When the service was over, Fellaire received the complimentary condolences of those who had assisted at it with the air of a brave but heart-broken man. He thanked those who had joined him in paying the last duties to the deceased. He seemed to recognise the presence of each person with particular satisfaction, although he did not know one among them. He shook their hands with an energy which was evidently meant to express, “Thank you — thank you. I will have courage; I will bear up.” Only, when it was the turn of his old tavern companions, he barely accorded them the tips of his fingers, and frowningly repelled their expression of sympathy; he was afraid they would slap him on the shoulder and call him “Poor old chap.”
He repeated his collective thanks many times, and finally addressed them to an assembly of persons who had been burying a magistrate, and who never understood what the singular gentleman in black wanted with them.
As it was impossible for him to distinguish between his son-in-law’s friends and the rest of mankind, he would have gone on doing the honours of all the funerals throughout the day if they had happened to pass uninterruptedly before him.
From that time he never laid aside his mourning garments or his stoical and depressed mien. Every day he went to the Hôtel Haviland to luncheon and dinner. After dinner he would put his hand on George’s head, and say with a sort of sob:
“This boy interests me.”
At the Brasserie de Colmar, where he played billiards in the evening, he would often exclaim:
“It is not only a son-in-law that I have lost; it is a son — and a gentleman.”
Julia, Madame Haviland’s maid, must have heard the — strange — cry her mistress gave on — the appearance — of — the — doctor in her room — ; for — the next day there were mysterious whisperings at the grocer’s and butcher’s. The rumour that the Englishman of the Boulevard Latour-Maubourg had been poisoned, and that his wife was an accomplice — of — the — crime, spread in a few days throughout the neighbourhood. Dr. Hersent, who lived — in — the — Rue Saint-Dominie, — was — surprised upon the following Monday to hear his wife speak of the crime as a matter of general knowledge.
A long addiction to science and the practice of medicine had rendered Hersent careful in making researches, and he would not admit that there was, as a matter of fact, any reason to suspect Madame Haviland. He told his wife that it was against the etiquette of the profession to listen to such servants’ gossip. At the same time, he was not quite easy in his mind; the disease to which Haviland had succumbed had not been sufficiently characterised in the burial certificate which he and the consulting physicians had signed, and he felt some qualms of self-reproach on the score of his negligence in this respect. He hoped that the affair would have no further consequences, and confidently reckoned that there would be none.
CHAPTER VIII
LONGUEMARE, whose morning visit at the hospital had been protracted longer than usual on account of an epidemic of typhoid fever, did not arrive at the Montparnesse Cemetery until the funeral of Mr. Haviland was over. All that he saw of the ceremony was the sombre and energetic profile of Fellaire being conveyed home from the cemetery in a carriage drawn by two black horses, placed at his disposal for the occasion by the undertakers.
Retracing his steps at this sight, he passed between the sculptured urns and hour-glasses over the entrance gates, when he was accosted by a sprightly little man, who, with a great deal of gaiety, hailed him as a ghost, a spectre and a phantom, and hummed in a fine grave voice the opening lines from the air in “Robert the Devil”—” Nuns who repose.”
It was an old class-mate of his, Bouteiller, who, celebrated at school for his ineptitude in science and letters, had become a reporter on an important daily newspaper. He had just heard, or approximately heard, three speeches pronounced over the grave of a member of the Institute. Taking Longuemare by the arm, he said:
“My dear fellow, dine with me to-night at Bréval’s.”
During dinner Longuemare was profoundly agitated, but hid, as his habit was, his emotion under a joking exterior, and talked on many questions dealing with love and women in scientific language relieved by shocking puns; they drank champagne throughout the dinner. Bouteiller made a practice of doing so, and said this wine was a professional necessity for him. He was always extremely busy, and spent what should have been the best hours of his life on the railway. He inaugurated statues in every town in France, followed the President of the Republic into inundated departments, assisted at aristocratic weddings, listened to lectures on the phylloxera, saw and heard everything and remained the least curious of men. There was only one place in the world which interested him, and that was Chatou, where he had a cottage and a boat. He thought of nothing else, whereas he ought to have thought of the whole world. A factory could not burn down without him. Naturally, Longuemare was led to speak of Haviland and his singular habits, of his death, and in a casual way, of poisoning by belladonna. At the same time Bouteiller was describing his boat; they understood each other perfectly. Towards ten o’clock the journalist said:
“My dear fellow, I must run round to the office. Wait for me at the Café de Suède; I have an appointment there.”
