Henry Bordeaux

“ His sister’s betrothal is broken, his brother’s future is spoiled, his mother’s health is shattered, his family’s fortune is compromised, our name spotted and our honour stained! That’s his work! And that is called love! What does it matter whether he has stolen a sum of money! From us he has stolen everything. What is there left to us to-day?”
“You,” cried Margaret. “And you will save him.”
“God,” said Mrs. Roquevillard, finding a strange serenity in her sorrow. “Have confidence. The worth of a race can never be undone. It will redeem the culprit’s faults.” ”

“ The family keeps it strong. And yet, even at this hour, Maurice, I won’t speak ill of love, if only you know how to understand it. Love is our heart’s sigh for all that lies beyond our grasp. Cherish this longing in your heart. It is yours to cherish. You will find it again in doing good deeds, in nature, in fulfilling your destiny without fear or frailty. Don’t misunderstand it. Don’t mistake it any more. Before you give your love to a woman, remember your mother, think of your sister; think of the happiness that may be in store for you some day of having a daughter of your own to bring up. ”

“ But was not a family just a great material force, visibly expressed in the continuity of its patrimony, by its mutual obligations permitting the payment of the debts of some by the fruits of others’ toil? Was it not indeed something else, too, less palpable but more sacred—a solid chain of traditions, a common heritage of honour, probity and courage? What use was it to transmit life if you were not to supply it with a worthy setting, support and comfort from the past, opportunity for a well-stored future? For to transmit life was to admit life’s immortality. ”

“ There had been some sorrow, then, a great sorrow, during his absence. In one’s extreme youth, and even later on in life sometimes, one does not take in the possibility of losing those one loves: one goes away from them with no sorrow, feeling sure of seeing them again when one comes back. Only with our first grief is the future’s credit injured. Maurice, separated from his own people, deprived of news, preserved by the heedlessness of his age and the egotism of his love, had not been conscious of the inquietude that wrung his heart brutally when memory intervened. ”

“ The young man had made no attempt to recapture her affection or her promise to him. Developments had broken on them like a tempest: the accusation by Mr. Frasne, Mrs. Roquevillard’s death, Maurice’s sentence for contempt, the shame and ruin of the family that resulted from it, and, last cruelty of all, the loss of the firstborn son, their future hope and stay. It was more than enough to justify one’s giving up, keeping away from people, forgetting. Was it not the privilege of unhappiness to hide itself? She had enjoyed her tears and her affliction by herself. ”

“ Of itself it called up memories of ancient Savoy, and the times of his ancestors and rude wars, while the pointed arches of the Sainte-Chapelle symbolised the pious impulses of their hearts. What is left of the dead, with all their acts and sentiments, if these material signs, through which they realise and recall themselves, do not exist for us? Did La Vigie, its lands cleared, subdued, added to and restored, count for nothing in the destiny of the Roquevillards? And when it should be abandoned, would not its mainstay, the visible scene of its continuity, be lacking to his race? ”

“ Battard echoed persistently in his mind.
“There has been a theft. Therefore, there is a guilty person. Who is it? If it isn’t the lover it’s the mistress. He won’t have the mistress accused, therefore it will be the lover. How could he reply to this argument in a way to convince the jury’s rustic brains?”
And suddenly, as he traced the blurred outlines of the map, he thought an idea broke forth in it, like a light in the darkness.
“If we suppress the fact of theft, then no one will be guilty. The jury will have to acquit him. ”

“ It is not the patrimony that makes a family, but the long line of generations that have created and maintained the patrimony. If a family is dispossessed, it can found a new estate elsewhere. If it has lost its traditions, its faith, its joint responsibility, its honour, if it is reduced to an assemblage of individuals ruled by contrary interests and following their own destinies rather than the family’s, then it is a body emptied of its soul, a corpse that reeks of death, and the finest estates can never make it live again. ”

“ These young people to-day don’t know what the patrimony meant then, when it was the material force of the family, the whole family grouped about one head, assured of living and enduring because it held together. To-day what use is there in keeping an estate together? If you don’t sell it, the law will take a hand and scatter it when you die. With a forced division of estates there is no more patrimony. What with each one being for himself on the one hand, and the continuous prying and meddling of the state, on the other hand, in all the doings of one’s life, there is no more family. ”

