CHAPTER IV

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"When? When? The action they wish to force on me becomes inevitable then? I shall be obliged, then, to face that brute?" George saw the hour approach with ungovernable dread. An insurmountable repugnance arose from the roots of his being at the very thought that he was going to find himself alone, in a closed room, in a _tete-a-tete_, with that man.

As the days passed, he felt increase his anxiety and humiliation, caused by culpable inertia. He felt that his mother, that his sister, that all the victims, expected from him, the first-born, some energetic action, some kind of protest--protection. Why, in fact, had he been summoned? Why had he come? From now on, it no longer seemed possible for him to leave without having done his duty. Without doubt, at the last minute, he could have escaped without saying good-by, and then written a letter justifying his conduct by any plausible pretext. When his distress was at its height, he ventured to think of this ignominious resource; he stopped to consider a way, to arrange the most trifling details, to picture the results. But, in the scenes conjured up, the unhappy and ravaged face of his mother awoke in him an intolerable remorse. The reflections which he made on his egotism and his weakness revolted him against himself: and he sought with puerile fury to find some particle of energy which he could excite and efficaciously employ against the greater part of his being, and which would permit him to triumph over it as over a cowardly brute. But this false energy did not last, did not serve in the least to press him to a manly resolution. Then he undertook to calmly examine his situation, and he deluded himself by the very vigor of his reasoning. He thought: "What good could I do? What evils could my intervention remedy? Will this unhappy effort which my mother and the rest demand from me yield any real advantage? And what advantage?" As he had not found in himself the energy necessary for the execution of the act, as he had not succeeded in provoking in himself a satisfactory revolt, he had recourse to the opposite method--he attempted to demonstrate to his own satisfaction the uselessness of the effort. "What would be the result of the interview? It would certainly have none. According to my father's humor or according to the trend of his conversation, he would be either violent or persuasive. In the first case, his violence and insults would take me by surprise. In the second case, my father would find a mass of arguments to prove to me either his innocence or the necessity of his faults, and I should be taken equally by surprise. The facts are irreparable. When vice is rooted in the intimate substance of a man, it becomes indestructible. Now, my father is at the age when vice can no longer be rooted out, when habits can no longer be changed. For years he has been associated with that woman and those children. Have I the slightest chance to convince him that he ought to break off all those ties? Yesterday, I saw the woman. It sufficed to see her, to guess that she will never let go her hold on the man whose flesh she holds in her clutches. She will dominate him until his death. The thing is now irremediable. And then, there are those children and those children's rights. Besides, after all that has occurred, would a reconciliation be possible between my father and mother? Never. All my attempts would then be fruitless. And then? There still remains the question of material damage, of money squandered, of dilapidation. But does it fall on me to put all this in order, since I live far away from the house? It would require constant vigilance to do that, and only Diego could do it. I will speak to Diego; I will arrange with him. In short, the most urgent matter just now is Camille's dowry. Albert frequently brings the subject up, and is even the most annoying of all my solicitors. Perhaps I shall be able to make some arrangement without difficulty."

He intended to favor his sister by contributing towards her dowry; for, the heir of all his uncle Demetrius's fortune, he was rich, and already in possession of his property. The intention to perform this generous act raised him once more in his own conscience. He believed himself freed from all other duties, from any other disagreeable step, by the sacrifice which he consented to make of his money.

When he turned his steps towards his mother's room he felt less uneasy, lighter, more comfortable. Moreover, he had learned that since morning his father had returned to the country place where he usually went in order to have more freedom in his actions. And it relieved him greatly to think that in the evening, at table, a certain place would be vacant.

"Ah! George, you have come just in time," cried his mother, directly she saw him enter.

The angry voice gave him such a rude and unexpected shock that he stopped, and he looked at his mother with stupor, so transfigured by the transport of anger as to be almost unrecognizable. He also looked at Diego, not understanding; he looked at Camille, who stood still, mute and hostile.

"What is the matter?" stammered George, fixing his eyes once more on his brother, attracted by the bad expression which he saw for the first time on the young man's face.

"The strong box in which the silverware is kept is no longer in its place," said Diego, without raising his eyes, contracting his eyebrows and mumbling. "They charge me with having made away with it."

A flood of bitter words fell from the unhappy woman's mouth.

"Yes, you--in league with your father. You are your father's accomplice. Oh! what infamy. And now this frightful thing! Now this frightful thing! The child who has nursed at my breast to turn against me! But you are the only one who resembles him. God has been more merciful with the others. O God, blessed be thy name, blessed forever, for having spared me that supreme misfortune! You are the only one who resembles him, the only one----"

She turned towards George, who stood paralyzed, motionless, voiceless. Her chin trembled spasmodically; and she was so convulsed that one would have believed that she was going to sink down on the floor at any moment.

