Pierre and Jean, Guy de Maupassant [books for 6 year olds to read themselves .txt] 📗

Jean, startled by his violence, was silent for a few seconds, trying in the confusion of mind which comes of rage to hit on the thing, the phrase, the word, which might stab his brother to the heart. He went on, with an effort to control himself that he might aim true, and to speak slowly that the words might hit more keenly:

“I have known for a long time that you were jealous of me, ever since the day when you first began to talk of ‘the widow’ because you knew it annoyed me.”

Pierre broke into one of those strident and scornful laughs which were common with him.

“Ah! ah! Good Heavens! Jealous of you! I? I? And of what? Good God! Of your person or your mind?”

But Jean knew full well that he had touched the wound in his soul.

“Yes, jealous of me⁠—jealous from your childhood up. And it became fury when you saw that this woman liked me best and would have nothing to say to you.”

Pierre, stung to the quick by this assumption, stuttered out:

“I? I? Jealous of you? And for the sake of that goose, that gaby, that simpleton?”

Jean, seeing that he was aiming true, went on:

“And how about the day when you tried to pull me round in the Pearl? And all you said in her presence to show off? Why, you are bursting with jealousy! And when this money was left to me you were maddened, you hated me, you showed it in every possible way, and made everyone suffer for it; not an hour passes that you do not spit out the bile that is choking you.”

Pierre clenched his fist in his fury with an almost irresistible impulse to fly at his brother and seize him by the throat.

“Hold your tongue,” he cried. “At least say nothing about that money.”

Jean went on:

“Why your jealousy oozes out at every pore. You never say a word to my father, my mother, or me that does not declare it plainly. You pretend to despise me because you are jealous. You try to pick a quarrel with everyone because you are jealous. And now that I am rich you can no longer contain yourself; you have become venomous, you torture our poor mother as if she were to blame!”

Pierre had retired step by step as far as the fireplace, his mouth half open, his eyes glaring, a prey to one of those mad fits of passion in which a crime is committed.

He said again in a lower tone, gasping for breath: “Hold your tongue⁠—for God’s sake hold your tongue!”

“No! For a long time I have been wanting to give you my whole mind! You have given me an opening⁠—so much the worse for you. I love the woman; you know it, and laugh her to scorn in my presence⁠—so much the worse for you. But I will break your viper’s fangs, I tell you. I will make you treat me with respect.”

“With respect⁠—you?”

“Yes⁠—me.”

“Respect you? You who have brought shame on us all by your greed.”

“You say⁠—? Say it again⁠—again.”

“I say that it does not do to accept one man’s fortune when another is reputed to be your father.”

Jean stood rigid, not understanding, dazed by the insinuation he scented.

“What? Repeat that once more.”

“I say⁠—what everybody is muttering, what every gossip is blabbing⁠—that you are the son of the man who left you his fortune. Well, then⁠—a decent man does not take the money which brings dishonour on his mother.”

“Pierre! Pierre! Pierre! Think what you are saying. You? Is it you who give utterance to this infamous thing?”

“Yes, I. It is I. Have you not seen me crushed with woe this month past, spending my nights without sleep and my days in lurking out of sight like an animal? I hardly know what I am doing or what will become of me, so miserable am I, so crazed with shame and grief; for first I guessed⁠—and now I know it.”

“Pierre! Be silent. Mother is in the next room. Remember she may hear⁠—she must hear.”

But Pierre felt that he must unburden his heart. He told Jean all his suspicions, his arguments, his struggles, his assurance, and the history of the portrait⁠—which had again disappeared. He spoke in short broken sentences almost without coherence⁠—the language of a sleepwalker.

He seemed to have quite forgotten Jean, and his mother in the adjoining room. He talked as if no one were listening, because he must talk, because he had suffered too much and smothered and closed the wound too tightly. It had festered like an abscess and the abscess had burst, splashing everyone. He was pacing the room in the way he almost always did, his eyes fixed on vacancy, gesticulating in a frenzy of despair, his voice choked with tearless sobs and revulsions of self-loathing; he spoke as if he were making a confession of his own misery and that of his nearest kin, as though he were casting his woes to the deaf, invisible winds which bore away his words.

Jean, distracted and almost convinced on a sudden by his brother’s blind vehemence, was leaning against the door behind which, as he guessed, their mother had heard them.

She could not get out, she must come through his room. She had not come; then it was because she dare not.

Suddenly Pierre stamped his foot.

“I am a brute,” he cried, “to have told you this.”

And he fled, bareheaded, down the stairs.

The noise of the front-door closing with a slam roused Jean from the deep stupor into which he had fallen. Some seconds had elapsed, longer than hours, and his spirit had sunk into the numb torpor of idiocy. He was conscious, indeed, that he must presently think and act, but he would wait, refusing to understand, to know, to remember, out of fear, weakness, cowardice. He was one of those procrastinators who put everything off till tomorrow; and when he was compelled to come to a decision then and