The House by Henry Bordeaux

SORROWS like these have their own modesty, and I throw a veil over mine.

I resume my story at the time when we resumed our ordinary life. The first meal by ourselves consecrated its permanence, after the comings and goings of relatives and friends were over, with all the confusion inseparable from a house of mourning. My brother Stephen, who had hastened from Rome, had gone back to complete his theological studies. Mélanie was doubtless finding expression for her own grief by more complete devotion to all the sorrows of the hospital, and Bernard, far away, had acknowledged the blow by a brief cablegram in which we could measure his affection. We others, who remained, could now count one another like the wounded after defeat.

The bell rang and we must go to the dining-room. Grandfather came in from his walk; he was bent and broken, he leant upon his cane, bemoaning himself about something, I can not tell what. Something had gone wrong, he himself could not quite understand.

"Ah! " he sighed, all out of breath. "I thought I should never get back to the house."

He spoke as we used to speak when we were little. But had we ever left off saying The House? I saw him so old and weak and hardly realised that it was he who used to take me into the woods and on the lake, in those days when both of us used to sally forth in all tranquillity for the conquest of liberty. In my transformation, going to the other extreme, I gazed upon him now with an excessive pity which bordered upon contempt.

Yes, when the soldiers are on the ramparts the town may question and discuss, may they not? It questions and discusses the utility of arms and fortifications, their destruction appearing a slight thing. But what if there are no soldiers and the enemy is at the gates?

Thus in the old days we could talk of our desires and our dreams, of the commonwealth of the future, and above all, of our dear liberty. We could, then, and now we can no more, for there is no one defending us, and we are face to face with life, with our own destinies. He is no longer here, grandfather, who used to mount guard on the ramparts for the whole family.

Aunt Deen was putting finishing touches to the table. She was very old to impose so much labour upon herself, never stopping to rest from morning till night.

"Don't, aunt, it is not your work."

But she protested and muttered and began to weep aloud.

"You mustn't prevent my working. I feel it less when I am working."

Didn't I know, too, that there was now no one in the kitchen but Mariette, because things were changed with us? Each of us must do his part, and Aunt Deen, as usual, began first.

Louise was no longer gay, as she used to be. She came in, leading her sister Nicola, as if to protect her. Why did I look more lovingly at their fair hair? Was I already thinking of the new uncertainties of their future? Jamie, left mostly to himself these latter days, had not been good, and my mother was reproving him. He probably thought that she would never think of scolding him, and all astonishment, he obeyed. And now we must take our seats around the table.

Mother had taken her old place in the middle, and I found in her manner, in her voice gentle as always, an indescribable new authority, inexplicable and yet to be felt. She turned to grandfather, who came next.

"It is for you to take his place," she said indicating my father's chair, opposite to hers.

"Oh, not I! " exclaimed grandfather with agitation. "Valentine, I can't take that place. I am nothing now but an old beast."

She urged, but in vain; nothing would induce him to yield. Then my mother turned to me with that expression, at once calm and frightened, which she had worn ever since -- since she became a widow.

"It must be you," she said.

Without a word I seated myself in my father's place and for a few moments I found it impossible to speak. Why this emotion for so simple and natural a thing? So simple and so natural indeed was the transmission of authority.

I have compared the house to a kingdom, and the succession of heads of the family to a dynasty. And now this dynasty had come to me. My mother was exercising the regency, and I was wearing the crown. And now I learned at the same time its weight and its honour. As before this I had been born into sorrow and into death, I was now born into the sense of my responsibility in life. Indeed I do not know whether I can compare the feeling that took possession of me with any other emotion. It pierced my heart with that sharp and cruel dart which is generally attributed to love. And from my wound sprang up, as it were, a gush of red blood, the sense of exaltation which was to colour all my life -- blood which, far from subtracting from life's forces, would add to the eternal defences of our race.