“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 to-day, 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 to-day, 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: