How often had my own hand shrunk with unconquerable repugnance from that contact! I listened while he repeated the same phrases of sympathy with my sorrow which he had already written to me while Iwas at Compiegne.I listened while Madame Bernard uttered other phrases to the same effect; and then the conversation resumed its course, and, during the half-hour that ensued, I looked on, speaking hardly at all, but mentally comparing the physiognomy of my stepfather with that of the visitor, and that of my mother.The contemplation of those three faces produced a curious impression upon me; it was that of their difference, not only of age, but of intensity, of depth.There was no mystery in my mother's face, it was as easy to read as a page in dear handwriting! The mind of Madame Bernard, a worldly, trumpery, poor mind, but harmless enough, was readily to be discerned in her features which were at once refined and commonplace.How little there was of reflection, of decision, of exercise of will, in short of individuality, behind the poetic grace of the one and the pretty affectations of the other! What a face, on the contrary, was that of my stepfather, with its strong individuality, and its vivid expression! In this man of the world, as he stood there talking with two women of the world, in his blue, furtive eyes, too wide apart, and always seeming to shun observation, in his prematurely gray hair, his mouth set round with deep wrinkles, in his dark, blotched, bilious complexion, there seemed to be a creature of another race.What passions had worn those furrows? what vigils had hollowed those eyeballs? Was this the face of a happy man, with whom everything had succeeded, who, having been born to wealth and of an excellent family, had married the woman he loved; who had known neither the wearing cares of ambition, the toil of money-getting, nor the stings of wounded self-love? It is true, he suffered from liver complaint; but why was it that, although I had hitherto been satisfied with this answer, it now appeared to me childish and even foolish? Why did all these marks of trouble and exhaustion suddenly strike me as effects of a secret cause, and why was Iastonished that I had not sooner sought for it? Why was it that in his presence, contrary to my expectations, contrary to what had happened about my mother, I was plunged more deeply into the gulf of suspicion from which I had hoped to emerge with a free mind?
Why, when our eyes met for just one second, was I afraid that he might read my thoughts in my glance, and why did I shift them with a pang of shame and terror? Ah! coward that I was, triple coward!
Either I was wrong to think thus, and at any price I must know that I was wrong; or, I was right and I must know that too.The sole resource henceforth remaining to me for the preservation of my self-respect was ardent and ceaseless search after certainty.
That such a search was beset with difficulty I was well aware.How was I to get at facts? The very position of the problem which Ihad before me forbade all hope of discovering anything whatsoever by a formal inquiry.What, in fact, was the matter in question?
It was to make myself certain whether M.Termonde was or was not the accomplice of the man who had led my father into the trap in which he had lost his life.But I did not know that man himself; Ihad no data to go upon except the particulars of his disguise and the vague speculations of a Judge of Instruction.If I could only have consulted that Judge, and availed myself of his experience?
How often since have I taken out the packet containing the denunciatory letters, with the intention of showing them to him and imploring advice, support, suggestions, from him.But I have always stopped short before the door of his house; the thought of my mother barred its entrance against me.What if he, the Judge of Instruction in the case, were to suspect her as my aunt had done?
Then I would go back to my own abode, and shut myself up for hours, lying on the divan in my smoking-room and drugging my senses with tobacco.During that time I read and re-read the fatal letters, although I knew them by heart, in order to verify my first impression with the hope of dispelling it.It was, on the contrary, deepened.The only gain I obtained from my repeated perusals was the knowledge that this certainty, of which I had made a point of honor to myself, could only be psychological.In short, all my fancies started from the moral data of the crime, apart from physical data which I could not obtain.I was therefore obliged to rely entirely, absolutely, upon those moral data, and I began again to reason as I had done at Compiegne."Supposing," said I to myself, "that M.Termonde is guilty, what state of mind must he be in? This state of mind being once ascertained, how can I act so as to wrest some sign of his guilt from him?" As to his state of mind I had no doubt.Ill and depressed as I knew him to be, his mind troubled to the point of torment, if that suffering, that gloom, that misery were accompanied by the recollection of a murder committed in the past, the man was the victim of secret remorse.
The point was then to invent a plan which should give, as it were, a form to his remorse, to raise the specter of the deed he had done roughly and suddenly before him.If guilty, it was impossible but that he would tremble; if innocent, he would not even be aware of the experiment.But how was this sudden summoning-up of his crime before the man whom I suspected to be accomplished? On the stage and in novels one confronts an assassin with the spectacle of his crime, and keeps watch upon his face for the one second during which he loses his self-possession; but in reality there is no instrument except unwieldy, unmanageable speech wherewith to probe a human conscience.I could not, however, go straight to M.
Termonde and say to his face: "You had my father killed!" Innocent or guilty, he would have had me turned from the door as a madman!
