortune, load it upon somebody who was not of my own family? I have always been mistaken about the object of my desires. We do not know what we desire. We do not love what we think we love.
I heard Hubert saying to his sister: “It’s enormous...it’s enormous...it’s an enormous fortune.” They exchanged a few words in low voices; and then Geneviève declared that they would not accept my sacrifice, that they did not want to deprive me of everything.
Those words “sacrifice,” “deprive” sounded strangely in my ears. Hubert was insistent.
“You are acting under the influence of the emotion of today. You think yourself more ill than you are. You are not yet seventy. People live to be very old with a trouble like yours. After a little time you will be sorry. I will relieve you of all business anxieties, if you like. But keep what belongs to you in peace. We want nothing more than what is just. We have never sought anything but justice....”
Fatigue possessed me, and they saw my eyes close. I told them that I had made up my mind, and that I would talk no more about it except in the presence of the lawyer. They had already reached the door when I recalled them, without turning my head.
“I forgot to tell you that a monthly income of fifteen hundred francs is to be paid to my son Robert. I promised it to him. Remind me of that when we draw up the agreement.”
Hubert blushed. He did not expect that arrow. But Geneviève saw no malice in it. Round-eyed, she made a rapid calculation and said:
“Eighteen thousand francs a year....Don’t you think that’s a lot?”
Chapter XVIII
THE meadow is brighter than the sky. Smoke goes up from the earth, gorged with water, and the cart-ruts, full of rain, reflect a muddy blue. Everything still interests me just as it did in the days when Calèse belonged to me. Nothing is mine any more, and I do not feel my poverty.
The sound of the rain, at night, on the rotting grape-harve
st gives me no less concern than when I was the master of this threatened crop. The fact is that what I took for a sign of attachment to the property is merely the carnal instinct of the peasant, son of peasants, born of those who, for centuries, have anxiously scanned the sky.
The income which I am supposed to get every month will go on accumulating at the lawyer’s. I have never had any need of it. I have been a prisoner all my life long to a passion which did not possess me. As a dog barks at the moon, so I was fascinated by a reflection.
Imagine waking up at sixty-eight—being born again on the point of dying! May I be given a few years more, a few months, a few weeks!...
The nurse has gone. I feel much better. Amélie and Ernest, who looked after Isa, now look after me. They know how to make injections. Everything is ready at hand: bottles of morphine, nitrate.
The children are so busy that they scarcely ever leave the town, and reappear here only when they need my opinion about a valuation....Everything is passing off without too many disputes. Their terror of being “disadvantaged” has made them take the comic decision to divide the complete sets of damask linen and glassware. They would cut a tapestry in two rather than let any one of them have the benefit of it. They would spoil everything rather than let one share be greater than another.
This is what they call “having a passion for justice.” They have spent their lives masking the lowest instincts under fine names....No, I ought to strike that out. Who knows whether they are not prisoners, as I was myself, to a passion which does not belong to the part of their nature that is deepest?
What do they think about me? That I have been beaten, no doubt, that I have surrendered. They have “got me.” Still, at every visit they show me great respect and gratitude. All the same, I surprise them. Hubert especially keeps me under observation; he distrusts me, he is not sure that I am disarmed.
Reassure yourself, my poor boy. I was not very formidable even that day when I came back convalescent to Calèse. But now....
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