"The reviews are not here," I answered; "we shall probably find them in the smoking-room."It was not true that the two numbers were not there; I knew their exact place on the table in my study; but my father's portrait hung in the smoking-room, and the notion of bringing M.Termonde face to face with the picture, to see how he would bear the confrontation, had occurred to me.At first he did not observe the portrait at all; but I went to the side of the room on which the easel supporting it stood, and his eyes, following all my movements, encountered it.His eyelids opened and closed rapidly, and a sort of dark thrill passed over his face; then he turned his eyes carelessly upon another little picture hanging upon the wall.Idid not give him time to recover from the shock; but, in pursuance of the almost brutal method from which I had hitherto gained so little, I persisted:
"Do you not think," said I, "that my father's portrait is strikingly like me? A friend of mine was saying the other day that, if I had my hair cut in the same way, my head would be exactly like--"He looked first at me, and then at the picture, in the most leisurely way, like an expert in painting examining a work of art, without any other motive than that of establishing its authenticity.If this man had procured the death of him whose portrait he studied thus, his power over himself was indeed wonderful.But--was not the experiment a crucial one for him? To betray his trouble would be to avow all? How ardently I longed to place my hand upon his heart at that moment and to count its beats.
"You do resemble him," he said at length, "but not to that degree.
The lower part of the chin especially, the nose and the mouth, are alike, but you have not the same look in the eyes, and the brows, forehead, and cheeks are not the same shape.""Do you think," said I, "that the resemblance is strong enough for me to startle the murderer if he were to meet me suddenly here, and thus?"--I advanced upon him, looking into the depths of his eyes as though I were imitating a dramatic scene."Yes," I continued, "would the likeness of feature enable me to produce the effect of a specter, on saying to the man, 'Do you recognize the son of him whom you killed?"'
"Now we are returning to our former discussion," he replied, without any farther alteration of his countenance; "that would depend upon the man's remorse, if he had any, and on his nervous system."Again we were silent.His pale and sickly but motionless face exasperated me by its complete absence of expression.In those minutes--and how many such scenes have we not acted together since my suspicion was first conceived--I felt myself as bold and resolute as I was the reverse when alone with my own thoughts.His impassive manner drove me wild again; I did not limit myself to this second experiment, but immediately devised a third, which ought to make him suffer as much as the two others, if he were guilty.I was like a man who strikes his enemy with a broken-handled knife, holding it by the blade in his shut hand; the blow draws his own blood also.But no, no; I was not exactly that man;I could not doubt or deny the harm that I was doing to myself by these cruel experiments, while he, my adversary, hid his wound so well that I saw it not.No matter, the mad desire TO KNOW overcame my pain.
"How strange those resemblances are," I said."My father's handwriting and mine are exactly the same.Look here."I opened an iron safe built into the wall, in which I kept papers which I especially valued, and took out first the letters from my father to my aunt which I had selected and placed on top of the packet.These were the latest in date, and I held them out to him, just as I had arranged them in their envelopes.The letters were addressed to "Mademoiselle Louise Cornelis, Compiegne;" they bore the postmark and the quite legible stamp of the days on which they were posted in the April and May of 1864.It was the former process over again.If M.Termonde were guilty, he would be conscious that the sudden change of my attitude towards himself, the boldness of my allusions, the vigor of my attacks were all explained by these letters, and also that I had found the documents among my dead aunt's papers.It was impossible that he should not seek with intense anxiety to ascertain what was contained in those letters that had aroused such suspicions in me.When he had the envelopes in his hands I saw him bend his brows, and I had a momentary hope that I had shattered the mask that hid his true face, that face in which the inner workings of the soul are reflected.The bent brow was, however, merely a contraction of the muscles of the eye, caused by regarding an object closely, and it cleared immediately.He handed me back the letters without any question as to their contents.
"This time," said he simply, "there really is an astonishing resemblance." Then, returning to the ostensible object of his visit--"And the reviews?" he asked.
I could have shed tears of rage.Once more I was conscious that Iwas a nervous youth engaged in a struggle with a resolutely self-possessed man.I locked up the letters in the safe, and I now rummaged the small bookcase in the smoking-room, then the large one in my study, and finally pretended to be greatly astonished at finding the two reviews under a heap of newspapers on my table.
What a silly farce! Was my stepfather taken in by it? When I had handed him the two numbers, he rose from the chair that he had sat in during my pretended search in the chimney-corner of the smoking-room, with his back to my father's portrait.But, again, what did this attitude prove? Why should he care to contemplate an image which could not be anything but painful to him, even if he were innocent?
