M. Jeannin and Olivier were left alone.
“What’s the matter with you, boy? Why won’t you play?” asked the father gently.
“I’m tired, father.”
“Well, let us sit here on this seat for a little.”
They sat down. It was a lovely September night. A dark, clear sky. The sweet scent of the petunias was mingled with the stale and rather unwholesome smell of the canal sleeping darkly below the terrace wall. Great moths, pale and sphinxlike, fluttered about the flowers, with a little whirring sound. The even voices of the neighbors sitting at their doors on the other side of the canal rang through the silent air. In the house Antoinette was playing a florid Italian cavatina. M. Jeannin held Olivier’s hand in his. He was smoking. Through the darkness behind which his father’s face was slowly disappearing the boy could see the red glow of the pipe, which gleamed, died away, gleamed again, and finally went out. Neither spoke. Then Olivier asked the names of the stars. M. Jeannin, like almost all men of his class, knew nothing of the things of Nature, and could not tell him the names of any save the great constellations, which are known to everyone: but he pretended that the boy was asking their names, and told him. Olivier made no objection: it always pleased him to hear their beautiful mysterious names, and to repeat them in a whisper. Besides, he was not so much wanting to know their names as instinctively to come closer to his father. They said nothing more. Olivier looked at the stars, with his head thrown back and his mouth open: he was lost in drowsy thoughts: he could feel through all his veins the warmth of his father’s hand. Suddenly the hand began to tremble. That seemed funny to Olivier, and he laughed and said sleepily:
“Oh, how your hand is trembling, father!”
M. Jeannin removed his hand.
After a moment Olivier, still busy with his own thoughts, said:
“Are you tired, too, father?”
“Yes, my boy.”
The boy replied affectionately:
“You must not tire yourself out so much, father.”
M. Jeannin drew Olivier towards him, and held him to his breast and murmured:
“My poor boy! …”
But already Olivier’s thoughts had flown off on another tack. The church clock chimed eight o’clock. He broke away, and said:
“I’m going to read.”
On Thursdays he was allowed to read for an hour after dinner, until bedtime: it was his greatest joy: and nothing in the world could induce him to sacrifice a minute of it.
M. Jeannin let him go. He walked up and down the terrace for a little in the dark. Then he, too, went in.
In the room his wife and the two children were sitting round the lamp. Antoinette was sewing a ribbon on to a blouse, talking and humming the while, to Olivier’s obvious discomfort, for he was stopping his ears with his fists so as not to hear, while he pored over his book with knitted brows, and his elbows on the table. Madame Jeannin was mending stockings and talking to the old nurse, who was standing by her side and giving an account of her day’s expenditure, and seizing the opportunity for a little gossip: she always had some amusing tale to tell in her extraordinary lingo, which used to make them roar with laughter, while Antoinette would try to imitate her. M. Jeannin watched them silently. No one noticed him. He wavered for a moment, sat down, took up a book, opened it at random, shut it again, got up: he could not sit still. He lit a candle and said good night. He went up to the children and kissed them fondly: they returned his kiss absently without looking up at him—Antoinette being absorbed in her work, and Olivier in his book. Olivier did not even take his hands from his ears, and grunted “Good night,” and went on reading:—(when he was reading even if one of his family had fallen into the fire, he would not have looked up).—M. Jeannin left the room. He lingered in the next room, for a moment. His wife came out soon, the old nurse having gone to arrange the linen-cupboard. She pretended not to see him. He hesitated, then came up to her, and said:
“I beg your pardon. I was rather rude just now.”
She longed to say to him:
“My dear, my dear, that is nothing: but, tell me, what is the matter with you? Tell me, what is hurting you so?”
But she jumped at the opportunity of taking her revenge, and said:
“Let me be! You have been behaving odiously. You treat me worse than you would a servant.”
And she went on in that strain, setting forth all her grievances volubly, shrilly, rancorously.
He raised his hands wearily, smiled bitterly, and left her.
No one heard the report of the revolver. Only, next day, when it was known what had happened, a few of the neighbors remembered that, in the middle of the night, when the streets were quiet, they had noticed a sharp noise like the cracking of a whip. They did not pay any attention to it. The silence of the night fell once more upon the town, wrapping both living and dead about with its mystery.
Madame Jeannin was asleep, but woke up an hour or two later. Not seeing her husband by her side she got up and went anxiously through all the rooms, and downstairs to the offices of the bank, which were in an annex of the house: and there, sitting in his chair in his office, she found M. Jeannin huddled forward on his desk in a pool of blood, which was still dripping down on to the floor. She gave a scream, dropped her candle, and fainted. She was heard in the
