The will to live (Les Roquevillard)

MR. FRASNE, bundled up in his overcoat on account of the early freshness of the air, and carrying a little bag in his hand, descended from the express in Chambéry at seven in the morning, after an absence of two days, and walked briskly home.

By the affected air of the maid who opened the door he knew immediately that something had happened or was happening in the house. He was a man going on toward fifty, rather well preserved, correct, cold and distinguished looking at first sight, but with thick lips, and especially a pair of pop-eyes, half concealed behind his glasses, that sooner or later gave one an impression of distrust.

“Everything all right?” he asked, in spite of his troublesome presentiment. “And madame?”

The servant threw a barely perceptible mocking note into her answer:

“Madame left last night for Italy, with her trunks.”

“For Italy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“At what hour?”

“At midnight.”

“Without any explanation?”

“Madame told me as she was leaving that you had been informed.”

“That’s true,” replied Mr. Frasne, with some presence of mind. “Bring me my breakfast to my study.”

And without any further show of surprise he entered his private room, which adjoined his offices. What use was there in putting any further questions to this girl, who was ill-disposed and plainly not very well informed? The unexpected news shot at him point blank had not yet hurt him. His only sensations were those of astonishment. A wound, even a mortal one, cannot at first be distinguished from a simple shock. It takes some time before suffering sets in.

His glance was sharpened and his nerves were taut when he caught sight of a letter lying on the table, sealed and placed almost aggressively within view. He took it in his hands, but without opening it, trying to guess its contents. There would doubtless be some explanation of this departure—carelessness, bravado, or indiscretion, who could tell? After nine years of marriage he was so little sure of his wife that all these conjectures seemed equally likely. Should he look for a companion in his wife’s flight, or would it be just the caprice of a neurasthenic, who would ere long come back to the fold? The name of Maurice Roquevillard did not enter his mind. Mrs. Frasne sought for men’s attentions, and amused herself with them: every one paid harmless court to her. He could not take seriously the banal friendship that she had shown for his clerk, even though he had been warned in some anonymous letters that the town was already preoccupied with it. He showed the rather general disdain of mature men for young people, with their propensity to take time for an ally and content them selves with hope. In proportion as a man loses his youth, it is always his own age or an age approaching it that he attributes to seducers. Sentiment in youth’s eyes goes for nothing unless it leads to some developments, and he knew how many adulterous thoughts are prevented by moral conditions in the country from going further. And, besides, how could he admit so unreasonable a hypothesis as her voluntarily renouncing a place so comfortable and untroubled? He did not understand it at all, but he found himself in the presence of a fact, and he attached importance to nothing but facts. He was irritated by this mystery which his penetration could not clear up, so he tore open the envelope and read:

For Mr. Frasne, whether from professional habit or a positive turn of mind, everything in life, even sentiment, translated itself into acts and obligations. Our characters rule us even in our suffering: in this shipwreck in which his life was going down he was for the moment conscious only of the loss of his wife, not his money, even though he was not prodigal with money; but to revive his past and exasperate his sorrow he went instinctively to an old portfolio and got out the marriage contract to which the letter made allusion. With this bit of stamped paper he evoked more clearly the great passion that had taken his later youth in its grasp. He saw again at the church door a young girl, delicate and supple, whose movements and eyes betrayed the fever in her veins. It was at Tronche, near Grenoble, his native country. He came there each summer for his vacation, from Paris, when he was head clerk. He could not make up his mind, though on the brink of forty, to leave the capital for good, and buy a practice in Dauphiné. According to inquiries that he made, Edith Dannemarie lived with her mother in the neighbourhood, in a little house to which the two women had retired almost without resources after the death of the head of the family, who had ruined himself with cards. A young country girl with those eyes ought to be easy prey. Two years in succession he had attempted to get hold of her. She was waiting for a prince, for her fancy flew high, and was losing her patience with the long waiting, solitude keeping her imagination warm. Accordingly she rebuffed him, but not severely enough to send him away for good. She had discovered without preparatory studies the art of promising and refusing, and she practised it on a man whom conquests in an easy and sensually minded world must have made more irritable and nervous in the face of coquetry. He should have known himself defeated, but his desire was greater than his interest. Being alone in the world, after the loss of his parents, who had left him a goodly inheritance, he decided at last to ask formally for her hand—a hand which at one and the same time repulsed him and coyly exhibited the proper place for an engagement ring.

How could he construct again from the laconic clauses of a contract the traces of that love? One article conceded to his future bride, in consideration of the marriage, a gift of one hundred thousand francs; not, as is customary and almost fashionable in such cases, a gift on the condition of her surviving the giver, but an immediate settlement, resembling a transfer of property. This abnormal generosity was the proof of his feebleness, the lamentable testimony to his defeat. It conferred authenticity on his passion.