“ But his yearning gaze fell back blankly before this cruelly cold, clear emptiness of space that was all around him: it gave back no message to him, no word such as the spring or summer or even the autumn of life’s seasons might have uttered to him. How should he defend his son with no weapons but memories of the past? What help could he expect from this deserted soil, this race that had gone down into the tomb? “One doesn’t argue through the dead,” Mr. Battard had said to him on learning of Maurice’s determination. ”

“ THE VINTAGE FROM the summit of the hill the voice of Mr. Francis Roquevillard came down to the grape-gatherers, who, ranged along the vines on the hillside, were lightening the stalks of their dark fruit.
“The night’s coming. All together now! One more good pull.”
It was a benevolent voice, but it had an accent of command. It made every finger nimbler at the sound of it; even the shoulders of those labourers that had begun to loaf bent again to work. Good-humouredly the master added:
“In the morning they are as swift as swallows, and in the afternoon they idle and chatter like a lot of jays.” ”

“ When you said to me, ‘I will be yours, but yours alone, when you want me,’ I could feel even then your caresses that made you one flesh with mine. Because you are too sensitive to love’s touch, because even now when I am going to make you suffer, I tremble for your frailty, tremble for the future, oh, Edith, don’t think I love you less. When I realise that for that very thing in you I may lose you one day, Edith, I ought not to think this of you, yet perhaps I love you all the more. What memories shall you keep of me? Between two autumns our love has run its course. ”

“ Silent and immaculate it yielded to the touch of life and gave it forth. The trembling earth separated itself distinctly from the sky, whose pale blue spread into a thousand tints under its dominant gold. Nearer by, the rime that covered the trees and shrubs reflected the rays of the setting sun like crystals that gather up in their tiny space the myriad lights of a chandelier.
Mr. Roquevillard, his eye fixed on La Vigie, beheld this phenomenon of the resurrection. For a few minutes nature lived again beneath the caresses of the evening. ”

“ Silence fell on the room immediately, a silence deep and throbbing with expectation, that made people hold their breath and their hearts stand still. This man with the almost white hair, this old man with his record of more than sixty years of probity and talent and upright living, who stood forth as the sole representative of so many generations of honourable and patriotic men, uttered, by the mere act of rising to his feet, an eloquent protest against the calumnies and defamation with which the long argument for the plaintiff had tried to overwhelm his race. ”

“ The snow made the outlines less distinct, blurring the foreground till the landscape was all soft and uniform. Threats of evening tinted it a delicate rose, spreading over all things the hue of living flesh.
In spite of the clear air, Mr. Roquevillard felt the cold, and buttoned up his overcoat. Now that he was no longer warm from walking he was again conscious of his age and sorrow. Why had he climbed this hill? Its slope seemed to him like a cemetery, with its felled trees scattered over the white ground. ”

“ In the name of our mother, whose last desire it was, her last command, for the sake of father, whom you have wounded to the heart, such a noble and tender heart, in the name of Felicie and Hubert, who deserve it from you, of Germaine and your little sister, in the name of all our race, who for so many years have never given examples of anything but honesty, and who conjure you now not to upset in one day what so many successive generations have built up, come back, Maurice. ”

“ With swelling breast he summoned up all the successive generations that had cleared these lands, the hands that built this mansion and these farm buildings, this rustic work, that had laid the foundation of this domain, from the first shirt-sleeves of the oldest peasant to the lawyer’s robes and the togas of the senate of Savoy. The high plateau which spread before him was invested like a fortress by the hosts of ancestors that had planted with their wheat and rye and oats and orchards and vines in this corner of the earth traditions of uprightness and honour, examples of courage and nobility. ”

“ We who have loved and laboured, fought and suffered, strove not for our own selfish ends, not for a personal result achieved or missed by any one of us, but for an end more permanent than that, an end beyond ourselves, encompassing all the family. What we have saved thus for the common fund we have given into your care to be handed on. It is not La Vigie. Land can be gained by the sweat of one’s brow, bought with money. The soul of our race you bear within you. ”

