The Guy De Maupassant Megapack: 144 Novels and Short Stories

by Guy de Maupassant

  Jean replied gently:

  “Stay, mother.”

  She clasped him in her arms, and her tears flowed again; then, with her face against his, she went on:

  “Well, but Pierre. What can we do about Pierre?”

  Jean answered:

  “We will find some plan! You cannot live with him any longer.”

  At the thought of her elder son she was convulsed with terror.

  “No, I cannot; no, no!” And throwing herself on Jean’s breast she cried in distress of mind:

  “Save me from him, you, my little one. Save me; do something—I don’t know what. Think of something. Save me.”

  “Yes, mother, I will think of something.”

  “And at once. You must, this minute. Do not leave me. I am so afraid of him—so afraid.”

  “Yes, yes; I will hit on some plan. I promise you I will.”

  “But at once; quick, quick! You cannot imagine what I feel when I see him.”

  Then she murmured softly in his ear: “Keep me here, with you.”

  He paused, reflected, and with his blunt good-sense saw at once the dangers of such an arrangement. But he had to argue for a long time, combating her scared, terror-stricken insistence.

  “Only for tonight,” she said. “Only for tonight. And tomorrow morning you can send word to Roland that I was taken ill.”

  “That is out of the question, as Pierre left you here. Come, take courage. I will arrange everything, I promise you, tomorrow; I will be with you by nine o’clock. Come, put on your bonnet. I will take you home.”

  “I will do just what you desire,” she said with a childlike impulse of timidity and gratitude.

  She tried to rise, but the shock had been too much for her; she could not stand.

  He made her drink some sugared water and smell at some salts, while he bathed her temples with vinegar. She let him do what he would, exhausted, but comforted, as after the pains of child-birth. At last she could walk and she took his arm. The town hall struck three as they went past.

  Outside their own door Jean kissed her, saying:

  “Good-night, mother, keep up your courage.”

  She stealthily crept up the silent stairs, and into her room, undressed quickly, and slipped into bed with a reawakened sense of that long-forgotten sin. Roland was snoring. In all the house Pierre alone was awake, and had heard her come in.

  CHAPTER VIII

  When he got back to his lodgings Jean dropped on a sofa; for the sorrows and anxieties which made his brother long to be moving, and to flee like a hunted prey, acted differently on his torpid nature and broke the strength of his arms and legs. He felt too limp to stir a finger, even to get to bed; limp body and soul, crushed and heart-broken. He had not been hit, as Pierre had been, in the purity of filial love, in the secret dignity which is the refuge of a proud heart; he was overwhelmed by a stroke of fate which, at the same time, threatened his own nearest interests.

  When at last his spirit was calmer, when his thoughts had settled like water that has been stirred and lashed, he could contemplate the situation which had come before him. If he had learned the secret of his birth through any other channel he would assuredly have been very wroth and very deeply pained, but after his quarrel with his brother, after the violent and brutal betrayal which had shaken his nerves, the agonizing emotion of his mother’s confession had so bereft him of energy that he could not rebel. The shock to his feeling had been so great as to sweep away in an irresistible tide of pathos, all prejudice, and all the sacred delicacy of natural morality. Besides, he was not a man made for resistance. He did not like contending against any one, least of all against himself, so he resigned himself at once; and by instinctive tendency, a congenital love of peace, and of an easy and tranquil life, he began to anticipate the agitations which must surge up around him and at once be his ruin. He foresaw that they were inevitable, and to avert them he made up his mind to superhuman efforts of energy and activity. The knot must be cut immediately, this very day; for even he had fits of that imperious demand for a swift solution which is the only strength of weak natures, incapable of a prolonged effort of will. His lawyer’s mind, accustomed as it was to disentangling and studying complicated situations and questions of domestic difficulties in families that had got out of gear, at once foresaw the more immediate consequences of his brother’s state of mind. In spite of himself, he looked at the issue from an almost professional point of view, as though he had to legislate for the future relations of certain clients after a moral disaster. Constant friction against Pierre had certainly become unendurable. He could easily evade it, no doubt, by living in his own lodgings; but even then it was not possible that their mother should live under the same roof with her elder son. For a long time he sat meditating, motionless, on the cushions, devising and rejecting various possibilities, and finding nothing that satisfied him.

  But suddenly an idea took him by storm. This fortune which had come to him. Would an honest man keep it?

  “No,” was the first immediate answer, and he made up his mind that it must go to the poor. It was hard, but it could not be helped. He would sell his furniture and work like any other man, like any other beginner. This manful and painful resolution spurred his courage; he rose and went to the window, leaning his forehead against the pane. He had been poor; he could become poor again. After all he should not die of it. His eyes were fixed on the gas lamp burning at the opposite side of the street. A woman, much belated, happened to pass; suddenly he thought of Mme. Rosemilly with a pang at his heart, the shock of deep feeling which comes of a cruel suggestion. All the dire results of his decision rose up before him together. He would have to renounce his marriage, renounce happiness, renounce everything. Could he do such a thing after having pledged himself to her? She had accepted him knowing him to be rich. She would take him still if he were poor; but had he any right to demand such a sacrifice? Would it not be better to keep this money in trust, to be restored to the poor at some future date.

  And in his soul, where selfishness put on a guise of honesty, all these specious interests were struggling and contending. His first scruples yielded to ingenious reasoning, then came to the top again, and again disappeared.

  He sat down again, seeking some decisive motive, some all-sufficient pretext to solve his hesitancy and convince his natural rectitude. Twenty times over had he asked himself this question: “Since I am this man’s son, since I know and acknowledge it, is it not natural that I should also accept the inheritance?”

  But even this argument could not suppress the “No” murmured by his inmost conscience.

  Then came the thought: “Since I am not the son of the man I always believed to be my father, I can take nothing from him, neither during his lifetime nor after his death. It would be neither dignified nor equitable. It would be robbing my brother.”

  This new view of the matter having relieved him and quieted his conscience, he went to the window again.

  “Yes,” he said to himself, “I must give up my share of the family inheritance. I must let Pierre have the whole of it, since I am not his father’s son. That is but just. Then is it not just that I should keep my father’s money?”

  Having discerned that he could take nothing of Roland’s savings, having decided on giving up the whole of this money, he agreed; he resigned himself to keeping Marechal’s; for if he rejected both he would find himself reduced to beggary.

  This delicate question being thus disposed of he came back to that of Pierre’s presence in the family. How was he to be got rid of? He was giving up his search for any practical solution when the whistle of a steam-vessel coming into port seemed to blow him an answer by suggesting a scheme.

  Then he threw himself on his bed without undressing, and dozed and dreamed till daybreak.

  At a little before nine he went out to ascertain whether his plans were feasible. Then, after making sundry inquiries and calls, he went to his old home. His mother was waiting for him in her ro
om.

  “If you had not come,” she said, “I should never have dared to go down.”

  In a minute Roland’s voice was heard on the stairs: “Are we to have nothing to eat today, hang it all?”

  There was no answer, and he roared out, with a thundering oath this time: “Josephine, what the devil are you about?”

  The girl’s voice came up from the depths of the basement.

  “Yes, M’sieu—what is it?”

  “Where is your Miss’es?”

  “Madame is upstairs with M’sieu Jean.”

  Then he shouted, looking up at the higher floor: “Louise!”

  Mme. Roland half opened her door and answered:

  “What is it, my dear?”

  “Are we to have nothing to eat today, hang it all?”

  “Yes, my dear, I am coming.”

  And she went down, followed by Jean.

  Roland, as soon as he saw him, exclaimed:

  “Hallo! There you are! Sick of your home already?”

  “No, father, but I had something to talk over with mother this morning.”

  Jean went forward holding out his hand, and when he felt his fingers in the old man’s fatherly clasp, a strange, unforeseen emotion thrilled through him, and a sense as of parting and farewell without return.

  Mme. Roland asked:

  “Pierre is not come down?”

  Her husband shrugged his shoulders.

  “No, but never mind him; he is always behind-hand. We will begin without him.”

  She turned to Jean:

  “You had better go to call him, my child; it hurts his feelings if we do not wait for him.”

  “Yes, mother. I will go.”

  And the young man went. He mounted the stairs with the fevered determination of a man who is about to fight a duel and who is in a fright. When he knocked at the door Pierre said:

  “Come in.”

  He went in. The elder was writing, leaning over his table.

  “Good-morning,” said Jean.

  Pierre rose.

  “Good-morning!” and they shook hands as if nothing had occurred.

  “Are you not coming down to breakfast?”

  “Well—you see—I have a good deal to do.” The elder brother’s voice was tremulous, and his anxious eye asked his younger brother what he meant to do.

  “They are waiting for you.”

  “Oh! There is—is my mother down?”

  “Yes, it was she who sent me to fetch you.”

  “Ah, very well; then I will come.”

  At the door of the dining-room he paused, doubtful about going in first; then he abruptly opened the door and saw his father and mother seated at the table opposite each other.

  He went straight up to her without looking at her or saying a word, and bending over her, offered his forehead for her to kiss, as he had done for some time past, instead of kissing her on both cheeks as of old. He supposed that she put her lips near but he did not feel them on his brow, and he straightened himself with a throbbing heart after this feint of a caress. And he wondered:

  “What did they say to each other after I had left?”

  Jean constantly addressed her tenderly as “mother,” or “dear mother,” took care of her, waited on her, and poured out her wine.

  Then Pierre understood that they had wept together, but he could not read their minds. Did Jean believe in his mother’s guilt, or think his brother a base wretch?

  And all his self-reproach for having uttered the horrible thing came upon him again, choking his throat and his tongue, and preventing his either eating or speaking.

  He was now a prey to an intolerable desire to fly, to leave the house which was his home no longer, and these persons who were bound to him by such imperceptible ties. He would gladly have been off that moment, no matter whither, feeling that everything was over, that he could not endure to stay with them, that his presence was torture to them, and that they would bring on him incessant suffering too great to endure. Jean was talking, chatting with Roland. Pierre, as he did not listen, did not hear. But he presently was aware of a pointed tone in his brother’s voice and paid more attention to his words. Jean was saying:

  “She will be the finest ship in their fleet. They say she is of 6,500 tons. She is to make her first trip next month.”

  Roland was amazed.

  “So soon? I thought she was not to be ready for sea this summer.”

  “Yes. The work has been pushed forward very vigorously, to get her through her first voyage before the autumn. I looked in at the Company’s office this morning, and was talking to one of the directors.”

  “Indeed! Which of them?”

  “M. Marchand, who is a great friend of the Chairman of the Board.”

  “Oh! Do you know him?”

  “Yes. And I wanted to ask him a favour.”

  “Then you will get me leave to go over every part of the Lorraine as soon as she comes into port?”

  “To be sure; nothing could be easier.”

  Then Jean seemed to hesitate, to be weighing his words, and to want to lead up to a difficult subject. He went on:

  “On the whole, life is very endurable on board those great Transatlantic liners. More than half the time is spent on shore in two splendid cities—New York and Havre; and the remainder at sea with delightful company. In fact, very pleasant acquaintances are sometimes made among the passengers, and very useful in after-life—yes, really very useful. Only think, the captain, with his perquisites on coal, can make as much as twenty-five thousand francs a year or more.”

  Roland muttered an oath followed by a whistle, which testified to his deep respect for the sum and the captain.

  Jean went on:

  “The purser makes as much as ten thousand, and the doctor has a fixed salary of five thousand, with lodgings, keep, light, firing, service, and everything, which makes it up to ten thousand at least. That is very good pay.”

  Pierre raising his eyes met his brother’s and understood.

  Then, after some hesitation, he asked:

  “Is it very hard to get a place as medical man on board a Transatlantic liner?”

  “Yes—and no. It all depends on circumstances and recommendation.”

  There was a long pause; then the doctor began again.

  “Next month, you say, the Lorraine is to sail?”

  “Yes. On the 7th.”

  And they said nothing more.

  Pierre was considering. It certainly would be a way out of many difficulties if he could embark as medical officer on board the steamship. By-and-by he could see; he might perhaps give it up. Meanwhile he would be gaining a living, and asking for nothing from his parents. Only two days since he had been forced to sell his watch, for he would no longer hold out his hand to beg of his mother. So he had no other resource left, no opening to enable him to eat the bread of any house but this which had become uninhabitable, or sleep in any other bed, or under any other roof. He presently said, with some little hesitation:

  “If I could, I would very gladly sail in her.”

  Jean asked:

  “What should hinder you?”

  “I know no one in the Transatlantic Shipping Company.”

  Roland was astounded.

  “And what has become of all your fine schemes for getting on?”

  Pierre replied in a low voice:

  “There are times when we must bring ourselves to sacrifice everything and renounce our fondest hopes. And after all it is only to make a beginning, a way of saving a few thousand francs to start fair with afterward.”

  His father was promptly convinced.

  “That is very true. In a couple of years you can put by six or seven thousand francs, and that well laid out, will go a long way. What do you think of the matter, Louise?”

  She replied in a voice so low as to be scarcely audible:

  “I think Pierre is right.”

  Roland exclaimed:

  “I will go and talk it over with M
. Poulin: I know him very well. He is assessor of the Chamber of Commerce and takes an interest in the affairs of the Company. There is M. Lenient, too, the ship-owner, who is intimate with one of the vice-chairmen.”

  Jean asked his brother:

  “Would you like me to feel my way with M. Marchand at once?”

  “Yes, I should be very glad.”

  After thinking a few minutes Pierre added:

  “The best thing I can do, perhaps, will be to write to my professors at the college of Medicine, who had a great regard for me. Very inferior men are sometimes shipped on board those vessels. Letters of strong recommendation from such professors as Mas-Roussel, Remusot, Flanche, and Borriquel would do more for me in an hour than all the doubtful introductions in the world. It would be enough if your friend M. Marchand would lay them before the board.”

  Jean approved heartily.

  “Your idea is really capital.” And he smiled, quite reassured, almost happy, sure of success and incapable of allowing himself to be unhappy for long.