The American (48 page)

Newman had listened eagerly—with an eagerness greater even than that with which he had bent his ear to Valentin de Bellegarde’s last words. Every now and then, as his companion looked up at him, she reminded him of an ancient tabby cat, protracting the enjoyment of a dish of milk. Even her triumph was measured and decorous; the faculty of exultation had been chilled by disuse. She presently continued. “Late one night I was sitting by the marquis in his room, the great red room in the west tower. He had been complaining a little, and I gave him a spoonful of the doctor’s dose. My lady had been there in the early part of the evening; she sat for more than an hour by his bed. Then she went away and left me alone. After midnight she came back, and her eldest son was with her. They went to the bed and looked at the marquis, and my lady took hold of his hand. Then she turned to me and said he was not so well; I remember how the marquis, without saying anything, lay staring at her. I can see his white face, at this moment, in the great black square between the bed-curtains. I said I didn’t think he was very bad; and she told me to go to bed—she would sit a while with him. When the marquis saw me going he gave a sort of groan, and called out to me not to leave him; but Mr. Urbain opened the door for me and pointed the way out. The present
marquis—perhaps you have noticed, sir—has a very proud way of giving orders, and I was there to take orders. I went to my room, but I wasn’t easy; I couldn’t tell you why. I didn’t undress; I sat there waiting and listening. For what would you have said, sir? I couldn’t have told you; for surely a poor gentleman might be comfortable with his wife and his son. It was as if I expected to hear the marquis moaning after me again. I listened, but I heard nothing. It was a very still night; I never knew a night so still. At last the very stillness itself seemed to frighten me, and I came out of my room and went very softly downstairs. In the anteroom, outside of the marquis’s chamber, I found Mr. Urbain walking up and down. He asked me what I wanted, and I said I came back to relieve my lady. He said
he
would relieve my lady, and ordered me back to bed; but as I stood there, unwilling to turn away, the door of the room opened and my lady came out. I noticed she was very pale; she was very strange. She looked a moment at the count and at me, and then she held out her arms to the count. He went to her, and she fell upon him and hid her face. I went quickly past her into the room, and to the marquis’s bed. He was lying there, very white, with his eyes shut, like a corpse. I took hold of his hand and spoke to him, and he felt to me like a dead man. Then I turned round; my lady and Mr. Urbain were there. ‘My poor Bread,’ said my lady, ‘M. le Marquis is gone.’ Mr. Urbain knelt down by the bed and said softly,
’Mon père, mon père.’
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I thought it wonderful strange, and asked my lady what in the world had happened, and why she hadn’t called me. She said nothing had happened; that she had only been sitting there with the marquis, very quiet. She had closed her eyes, thinking she might sleep, and she had slept she didn’t know how long. When she woke up he was dead. ‘It’s death, my son, it’s death,’ she said to the count. Mr. Urbain said they must have the doctor immediately, from Poitiers, and that he would
ride off and fetch him. He kissed his father’s face, and then he kissed his mother and went away. My lady and I stood there at the bedside. As I looked at the poor marquis it came into my head that he was not dead, that he was in a kind of swoon. And then my lady repeated, ‘My poor Bread, it’s death, it’s death;’ and I said, ‘Yes, my lady, it’s certainly death.’ I said just the opposite to what I believed; it was my notion. Then my lady said we must wait for the doctor, and we sat there and waited. It was a long time; the poor marquis neither stirred nor changed. ‘I have seen death before,’ said my lady, ‘and it’s terribly like this.’ ‘Yes, please, my lady,’ said I; and I kept thinking. The night wore away without the count’s coming back, and my lady began to be frightened. She was afraid he had had an accident in the dark, or met with some wild people. At last she got so restless that she went below to watch in the court for her son’s return. I sat there alone and the marquis never stirred.”

Here Mrs. Bread paused again, and the most artistic of romancers could not have been more effective. Newman made a movement as if he were turning over the page of a novel. “So he
was
dead!” he exclaimed.

