Conscience — Complete. Hector Malot

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ which rang at that moment.

      Caffie rose. “How disagreeable it is not to have a clerk!” he said.

      He went to open the door with an eagerness that he had not shown to Saniel, which proved that he had no fear of admitting people when he was not alone.

      It was a clerk from the bank.

      “You will permit me,” Caffie said, on returning to his office. “It will take but an instant.”

      The clerk took a paper from his portfolio and handed it to Caffie.

      Caffie drew a key from the pocket of his vest, with which he opened the iron safe placed behind his desk, and turning his back to Saniel and the clerk counted the bills which they heard rustle in his hands. Presently he rose, and closing the door of the safe he placed under the lamp the package of bills that he had counted. The clerk then counted them, and placing them in his portfolio took his leave.

      “Close the door when you go out,” Caffie said, who was already seated in his arm-chair.

      “Do not be afraid.”

      When the clerk was gone Caffie apologized for the interruption.

      “Let us continue our conversation, my dear sir. I told you that there is only one way to relieve you permanently from embarrassment, and that way you will find is in a good marriage, that will place ‘hic et nunc’ a reasonable sum at your disposal.”

      “But it would be folly for me to marry now, when I have no position to offer a wife.”

      “And your future, of which you have just spoken with so much assurance, have you no faith in that?”

      “An absolute faith—as firm to-day as when I first began the battle of life, only brighter. However, as others have not the same reasons that I have to hope and believe what I hope and believe, it is quite natural that they should feel doubts of my future. You felt it yourself instantly in not finding it a good guarantee for the small loan of three thousand francs.”

      “A loan and marriage are not the same thing. A loan relieves you temporarily, and leaves you in a state to contract several others successively, which, you must acknowledge, weakens the guarantee that you offer. While a marriage instantly opens to you the road that your ambition wishes to travel.”

      “I have never thought of marriage.”

      “If you should think of it?”

      “There must be a woman first of all.”

      “If I should propose one, what would you say?”

      “But—”

      “You are surprised?”

      “I confess that I am.”

      “My dear sir, I am the friend of my clients, and for many of them—I dare to say it—a father. And having much affection for a young woman, and for the daughter of one of my friends, while listening to you I thought that one or the other might be the woman you need. Both have fortunes, and both possess physical attractions that a handsome man like yourself has a right to demand. And for the rest, I have their photographs, and you may see for yourself what they are.”

      He opened a drawer in his desk, and took from it a package of photographs. As he turned them over Saniel saw that they were all portraits of women. Presently he selected two and handed them to Saniel.

      One represented a woman from thirty-eight to forty years, corpulent, robust, covered with horrible cheap jewelry that she had evidently put on for the purpose of being photographed. The other was a young girl of about twenty years, pretty, simply and elegantly dressed, whose distinguished and reserved physiognomy was a strong contrast to the first portrait.

      While Saniel looked at these pictures Caffie studied him, trying to discover the effect they produced.

      “Now that you have seen them,” he said, “let us talk of them a little. If you knew me better, my dear sir, you would know that I am frankness itself, and in business my principle is to tell everything, the good and the bad, so that my clients are responsible for the decisions they make. In reality, there is nothing bad about these two persons, because, if there were, I would not propose them to you. But there are certain things that my delicacy compels me to point out to you, which I do frankly, feeling certain that a man like you is not the slave of narrow prejudices.”

      An expression of pain passed over his face, and he clasped his jaw with both hands.

      “You suffer?” Saniel asked.

      “Yes, from my teeth, cruelly. Pardon me that I show it; I know by myself that nothing is more annoying than the sight of the sufferings of others.”

      “At least not to doctors.”

      “Never mind; we will return to my clients. This one”—and he touched the portrait of the bejewelled woman—“is, as you have divined already, a widow, a very amiable widow. Perhaps she is a little older than you are, but that is nothing. Your experience must have taught you that the man who wishes to be loved, tenderly loved, pampered, caressed, spoiled, should marry a woman older than himself, who will treat him as a husband and as a son. Her first husband was a careful merchant, who, had he lived, would have made a large fortune in the butcher business”—he mumbled this word instead of pronouncing it clearly—“but although he died just at the time when his affairs were beginning to develop, he left twenty thousand pounds’ income to his wife. As I have told you what is good, I must tell you what is to be regretted. Carried away by gay companions, this intelligent man became addicted to intemperance, and from drinking at saloons she soon took to drinking at home, and his wife drank with him. I have every reason to believe that she has reformed; but, if it is otherwise, you, a doctor, can easily cure her—”

      “You believe it?”

      “Without doubt. However, if it is impossible, you need only let her alone, and her vice will soon carry her off; and, as the contract will be made according to my wishes in view of such an event, you will find yourself invested with a fortune and unencumbered with a wife.”

      “And the other?” Saniel said, who had listened silently to this curious explanation of the situation that Caffie made with the most perfect good-nature. So grave were the circumstances that he could not help being amused at this diplomacy.

      “I expected your demand,” replied the agent with a shrewd smile. “And if I spoke of this amiable widow it was rather to acquit my conscience than with any hope of succeeding. However free from prejudices one may be, one always retains a few. I understand yours, and more than that, I share them. Happily, what I am now about to tell you is something quite different. Take her photograph, my dear sir, and look at it while I talk. A charming face, is it not? She has been finely educated at a fashionable convent. In a word, a pearl, that you shall wear. And now I must tell you the flaw, for there is one. Who is blameless? The daughter of one of our leading actresses, after leaving the convent she returned to live with her mother. It was there, in this environment-ahem! ahem!—that an accident happened to her. To be brief, she has a sweet little child that the father would have recognized assuredly, had he not been already married. But at least he has provided for its future by an endowment of two hundred thousand francs, in such a way that whoever marries the mother and legitimizes the child will enjoy the interest of this sum until the child’s majority. If that ever СКАЧАТЬ