Beneath all my hesitation, my scruples, my doubts, there lurked that savage appetite for revenge which I had allowed to grow up in me, revenge that is not satisfied with the death of the hated object unless it be caused by one's self.I thirsted for revenge as a dog thirsts for water after running in the sun on a summer day.I wanted to roll myself in it, as the dog in question rolls himself in the water when he comes to it, were it the sludge of a swamp.I continued to gaze at my mother without moving.Presently she heaved a deep sigh and said aloud: "Oh, me, oh, me! what misery it is!" Then lifting up her tear-stained face, she saw me, and uttered a cry of surprise.I hastened towards her.
"You are in trouble, mother," I said."What ails you?"Dread of her answer made my voice falter; I knelt down before her as I used to do when a child, and, taking both her hands, I covered them with kisses.Again, at this solemn hour, my lips were met by that golden wedding-ring which I hated like a living person; yet the feeling did not hinder me from speaking to her almost childishly."Ah," I said, "you have troubles, and to whom should you tell them if not to me? Where will you find anyone to love you more? Be good to me," I went on; "do you not feel how dear you are to me?"She bent her head twice, made a sign that she could not speak, and burst into painful sobs.
"Has your trouble anything to do with me?" I asked.
She shook her head as an emphatic negative, and then said in a half-stifled voice, while she smoothed my hair with her hands, as she used to do in the old times:
"You are very nice to me, my Andre."
How simple those few words were, and yet they caught my heart and gripped it as a hand might do.How had I longed for some of those little words which she had never uttered, some of those gracious phrases which are like the gestures of the mind, some of her involuntary tender caresses.Now I had what I had so earnestly desired, but at what a moment and by what means! It was, nevertheless, very sweet to feel that she loved me.I told her so, employing words which scorched my lips, so that I might be kind to her.
"Is our dear invalid worse?"
"No, he is better.He is resting now," she answered, pointing in the direction of my stepfather's room.
"Mother, speak to me," I urged, "trust yourself to me; let me grieve with you, perhaps I may help you.It is so cruel for me that I must take you by surprise in order to see your tears."I went on, pressing her by my questions and my complaining.What, then, did I hope to tear from those lips which quivered but yet kept silence? At any price I WOULD know; I was in no state to endure fresh mysteries, and I was certain that my stepfather was somehow concerned in this inexplicable trouble, for it was only he and I who so deeply moved that woman's heart of hers.She was not thus troubled on account of me, she had just told me so; the cause of her grief must have reference to him, and it was not his health.
Had she, too, made any discovery? Had the terrible suspicion crossed her mind also? At the mere idea a burning fever seized upon me; I insisted and insisted again.I felt that she was yielding, if it were only by the leaning of her head towards me, the passing of her trembling hand over my hair, and the quickening of her breath.
"If I were sure," said she at length, "that this secret would die with you and me.""Oh, mother!" I exclaimed, in so reproachful a tone that the blood flew to her cheeks.Perhaps this little betrayal of shame decided her; she pressed a lingering kiss on my forehead, as though she would have effaced the frown which her unjust distrust had set there.
"Forgive me, my Andre," she said, "I was wrong.In whom should Itrust, to whom confide this thing, except to you? From whom ask counsel?" And then she went on as though she were speaking to herself, "If he were ever to apply to him?""He! Whom?"
"Andre, will you swear to me by your love for me, that you will never, you understand me, never, make the least illusion to what Iam going to tell you?"
"Mother!" I replied, in the same tone of reproach, and then added at once, to draw her on, "I give you my word of honor!""Nor--" she did not pronounce a name, but she pointed anew to the door of the sick man's room.
"Never."
"You have heard of Edmond Termonde, his brother?" Her voice was lowered, as though she were afraid of the words she uttered, and now her eyes only were turned towards the closed door, indicating that she meant the brother of her husband.I had a vague knowledge of the story; it was of this brother I had thought when I was reviewing the mental history of my stepfather's family.I knew that Edmond Termonde had dissipated his share of the family fortune, no less than 1,200,000 francs, in a few years; that he had been enlisted, that he had gone on leading a debauched life in his regiment; that, having no money to come into from any quarter, and after a heavy loss at cards, he had been tempted into committing both theft and forgery.Then, finding himself on the brink of being detected, he had deserted.The end was that he did justice on himself by drowning himself in the Seine, after he had implored his brother's forgiveness in terms which proved that some sense of moral decency still lingered in him.The stolen money was made good by my stepfather; the scandal was hushed up, thanks to the scoundrel's disappearance.I had reconstructed the whole story in my mind from the gossip of my good old nurse, and also from certain traces of it which I had found in some passages of my father's correspondence.Thus, when my mother put her question to me in so agitated a way, I supposed she was about to tell me of family grievances on the part of her husband which were totally indifferent to me, and it was with a feeling of disappointment that I asked her:
"Edmond Termonde? The man who killed himself?"She bent her head to answer, yes, to the first part of my question;then, in a still lower voice, she said:
