Part 14

The speech roused all the old man’s suspicions at once. He looked round the little blue-and-white bedroom at the touching scene before his eyes--at a beautiful woman weeping over a cradle, at David bowed down by anxieties, and then again at the lawyer. This was a trap set for him by that lawyer; perhaps they wanted to work upon his paternal feelings, to get money out of him? That was what it all meant. He took alarm. He went over to the cradle and fondled the child, who held out both little arms to him. No heir to an English peerage could be more tenderly cared for than this little one in that house of trouble; his little embroidered cap was lined with pale pink.

“Eh! let David get out of it as best he may. I am thinking of this child here,” cried the old grandfather, “and the child’s mother will approve of that. David that knows so much must know how to pay his debts.”

“Now I will just put your meaning into plain language,” said Petit-Claud ironically. “Look here, Papa Séchard, you are jealous of your son. Hear the truth! you put David into his present position by selling the business to him for three times its value. You ruined him to make an extortionate bargain! Yes, don’t you shake your head; you sold the newspaper to the Cointets and pocketed all the proceeds, and that was as much as the whole business was worth. You bear David a grudge, not merely because you have plundered him, but because, also, your own son is a man far above yourself. You profess to be prodigiously fond of your grandson, to cloak your want of feeling for your son and his wife, because you ought to pay down money hic et nunc for them, while you need only show a posthumous affection for your grandson. You pretend to be fond of the little fellow, lest you should be taxed with want of feeling for your own flesh and blood. That is the bottom of it, Papa Séchard.”

“Did you fetch me over to hear this?” asked the old man, glowering at his lawyer, his daughter-in-law, and his son in turn.

“Monsieur!” protested poor Eve, turning to Petit-Claud, “have you vowed to ruin us? My husband had never uttered a word against his father.” (Here the old man looked cunningly at her.) “David has told me scores of times that you loved him in your way,” she added, looking at her father-in-law, and understanding his suspicions.

Petit-Claud was only following out the tall Cointet’s instructions. He was widening the breach between the father and son, lest Séchard senior should extricate David from his intolerable position. “The day that David Séchard goes to prison shall be the day of your introduction to Mme. de Senonches,” the “tall Cointet” had said no longer ago than yesterday.

Mme. Séchard, with the quick insight of love, had divined Petit-Claud’s mercenary hostility, even as she had once before felt instinctively that Cérizet was a traitor. As for David, his astonishment may be imagined; he could not understand how Petit-Claud came to know so much of his father’s nature and his own history. Upright and honorable as he was, he did not dream of the relations between his lawyer and the Cointets; nor, for that matter, did he know that the Cointets were at work behind Métivier. Meanwhile old Séchard took his son’s silence as an insult, and Petit-Claud, taking advantage of his client’s bewilderment, beat a retreat.

“Good-bye, my dear David; you have had warning, notice of appeal doesn’t invalidate the warrant for arrest. It is the only course left open to your creditors, and it will not be long before they take it. So, go away at once----Or, rather, if you will take my advice, go to the Cointets and see them about it. They have capital. If your invention is perfected and answers the purpose, go into partnership with them. After all, they are very good fellows----”

“Your invention?” broke in old Séchard.

“Why, do you suppose that your son is fool enough to let his business slip away from him without thinking of something else?” exclaimed the attorney. “He is on the brink of the discovery of a way of making paper at a cost of three francs per ream, instead of ten, he tells me.”

“One more dodge for taking me in! You are all as thick as thieves in a fair. If David has found out such a plan, he has no need of me--he is a millionaire! Good-bye, my dears, and a good-day to you all,” and the old man disappeared down the staircase.

“Find some way of hiding yourself,” was Petit-Claud’s parting word to David, and with that he hurried out to exasperate old Séchard still further. He found the vinegrower growling to himself outside in the Place du Mûrier, went with him as far as L’Houmeau, and there left him with a threat of putting in an execution for the costs due to him unless they were paid before the week was out.

“I will pay you if you will show me how to disinherit my son without injuring my daughter-in-law or the boy,” said old Séchard, and they parted forthwith.

“How well the ‘tall Cointet’ knows the folk he is dealing with! It is just as he said; those seven hundred francs will prevent the father from paying seven thousand,” the little lawyer thought within himself as he climbed the path to Angoulême. “Still, that old slyboots of a paper-maker must not overreach us; it is time to ask him for something besides promises.”

