The baron called out, and a servant appeared, truly Southern in her dirty and unkempt state, with wisps of hair straggling across her face. Her well-stained skirt still retained some of its original gaudiness, suggesting a country fair or a mountebank’s costume.
“Is M. Duchoux at home?” he inquired.
In giving this name to the unwanted child many years ago, he had indulged his sense of humour at its expense.
“You want M. Duchoux?” the servant repeated.
“Yes.”
“He is in the parlour, drawing plans.”
“Tell him that M. Merlin wishes to see him.”
She replied in surprise: “Oh! come in, if you wish him,” and shouted:
“M. Duchoux, a visitor to see you!”
The baron entered a large room darkened by half-closed shutters, and received a vague impression of dirt and disorder.
A short, bald-headed man, standing at an overcrowded table, was tracing lines on a large sheet of paper. He stopped his work and came forward.
His open waistcoat, slackened trousers and rolled-up shirtsleeves showed how hot it was, and the muddy shoes that he was wearing pointed to recent rain.
“To whom have I the honour? …” he asked, with a strong Southern accent.
“I am M. Merlin. I have come to consult you about some building land.”
“Ah! yes. Certainly.”
And turning towards his wife, who was knitting in the darkened room, Duchoux said:
“Clear one of the chairs, Joséphine.”
Mordiane saw a young woman, already showing signs of age, as do most provincial women of twenty-five, for want of attention and regular cleanliness, in fact of all those precautions which form part of a woman’s toilet, helping to preserve her youthful appearance, her charm and beauty up to the age of fifty. A neckerchief hung over her shoulders, and her hair, which was beautifully thick and black, but twisted up in a slipshod fashion, looked as though it was seldom brushed. With her roughened hands she removed a child’s dress, a knife, a piece of string, an empty flowerpot and a greasy plate from a chair, and offered it to the visitor.
He sat down, and then noticed that on the table at which Duchoux had been working, in addition to his books and papers, there were two freshly cut lettuces, a basin, a hairbrush, a napkin, a revolver, and several dirty cups.
The architect saw him glance at these, and smilingly remarked: “I am sorry that the room is rather untidy; that is the children’s fault,” and he drew up his chair to talk to his client.
“You are looking for a piece of land in the neighbourhood of Marseilles?”
Although he was at some distance away the baron smelt the odour of garlic which people of the South exhale as flowers do their perfume.
“Was that your son I met under the plane-trees?” Mordiane inquired.
“Yes, the second.”
“You have two sons, then?”
“Three, sir, one a year,” replied Duchoux, evidently full of pride.
The baron thought that if they all had the same perfume, their nursery must be like a real conservatory. He resumed:
“Yes, I would like a nice piece of ground near the sea, on a secluded beach. …”
Then Duchoux began to explain. He had ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred and more plots of land of that kind, at all prices and to suit all tastes. The words came in a torrent as he smiled and wagged his round bald head in his satisfaction.
Meanwhile the baron remembered a little woman, slight, fair and rather sad, who used to say with such yearning: “My own beloved,” that the memory alone made his blood run hot in his veins. She had loved him passionately, madly, for three months; then becoming pregnant in the absence of her husband, who was Governor of a colony, she had fled into hiding, distracted by fear and despair, until the birth of the child, whom Mordiane carried off one summer evening and whom they had never seen again.
She died of consumption three years later, in the colony where she had gone to rejoin her husband. It was their son who sat beside him now, who was saying with a metallic ring in his voice:
“As for this plot, sir, it is a unique opportunity …”
And Mordiane remembered the other voice, light as a zephyr, murmuring:
“My own beloved; we shall never part. …” The memory of the gentle, blue, devoted look in those eyes came back to him as he watched the round blue but vacant eyes of this ridiculous little man who was so like his mother, and yet. …
Yes, he looked more and more like her every minute; his intonation, his demeanour, his actions were the same; he resembled her as a monkey resembles a man; but he was of her blood, he had many of her little habits, though distorted, irritating and revolting. The baron was in an agony of fear, haunted suddenly by that terrible, still-growing resemblance, which enraged, maddened and tortured him like a nightmare, or like bitter remorse.
“When can we look at this land together?” he stammered.
“Why, tomorrow, if you like.”
“Yes, tomorrow. What time?”
“At one o’clock.”
“That will be all right.”
The child he had met in the avenue appeared in the door and cried:
“Father!”
No one answered him.
Mordiane stood up trembling with an intense longing to escape. That word “father” had struck him like a bullet. He was sure that this cry of “father” that reeked of garlic, that was full of the South, was meant for him. Oh! how good had been the perfume of his sweetheart of bygone days!
As Duchoux was showing him out, the baron said to him:
“Is this house yours?”
“Yes, sir, I bought it recently, and I am proud of it. I am fortune’s child, sir, and I make no secret of it; I am proud of it. I owe nothing to anyone; I am the child of my own efforts, and I owe everything to myself.”
The child, who had stayed on