“ Hamel to understand men and life, shut up as the latter had been with his transcendental prejudices as in a tower; and he recognised in Maurice’s resolution that tenacity and sense of responsibility which from generation to generation had created and maintained the strength of the Roquevillard family. That the boy was using this same force to destroy it was the pity of the thing. To create his individual happiness he had compromised the past and future of his people, though their distinctive traits, nevertheless, showed even in his faults. ”

“ Little by little I shall raise myself to your level. Men like me, all men, hover between good and evil, between devotion and selfishness. They don’t reflect, they are carried away by all the mediocrity of life. But sometimes one impulse is enough to lift them out of themselves. Your love has given me that impulse, Margaret.”
He stopped, waiting for a word of hope. She lowered her eyes, and the veil, which she no longer held back, fell down to her shoulder, throwing a little shadow on one side of her face. ”

“ There’s plenty of work looking out for your own happiness, without adding the terrible weight of twenty generations to it. Advance Maurice’s share to him if you insist on it, but hold back his brothers’ and sisters’, and something for yourself in your old age. As for La Vigie, I’d sell it as a matter of fact, if you can get a good price for it, not to buy the jury’s sympathy with it, but because land’s no good any more except to some peasant who worries it like a rat. Industry, machines—that’s the future, for individuals and for society, too. ”

“ She was conscious of Maurice’s persistent gaze, and smiled at him, pointing toward the horizon with a comprehensive gesture that seemed to gather it all in at once.
“It’s lovelier even than in those first days.”
He could not help translating his recent thoughts for her.
“You, too, are more beautiful, Edith.”
The unlooked-for compliment took her by surprise.
“Really?”
“Yes, I mean it. Do you see those trees? They are more graceful, as if they had thrown off some useless weight. You can see farther through their branches. In the same way I can see deeper into your eyes.” ”

“ She wore no kerchief on her head, as if to face the daylight the more openly with her youth. Her hair, a little disarranged, fell forward. Her mouth was large and her expression rather common, but she had a look of health, bright eyes, and in especial a golden tint, as of full white grapes that are reddened by warmth till they seem full of the elixir of the sun. Mr. Roquevillard stared at her. ”

“ For you he has another wife in store, no doubt, who will make you happier than I could.”
“You’re like no other woman, Margaret. You’re not the kind one forgets. You’re not the kind one can replace.”
Darkness was coming into the drawing-room with the waning day, and in the shadow, where the outlines of her black dress were dimmed, the girl’s face shone forth like a last remnant of the light, a light which scarcely animated her pale features. It was as if in touching her cheek one should fear to feel, instead of living warmth, the chill of marble in them.
‘Yes,“ she said, ”you will forget me. ”

“ It stood at the far end of the Lake of Orta, on a hill covered with chestnut trees, and commanding a wide view from south to north. You could see as far as Novare, that shining city at the other end of the plain, and Monte Rosa, whose distant summit and glaciers scintillating in the sun looked round on all the other mountain levels. From no part roundabout was there a wider view than from this deserted place. Often when his companion’s fatigue left him with empty hours to fill Maurice would come here to gaze toward home and sense his exile to the full. ”

“ Business men won’t fail to take advantage of you. And the land yields scarcely three, whereas you only need one frost or hail-storm to ruin your crops. You have too much experience, father, not to know that mortgaging is an incurable disease for land, a fatal one. Country property is a great risk nowadays for one who does not live off the land, or hasn’t a good income to insure him against loss from bad seasons or competition. It’s compromising the future irrevocably. And La Vigie is the family’s patrimony, sacred to the future, and ought not to be touched. ”

“ She is there, quite near me yet. If I go back again she’ll never know. Her waking will be sweet and easy. But no, I shall never see her again. There are ties that love cannot obliterate. Happiness, I can understand it now, is not one’s right. I wound her, yet I love her. The wrong she did me was involuntary. I don’t remember anything but having felt life near her, of having lived it near her each minute to the full; and yet I can’t stay near her now any more. Do you remember our first days, Edith? ”