“Risking your health!” said David.
“I think I must be walking in my sleep,” said old Séchard, coming down in confusion. “Your want of confidence in your father set me dreaming; I dreamed you were making a pact with the Devil to do impossible things.”
“Der teufel,” said Kolb; “dot is your own bassion for de liddle goldfinches.”
“Go back to bed again, father,” said David; “lock us in if you will, but you may save yourself the trouble of coming down again. Kolb will mount guard.”
At four o’clock in the morning David came out of the distillery; he had been careful to leave no sign of his occupation behind him; but he brought out some thirty sheets of paper that left nothing to be desired in fineness, whiteness, toughness, and strength, all of them bearing by way of watermark the impress of the uneven hairs of the sieve. The old man took up the samples and put his tongue to them, the lifelong habit of the pressman, who tests papers in this way. He felt it between his thumb and finger, crumpled and creased it, put it through all the trials by which a printer assays the quality of a sample submitted to him, and when it was found wanting in no respect, he still would not allow that he was beaten.
“We have yet to know how it takes an impression,” he said, to avoid praising his son.
“Funny man!” exclaimed Kolb.
The old man was cool enough now. He cloaked his feigned hesitation with paternal dignity.
“I wish to tell you in fairness, father, that even now it seems to me that paper costs more than it ought to do; I want to solve the problem of sizing it in the pulping-trough. I have just that one improvement to make.”
“Oho! so you are trying to trick me!”
“Well, shall I tell you? I can size the pulp as it is, but so far I cannot do it evenly, and the surface is as rough as a burr!”
“Very good, size your pulp in the trough, and you shall have my money.”
“Mein master will nefer see de golor of your money,” declared Kolb.
Plainly, the old man meant to punish David for last night’s humiliation, for he treated him more than coldly. David sent away Kolb.
“Father,” he began, “I have never borne you any grudge for making over the business to me at such an exorbitant valuation; I have seen the father through it all. I have said to myself—‘The old man has worked very hard, and he certainly gave me a better bringing up than I had a right to expect; let him enjoy the fruits of his toil in peace, and in his own way.’—I even gave up my mother’s money to you. I began encumbered with debt, and bore all the burdens that you put upon me without a murmur. Well, harassed for debts that were not of my making, with no bread in the house, and my feet held to the flames, I have found out the secret. I have struggled on patiently till my strength is exhausted. It is perhaps your duty to help me, but do not give me a thought; think of a woman and a little one” (David could not keep back the tears at this); “think of them, and give them help and protection.—Kolb and Marion have given me their savings; will you do less?” he cried at last, seeing that his father was as cold as the impression-stone.
“And that was not enough for you,” said the old man, without the slightest sense of shame; “why, you would waste the wealth of the Indies! Good night! I am too ignorant to lend a hand in schemes got up on purpose to exploit me. A monkey will never gobble down a bear” (alluding to the workshop nicknames); “I am a vinegrower, I am not a banker. And what is more, look you, business between father and son never turns out well. Stay and eat your dinner here; you shan’t say that you came for nothing.”
There are some deep-hearted natures that can force their own pain down into inner depths unsuspected by those dearest to them; and with them, when anguish forces its way to the surface and is visible, it is only after a mighty upheaval. David’s nature was one of these. Eve had thoroughly understood the noble character of the man. But now that the depths had been stirred, David’s father took the wave of anguish that passed over his son’s features for a child’s trick, an attempt to “get round” his father, and his bitter grief for mortification over the failure of the attempt. Father and son parted in anger.
David and Kolb reached Angoulême on the stroke of midnight. They came back on foot, and steathily, like burglars. Before one o’clock in the morning David was installed in the impenetrable hiding-place prepared by his wife in Basine Clerget’s house. No one saw him enter it, and the pity that henceforth should shelter David was the most resourceful pity of all—the pity of a workgirl.
Kolb bragged that day that he had saved his master on horseback, and only left him in a carrier’s van well on the way to Limoges. A sufficient provision of raw material had been laid up in Basine’s cellar, and Kolb, Marion, Mme. Séchard, and her mother had no communication with the house.
Two days after the scene at Marsac, old Séchard came hurrying to Angoulême and his daughter-in-law. Covetousness had brought him. There were three clear weeks ahead before the vintage began, and he thought he would be on the lookout for squalls, to use his own expression. To this end he took up his quarters in one of the attics which he had reserved by the terms of the lease,
