“So as soon as the child was old enough to understand, she told her how she had been found, and very gently, tenderly even, she made the little girl realise that she was only an adopted member of the Chantal family, belonging to them but really no kin at all.
“Claire realised the state of affairs with an intelligence beyond her years and an instinctive wisdom that surprised us all; and she was quick to take and keep the place allotted to her, with so much tact, grace, and courtesy that she brought tears to my father’s eyes.
“My mother herself was so touched by the passionate gratitude and timid devotion of this adorable and tenderhearted little thing that she began to call her ‘My daughter.’ Sometimes, when the young girl had shown herself more than commonly sweet-natured and delicate, my mother pushed her glasses on to her forehead, as she always did when much moved, and repeated: ‘The child’s a pearl, a real pearl.’ The name stuck to little Claire: she became Mademoiselle Pearl for all of us from that time and for always.”
IV
Monsieur Chantal was silent. He was sitting on the billiard table, swinging his feet; his left hand fiddled with a ball and in his right hand he crumpled the woollen rag we called “the chalk rag,” and used for rubbing out the score on the slate. A little flushed, his voice muffled, he was speaking to himself now, lost in his memories, dreaming happily through early scenes and old happenings stirring in his thoughts, as a man dreams when he walks through old gardens where he grew up, and where each tree, each path, each plant, the prickly holly whose plump red berries crumble between his fingers, evoke at every step some little incident of his past life, the little insignificant delicious incidents that are the very heart, the very stuff of life.
I stood facing him, propped against the wall, leaning my hands on my useless billiard cue.
After a moment’s pause he went on: “God, how sweet pretty she was at eighteen—and graceful—and perfect! Oh, what a pretty—pretty—pretty—sweet—gay—and charming girl! She had such eyes … blue eyes … limpid … limpid … clear … I’ve never seen any like them … never.”
Again he was silent. “Why didn’t she marry?” I asked.
He didn’t answer me: he answered the careless word “marry.”
“Why? why? She didn’t want to … didn’t want to. She had a dowry of ninety thousand francs too, and she had several offers … she didn’t want to marry. She seemed sad during those years. It was just at the time I married my cousin, little Charlotte, my wife, to whom I’d been engaged for six years.”
I looked at Monsieur Chantal and thought that I could see into his mind, and that I’d come suddenly upon the humble cruel tragedy of a heart at once honourable, upright, and pure, that I’d seen into the secret unknown depths of a heart that no one had really understood, not even the resigned and silent victims of its dictates.
Pricked by a sudden savage curiosity, I said deliberately:
“Surely you ought to have married her, Monsieur Chantal?”
He started, stared at me, and said:
“Me? Marry whom?”
“Mademoiselle Pearl.”
“But why?”
“Because you loved her more than you loved your cousin.”
He stared at me with strange, wide, bewildered eyes, then stammered:
“I loved her? … I? … how? What are you talking about?”
“It’s obvious, surely? Moreover, it was on her account that you delayed so long before marrying the cousin who waited six years for you.”
The cue fell from his left hand, and he seized the chalk rag in both hands and, covering his face with it, began to sob into its folds. He wept in a despairing and ridiculous fashion, dripping water from eyes and nose and mouth all at once like a squeezed sponge. He coughed, spat, and blew his nose on the chalk rag, dried his eyes, choked, and overflowed again from every opening in his face, making a noise in his throat like a man gargling.
Terrified and ashamed, I wanted to run away, and I did not know what to say, or do, or try to do.
And suddenly Madame Chantal’s voice floated up the staircase: “Have you nearly finished your smoke?”
I opened the door and called: “Yes, ma’am, we’re coming down.”
Then I flung myself on her husband, seized him by the elbows, and said: “Monsieur Chantal, Chantal my friend, listen to me; your wife is calling you, pull yourself together, pull yourself together, we must go downstairs; pull yourself together.”
“Yes … yes …” he babbled. “I’m coming … poor girl … I’m coming … tell her I’m just coming.”
And he began carefully drying his face on the rag that had been used to rub the score off the slate for two or three years; then he emerged, white and red in streaks, his forehead, nose, cheeks, and chin dabbled with chalk, his eyes swollen and still full of tears.
I took his hands and led him towards his bedroom, murmuring: “I beg your pardon, I humbly beg your pardon, Monsieur Chantal, for hurting you like this … but … I didn’t know … you … you see.”
He shook my hand. “Yes … yes … we all have our awkward moments.”
Then he plunged his face in his basin. When he emerged, he was still hardly presentable, but I thought of a little ruse. He was very disturbed when he looked at himself in the glass, so I said “You need only tell her you’ve got a speck of dust in your eye, and you can cry in front of everyone as long as you like.”
He did at last go down, rubbing his eyes with his handkerchief. They were all very concerned; everyone wanted to look for the speck of dust, which no one could find, and they related similar cases when it had become necessary to call in a doctor.
I had betaken myself to Mademoiselle Pearl’s side and I looked
