lifted to me his almost terrifying eyes.

“Francis,” he repeated.

He tried to raise his hand to lay it upon my head. Though I leaned low
over him he could not do it, and his arm fell back. I kneeled, that
he might do it with less effort. He did not even try, as I had hoped,
but in that low voice in which he had named us one by one, he said
distinctly:

“Your turn has come.”

My mother, who was a little behind, drew near to ask me the same
question that I had asked her:

“What is he saying?”

I made an instinctive movement as if to say that I did not precisely
know--yet I had clearly heard him, and after a moment of hesitation,
the expression ceased to be mysterious to me. I could see in it an
evidence of confidence in the past. My father had not admitted my
treachery, my enfranchisement, he had been sure that I would return to
him; he counted upon me. But in its form as from beyond the tomb the
utterance had a still deeper significance, which completely overcame
me; my father was tendering to my weakness the royal crown of the
family, inviting me to wear it after him, because I should be, at home,
his successor, his heir. I had never thought of that.

Did my mother understand the emotion which bowed and shattered me? She
reminded me that I needed food after my long journey in the cold air,
and went with me to the door.

“Valentine,” murmured the sick man.

“I am not leaving you, dear.” And she turned from me to hurry back to
him.

I did not leave the room, but remained and witnessed a scene which
almost without words, apparently obscure and far away, was only all the
more clear to me.

My father began by saying:

“Listen!” He was looking at no one at the moment; his eyes were fixed
on the ceiling above him. He made no haste to speak, he was gathering
himself together. An indescribable anguish swept over me. I divined
that my presence had shaken him, and that he was collecting his
thoughts as to the future of the family. What he had to say to my
mother was doubtless his last wish on the subject. Had I not a right to
hear, since _my turn had come_?

Perhaps my mother, too, understood. She was at the bedside, leaning
over, and the sheet which hung out against her knee shook slightly. I
am sure I saw it shake--was it the trembling of her knee? And then I
saw nothing except one face.

My father was still silent. I could hear the monotonous moan of the
fountain in the court. Mother urged him tenderly:

“My love, my dear love ...”

His mind was entirely lucid. He had _himself followed the progress
of his disease_, he knew precisely how he was. At her words he
seemed to emerge from the thoughts in which he was plunged; he turned
his head slightly and looked at my mother with his almost awe-inspiring
gaze, which penetrated deeply into her heart.

“Valentine,” he repeated, simply.

“You had something to say to me?”

With infinite gentleness he murmured: “Oh, no, Valentine. I have
nothing to say to you.”

I am sure that he had meant to confide to her the future of the
house, and one gaze had been enough to silence him. That gaze alone
had told him that there was no need. She who was there, close beside
him, was she not his flesh and his heart? All those years together,
day by day, without one difference of opinion, one cloud, had made
them indissolubly one. What could one utterance add to all that? Was
ever greater evidence of love given to wife than that silence, that
confidence, that peace! ...

After those high moments I was overpowered by the human cowardice which
finds a sort of solace in absence from the scene of calamity. I left
the room. Grandfather was getting down from the diligence with Nicola,
already a big girl, growing serious, and Jamie, lighter minded, whose
twelve years were not yet troubled by any presentiment. Grandfather
was anxiously superintending the transportation of his violin case and
his almanacs; his collection of pipes was not to be entrusted to any
hands but his own. Aunt Deen attended in person to the heavy luggage.
Notwithstanding her years and declining strength, she still took upon
herself a servant’s duties. Physical effort alone could relieve her
mind; with her, sorrow expressed itself in increased activity.

Once in the house, grandfather wandered about like a soul in pain. He
hovered around the sick room without venturing to enter. He dared not
ask questions, and in his uncertainty he made his moan to any one whom
he saw:

“I am getting old. I am old.”

They saw one another, but I was not present. It was not necessary
to be present to realise what it must have been, and that the son,
inevitably, supported and comforted the father. If life does not draw
from a religious heart the fervour of a constant upward progress, one
must always remain what one has been. For some the burden, for others
the looking on. And even the approach of death does not change things.

As evening drew on, grandfather, who was dragging himself from room to
room, bemoaning himself, timidly proposed that we should take a walk.

“That’s a good idea,” said Aunt Deen, who understood him. “There are
two or three errands at the chemist’s and the grocer’s.”

He manifested a childish joy at being made useful and I did not refuse
to go with him. After the solitude of the mountain, with its silent
nights, we found a secret pleasure in the lighted streets and the
coming and going of people. The epidemic had been completely checked;
the sanitary measures which had been ordered left not the slightest
danger to be feared. Awakened from its nightmare, the town was giving
itself over to transports of joy the reaction from terror. I had seen
it in its consternation rushing with loud cries to seek salvation in
one man, and I found it now in all the heyday and thoughtlessness of
a festival. The autumn softness floated like a perfume over all. The
shops were lighted up. The pavements were crowded with people and the
cafés overflowed to the very street. The women were in light dresses
which they had not been able to wear all summer, and jaunty in their
fresh costumes transformed the season into a belated spring. After
so much mourning life was sweet, and funerals were relegated to the
background.

I was the son of their saviour. I expected tokens of popular favour,
and behold people avoided us, as I was not slow to see. The sight of
that old man and that youth forced upon them the thought of their
benefactor, and recalled the evil days through which they had passed.
Evidently no one wanted to think of them. We should have liked to talk
over all the troubles, but no one gave us an opportunity.

Finally, some one spoke to us. It was Martinod, Martinod with his
pursed-up mouth and sleek beard who, without giving me time to
shake him off, began to talk of my father admiringly, eloquently,
enthusiastically, awarding him full and entire justice, celebrating his
courage, his organising ability, his medical skill, his marvellous art
of directing men. I had resolved, on seeing him, to turn my back upon
him with contempt, and here I was, full of gratitude, drinking in his
words--forgetting his calumnies, his base manœuvres, his secret plots,
which had so nearly destroyed the unity of our family. I ought to have
been seeking upon his face the mark imprinted by my father’s hand, and
here I was listening to his brazen encomiums. I was still too simple
minded to imagine what he was designing.

Gallus and Merinos, who next met us, were quite ready to descant
upon themselves and the cruel trials from which they had fortunately
emerged. We tried to speak of poor Casenave and the unlucky Galurin,
but they changed the subject by informing us that one of them was
composing a Funeral March and the other a _Danse Macabre_, in
commemoration of the historic typhus. I have never learned that either
was finished.

When we returned home, somewhat cheered up by the change, we met
Mariette at the door, full of indignant wrath. She had served us for
more than twenty years, and never thought of controlling herself in our
presence. The little doctor who had long ago visited me in my attack of
pleurisy had attempted to slip a gold piece into her hand, begging her
to give his name and address to the patients who continued to crowd to
our house, and with an emphatic gesture she had thrown his gold at his
head.

“The wretched creature!” exclaimed Aunt Deen, who had witnessed the
incident from the staircase. “Ah! _they_ are all just alike!”

And I ceased to deny the existence of those who surrounded us, “they,”
and knew that calamity was impending over us.

A little later in the evening, just before the dinner hour, as the bell
rang I went myself to the door, thinking that it might be my brother
Stephen, arriving from Rome, whence he had been recalled the previous
evening. I saw before me in the shadow, for the vestibule lamp but
feebly lighted the doorstep, one of our poor people, old Yes-Yes, with
his ever-nodding head. I knew that he was still alive, though Zeeze
Million had carried her dreams of fortune with her to the grave. Why
did he come on another day than Saturday, the regular day of the poor?

“Wait,” I said. “I’ll go for some money.”

But he caught my arm almost familiarly.

“Yes, yes,” he began, “that’s not it.”

“What then?”

“Yes, yes, he cured me, you understand. So it’s to learn, yes, to learn
how he is.”

Full of gratitude he had come for information. I spoke more gently, as
I replied:

“Always the same, friend.”

“Ah, ah! yes, yes, so much the worse.”

I wondered why he did not go. Did he after all, hope for a little
money? Suddenly, like a stammerer who has succeeded in getting hold of
his words, and makes the most of it, he thrust his face close to mine,
exclaiming:

“He--he--he was a man! Yes, yes.”

And he at once disappeared in the darkness. I gazed into the shadows
which had swallowed him up, and then suddenly closed the door;--but too
late, for it seemed to me that some one had come in, an invisible some
one who took his way up the stairs, through the passage, to the room. I
tried to cry out, but my lips uttered no sound; and I thought to myself
that if I had cried out they would have thought me crazy. I stood there
paralysed, knowing that some one had come into the house before me, and
that I could not drive out him who was there, before me, who would not
go out, who was noiselessly going up the stairs, his actual presence
unsuspected by all but me.

Now I understood the true, the irreparable meaning of what I had
vaguely seen without admitting that I saw it. That poor stammering
creature had said “He was a man,” speaking of my father in the past
tense, speaking of my father as if my father was no longer living. Then
that invisible presence which had come in by the open door was Death.
For the first time it seemed to me an active thing, for the first time
Death seemed to me--there is no other word--_alive_. Until that
moment I had attached no importance to its acts. And in my horror and
impotence, I stood there, my arms hanging helpless at my sides.

Long ago, when we had been in danger of losing the house, I had been
born into the unknown sense of grief; now I was born into the sense of
death. And I felt all the cruelty of the parting, before it had come to
pass.

As in that long ago time, I fled into the garden and threw myself upon
the grass. The night was there before me; the earth was cold and seemed
to repel me. The wind which had risen was wrenching the branches of the
chestnut trees, and they groaned, uttering lamentations. Especially
one of them, the one of the breach in the wall, never ceased moaning,
and I thought to see it fall. I recalled to mind some that I had seen
in the forest of the Alpette after a storm, prone upon the ground, at
such length that the eye was astonished on measuring them from root to
tip. And I recalled, too, that picture in my Bible of the tall cedars
of Lebanon lying on the ground--those that were destined to be used in
building the Temple in Jerusalem.

The beams of the roof seemed to be complaining, like the trees, and
I expected to see the house fall into a heap. What would there be to
wonder at, if the house did fall, since my father was dying?

                                  IV

                               THE HEIR

SORROWS like these have their own modesty, and I throw a veil over
mine....

I resume my story at the time when we resumed our ordinary life. The
first meal by ourselves consecrated its permanence, after the comings
and goings of relatives and friends were over, with all the confusion
inseparable from a house of mourning. My brother Stephen, who had
hastened from Rome, had gone back to complete his theological studies.
Mélanie was doubtless finding expression for her own grief by more
complete devotion to all the sorrows of the hospital, and Bernard, far
away, had acknowledged the blow by a brief cablegram in which we could
measure his affection. We others, who remained, could now count one
another like the wounded after defeat.

The bell rang and we must go to the dining-room. Grandfather came
in from his walk; he was bent and broken, he leant upon his cane,
bemoaning himself about something, I can not tell what. Something had
gone wrong, he himself could not quite understand.

“Ah!” he sighed, all out of breath. “I thought I should never get back
to the house.”

He spoke as we used to speak when we were little. But had we ever left
off saying The House? I saw him so old and weak and hardly realised
that it was he who used to take me into the woods and on the lake, in
those days when both of us used to sally forth in all tranquillity
for the conquest of liberty. In my transformation, going to the other
extreme, I gazed upon him now with an excessive pity which bordered
upon contempt.

Yes, when the soldiers are on the ramparts the town may question and
discuss, may they not? It questions and discusses the utility of arms
and fortifications, their destruction appearing a slight thing. But
what if there are no soldiers and the enemy is at the gates?

Thus in the old days we could talk of our desires and our dreams, of
the commonwealth of the future, and above all, of our dear liberty. We
could, then, and now we can no more, for there is no one defending us,
and we are face to face with life, with our own destinies. He is no
longer here, grandfather, who used to mount guard on the ramparts for
the whole family.

Aunt Deen was putting finishing touches to the table. She was very old
to impose so much labour upon herself, never stopping to rest from
morning till night.

“Don’t, aunt, it is not your work.”

But she protested and muttered and began to weep aloud.

“You mustn’t prevent my working. I feel it less when I am working.”

Didn’t I know, too, that there was now no one in the kitchen but
Mariette, because things were changed with us? Each of us must do his
part, and Aunt Deen, as usual, began first.

Louise was no longer gay, as she used to be. She came in, leading her
sister Nicola, as if to protect her. Why did I look more lovingly at
their fair hair? Was I already thinking of the new uncertainties of
their future? Jamie, left mostly to himself these latter days, had not
been good, and my mother was reproving him. He probably thought that
she would never think of scolding him, and all astonishment, he obeyed.
And now we must take our seats around the table.

Mother had taken her old place in the middle, and I found in her
manner, in her voice gentle as always, an indescribable new authority,
inexplicable and yet to be felt. She turned to grandfather, who came
next.

“It is for you to take his place,” she said indicating my father’s
chair, opposite to hers.

“Oh, not I!” exclaimed grandfather with agitation. “Valentine, I can’t
take that place. I am nothing now but an old beast.”

She urged, but in vain; nothing would induce him to yield. Then my
mother turned to me with that expression, at once calm and frightened,
which she had worn ever since--since she became a widow.

“It must be you,” she said.

Without a word I seated myself in my father’s place and for a few
moments I found it impossible to speak. Why this emotion for so
simple and natural a thing? So simple and so natural indeed was the
transmission of authority.

I have compared the house to a kingdom, and the succession of heads
of the family to a dynasty. And now this dynasty had come to me. My
mother was exercising the regency, and I was wearing the crown. And
now I learned at the same time its weight and its honour. As before
this I had been born into sorrow and into death, I was now born into
the sense of my responsibility in life. Indeed I do not know whether
I can compare the feeling that took possession of me with any other
emotion. It pierced my heart with that sharp and cruel dart which is
generally attributed to love. And from my wound sprang up, as it were,
a gush of red blood, the sense of exaltation which was to colour all my
life--blood which, far from subtracting from life’s forces, would add
to the eternal defences of our race.

Thus, before I had attained the age of man, I entered, by anticipation,
upon the great struggle which without fail forms a part of every
human existence, the struggle between liberty and acceptance, between
the horror of servitude and the sacrifices which are the price of
permanence. A delightful but dangerous teacher had early revealed to
me the miraculous charm of nature, of that very love and pride with
which we think to bring the earth into subjection, but this too sweet
and enervating charm would never again entirely possess me. My life was
henceforth fixed to an iron ring: it would no longer depend upon my
own fancy. Toward the mirages of happiness I should henceforth reach
out only fettered hands. But these fetters are those which every man
must one day assume, whether he actually mounts a throne or whether his
empire is only over an acre or a name. Like a king I was responsible
for the decadence or the prosperity of the kingdom--The House.

A few days later, since I must begin my medical studies, I also was
obliged to go away, for a time. This parting tore my heart: in the
zeal of my new part, I would fain have believed my presence necessary
to my mother, who must be quite crushed by the loss of him who was her
life. Her calmness, however, surprised me, and also the clearness of
her judgment, and that mysterious new authority that every one felt. At
the time of the funeral Martinod had begged for the honour of making
a speech, reminding all present of my father’s devotion to the public
weal, but she had refused. I could not understand her repelling a
repentant enemy, and would willingly have given a contrary opinion.
But not long afterward we learned that Martinod, hoping to capture the
Mayor’s office, had counted upon thus making use of the dead to regain
his lost popularity. Aunt Deen’s _they_ had not laid aside their
arms. They would never lay them aside. But the hearth-stone had its
watchful guardians, neither to be duped nor lulled to sleep.

But there would be loneliness there, with only Nicola and Jamie.
Grandfather would hardly count, for he was failing from day to day. He
who had always had such horror of enclosures now asked almost every
evening if the doors were locked and bolted. What did he fear? Once,
arousing from a doze, he earnestly called for his father. Aunt Deen
took him up almost roughly:

“You know very well that he has been dead these thirty years!”

To our stupefaction he quickly replied,

“No, no, not him, the other.”

“What other? What do you mean?”

“The one who was there a little while ago,” he said, pointing in the
direction of the consulting room.

Then we understood that there was a confusion of generations in his
brain. He felt that he had lost his support, and very naturally our
father had become his.

Much affected by his confusion of mind, I became more just to him.
Together we had lost the empire of liberty.

The evening before my departure I went to my mothers room. I had
expected to lend her courage for our parting, and behold I was weaker
and more agitated than she.

“I shall come back,” I said positively, “and I shall try to follow
_him_.”

We never spoke of him otherwise, among ourselves.

“Yes,” she replied, “_your turn has come_.”

Then she had heard and understood. And as, my head on her shoulder, I
expressed my sorrow at leaving her in her trouble, she comforted me.

“Listen; we must not be sad.”

Was it she who spoke thus? I raised my head in surprise and looked at
her; her face, ravaged by trials, chiselled by the sorrow of the most
ardent love, was almost colourless. All its expression centred in her
eyes, so gentle, so pure, so limpid. She was changed and aged. And yet
there was in her an indescribable firmness which she imparted to all
around her, no one knew how.

“Don’t be surprised,” she said. “That first night I was so overwhelmed
with despair that I prayed God to take me. I cried unto Him and He
heard me. He sustained me, but in another way. I had not believed
enough. Now I believe as we ought to believe. We are not parted, don’t
you see?--We are going forward to meet again.”

A Book of Hours was lying on the work table beside her. I mechanically
took it up. It opened of itself to a page which she must have read
often.

“Read it aloud,” she said.

It was the prayer of the dying, to be recited during the approach of
death:

 “_Leave this world, Christian soul, in the name of God the Father
 Almighty who created thee; in the name of Jesus Christ, Son of
 the living God who suffered for thee; in the name of Angels and
 Archangels, of Thrones and Dominations; in the name of Principalities
 and Powers, of Cherubim and Seraphim; in the name of the Patriarchs
 and Prophets, and of the Holy Apostles and Evangelists; in the name
 of the Holy Martyrs and Confessors, in the name of the holy Monks and
 Solitaries, in the name of the holy Virgins, and of all the Saints of
 God. May thy dwelling be this day in peace and thy habitation in the
 Holy Places!_ ...”

All heaven assembled to receive the Soul to whom the portals of Life
were opened.

_We are not parted; we are going forward to meet again_; I
understood the meaning of her words.

In the silence that followed my reading, once more I heard the
monotonous lament of the fountain in the court, and I recalled my
father’s confidence when, about to speak, confidence had closed his
lips. What could he have said to my mother which she would not know
from him? She was still living with him. She would finish his work, and
then she would go to join him. It was so simple; and this was why she
was so at peace.

Her calmness communicated itself to Aunt Deen, always at work, and
ever on the lookout for the most humiliating duties, polishing floors
or blacking shoes, as if she would punish herself for having outlived
her nephew. And when mother gently took her to task for her excessive
devotion, she would protest with tears, as if begging a favour.

As at evening one sees the village lights come out, one by one, along
the slopes, so I could see the lights of our house shining out even
beyond our own horizon, to the ends of the world, and even beyond the
world. They were shining for the absent as well as for the present,
for Mélanie at the bedside of the poor, for Stephen at Rome, and for
Bernard, soldier of the outposts in his far distant colony. And they
were shining still higher.

And it seemed to me that the walls whose restrictions I had deplored
during my years of youth, during my mad search for liberty, were
opening of themselves to let me pass out. They no longer kept me
a prisoner. How should they keep me a prisoner? Wherever I might
henceforth go, I should carry with me a bit of earth, a bit of my
earth, as if I had been made of its dust, as God made the first man.

That evening, the eve of my departure, my faith in The House became
faith in The Eternal House where the dead live again in peace....

April, 1908--December, 1912.