NOBODY'S BOY (Sans Famille) - Hector Malot

[CHAP XXVIII - XXXIII] (The End)

CHAPTER XXVIII

A MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

If I had been in Mattia's place, I should perhaps have had as much

imagination as he, but I felt in my position that it was wrong for me to

have such thoughts. It had been proved beyond a doubt that Mr. Driscoll

was my father. I could not look at the matter from the same point of

view as Mattia. He might doubt ... but I must not. When he tried to make

me believe as he did, I told him to be silent. But he was pig-headed and

I was not always able to get the better of his obstinacy.

"Why are you dark and all the rest of the family fair?" he would ask

repeatedly.

"How was it that poor people could dress their baby in fine laces and

embroidery?" was another often repeated question. And I could only reply

by putting a question myself.

"Why did they search for me if I was not their child? Why had they given

money to Barberin and to Greth and Galley?"

Mattia could find no answer to my question and yet he would not be

convinced.

"I think we should both go back to France," he urged.

"That's impossible."

"Because it's your duty to keep with your family, eh? But is it your

family?"

These discussions only had one result, they made me more unhappy than I

had ever been. How terrible it is to doubt. Yet, in spite of my wish not

to doubt, I doubted. Who would have thought when I was crying so sadly

because I thought I had no family that I should be in such despair now

that I had one. How could I know the truth? In the meantime I had to

sing and dance and laugh and make grimaces when my heart was full.

One Sunday my father told me to stay in the house because he wanted me.

He sent Mattia off alone. All the others had gone out; my grandfather

alone was upstairs. I had been with my father for about an hour when

there was a knock at the door. A gentleman, who was unlike any of the

men who usually called on my father, came in. He was about fifty years

old and dressed in the height of fashion. He had white pointed teeth

like a dog and when he smiled he drew his lips back over them as though

he was going to bite. He spoke to my father in English, turning

continually to look at me. Then he began to talk French; he spoke this

language with scarcely an accent.

"This is the young boy that you spoke to me about?" he said. "He appears

very well."

"Answer the gentleman," said my father to me.