The will to live (Les Roquevillard)

SOME decision must be made. Mr. Roquevillard had been stunned since last evening by his son’s loss, of which he had heard in a laconic official note, saying that Hubert had died in his country’s service, far from any help, in an advanced post. His father had not even the supreme consolation of giving way to his sorrow. Hubert had gone away to the colonies to seek out danger and win some glory that should brighten the family’s tarnished name, and so he was the last victim of Maurice’s heedless wrongs against them all. Maurice, himself, to-morrow, was to appear in court, and there was still the struggling with the wilful difficulties of his defence. No doubt the sacrifice of the family estate would have its effect. No doubt the reparation made to the plaintiff would render acquittal certain, or at any rate probable, and turn the tables in favour of the accused. But even acquittal must not be wrung from the jury through pity or through favour. To come back again to his own fireside, to deserve honour again in the city or at the bar, to continue a tradition and hand it down in his turn, the young man must leave the court-house stripped of every injurious suspicion, discharged from every fault against the law and honour. And how was this to be accomplished without mentioning the name of Mrs. Frasne?

It was true that Mr. Battard, after the sale of La Vigie, had gone back on his refusal to plead.

“It has cost you more than it’s worth,” he had said, with professional cynicism. “But your generosity will soften the jury’s minds. They’re the sort who will split hairs about an egg and hang an orchard thief, but weep like calves when they learn you’ve sold your land to indemnify the plaintiff. They may even be capable, if they stop to think, of convicting your son just the same, on account of the bad example that you give them, if Mr. Frasne’s clever transaction, when it is made known in court in the final argument, doesn’t probably precipitate a furious envy in them that will be in your favour.”

For Mr. Battard thought very ill of justice and humanity, but knew the case, and offered his services. His reputation made him a coadjutor that could not be refused. At five o’clock he was to come and have a last talk in Mr. Roquevillard’s office, with Mr. Hamel, on the main lines of his argument. Nevertheless, Maurice’s father had no confidence in the power of Mr. Battard’s showy and sceptical art to sustain the cause of a whole race.

After luncheon, at which he and Margaret hardly touched their food, he rose and went out for a walk. His too heavy sorrow smothered him within doors. Outside he should be able to think more clearly. The air would revive his thoughts, restore his spent forces and beaten energy. As he reached the door Margaret called him.

“Father.”

He turned quickly. Margaret, since his wife’s death, and even before it, had been his confidante and counsellor, his supreme comforter in life. Since the departure of little Julian, whose father had taken him back to Lyons the morning after the family council, Margaret and her father had been left to face each other all alone in the gradually emptied house. All that night again, almost till morning, they had talked of Hubert, weeping for him and praying. When Margaret came up to him now he put his hand on her beautiful hair and let it linger there. She understood that he was saying a blessing for her, quite low, and her eyes, so easily misted now, so used to tears, grew moist once more.

“Father,” she asked, “what have you decided on for Maurice?”

“Battard is ready to defend him. He’s coming at five o’clock with Hamel. I’m going out to think over my last instructions to them in the open air.”

“You don’t want me to go with you?”

“No, little girl. Don’t worry about me. I’ll work while I’m walking. We haven’t time for burying our dead. The living need us.”

“Well, then, I’ll go to the gaol and do my part there.”

“Yes, you can tell the sad news to him.”

“Poor Maurice, how he will suffer!”

“Less than we do.”

“Oh, no, father. As much as we do, and more than we do. He will reproach himself.”

“He may well do so. Hubert is gone because of him.”

“Exactly, father. We cry, you and I, without self-reproach. Shall I say nothing to him for you?”

“No, nothing.”

“Father——”

“Tell him—tell him to remember that he is the last of the Roquevillards.”

He went out, passing by the castle and on into the country. It was a fine winter’s day, with the sun shining on the snow. Mechanically he took the Lyons road that led to La Vigie, his customary walk. It led through the village of Cognin, and, beyond the sawmills near the Saint Charles bridge, settled into a long defile between the Vimines and Saint Cassin hills, spurs of the mountains of Lepine and Corbelet, coming out at last by the pass of the Echelles. From this place on, lost in his meditations, Mr. Roquevillard followed the rural path on the left which was the way to La Vigie. He crossed the old bridge thrown over the Hyères, now a thin stream of water between too icy borders, the leafless poplars and willow trees no longer hiding it. After a brief circuit he found himself in a fold of the deserted valley, shut in by the slopes of Montagnole, whose bell-tower he could see outlined against the sky. But he took no note of the solitude. On the contrary, he walked more lightly, and was conscious of some lightening of his sorrow, too. Was he not at home here, at home on either side? And did not the good earth bring him the comfort of its old safe friendship, of his childhood memories whose grace it cherished, of all the human past which had remade it after nature finished? In this vineyard on the left, with its shrouded vines—he could distinguish the stakes and the wires that ran between them—he had always gathered the grapes at autumn. On the right, beyond the stream which served as common boundary between him and his neighbour, this dismantled hill, with a single tree standing over it, had borne the woods of beeches red and white, and the oaks, which he had bought with his savings to enlarge his holdings and had ordered cut not long ago. At the top of the ascent he would reach the old house that he had restored, its very age testifying to the hardiness of his race and its taste for solid things. He would enter by the farm, pat the children’s heads, drink a little glass of brandy of his own distilling, with the farmer, who did not object to alcohol; above all, his gaze would sweep the whole horizon, where the storm-tossed mountain forms and fertile plains, with a lake in the distance, made a composition of motionless and inspiring lines; then the nearer horizon of La Vigie with its divers tillages.

He walked briskly, lost thus in his thoughts. On this familiar soil his steps had again their old brisk ring, as in the days when he had felt like a young man despite his years, happily surrounded by those he loved and confident in their love and life.

Suddenly he stopped.

“But I am no longer at home here,” he thought abruptly. “La Vigie is sold. The Roquevillards are no longer masters there. What am I doing? I must get out of this.”

And he turned in his path, his head bent low, like a tramp caught in an orchard.

He stopped at the stream which separated Cognin from Saint Cassin. He cleared it at a bound, and found himself this time on a piece of land which had been outside the straight line of cultivation on the estate, and had not been included in the bill of sale. It remained henceforth his only landed property. At the foot of the slope he stopped a moment to get his breath, like a company that comes upon some shelter in retreat. Then he began to clamber up the slope, not without difficulty, for he slipped and had to thrust his cane in the ground to hold his balance. The path, faintly marked at best, ended by losing itself altogether, and he made his way as well as he could in the direction of the solitary tree that stood out clear against the sky on the summit. It was an old oak, which had been spared, not for its age nor the fine effect of its height and branches, but on account of a beginning of dry rot that impaired its saleability. Its clinging leaves, all tightened and shrivelled up after the manner of oaks, the better to defend themselves against the wind, were loath even now to fall, their rusty tints appearing here and there beneath the rime. Along the hillside the tree trunks cut by the woodsmen, but not carted away before winter came on, lay like corpses in the snow, some still clothed in their bark, others already stripped.

Finally Mr. Roquevillard reached the point he had been making for. He touched with his hand, as if it had been a friend, the tree that had drawn him this far, admiring its grandeur and pride.

“You are like me,” he reflected, mopping his brow. “You have seen your companions struck down, and are left alone. But we are condemned. Time is the axe that will soon fell us.”

He had been a little retarded in climbing up the hill, and though the afternoon was not far advanced, the sun was already declining toward the Lepine chain. December days are so short, and the nearness of the mountains cut them shorter still. From the hill he could see the same view almost as from La Vigie: the Signal facing him, and below it the receding valley of the Echelles; on the right, in the background, beyond the plain, the lake of Bourget, the Revard range, and the Nivolet with its regular gradations. 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. Did he come here, opposite the old place abandoned now after the care of so many centuries, to gaze upon its ruin and mourn the death of its hopes? Across the valley he could distinguish the lands and buildings that had been his heritage. The house, which only a year ago had sheltered all the reassembled, joyful family, was closed now: never again should he pass its doors.

Silence and solitude were all round him on this funereal, leafless hillock where he stood. About him, within him, it was Death. And as a vanquished chief calls the roll of his soldiers after battle, he summoned up his sorrows one by one: his wife’s life had been crushed out, borne down by her troubles; his daughter Felicie given up to God, far away over the seas and lost to him; Hubert, his firstborn, his best boy, struck down in full youth, far from France and all that were dear to him; Germaine, leaving her native country; Margaret, vowed to celibacy by her poverty; and finally Maurice, the last of the Roquevillards, on whom the future of the race depended, thrown into prison upon an infamous charge; threatened with conviction even though the paternal lands had been sacrificed to save him. In vain had sixty years been given to the nurture of this family. Decimated, crushed by the fault of a single member, it lay prone now at the foot of La Vigie, like the trunks of these trees half bedded in the snow. To him whose robust force and faith had looked for victory, defeat and shame had been dealt out.

In his discouragement he leant against the oak, his brother in misfortune. He gave a long, despairing groan, the groan of a tree which totters beneath the raining blows of the axe before it falls. The unheeding earth and sky were immobile in their quiet colours; he felt himself abandoned.

Two tears rolled down his cheeks—a man’s tears, the more rare and moving because they are a confession of humility and weakness, falling slowly in the cold air, half frozen on his unwarmed cheeks. He did not dream that he wept. He only realised it upon perceiving a human form slowly climbing the hillside toward him. He dried his eyes, lest he should be surprised in his sorrow. It was the figure of a woman gathering dead wood and faggots. Bending over the white earth, she could not see him; only when she got near the oak she straightened up a little and recognised him.

“Master Francis!” she murmured.

“Mother Fauchois!” he exclaimed.

She came nearer, and put down her burden; searched for the right thing to say, and finding nothing, began to weep, not silently, but with loud sobs.

“Why do you cry?” asked Mr. Roquevillard.

“For you, Master Francis.”

“For me?”

“Yes.”

He had never confided his grief to any one; his pride and reserve kept pity at a distance; but he accepted it from this poor old woman, and gave her his hand. “You’ve heard of all my troubles?”

“Yes, Master Francis.”

“The last of them?”

“Yes—through a man from Saint Cassin, who came back from town this morning.”

“Ah, I see.”

They were silent; then Mother Fauchois began her lamentations again in a loud voice. It is not the way of the primitive to be silent in sorrow.

“Master Hubert, so gallant, so nice and young, so good to everybody! He used to come into the kitchen and watch the dishes and laugh with us. And madame—madame was one of the good God’s saints. They are the sort you find in Paradise, Master Francis.”

Mr. Roquevillard stood motionless and silent, envying the dead who were at rest. Mother Fauchois went prattling on again:

“And Master Maurice, they’ll give him back to you? It’s to-morrow the trial comes off,” she added, quite low, with her peasant’s dread of justice.

He saw her cross herself, praying for the Lord’s help for him, and involuntarily he recalled her daughter who had been condemned for theft. He inquired about her gently, for his tried soul was cleansed now of all contempt or pride.

“And your daughter, have you good news from her?”

“She’s come back to me, Master Francis.”

“I’m glad of that.”

“Oh, she doesn’t deserve any credit for it. She had to. She came back from Lyons quite sick. She doesn’t want to get well.”

“What’s the matter with her?”

“She was very sick after her baby was born.”

“A baby? Is she married?”

“No, Master Francis. But she has a baby. A little darling, very lively; plays all day long. I wouldn’t look at the little angel at first, on account of the disgrace, you understand. But when I saw it it gave one little laugh and made my heart leap. Now it’s all the pleasure I have left.”

“Is it a girl?”

“A girl? You’d say it was a boy, sure enough, a big boy, very plump.”

“It’s quite an expense for you.”

“For sure. But when I come home and see this urchin with his bottle it makes me feel as good as a glass of your wine. It makes life feel warm and pleasant again.”

“You’re pretty old to work now,” said Mr. Roquevillard.

“Exactly. I’m no good for anything else any more.”

Even from her wretchedness she could draw comfort, and misfortune brought her a supreme interest for her last days. His mind was distracted from his own trouble by her story, and he marvelled at the courage of the poor woman, who, without knowing it, set him an example of bravery and forgiveness. She stooped down to lift her bundle again to her shoulders.

“Good-bye, Master Francis.”

“Where are you going?”

“To Cognin, to take my wood to the baker’s.”

“Wait a moment.”

He took out a five-franc piece, wanting to help her in her misfortunes, but she would not accept it.

“Take it, I want you to,” he said.

“Master Francis,” she answered, “La Vigie doesn’t belong to you any more, if what they say is true.”

The lawyer’s brow clouded over.

“No, La Vigie isn’t mine any more. Take the money just the same. It will bring me luck.”

She saw that she was humiliating him by her refusal, and held out her hand. Then she went on down the hillside, bending her knees at each step to keep from slipping. He watched her figure growing smaller in the distance, until it was no more than a dark spot against the background of the valley. Her going left him alone again, but changed. This poor old woman here had returned to him a hundredfold the succour and strength that he had given her a year ago at the vintage time.

While they had been talking together evening had come on. All nature, motionless and as if congealed beneath the snow, submitted to the solemn and mysterious calm that precedes the flight of day. The outlines of the mountains melted more and more into the borders of the pale sky. Not a sound broke the silence, more impressive in its aloof stillness than the roaring of a storm.

At the foot of the hill the little stream slipped slyly by under a thin bed of ice, where it had broken and reformed again. The earth, all of an even hue, seemed shrouded in its whiteness, like a jewel wrapped in cotton-wool.

Mr. Roquevillard fixed his gaze upon La Vigie, that closed and deserted relic of the race that had possessed it. The prospect held and fascinated him. Mother Fauchois had reawakened the instincts of battle in him, had turned away despair from him. The head of the family thrust sorrow from him, to think of the child that was now his charge in life. He must seek some means of saving Maurice. 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 sun, touching the line of the mountain ridge, shed its last glory. On the mountain slopes the piledup snow seemed to kindle beneath its fire and grow crimson, as if awakened from its lethargy. Last of all, the still horizon line stirred beneath the light. 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. Once more the blood coursed through its marble face. Along the vines, on the summit of the hill, where the almost horizontal beams of the sun struck more directly, the dispossessed proprietor could make out now, instead of a piece of land uniform in its whiteness, the distinguishing marks of the different places he had put under cultivation; and behold, here and there were trees, tall poplars standing calm and proud like palms, lindens with tapering branches, thin birches, massive chestnuts, delicate fruit trees puny of limb yet so expert in bearing their branches; trees, but just now nameless and lost in mist, which seemed to him to surge forth again like living beings.

And he was no longer conscious of being alone there, for he knew names for these phantoms. 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. And as the products of these their lands had scattered their good repute abroad, so this tradition lighted up the city down there within the circle of the mountains where the shadows were beginning to fall upon it, and the province which it had served and protected and even in certain moments of its history made illustrious; shed lustre even upon their native land, whose power was made of the continuity and hardihood of such breeds of men as they were. “One doesn’t argue through the dead,” he repeated a second time. “With the dead, no; but with the living, yes. They are there, all of them. Not one but will answer to his name. The earth has opened up to let them pass. I will overleap this valley that lies between us. I am going to join them.”

And he measured the already darkened hollow of the vale, as if these phantoms all were massed there before him.

The shadows were laying hold of nature. Already all the plain belonged to them. They rose. Only the mountains were still defiant, especially the storeyed Nivolet that faced the setting sun and received all its flame, glowing with the purple and violet snow like heated metal.

Stooping toward the foot of the hill, Mr. Roquevillard followed this struggle. And all at once his whole being started. With the darkness the shades were mounting, all the shades. They had left La Vigie, they were coming. Just now he had seen them gathered there in the valley’s depths. They were bringing him their presences, their help and testimony. There were some of them on all the hillsides. It was as if an army were rallying round their chief as he stood there at the foot of the old oak. And when all the army was assembled, he could hear it heralding a victory for him.

“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. We are confident that you will defend it. What are you saying, in your despair, of solitude and death? Will you render us your account and tell us whence you came? From Death? But the family is the very negation of death. While you live we all live. And when you shall join us in your turn, you will live again, you must live again, in those that have been born of you. See: at this deciding moment, we are all here. Put off your sorrow as we have lifted up the stones from above our graves. For you, do you hear, is reserved the honour of defending and saving the last of the Roquevillards. You will speak in our name. Afterwards, when your tasks are done, you can rejoin us here in the peace of God.”

Mr. Roquevillard put out his hand and supported himself against the oak. The darkness was storming Le Nivolet, its last terrace, with a cross upon it, flaming once more before it should go out. A great calm settled on his soul, and he accepted in good faith this mission laid upon him by the past.

“Maurice, your defender shall be no one but myself.... And I’ll not mention the name of Mrs. Frasne.”

He moved away from the spot where the tree stood, noting the situation as he left the place.

“I’ll rebuild here,” he thought, “I, or my son.”