At eleven they were both seated smoking at a zinc table, in the noise and light of the boulevard. Bouteiller was saying:
“You see you must have a rather short oar, which you can get a good grip on, and above all, thin at the end, so that it cuts the water like a knife”; when a young lad in a blouse and cap stopped in front of them and said:
“It is not to be to-night.”
Bouteiller gave him a couple of francs and sent him off. He seemed displeased.
“A special report which I had written up in advance, and which is no good now.”
Then by way of explanation he added:
“That young scamp knows how things are done at La Roquette. He has just told me that the man who committed the murder in the Rue du Château-des-Rentiers will not be executed to-night. By the way, you are a doctor; tell me if you think one suffers after having one’s head cut off?”
“I can easily tell you that,” said Longuemare, and he began a lengthy explanation.
“Life being a quantity, as Buffon says, it is susceptible to augmentation or diminution. The ‘vital knot’ Flourens talks of is rubbish. Now follow me carefully. If I say with Bichat that life is an assemblage of forces which resist death, I should add that these forces only resist for a longer or shorter period before final dissolution. Beheading produces a violent syncope, and abolishes sensibility in a measure which one may consider definite; but at the same time muscular life goes on. You must not confound—”
Here Bouteiller in despair broke in:
“No, no; I’d rather tell you at once that your explanation is too long, and I don’t understand a word of it. Science has always seemed to me terribly obscure. There are certain subjects, like the immortality of the soul, for instance, or the existence of God, which are so difficult. Fortunately God does not come into the news of the day — by-the-bye, what was the name of the Englishman you buried this morning? I think I could make a good ‘par.’ out of what you told me, if I embroidered it a little. You were saying that...?”
CHAPTER IX
GROULT having roughly ordered his wife to pack his bag, left Paris for Avranches, where he said he had business to attend to. As a matter of fact, he had inherited a bit of land in a neighbouring village. He put up at an inn in the suburbs, called the Red Horse. Here he was to be seen drinking in the company of farmers and graziers, pouring the entire contents of a small spirit decanter into his coffee-cup in true Norman fashion. He was more gay and outspoken than usual, talked willingly to the folks about him, accepted their courtesies, and treated them to drinks.
On Wednesday he took the train to Granville, where he arrived at nightfall, in most frightful weather. A bad squall, the sailors said. It was raining, and a high wind was blowing the light aslant in the gas-lamps, and howling in the narrow alle
ys. He went towards the old part of the town, and turned up a steep, narrow, and winding street full of the smell of fish. His left foot as it followed the right described the motion of a scythe in a wheat field, and his whole body swung at every step; still he went quickly on in the darkness, grumbling and cursing as he splashed up the water in the puddles.
By-and-by he came to a small, mean grocer’s shop, the blurred windows of which contained two or three bottles of sweets; he went in without hesitating. There was a wooden staircase in the shop, with a bed covered in scarlet cotton, packed under it. The sole entrance to the house was through the shop, and its unflagged earthen floor had crumbled in places and bore traces of heavily nailed boots. No one was about, and Groult, without losing time by waiting for the grocer, mounted the stairs and knocked at a door on the second storey, just where the banisters ended. A little old man, holding a candle close under his chin, examined the visitor through the half-opened door before admitting him into a room encumbered with packets of torn papers, dog-eared ledgers, and burst and yawning portfolios, from which protruded ends of ancient legal documents, all heaped up and pressed solidly together. Piles of dusty papers and parchments leant against the walls, behind which one could hear the mice scurrying, in spite of the noisy wind in the chimney and the beating of the rain on the roof.