The maid who brought in his chocolate distracted him a moment from his examination. She watched her master out of the corner of her eye as she served him, and was astonished to see him with business papers in his hands. Here he was examining a brief, while she was watching for an outbreak of spite or fury, ready to make a good story out of it in the town. He dismissed her with a wave of his hand, and breakfasted without appetite, by sheer force of will. Should he not need to keep his forces all intact, presently, and decide definitely what to do?

As he gulped down his steaming chocolate he succeeded in making the dead years live again. He revived them from his own point of view, incapable, like many men and almost all women, of representing things from that of their partners. There was the marriage at Tronches, after many hesitations and delays, which had not been of his making; then the departure for Paris. In Paris there had been revealed to him an unknown companion, a woman who passed without transition or surprise from isolation and monotony to the most delirious gaiety. If she did not manage him in his maturity, neither did he respect her youth. It was then, in the hope of finding more quiet in the country, that he had bought out Mr. Clairval’s practice at Chambéry, in default of an office being obtainable in Grenoble. His wife had adapted herself, with the indifference of those whom life cannot satisfy further, to this radical change in her existence. She appeared to accept their retreat as a pleasure, without enthusiasm, but with no objections. Two years slipped by thus, as peacefully as could be expected of a woman who even in her calmer moments never failed to give him some anxiety. And now, just as he began to think she was sunk deep in the comfort of good surroundings, content with their daily jog trot, suddenly, without a sound of warning, she was leaving her husband and running away with a lover.

The lawyer was crushed by a catastrophe that had caught him so unprepared, and mechanically went back over these memories, the deed of gift bringing back all details to him. For the second time he stood on the brink, and this time he measured it better. This Maurice Roquevillard, whom he had disdained just now on his arrival, began to loom larger in his jealous fury. Edith had not gone away alone. She had gone with him probably, nay, surely. At this very moment, far away down there in Italy, safely out of reach, he held her in his arms. Mr. Frasne took his handkerchief and passed it across his eyes, then held it savagely to his mouth with both hands, and gritted his teeth upon it. Presently he gave way and wept without control. “He loves me in his way,” she had said of him. His way was one which is not the most noble, but is the most fertile certainly in devising torments. It knocks itself against definite and cruelly imagined things, it tears up the heart as a plow tears up the ground, and lays hatred bare.

Mr. Frasne took up the letter and the contract again, this time not to sound the depths of his misery, but to search for some plan of vengeance. The clerks would be invading the office before long. Before they came he must decide on his inquiry, and prepare to forge his arms. The money that Edith had taken away, that she had stolen really, for a gift between betrothed persons would in all cases be annulled in consequence of a divorce pronounced against the giver, she must have taken from the safe. He had recently deposited there the proceeds of a one hundred and twenty thousand francs sale of land, a sum which was to be turned over in a few days, or as soon as the deed was ready to be executed. He had indiscreetly spoken of it, and she might have learned of it from him. A key can be made or stolen, but how had she discovered the mysterious combination of figures without which this key to the safe was useless?

He rose and went up to the safe, which bore no trace of any breakage. He felt in his pocket and took out his bunch of keys. Then he perceived that this one key was missing. It must have been extracted the very day of his departure. He had a duplicate, it is true, and had confided the other, according to his habit, to his head clerk during his absence. He would wait till the arrival of the clerk, who could open and verify the contents of the safe, and at the same time serve as a witness.

Returning to his work-table, he found a penal code and began to run through the paragraphs under the title of crimes and misdemeanours against property. He read in Article 380 that abstractions made by husbands to the injury of their wives, and by wives against their husbands, can only give rise to civil actions. But the end of this same paragraph that disarmed him against the faithless woman armed him against her accomplice:

With respect to all other individuals who shall receive or apply to their own profit all or any part of the objects stolen, they shall be punished as if guilty of theft.

Started on this scent, he found things better still. Article 408, which treated of the abuse of confidence, gave it as an aggravating circumstance when the theft was committed by a public or administrative officer, by a domestic servant, a man under employment for wages, a student, clerk, commissioner, workman, companion or apprentice, to the injury of his master; and the penalty in such cases was imprisonment. What was to prevent him from accusing Maurice Roquevillard, and him alone? Was it not all probable and likely? The young man knew the premises, the payments made through the office, the dates of contracts, the absence of his chief. He could have discovered the secret of the lock, have extracted the key for a moment from the hands of the head clerk. With no fortune of his own, he must have had to supply himself with funds to carry off his mistress. Finally, did not his flight to foreign territory condemn him? Of course, the statement made by Mrs. Frasne expressly contradicted this version of the case, but Mrs. Frasne’s declaration, ineffective against herself, though awkward for her lover, could well enough be suppressed. This declaration out of the way, nothing could make the latter appear innocent again. He would even be without any grounds of defence: for to defend himself, would he not have to turn against his mistress, admitting at last that they had both been supported by the funds that she had taken? A man of honour could not do this. Maurice’s conviction was, therefore, certain. Extradition would put an end to his amorous flight. He would have to appear at the assizes. Branded, overthrown and broken, he would expiate their fault for both the culprits. And finally, his family, to make atonement for his fault, would perhaps restore the sum that had been taken away. Thus the disaster would at least result in no material loss. And already the material loss began to seem not negligible to Mr. Frasne, the more so as he reflected further upon it.

The more he explored in all its aspects a combination so rich in inference, and traced all its possibilities to the end, the more he felt his despair grow lighter. He forgot his sorrow in preparing a fine punishment for his rival. He considered pitilessly the remotest consequences of his revenge, not least of them the abasement of the haughty Roquevillards, and this despite the fact that as Mr. Clairval’s successor he had been received by them as a friend. In his unhappiness he hurled his sufferings like curses in the face of the whole world. For a last time he read this letter, the only source of difficulty to his plan: then, his mind made up, he threw it in the fire and watched it twist and blacken into ashes.

Nine o’clock struck.

Punctually the clerks arrived at the office, one by one, and took their places at their desks. Their chief stepped at once to the door leading from his own room into the office, and, without any salutations, began to question the head clerk in a preoccupied manner.

“Philippeaux, I can’t find the key of the safe.”

“Why, here it is, sir,” replied the clerk. “You handed it to me to take care of while you were away. I have not used it.”

“Good. Come with me, then.”

The two men passed into the study.

Mr. Frasne opened the safe and noticed at once a certain disorder in its contents.

“You have been looking for something, a will perhaps?” he asked blandly.

Philippeaux protested with the greatest energy.

“No, sir. I can swear to it.”

“Then I don’t understand any better than I did at first. Wait a moment. This envelope has been torn open. It contained the money from the purchase of Belvade: one hundred and twenty thousand francs. We counted it together.”

“That’s true,” agreed the frightened clerk.

Still very calm, the notary did not pursue his investigation any further, closing the safe carefully.

“Some one has been in here.”

“But it’s not possible, sir.”

“I tell you some one has been here. We’ll check up the contents before the commissioner of police. Who shut up the office last night?”

“Maurice Roquevillard.”

“Did he stay here alone?”

“Yes, to write some letters.”

“How long?”

“I don’t know. I met him under the Porticoes half an hour later. He gave me the keys.”

“The keys? The key of the safe was in your bunch?”

“Yes.”

“That was imprudent.”

After a silence Mr. Frasne resumed: “Why has he not come yet?”

“Who?”

“Maurice Roquevillard.”

“He won’t come,” flung out the clerk vindictively.

Mr. Frasne fixed him with his perspicacious eyes. He drew two conclusions from this examination: the rumour of his misfortune was already running through the town, and Philippeaux, whose jealousy he suspected, would be a safe ally for him. Nevertheless, he pretended ignorance.

“That’s right. He ought to be with his father.”

“No, Mr. Frasne. He took the train last night at midnight.”

“Where for?”

“Italy!”

“Ah, I understand at last,” avowed the solicitor this time.

And slowly he pronounced his decree against Maurice:

“It’s he, then, that will have forced my safe. How did he discover the combination?”

Philippeaux bent his head: fear and envy made an informer out of him.

“The combination is written down in my memorandum book, though with nothing to identify it: my memory’s not good. Roquevillard might have seen it and suspected its use.”

Again Mr. Frasne, whom all the circumstances favoured, scrutinised his clerk and concealed his inward satisfaction.

“You have been doubly imprudent, Philippeaux. Take one of your comrades and call the commissioner of police. He shall make a strict search here himself.”

Thus the safe was visited legally in the presence of several witnesses. Mr. Frasne patiently made his inventory. Not a thing was missing and the sum of the money deposited proved to be exact.

“The only thing left to examine,” said the solicitor quietly, conducting the inquest methodically, “is this long envelope, which has been unsealed. It contained the purchase price of Belvade, twenty acres, one hundred and twenty thousand francs in banknotes. I counted them before going away, with my head clerk, here, who can corroborate me.”

“Perfectly, sir.”

“The sum was put away along there.”

Now the envelope contained no more than twenty bills.

“I have been robbed of one hundred thousand francs,” concluded Mr. Frasne.

“How do you account for the fact that the thief did not take everything?” objected the commissioner. “As a rule, they don’t voluntarily limit their profits.”

“I’ll explain that to the public prosecutor, to whom I shall carry my complaint at once.”

“That’s for you to say. You suspect some one, then?”

“Yes.”

“Your servants?”

“No. They would not have been in here. And, besides, they would not have known how to make out the combination.”

“Good. I’ll go and draw up my report.”

“Come with me to the court-house. It’s only a step.”

“As you wish.”

They presented themselves to the prosecutor directly, and the notary had a long conference with him, a conference that prolonged itself some time after the commissioner of police had left them. As Mr. Frasne came down the staircase he met Mr. Roquevillard at the foot, coming in on his way to court. It was a quarter past twelve, the hour for the opening of the hearings. The two men looked at each other and bowed.