He ended by saying:
“What did she die of?”
“Of lung trouble.”
“Was she ill long?”
“About eighteen months.”
“How did she get it?”
“No one knows.”
A silence fell upon them. The Abbé was lost in thought. He felt troubled by many things that he wanted to know, for since the day of his violent attack upon her, he had heard nothing. It was true that he had not wanted news; he had resolutely buried all memory of her and of his days of happiness. But now that she was dead, he felt a sudden violent desire to know everything, a jealous desire, almost a lover’s desire.
He resumed:
“She was not alone, was she?”
“No, she was still living with him.”
The old man shrank within himself.
“With him, with Pravallon?”
“Of course.”
The man who had been betrayed calculated that the very woman who had deceived him had lived over thirty years with his rival.
Almost in spite of himself, he stammered:
“Were they happy together?”
The young man replied, grinning:
“Well, yes, though there were ups and downs. It would have been all right but for me. I have always spoilt everything.”
“How’s that, and why?” said the priest.
“I have already told you. Because he believed I was his son until I was about fifteen. But he was no fool, the old man, he himself discovered the likeness, and then there were rows. He accused Mamma of landing him in a mess. Mamma retorted: ‘Am I to blame? When you took me, you knew quite well that I was the other’s mistress.’ The other being you.”
“Oh, so they talked about me sometimes?”
“Yes, but they never mentioned your name when I was present, except at the end, the very end. The last days when Mamma knew she was done for. They had no confidence in me.”
“And you … did you soon learn that your mother was living an irregular life?”
“What do you think? I am not a fool, you bet, I never was. You guess these things directly, as soon as you know something of life.”
Philippe-Auguste was pouring out one glass of wine after another. His eyes lighted up, intoxication quickly followed his long fast. The priest noticed this and was going to make him stop drinking, when he remembered that drink made men reckless and talkative, so he took the bottle and refilled the young man’s glass.
Marguerite brought in the dish of chicken and rice. As she placed it on the table, she fixed her eyes on the tramp, then indignantly said to her master:
“Just look how drunk he is, your Reverence.”
“Leave us alone and go away,” said the priest.
She went out slamming the door.
He asked:
“What did your mother say about me?”
“The usual thing that is said about the man you leave; that you were not easy to live with, a worry to a woman, and that you would have made her life very difficult with your ideas.”
“Did she say that often?”
“Yes, sometimes in a roundabout way so that I should not understand, but I guessed what had happened.”
“And you, how were you treated in the home?”
“Me? Very well at first, but very badly later on. When Mamma saw that I was a spoilsport, she chucked me out.”
“How?”
“How! Quite easily. I played some pranks when I was about sixteen, so the idiots put me into a reformatory to get rid of me.”
He put his elbows on the table, resting his cheeks on his hands, and quite drunk, his wits upside-down in drink, he suddenly felt that irresistible wish to talk about himself that turns a drunkard into a drivelling braggart. He was smiling prettily with all a woman’s charm. The Abbé recognised the perverse charm of the boy’s smile, he not only recognised it, he also felt the spell of the charm—hateful but caressing—that had conquered and ruined him in the past. For the moment the child was more like his mother, not in feature, but in the alluring and insincere expression of his face, and more especially in the attraction of that misleading smile that seemed to open a door on all the incredible baseness of his nature.
Philippe-Auguste continued:
“Well, well! I have had a life, I have, ever since I left the reformatory, a curious life for which a novelist would pay a large sum. Really, old Dumas with his Monte Cristo never imagined stranger adventures than have happened to me.”
He was silent, thinking things over with the philosophical seriousness of the meditative drunkard, then he said slowly:
“If you want a boy to turn out well, no matter what he has done he should never be sent to a reformatory, because of the people he has to mix with. I had a jolly good idea, but it failed. One night about nine o’clock I was wandering around with three pals, all four of us rather the worse for drink, on the main road near Folac ford, when what should I see but a carriage full of people asleep!—the man who was driving and his family; they lived at Martinon and were returning home after dining in town. I seized the horse by the reins and forced it on to the ferryboat, then pushed the boat into the middle of the river. That made a noise, and the driver woke and, not able to see anything, whipped up his horse. Off it went and jumped into the stream with the carriage. They were all drowned! My pals informed against me. At first they laughed like anything as they watched me at work. We never thought it would turn out so badly. All we had hoped for was a bath, something to laugh about.
“Since that I have done worse out of revenge for the first joke, which, I must say, did not deserve punishment. However, there is nothing worth telling. I will only tell you about my last trick because I know that will please you. I paid him out for you.”
The Abbé looked at his son with terrified eyes and stopped eating.
Philippe-Auguste was going