A mean and disordered bed, hung with ragged curtains, exposed its wretchedness and bareness in a shadowy corner. A thick layer of dust covered everything, making all objects uniformly grey; even the old man’s face seemed to be spread with a coating of it. He was toothless, and his tongue moved and mumbled ceaselessly between his withered lips. His eyes were pale green, and their quick restlessness reminded one of the swift mice nibbling audibly behind the wainscoting.
“Well,” said Groult, sitting down, “you wanted to speak to me; here I am. What’s the news?”
The old man licked his gums slowly, and said in a drawling nasal voice:
“I am very pleased to see you, my good Monsieur Groult — perhaps there is some news, perhaps there isn’t; it all depends upon how one looks at it.”
He was twiddling his grey beard as he spoke, and seemed to be counting his words and the bristles in it at the same time.
Groult interrupted him with an impatient growl.
“Dear me!” said the other; “you are in a great hurry! As sure as my name is Tancrède Reuline, and yours is Désiré Groult, I am ready to tell you everything I know that may interest you. Daddy Reuline is known all along the coast, from Carolles point to the Bréhal fisheries. Big and little all come to me. I do business with gentle and simple. No later than yesterday I collected a debt for Monsieur de Tancarville. Ah! my dear sir, it was what you might call a bad debt. Monsieur de Tancarville said to me in these very words, ‘Reuline, I was going to light my pipe with it.’ And only last week the Baroness Dubosq-Marienville—”
Groult interrupted by banging his fist down on the table, and Reuline, after a moment in which his lips moved without sound, went on in his slow nasal drawl:
“Now we will come, if you please, to your business. I am entirely at your disposition; we can’t possibly misunderstand each other. I found for you the birth certificate of a certain Mr. Samuel Ewart, and sundry other papers, enabling one to identify this person. I gave you the papers from hand to hand, as it were, without so much as asking what use you were going to make of them. I just did it to be of service to you.”
“What then?” asked Groult with a frown.
“Wait a bit — wait a bit,” said the Norman.
He moistened his lips and continued:
“It’s none of my business to inquire what interest you had in Samuel Ewart’s papers. I am very discreet, my good sir. Discretion is one of the leading virtues of my little trade. But suppose that Samuel Ewart is dead?”
“By God!” cried Groult, “if he is dead he won’t come to life again”; and he burst out laughing.
“Wait a bit,” said the old man (contemplating the pins carefully stuck in the sleeve of his coat)— “wait a bit. Suppose some person possesses a certified copy of his death certificate — the death certificate of Samuel Ewart who died in Jersey without descendants, and that the possessor of this paper can produce it at the right moment.”
Groult spread out his enormous hands. He was exasperated at what he considered the treachery of his old accomplice, which seemed to make the other papers he had procured for him, at a great expense, useless.
“No tricks,” he said roughly; “act square.”
The Norman’s eyes blinked uneasily, but he answered in a calm voice:
“Whatever I said was for your own good; but I see it makes you angry, so let’s say no more about it and part good friends.”
He got up, and took a lipless pitcher containing a bunch of forget-me-nots from a dilapidated walnut secretary.
“See,” he said, putting the pitcher on the table, “they will last all the summer. Each time I go along the shore by Carteret, I gather a bunch in the ditch which runs by Monsieur de Laigle’s grounds.
I wrap them up in my handkerchief... As he spoke, he passed his hand gently over the blue flowers and shook off the faded petals. “If one takes care to pull up the roots with the stalks, the plant will live in water as it would in the ground. Dear me! I have neither wife nor child, dog nor cat, and one must be fond of something — I’m fond of flowers.”
Groult was not listening to him, he was biting his lips and gnawing at his nails. Suddenly he jumped up and shouted:
“You’ve got Samuel Ewart’s death certificate. Give it me. I want it, and I will have it.”
Reuline, with a furtive glance at the walnut secretary, put the pot of flowers carefully back in its place.
“Wait a bit,” he said—” wait a bit. I have got the paper, and I haven’t got it. Perhaps I could lay my finger on it, and then again perhaps I couldn’t; but let’s talk as if I could. I heard lately that Mr. Haviland (in whose service you have been a good many years, haven’t you?) was looking for this same Samuel Ewart. It is only natural that I should think of obliging him in his turn; he would be very glad to have news of Samuel Ewart, who died so unfortunately in Jersey.”
