Lesable, uneasy, wondered what could be the matter. Maze disconcerted, blushed, and stammered, “I do not know—she was well a moment since.”
Cachelin appeared frightened, and remained seated, with his fork in the air, a leaf of salad suspended at the end. Then he rose, trying to see his daughter. Bending forward, he perceived her leaning against a tree and seeming very ill. A swift suspicion flashed through his mind, and he fell back into his seat and regarded with an embarrassed air the two men, both of whom seemed now equally confused. He looked at them with anxious eyes, no longer daring to speak, wild with anguish and hope.
A quarter of an hour passed in utter silence. Then Cora reappeared, a little pale and walking slowly. No one questioned her; each seemed to divine a happy event, difficult to speak of. They burned to know, but feared also to hear, the truth. Cachelin alone had the courage to ask: “You are better now?” And she replied: “Yes, thank you; there is not much the matter; but we will return early, as I have a light headache.” When they set out she took the arm of her husband as if to signify something mysterious she had not yet dared to avow.
They separated at the station of Saint-Lazare. Maze, making a pretext of some business affair which he had just remembered, bade them adieu, after having shaken hands with all of them. As soon as Cachelin was alone with his daughter and his son-in-law, he asked: “What was the matter with you at breakfast?”
But Cora did not reply at first; after hesitating for a moment she said: “It was nothing much; a little sickness of the stomach was all.” She walked with a languid step, but with a smile on her lips.
Lesable was ill at ease, his mind distracted; haunted with confused and contradictory ideas, angry, feeling an unavowable shame, cherishing a cowardly jealousy, he was like those sleepers who close their eyes in the morning that they may not see the ray of light which glides between the curtains and strikes the bed like a brilliant shaft.
As soon as he entered the house, he shut himself in his own room, pretending to be occupied with some unfinished work. Then Cachelin, placing his hands on his daughter’s shoulders, exclaimed: “You are pregnant, aren’t you?”
She stammered: “Yes, I think so. Two months.”
Before she had finished speaking, he bounded with joy, then began to dance the cancan around her, an old recollection of his garrison days. He lifted his leg and leaped like a young kid in spite of his great paunch, and made the whole apartment shake with his gambols. The furniture jostled, the glasses on the buffet rattled, and the chandelier oscillated like the lamp of a ship.
He took his beloved daughter in his arms and embraced her frantically. Then tapping her lightly on the shoulder he cried: “Ah, it is done, then, at last! Have you told your husband?”
She murmured, suddenly intimidated: “No—not yet—I—I—was waiting—”
But Cachelin exclaimed: “Good, very good. You find it awkward. I will run and tell him myself.”
And he rushed to the apartment of his son-in-law. On seeing him enter, Lesable, who was doing nothing, rose and looked inquiringly at Cachelin, who left him no time for conjecture, but cried: “Do you know your wife is in the family way?”
The husband was stricken speechless, his countenance changed, and the blood surged to the roots of his hair: “What? How? Cora? you say—” he faltered when he recovered his voice.
“I say that she is pregnant; do you understand? Now is our chance!”
In his joy he took Lesable’s hands and pressed and shook them, as if to felicitate him, to thank him, and cried: “Ah, at last it is true, it is true! it is true! Think of the fortune we shall have!” and unable to contain himself longer, he caught his son-in-law in his arms and embraced him, crying: “More than a million! think of it! more than a million!” and he began to dance more violently than ever.
“But come, she is waiting for you, come and embrace her, at least,” and taking him by the shoulders he pushed Lesable before him, and threw him like a ball into the apartment where Cora stood anxiously waiting and listening.
The moment she saw her husband, she recoiled, stifled with a sudden emotion. He stood before her, pale and severe. He had the air of a judge, and she of a culprit. At last he said: “It seems that you are pregnant.”
She stammered in a trembling voice: “Yes, that seems to be the case.”
But Cachelin seized each of them by the neck, and, bringing them face to face, cried: “Now kiss each other, by George! It is a fitting occasion.”
And after releasing them, he capered about like a schoolboy, shouting: “Victory, victory, we have won our case! I say, Léopold, we must purchase a country house; there, at least, you will certainly recover your health.” At this idea Lesable trembled. His father-in-law continued: “We will invite M. Torchebeuf and his wife to visit us, and as the under-chief is at the end of his term you may take his place. That is the way to bring it about.”
Lesable was now beginning to regard things from Cachelin’s standpoint, and he saw himself receiving his chief at a beautiful country place on the