“Well, David dear, what do you mean to do?” asked Eve, when the lawyer had followed her father-in-law.

“Marion, put your biggest pot on the fire!” called David; “I have my secret fast.”

At this Eve put on her bonnet and shawl and walking shoes with feverish haste.

“Kolb, my friend, get ready to go out,” she said, “and come with me; if there is any way out of this hell, I must find it.”

When Eve had gone out, Marion spoke to David. “Do be sensible, sir,” she said, “or the mistress will fret herself to death. Make some money to pay off your debts, and then you can try to find treasure at your ease----”

“Don’t talk, Marion,” said David; “I am going to overcome my last difficulty, and then I can apply for the patent and the improvement on the patent at the same time.”

This “improvement on the patent” is the curse of the French patentee. A man may spend ten years of his life in working out some obscure industrial problem; and when he has invented some piece of machinery, or made a discovery of some kind, he takes out a patent and imagines that he has a right to his own invention; then there comes a competitor; and unless the first inventor has foreseen all possible contingencies, the second comer makes an “improvement on the patent” with a screw or a nut, and takes the whole thing out of his hands. The discovery of a cheap material for paper pulp, therefore, is by no means the conclusion of the whole matter. David Séchard was anxiously looking ahead on all sides lest the fortune sought in the teeth of such difficulties should be snatched out of his hands at the last. Dutch paper, as flax paper is still called, though it is no longer made in Holland, is slightly sized; but every sheet is sized separately by hand, and this increases the cost of production. If it were possible to discover some way of sizing the paper in the pulping-trough, with some inexpensive glue, like that in use to-day (though even now it is not quite perfect), there would be no “improvement on the patent” to fear. For the past month, accordingly, David had been making experiments in sizing pulp. He had two discoveries before him.

Eve went to see her mother. Fortunately, it so happened that Mme. Chardon was nursing the deputy-magistrate’s wife, who had just given the Milauds of Nevers an heir presumptive; and Eve, in her distrust of all attorneys and notaries, took into her head to apply for advice to the legal guardian of widows and orphans. She wanted to know if she could relieve David from his embarrassments by taking them upon herself and selling her claims upon the estate, and besides, she had some hope of discovering the truth as to Petit-Claud’s unaccountable conduct. The official, struck with Mme. Séchard’s beauty, received her not only with the respect due to a woman, but with a sort of courtesy to which Eve was not accustomed. She saw in the magistrate’s face an expression which, since her marriage, she had seen in no eyes but Kolb’s; and for a beautiful woman like Eve, this expression is the criterion by which men are judged. When passion, or self-interest, or age dims that spark of unquestioning fealty that gleams in a young man’s eyes, a woman feels a certain mistrust of him, and begins to observe him critically. The Cointets, Cérizet, and Petit-Claud--all the men whom Eve felt instinctively to be her enemies--had turned hard, indifferent eyes on her; with the deputy-magistrate, therefore, she felt at ease, although, in spite of his kindly courtesy, he swept all her hopes away by his first words.

“It is not certain, madame, that the Court-Royal will reverse the judgment of the court restricting your lien on your husband’s property, for payment of moneys due to you by the terms of your marriage-contract, to household goods and chattels. Your privilege ought not to be used to defraud the other creditors. But in any case, you will be allowed to take your share of the proceeds with the other creditors, and your father-in-law likewise, as a privileged creditor, for arrears of rent. When the court has given the order, other points may be raised as to the ‘contribution,’ as we call it, when a schedule of the debts is drawn up, and the creditors are paid a dividend in proportion to their claims.

“Then M. Petit-Claud is bringing us to bankruptcy,” she cried.

“Petit-Claud is carrying out your husband’s instructions,” said the magistrate; “he is anxious to gain time, so his attorney says. In my opinion, you would perhaps do better to waive the appeal and buy in at the sale the indispensable implements for carrying on the business; you and your father-in-law together might do this, you to the extent of your claim through your marriage contract, and he for his arrears of rent. But that would be bringing the matter to an end too soon perhaps. The lawyers are making a good thing out of your case.”

“But then I should be entirely in M. Séchard’s father’s hands. I should owe him the hire of the machinery as well as the house-rent; and my husband would still be open to further proceedings from M. Métivier, for M. Métivier would have had almost nothing.”

“That is true, madame.”

“Very well, then we should be even worse off than we are.”