Reuline paused and looked narrowly at Groult.
He did not want to irritate him too much, but Groult answered quietly:
“If you want to send the certificate to my master you must be quick about it. He is probably dead by now, or not far off.”
The old man stuck his tongue in his cheek, and looked at Groult with such evident perspicacity in his green eyes that the latter felt uneasy.
“Poor Mr. Haviland! Well, well, such is life! But you seem very sure that your master will die! It seems, then, one can tell beforehand how certain maladies will end. Well, well, who would have thought it! Now, to return to our business, Mr. Haviland will leave heirs who will certainly be glad to know what has become of Samuel Ewart. There is only one thing I want, my good sir, and that is to oblige everybody, if I can.”
Groult was quieter now. The wrinkles on his temples seemed to have gathered themselves into a sort of spiteful grin.
“But,” he said, “Haviland’s heirs won’t give you a penny for the paper. You would be a fool to send it to them. What good would it do you? Give it to me; I shall be able to pay you something for it later on.”
“Gently, gently. Suppose you explain your little business to me. Daddy Reuline is discretion itself.
When I know what it is all about I will see what is to be done.”
“I have nothing to explain to you.”
“Oh, good Lord! I know what’s the matter; you are shy. I must help you out. The late Samuel Ewart is put down for a round sum of money in Mr. Haviland’s will. Provided as you are, thanks to me, with papers establishing the identity of the defunct legatee, you will find a young man willing, for a consideration, to present himself at the lawyer’s office as Samuel Ewart, and receive as such the sum left to him. Good Lord! don’t try to deny it. One must not leav
e good money idle, and as poor Samuel can’t profit by it —
“But, my dear Groult, who is going to answer for the probity of this spurious Samuel Ewart? Suppose he kept everything for himself? It would be an indelicate proceeding on his part, and very unpleasant for you. These things have to be considered. There is so much dishonesty in this weary world! Think it over, be wise. I only want what is for your good.”
The old man stuck out the tip of his lizard’s tongue and continued:
“I am warning you, and forewarned is forearmed. I know the person who possesses Samuel Ewart’s death-certificate This person is neither a Turk nor a Jew, wishes you no ill, and is most reasonable. And this is what I am authorised to say to you: Get hold of the legacy, and when you have got it, offer a decent share of it to this person, through my intermediary; not half of it — no, that would be too much, it doesn’t do to be too hard on folks — but something like a bonus of, well, fifty per cent. Otherwise this person, quite contrary to my advice, will insist on making the document public, and that would be awkward for you and painful to me.”
During this long harangue Groult had quietly pushed his chair further and further back into the shadow; now, gathering himself together, he leapt suddenly on Reuline, and, seizing him by the throat, cried out:
“Give me the paper, you old Jew, or I will strangle you!”
He was furious at being thus met by an unforeseen obstacle.
Reuline, who was yellow, thin, and dried-up, and who drew each breath as though it must be his last, resisted with the strength and suppleness of a man used to such tussles — his frequent quarrels with the sailors who pawned their watches with him for money to get drunk on kept him in good condition.
Such unexpected resistance only made Groult more frantic, who saw red, and pulled out his knife; it was a wicked-looking thing, with a pointed blade fastened into a brass-mounted boxwood handle, and was hardly ever out of Groult’s hand; he was constantly using it for some purpose or another. The old man, in his struggles to get free, slipped and struck his forehead against the angle of the chimney-piece. Groult, still holding on, fell with him, and saw first a white scratch and then a stream of blood. Reuline’s cries and the sight of the blood frightened him, and he lost his head. With singular lucidity he chose his spot and plunged the knife into the old man’s breast. Then for a moment, which seemed to him endless, he paid no heed to anything. The man lay under him, resisting still with all his might, his mouth open, his green eyes rolling; then he let go and fell back, opening and shutting his hands convulsively as though trying to grasp something, then suddenly he was still.
Complete Works of Anatole France Page 290