Mme. Roland, always so self-possessed, started violently, betraying to her doctor son the anguish of her nerves.
Then she said: “It must be Mme. Rosemilly;” and her eye again anxiously turned to the mantel-shelf.
Pierre understood, or thought he understood, her fears and misery. A woman’s eye is keen, a woman’s wit is nimble, and her instincts suspicious.
When this woman who was coming in should see the miniature of a man she did not know, she might perhaps at the first glance discover the likeness between this face and Jean.
Then she would know and understand everything.
He was seized with dread, a sudden and horrible dread of this shame being unveiled, and, turning about just as the door opened, he took the little painting and slipped it under the clock without being seen by his father and brother.
When he met his mother’s eyes again they seemed to him altered, dim, and haggard.
“Good evening,” said Mme. Rosemilly. “I have come to ask you for a cup of tea.”
But while they were bustling about her and asking after her health, Pierre made off, the door having been left open.
When his absence was perceived they were all surprised.
Jean, annoyed for the young widow, who, he thought, would be hurt, muttered:
“What a bear!”
Mme. Roland replied:
“You must not be vexed with him; he is not very well to-day and tired with his excursion to Trouville.”
“Never mind,” said Roland, “that is no reason for taking himself off like a savage.”
Mme. Rosemilly tried to smooth matters by saying:
“Not at all, not at all. He has gone away in the English fashion; people always disappear in that way in fashionable circles if they want to leave early.”
“Oh, in fashionable circles, I dare say,” replied Jean. “But a man does not treat his family a l’Anglaise, and my brother has done nothing else for some time past.”
CHAPTER VI
For a week or two nothing occurred.
The father went fishing; Jean, with his mother’s help, was furnishing and settling himself; Pierre, very gloomy, never was seen excepting at meal-times.
His father having asked him one evening:
“Why the deuce do you always come in with a face as cheerful as a funeral?
This is not the first time I have remarked it.”
The doctor replied:
“The fact is I am terribly conscious of the burden of life.”
The old man did not have a notion what he meant, and with an aggrieved look he went on:
“It really is too bad.
Ever since we had the good luck to come into this legacy, every one seems unhappy. It is as though some accident had befallen us, as if we were in mourning for some one.”
“I am in mourning for some one,” said Pierre.
“You are?
For whom?”
“For some one you never knew, and of whom I was too fond.”
Roland imagined that his son alluded to some girl with whom he had had some love passages, and he said:
“A woman, I suppose.”
“Yes, a woman.”
“Dead?”
“No. Worse. Ruined!”
“Ah!”
Though he was startled by this unexpected confidence, in his wife’s presence too, and by his son’s strange tone about it, the old man made no further inquiries, for in his opinion such affairs did not concern a third person.
Mme. Roland affected not to hear; she seemed ill and was very pale.
Several times already her husband, surprised to see her sit down as if she were dropping into her chair, and to hear her gasp as if she could not draw her breath, had said:
“Really, Louise, you look very ill; you tire yourself too much with helping Jean.
Give yourself a little rest. Sacristi!
The rascal is in no hurry, as he is a rich man.”
She shook her head without a word.
But to-day her pallor was so great that Roland remarked on it again.
“Come, come,” said he, “this will not do at all, my dear old woman. You must take care of yourself.” Then, addressing his son, “You surely must see that your mother is ill.
Have you questioned her, at any rate?”
Pierre replied: