A letter, warning us of their approaching visit, came in the last days of July. Edmé had heard tell of a good doctor in Le Mans who was knowledgeable about chest diseases. The summer weather, with the warm winds blowing grass and pollen, had increased the severity of Michel’s cough and his shortness of breath. Edmé had persuaded him to take a few days’ absence from work, and they were to proceed to Le Mans, and would spend the night with us on their return.
“What shall I do?” I asked François. “Shall I be blunt with them and tell the truth? That Robert has come home?”
“They won’t come here if you do,” he answered. “I have not forgotten, if you have, what Michel said about his émigré brother. He told me once that Robert would be better dead, and that was the end of it. Certainly warn them, so that they may make a change in plans. I don’t want a fight under my own roof. As it is, I find myself in considerable embarrassment because of your brother’s presence here. It’s hardly becoming in the mayor of Vibraye to house an émigré, relative or not. I think you don’t always realize what is due to my position.”
I realized too well. The years that had dealt so kindly with my husband’s face and fortune had not graced him with humility or compassion. I loved him still, but he was a world away from the young man in the uniform of the National Guard singing “Ça Ira,” who used to follow Michel on forays in ’91.
“I’ll write to Edmé,” I said, “and to Michel too. It’s best that they should know Robert is here, and so keep away.”
The letter was dispatched. A week passed, and also the date that Edmé and Michel were due to visit the doctor in Le Mans. I expected to hear the result of the visit on their return to Alençon, with comment, perhaps, on Robert’s presence. I did not expect the sound of wheels on our gravel drive one afternoon, and the sight of the hired chaise outside the windows, with first Michel and then Edmé descending from it.
Robert, who was reading, laid down his book and spectacles.
“Were you expecting visitors,” he enquired, “or does Monsieur le maire perform his duties at home as well as at Vibraye?”
There was little love lost between him and my husband, but the pinprick did not rouse me on this day. I was too much concerned about the others.
“It’s Edmé and Michel,” I said quickly. “I’ll greet them, you stay here.”
His face lit up, and he rose to his feet. Then, seeing my expression, his smile vanished. Slowly he sat down again.
“I understand,” he said, “you don’t have to tell me.”
He was not so lacking in perception after all. François, perhaps, had been more explicit than I had realized.
I went out of the salon and into the entrance hall. Edmé was there before me. Michel was still without, paying off the driver.
“You didn’t expect us,” she said at once. “You were right, we had decided otherwise. Then, after seeing the doctor, Michel changed his mind.”
I looked at her. The question was in my eyes.
“Yes,” she answered, “what we feared. He can’t get better…”
She showed no emotion on her face. Only her voice betrayed her.
“It may be six months,” she said, “or even less. He took it well. He insists that he will go on working until the end, and it’s better so.”
She said no more, for at this moment Michel came into the hall. I was startled by the alteration in his appearance since I had seen him last, a few months back. His face was gray and pinched, and he walked with little shuffling steps. When he spoke the breath came short, as though the effort hurt him.
“We can p-put up at Vibraye if you have no room for us,” he said. “My f-fault, as Aimée will have told you. I ch-changed my mind.”
I put my arms round him. The square stalwart figure had become suddenly small.
“You know there’s room for you,” I answered, “tonight and always, should you want it.”
“Only t-tonight,” he said. “Tomorrow I must get b-back to work again. Is Robert here?”
I glanced at Edmé and she nodded, then dropped her eyes.
“Where are the children?” she asked. “Shall I go and find them?”
My sister, no great lover of young people under the age of twelve, must have needed the excuse. Michel might have changed his mind about coming to le Gué de Launay, but she had not.
“As you please,” I told her. “They are somewhere in the garden. Come, Michel.”
I put my arm through his and opened the door of the salon. On the instant I was back again to that moment, thirteen years before, when he and I had walked out of the laboratory in the rue Traversière.
Robert, standing by the window of my salon, nervous, watchful, ready to match his mood to his brother’s whatever it should be, whether mocking or aggressive, was not prepared, in fact, for what he saw. The angry fanatic with his shock of dark unruly hair had gone forever. The sick man, who stood with his arm in mine, had lost his fire.
“Hullo, mon b-brave,” said Michel.
This was all. He shuffled towards Robert, holding out his arms. I went out of the room, leaving them alone, and shut myself upstairs until my tears had dried.
François was kept in Vibraye that day until after we had dined, and I was glad of it, for it meant that the four of us could be together. It was only Pierre we lacked to make my family complete.
Edmé, cool at first, holding out a stiff formal hand to Robert, which he kissed in mock solemnity, then flung aside to take her in his arms, soon found it hard to withstand the old gaiety, the old forgotten charm. She followed Michel’s lead, through love of him, I think, more than anything else, knowing as I did that the occasion was almost certainly unique, never to be repeated. As to Michel, whether his own death sentence had blotted out resentment I do not know; but remembering how he had felt, and spoken too, during the years since Robert left us, it was a miracle this day to see how he had mellowed.
They say death does this to us once we are warned. Unconsciously, we strive not to waste time. Pettiness falls away, with all those things of little value in our lives. Could we but have known sooner, we tell ourselves, it would have been otherwise; no anger, no destruction, above everything no pride.
At dinner Robert kept us entertained with stories of cockney London, mocking the city that had sheltered him, along with its inhabitants and his own fellow émigrés, in merciless disregard of any help they may have given him. But as we moved back into the salon afterwards he suddenly said, “But why, mon vieux, are you killing yourself as manager in a scrubby little foundry near Alençon when you might have taken the lease of some place like la Pierre? You could surely have done so, with our mother’s inheritance, and what you had made besides out of Church lands?”
My heart sank. This topic might lead us to the drama I had dreaded before they came. There was no time, though, to leave the room on some excuse. Robert had firmly shut the door behind him as we entered.
Michel walked slowly to the hearthrug, and stood with his hands behind his back. He had taken wine at dinner, and two spots of color showed on his gray, sick face.
“I had n-no alternative,” he replied at last. “Aimée and I went into p-partnership together in the Year VII. We lost everything we p-possessed.”
Robert raised his eyebrows.
“Then I’m not the only gambler in the family after all,” he said. “What in the world induced you to take the risk?”
Michel paused a moment. “Y-you did,” he said.
Robert, bewildered, looked from him to Edmé.
“I did?” he asked. “How could I have possibly done such a thing when you were over here and I in London?”
“You m-misunderstand me,” answered Michel. “It was the th-thought of you which induced me, that’s all. I wanted to succeed where you had f-failed. I did not d-do so. I think the answer is that we both of us, you and I, l-lack not only our father’s t-talent, but his courage as well. I shall leave no children, but your J-Jacques may pass on both qualities to
p-posterity.”
Not necessarily Jacques, I thought. There were the children abandoned in London, who might do the same.
“Where did you lose your money?” asked Robert.
“At R-Rougemont,” answered Michel.
I shall never forget the look on Robert’s face. Incredulity passed to admiration, then to pity, then to shame.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I would have warned you had I known.”
“Don’t be sorry,” answered Michel. “It was all experience. I’ve learned my l-limitations, and the country’s too.”
“The country’s?”
“Yes. Our p-plan was to share our p-profits with the workmen. Perhaps you haven’t heard of Gracchus B-Babeuf, who killed himself rather than be g-guillotined? He believed that all wealth and p-property should be shared among the people. He was a f-friend of mine.”
Our émigré, spectacles in hand, stared back at his youngest brother open-mouthed. It was not just thirteen years that stood between them, but a century of ideas as well. King’s Bench prison might have taught him some humility, but his world was still the world of ’89; Michel’s and Edmé’s belonged to a future we should never live to see.
“In other words,” said Robert slowly, “you gambled on a dream.”
“P-put it that way if you like,” replied Michel.
Robert crossed to the window and looked out over the garden. The children were chasing butterflies on the lawn.
“Come to think of it,” he added, “my gamble was also a dream. But a different one from yours.”
We were all of us silent for a while, until Michel’s cough, stabbing the air, made us suddenly conscious of what lay ahead for him. He sat down, gasping, waving his hand to draw attention away from himself.
“Don’t be alarmed,” he said, “it c-comes and goes. Sophie gave me too good a d-dinner.” Then, smiling at his brother, he asked, “What happened to the g-glass?”
“The glass?”
Robert, startled into the present, was nonplussed for a moment only. Then, with a glance at me, he went to the cabinet. “It’s here,” he said, “the only thing I brought home with me from England. I nearly lost it once, but that’s another story.”
He opened the cabinet and took out the glass and showed it to Michel. “Not a scratch upon it, as you see,” he said, “but I won’t let you handle it, you say it brings bad luck.”
“Not any l-longer,” answered Michel, “my luck ran out some t-time ago. I’d like to hold it now.”
He put out his hands and took the glass and turned it this way and that. The light from the window caught the engraven fleur-de-lys.
“They were c-craftsmen, I’ll say that for them, both my f-father and my uncle,” Michel said. “I’ve t-tried to copy this a hundred times, and always f-failed. Is Sophie going to keep it?”
“Until Jacques takes it from her,” Robert answered.
“He won’t d-do that,” said Michel, “he belongs to B-Bonaparte. Jacques will f-follow the First Consul to the S-Siberian steppes and beyond. You ought to have bred more s-sons. I’m sorry your s-second marriage ended as disastrously as the f-first.”
Robert did not answer. He took the glass from Michel and put it back in the cabinet. I was still the only one to know his secret.
“Too late for you and me to enter into p-partnership, mon vieux,” said Michel, “the p-plain fact being that I may not live six months. But I’d welcome your c-company, even though you are a s-sacré émigré. You don’t m-mind, do you, Aimée?”
“Not if you want him with you,” answered Edmé.
“You can come back to S-Sophie and the comfort of the mayor’s establishment after I’m g-gone,” continued Michel. “How about it?”
This time it was Robert who was thinking of the parting at the laboratory in the rue Traversière. What bitterness he may have suffered then was now forgotten, extinguished forever by his brother’s words. They made a strange contrast: Robert, the one-time dandy, now stooping, with his clothes hanging about him, his dyed hair streaked with gray, spectacles on nose; and Michel, no more a terrorist of the district of Mondoubleau ready to fight the world, but a dying man, facing his last battle.
If they had known then, I kept repeating to myself, if they had known then, would they have acted differently, would they have never quarreled? Why the loneliness, the resentment, the anguish in between?
“I’ll come with you,” said Robert. “I’d be proud to do so. As to your six months’ sentence, we might wager on that too. I give you at least a year. If I win, so much the better for both of us. If I lose, I shan’t have to pay my debt!”
One thing was certain. Neither the London rain and fog, nor the gloom of King’s Bench prison, nor Michel’s approaching death, could quench my eldest brother’s sense of fun or his gambling instinct.
20
My eldest brother lost his wager. Michel died seven months later, in February 1803—thank God, without much pain. He was working until the day before he died, and the end came suddenly, after a paroxysm of coughing. He was talking to Edmé one moment, and the next was dead. We brought his body back to Vibraye and buried him in the cemetery there, where I shall lie one day, and my sons as well.
None of us could have wished him to live longer. His strength had gone, and he would never have taken to an invalid’s life, humped in an easy chair. His last months were made the easier by the presence of Robert, who, Edmé said, was gentler with Michel than she was herself. He made his bed for him, helped him to dress, and sat by him at night when his cough worsened; and all of it was done with ease and gaiety.
“I grudged his coming,” Edmé admitted, “but after two weeks relied on him completely. Without him I think I could hardly have faced the end.”
So the youngest of my brothers was the first to go, and, never having lost my faith, I liked to think of him when he was no longer with us, walking in some celestial glass-house with my father, reconciled at last, his stammer gone. Sentiment can turn afterlife into a fairy tale for children, and I prefer this to Edmé’s theory of oblivion.
She herself was so much moved by Michel’s death that she lost all purpose for a while. He had been that purpose for more than seven years, and without him her roots were severed. They had shared the same beliefs, the same fanaticism for so long, and even in failure, when their dreams had shattered, their mutual loss became their consolation.
“She should marry again,” said François bluntly. “A home and a husband would soon put her to rights.”
I thought how lacking in intuition men could be in persuading themselves that mending some stranger’s socks, and attending to his comfort, could content a woman of thirty-eight like my sister Edmé, who, with her quick brain and passion for argument, would—had she lived in another age—have fought for her beliefs like Joan of Arc.
For Edmé the Revolution had come to an end too soon. Bonaparte’s victorious armies might be a cause for pride, but in her view, and in Michel’s also while he lived, the glory was all an empty mockery to make the generals shine—the mass of the people did not participate. The new aristocrats were the First Consul’s friends, befeathered and beribboned, jockeying for favors just as the courtiers had done once at Versailles. Only the names had changed.
“I’ve outlived my time,” she used to say. “I should have gone to the guillotine with Robespierre and St. Just, or else died for their ideals in the streets of Paris. Everything since has been corruption.”
A few weeks with us at le Gué de Launay were enough. She was plainly restless, bored. She packed her things and went off to Vendôme in search of any of the former clique of “Babouviste” adherents who might still be living there, and when next we heard from her she was writing articles for Hésine, Babeuf’s friend and associate, who was once more at liberty, and agitating against the conscription laws.
I always said she should have been born a man. Her brains and her tenacity were wasted in a woman.
When the spring came Rober
t and I went down to St. Christophe to see Pierre, who, of course, had come earlier to Vibraye for Michel’s funeral, so the pair of them had already seen each other. I had had no fears about this encounter. Pierre had welcomed the émigré as though he had never been away, and immediately presented him with that share of my mother’s inheritance which he had carefully kept apart from the portion of it that had gone to Jacques. The rent from the small farm property, with the produce from the vines, though not in any sense a considerable sum, was at least enough to keep my eldest brother in the future, with enough over for investment.
“The question is,” said Pierre, “what do you want to do with it?”
“I propose to do nothing,” answered Robert, “until I can discuss the matter with Jacques. I don’t understand this business of conscription. Isn’t it possible to buy him out of the army?”
“No,” said Pierre, “and even if it was…”
He left his sentence unfinished and glanced at me. I knew very well what he was thinking. Jacques, whether a soldier or civilian, was nearly twenty-two, and believed his father dead, or so we supposed.
“I think you should know,” said Pierre, “that Jacques has never mentioned your name to me in all the years he has lived with us here at St. Christophe. My boys have told me the same. He may have talked about you to my mother, when he lived with her, but never to us.”
“Perhaps not,” Robert replied. “It does not mean he never thought about me.”
I could tell that Pierre was disturbed for both their sakes. There was nothing he would have liked more than to bring father and son together, but Robert refused to see that the position was unusual. It was not as though he had returned as a colonialist might do after long absence. He had deserted his son, deserted his country, and lived as an émigré in England for thirteen years. He must not expect to find on his return the same affectionate lad that he remembered.
“What about his other grandparents?” persisted Robert. “Has he lost touch with them? I suppose so.”