Part 18

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 work-girl.

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 look-out 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, wilfully shutting his eyes to the bareness and want that made his son’s home desolate. If they owed him rent, they could well afford to keep him. He ate his food from a tinned iron plate, and made no marvel at it. “I began in the same way,” he told his daughter-in-law, when she apologized for the absence of silver spoons.

Marion was obliged to run into debt for necessaries for them all. Kolb was earning a franc for daily wage as a brick-layer’s laborer; and at last poor Eve, who, for the sake of her husband and child, had sacrificed her last resources to entertain David’s father, saw that she had only ten francs left. She had hoped to the last to soften the old miser’s heart by her affectionate respect, and patience, and pretty attentions; but old Séchard was obdurate as ever. When she saw him turn the same cold eyes on her, the same look that the Cointets had given her, and Petit-Claud and Cérizet, she tried to watch and guess old Séchard’s intentions. Trouble thrown away! Old Séchard, never sober, never drunk, was inscrutable; intoxication is a double veil. If the old man’s tipsiness was sometimes real, it was quite often feigned for the purpose of extracting David’s secret from his wife. Sometimes he coaxed, sometimes he frightened his daughter-in-law.

“I will drink up my property; I will buy an annuity,” he would threaten when Eve told him that she knew nothing.

The humiliating struggle was wearing her out; she kept silence at last, lest she should show disrespect to her husband’s father.

“But, father,” she said one day when driven to extremity, “there is a very simple way of finding out everything. Pay David’s debts; he will come home, and you can settle it between you.”

“Ha! that is what you want to get out of me, is it?” he cried. “It is as well to know!”

But if Séchard had no belief in his son, he had plenty of faith in the Cointets. He went to consult them, and the Cointets dazzled him of set purpose, telling him that his son’s experiments might mean millions of francs.

“If David can prove that he has succeeded, I shall not hesitate to go into partnership with him, and reckon his discovery as half the capital,” the tall Cointet told him.

The suspicious old man learned a good deal over nips of brandy with the work-people, and something more by questioning Petit-Claud and feigning stupidity; and at length he felt convinced that the Cointets were the real movers behind Métivier; they were plotting to ruin Séchard’s printing establishment, and to lure him (Séchard) on to pay his son’s debts by holding out the discovery as a bait. The old man of the people did not suspect that Petit-Claud was in the plot, nor had he any idea of the toils woven to ensnare the great secret. A day came at last when he grew angry and out of patience with the daughter-in-law who would not so much as tell him where David was hiding; he determined to force the laboratory door, for he had discovered that David was wont to make his experiments in the workshop where the rollers were melted down.

He came downstairs very early one morning and set to work upon the lock.

“Hey! Papa Séchard, what are you doing there?” Marion called out. (She had risen at daybreak to go to her papermill, and now she sprang across to the workshop.)

“I am in my own house, am I not?” said the old man, in some confusion.

“Oh, indeed, are you turning thief in your old age? You are not drunk this time either----I shall go straight to the mistress and tell her.”

“Hold your tongue, Marion,” said Séchard, drawing two crowns of six francs each from his pocket. “There----”

“I will hold my tongue, but don’t you do it again,” said Marion, shaking her finger at him, “or all Angoulême shall hear of it.”

The old man had scarcely gone out, however, when Marion went up to her mistress.