"Do you see now the life that we lead? Tell me, do you see it now? Every day, some new infamy. Every day, the same struggle to prevent the pillage of this unfortunate house. Are you convinced now that, if your father could, he would turn us into the streets, snatch the bread from our mouths? And it will come to that; we shall end by seeing that. You will see, you will see."

She continued, panting, with a choking sob in her throat at every pause, giving vent at times to hoarse shrieks, which expressed an almost savage hate, a hate inconceivable in a creature apparently so delicate. And once more accusations fell from her lips. The man had no longer the slightest consideration, the slightest shame. He would stop at nothing and for nobody to make money. He had become insane; he seemed a prey to uncontrollable madness. He had ruined his real estate, cut down his woods, sold his herds at hazard, blindly, to the first comer, to the one who offered most. Now he began to despoil the house in which his children were born. For a long time he had had designs upon the silver, family silver, old and hereditary, piously guarded as a relic of the house of Aurispa, preserved intact until now. Hiding it had proved useless. Diego was in league with his father; and the two confederates, eluding the keenest vigilance, had taken it, to do with it God only knows what.

"Have you no shame?" she went on, turning towards Diego, who restrained with difficulty an explosion of his violence. "Are you not ashamed to take part with your father against me--against me, who have never refused you anything, who have always done as you wished? And yet you know, you know perfectly well, where the silver has gone And you are not ashamed? You've nothing to say? Won t you answer? Look, there's your brother. Tell me where the box has gone. I must know, do you hear?"

"I have already said that I don't know, that I haven't seen the box, and that I did not take it," cried Diego, unable to longer contain himself, with an explosion of brutality, and shaking his head; and the sombre flame which lit up his face made him resemble the absentee. "Do you understand?"

The mother, pale as death, looked at George, to whom the look seemed to impart a similar color.

Seized with a fit of trembling impossible to hide, the elder brother said to the younger:

"Diego, leave the room."

"I'll leave when it pleases me," replied Diego insolently, shrugging his shoulders, without, however, looking his brother in the face.

Then a sudden exasperation seized George, one of those extreme exasperations which, in feeble and irresolute men, have such an excessive vehemence that they cannot manifest themselves by any external act, but cause to pass before the thwarted will flashes of criminal visions. The hatred between brothers, that odious hate which, since the creation, breeds secretly at the bottom of human nature to break out at the first discord, more ferocious than every other hate--that inexplicable hostility which exists, latent, between the males of the same blood, even though the customs and peace of the birthplace have created between them affectionate bonds; and, also, that horror which accompanies the execution or the thought of a crime, and which is perhaps only the vague sentiment of the law inscribed by secular heredity in the Christian conscience--all this surged confusedly in a sort of vertiginous whirl which, for a second, superseded all other sentiment in his soul, and gave him an aggressive impulse. The very aspect of Diego, his thick-set and sanguine body, his fallow head on the bull-like neck, the evident physical superiority of this robust, muscular fellow, the offence against his authority as the elder--all contributed to augment his fury. He would like to have had a prompt means of dominating, subjugating, felling this brute, without resistance and without a struggle. Instinctively he looked at his fists, those large, powerful fists, covered with a reddish down, which at dinner, employed in the service of a voracious appetite, had already caused him such a strong repulsion.

"Leave the room! Leave the room immediately!" he repeated in a higher and more commanding key; "or else ask my mother's pardon immediately."

He advanced towards Diego, his hand extended as if to grasp an arm.

"I do not permit anyone to give me orders," cried Diego, at last looking his elder brother in the face.

And, beneath his low forehead, his little gray eyes expressed a resentment which had been brooding for years.

"Take care, Diego!"

"You don't frighten me."

"Take care!"

"Who are you, I'd like to know? What business have you here?" shouted Diego angrily. "You have no right to interfere. You are a stranger. I do not want to know you. What has been your role up to now? You have never done anything for anybody; you have always thought only of your comfort, and your interest. The caresses, the preferences, the adorations, have all been for you. What do you want now? Go back to Rome and squander your heritage as you choose; but don't meddle in what does not concern you."

So he breathed out all his rancor, all his jealousy, all his envious hate against the fortunate brother who, in the great city yonder, lived a life of unknown pleasures, a stranger to his family, as though a being of another race, favored by a thousand privileges.

"Hold your tongue! Hold your tongue!"

And the mother, beside herself, and throwing herself between them, slapped Diego's face.

"Leave the room! Not another word! Get out of here! Go to your father! I don't want to hear you any more! I don't even want to see you again!"

Diego hesitated, shaken by the quivering of fury, perhaps only waiting for a gesture from his brother to fling himself on him.

"Go!" repeated the mother, at the end of her energy.

And she fell fainting into Camille's arms, extended to receive her.

Then Diego went out, livid with rage, muttering between his teeth a word which George did not understand, and they heard his heavy steps grow fainter as he passed through the gloomy enfilade of rooms in which the daylight was already dying.

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