It was only about one hundred steps farther on—the second street to the right.
Then he hesitated. Up to the present he had blindly obeyed the will of his dead father. But now he felt agitated, confused, humiliated at the idea of finding himself—he, the son—in the presence of the woman who had been his father’s mistress.
All our better feelings developed by centuries of family training, all that he had been taught since early childhood about women of loose character, the instinctive distrust that all men feel of these women even when they marry them, all his narrow-minded peasant virtue; all combined to disturb him, to make him hesitate, and fill him with shame.
But he said to himself: “I promised my father. I must not fail.” So he pushed the partly-opened door of number 18, discovered a dark staircase, went up three flights, saw first one door, then a second, then found a bell rope, which he pulled.
The ding-dong that sounded in the next room sent a shiver through his body. The door opened and he found himself face to face with a well-dressed young lady, a brunette with rosy cheeks, who gazed at him with eyes full of astonishment.
He did not know what to say, and she, who suspected nothing and was expecting the father, did not invite him in. They looked at each other about thirty seconds until, at last, she said:
“What do you want, sir?”
He muttered:
“I am the young Hautot.”
She started, turned pale, and stammered as if she had known him for a long time:
“Monsieur César?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
“I have a message for you from my father.”
She exclaimed: “My God!” and moved away so that he might enter. He closed the door and followed her.
Then he caught sight of a little boy of four or five years playing with a cat, seated on the ground in front of a stove from which rose the odour of food being kept hot.
“Sit down,” she said.
He sat down. She said: “Well?”
He dare not say anything, he fixed his eyes on the table standing in the middle of the room that was laid for two grownups and a child. He looked at the chair with its back to the fire, the plate, the table napkin and glasses, the bottle of red wine already opened, and the bottle of white wine still uncorked. That was his father’s chair, with its back to the fire. They were expecting him. That was his bread near the fork, he knew that because the crust had been removed on account of Hautot’s bad teeth. Then, raising his eyes, he noticed his father’s portrait hanging on the wall, the large photograph taken at Paris the year of the Exhibition, the same one that hung above the bed in the room at Ainville.
The young woman asked again:
“Well, Monsieur César?”
She stared at him. Her face was deathly white with anxiety, and she waited, her hands trembling with fear.
Then he picked up courage:
“Well, Miss, papa died on Sunday, the first day of the season.”
She was too overcome to make any movement. After a silence of a few seconds, she faltered almost inaudibly:
“Oh, it’s not possible?”
Then the tears came to her eyes, and covering her face with her hands, she burst out sobbing.
Seeing his mother cry, the little boy turned round and began to roar at the top of his voice. Then, understanding that the sudden grief was caused by the unknown visitor, he threw himself upon César, caught hold of his trousers with one hand and hit his shins as hard as he could with the other. César felt bewildered, deeply affected, thus placed between the woman mourning for his father, and the child who was defending his mother. Their emotion communicated itself to him and his eyes filled with tears, so, to regain his self-control, he began to talk.
“Yes,” he said, “the accident occurred on Sunday morning, at eight o’clock.” And he told the story in detail, as if she were listening to him, mentioning the most trivial matters with the characteristic thoroughness of the peasant. The child, who had kept on beating César, was now kicking his ankles.
When he reached the point of Hautot’s anxiety for her, she heard her name mentioned and, taking her hands from face, asked:
“Excuse me! I was not following you. I would like to know—would it be a bother to you to begin all over again?”
He began the story in the same words: “The accident occurred Sunday morning at eight o’clock.”
He repeated everything, at great length, with pauses and occasional reflections of his own. She listened eagerly, feeling with a woman’s keen sensitiveness the events as they were unfolded, and, trembling with horror, exclaimed at intervals: “My God!” The boy, thinking that she was all right again, took hold of his mother’s hand instead of beating César, and listened attentively as if he understood what was happening.
When the story was finished, young Hautot continued:
“Now, we’ll settle matters together according to his wishes. Listen! I am well off, he has left me plenty. I don’t want you to have anything to complain about.”
She interrupted quickly:
“Oh! Mr. César, not today. My heart is … Another time … another day. … No, not today. … If I accept, listen … it is not for myself … no, no, no, I swear. It is for the child. Besides, what you give will be placed to his account.”
Whereupon César, feeling troubled, guessed the truth and stammered:
“So then … it is his … the little one?”
“Why, yes,” she said.
The young Hautot looked at his brother with confused feelings both intense and painful.
After a long silence, for she was crying again, César, very embarrassed, went on:
“Well, Mam’zelle Donet, I am going. When would you like to talk this over?”
She exclaimed:
“Oh! no, don’t go! don’t go! Don’t leave me all alone with Emile. I would die of grief. I have nobody in the world, nobody but my little one. Oh! what misery, what
