Chapter 5

But the doctor's frame lay scarcely more than an hour or two in the
torpor of troubled slumbers. When he awoke in the darkness of his warm,
closed room he was aware, even before thought was awake in him, of the
painful oppression, the sickness of heart which the sorrow we have slept
on leaves behind it. It is as though the disaster of which the shock
merely jarred us at first, had, during sleep, stolen into our very
flesh, bruising and exhausting it like a fever. Memory returned to him
like a blow, and he sat up in bed. Then slowly, one by one, he again
went through all the arguments which had wrung his heart on the jetty
while the fog-horns were bellowing. The more he thought the less he
doubted. He felt himself dragged along by his logic to the inevitable
certainty, as by a clutching, strangling hand.

He was thirsty and hot, his heart beat wildly. He got up to open his
window and breathe the fresh air, and as he stood there a low sound fell
on his ear through the wall. Jean was sleeping peacefully, and gently
snoring. He could sleep! He had no presentiment, no suspicions! A man
who had known their mother had left him all his fortune; he took the
money and thought it quite fair and natural! He was sleeping, rich and
contented, not knowing that his brother was gasping with anguish and
distress. And rage boiled up in him against this heedless and happy
sleeper.

Only yesterday he would have knocked at his door, have gone in, and
sitting by the bed, would have said to Jean, scared by the sudden
waking:

"Jean you must not keep this legacy which by to-morrow may have brought
suspicion and dishonour on our mother."

But to-day he could say nothing; he could not tell Jean that he did not
believe him to be their father's son. Now he must guard, must bury the
shame he had discovered, hide from every eye the stain which he
had detected and which no one must perceive, not even his
brother--especially not his brother.

He no longer thought about the vain respect of public opinion. He would
have been glad that all the world should accuse his mother if only he,
he alone, knew her to be innocent! How could he bear to live with her
every day, believing as he looked at her that his brother was the child
of a stranger's love?

And how calm and serene she was, nevertheless, how sure of herself she
always seemed! Was it possible that such a woman as she, pure of soul
and upright in heart, should fall, dragged astray by passion, and
yet nothing ever appear afterward of her remorse and the stings of a
troubled conscience? Ah, but remorse must have tortured her, long ago in
the earlier days, and then have faded out, as everything fades. She
had surely bewailed her sin, and then,