“Three days afterwards he was in his grave,” said Mrs. Bread sententiously. “In a little while I went away to the front of the house and looked out into the court, and there, before long, I saw Mr. Urbain ride in alone. I waited a bit, to hear him come upstairs with his mother, but they stayed below, and I went back to the marquis’s room. I went to the bed and held up the light to him, but I don’t know why I didn’t let the candlestick fall. The marquis’s eyes were open—open wide! they were staring at me. I knelt down beside him and took his hands, and begged him to tell me, in the name of wonder, whether he was alive or dead. Still he looked at me a long time, and then he made me a sign to put my ear close to him: ‘I am dead,’ he said, ‘I am dead. The marquise has killed me.’ I was all in a tremble. I didn’t
understand him. I didn’t know what had become of him. He seemed both a man and a corpse if you can fancy, sir. ‘But you’ll get well, now, sir,’ I said. And then he whispered again, ever so weak: ‘I wouldn’t get well, for a kingdom. I wouldn’t be that woman’s husband again.’ And then he said more; he said she had murdered him. I asked him what she had done to him, but he only replied: ‘Murder, murder. And she’ll kill my daughter,’ he said; ‘my poor unhappy child.’ And he begged me to prevent that, and then he said that he was dying, that he was dead. I was afraid to move or to leave him; I was almost dead myself. All of a sudden he asked me to get a pencil and write for him; and then I had to tell him that I couldn’t manage a pencil. He asked me to hold him up in bed while he wrote himself, and I said he could never, never do such a thing. But he seemed to have a kind of terror that gave him strength. I found a pencil in the room and a piece of paper and a book, and I put the paper on the book and the pencil into his hand, and moved the candle near him. You will think all this very strange, sir; and very strange it was. The strangest part of it was that I believed he was dying, and that I was eager to help him to write. I sat on the bed and put my arm round him, and held him up. I felt very strong; I believe I could have lifted him and carried him. It was a wonder how he wrote, but he did write, in a big scratching hand; he almost covered one side of the paper. It seemed a long time; I suppose it was three or four minutes. He was groaning, terribly, all the while. Then he said it was ended, and I let him down upon his pillows, and he gave me the paper and told me to fold it, and hide it, and to give it to those who would act upon it. ‘Whom do you mean?’ I said. ‘Who are those who will act upon it?’ But he only groaned, for an answer; he couldn’t speak, for weakness. In a few minutes he told me to go and look at the bottle on the chimney-piece. I knew the bottle he meant; the white stuff that
was good for his stomach. I went and looked at it, but it was empty. When I came back his eyes were open and he was staring at me; but soon he closed them and he said no more. I hid the paper in my dress; I didn’t look at what was written upon it, though I can read very well, sir, if I haven’t any handwriting. I sat down near the bed, but it was nearly half an hour before my lady and the count came in. The marquis looked as he did when they left him, and I never said a word about his having been otherwise. Mr. Urbain said that the doctor had been called to a person in childbirth, but that he promised to set out for Fleurières immediately. In another half hour he arrived, and as soon as he had examined the marquis he said that we had had a false alarm. The poor gentleman was very low, but he was still living. I watched my lady and her son when he said this, to see if they looked at each other, and I am obliged to admit that they didn’t. The doctor said there was no reason he should die; he had been going on so well. And then he wanted to know how he had suddenly fallen off; he had left him so very hearty. My lady told her little story again—what she had told Mr. Urbain and me—and the doctor looked at her and said nothing. He stayed all the next day at the château, and hardly left the marquis. I was always there. Mademoiselle and Mr. Valentin came and looked at their father, but he never stirred. It was a strange, deathly stupor. My lady was always about; her face was as white as her husband’s, and she looked very proud, as I had seen her look when her orders or her wishes had been disobeyed. It was as if the poor marquis had defied her; and the way she took it made me afraid of her. The apothecary
³
from Poitiers kept the marquis along through the day, and we waited for the other doctor from Paris, who, as I told you, had been staying at Fleurières. They had telegraphed for him early in the morning, and in the evening he arrived. He talked a bit outside with the doctor from Poitiers, and then
they came in to see the marquis together. I was with him, and so was Mr. Urbain. My lady had been to receive the doctor from Paris, and she didn’t come back with him into the room. He sat down by the marquis—I can see him there now, with his hand on the marquis’s wrist, and Mr. Urbain watching him with a little looking-glass in his hand.
⁴
‘I’m sure he’s better,’ said the little doctor from Poitiers; ‘I’m sure he’ll come back.’ A few moments after he had said this the marquis opened his eyes, as if he were waking up, and looked at us, from one to the other. I saw him look at me very softly, as you’d say. At the same moment my lady came in on tiptoe; she came up to the bed and put in her head between me and the count. The marquis saw her and gave a long, most wonderful moan. He said something we couldn’t understand, and he seemed to have a kind of spasm. He shook all over and then closed his eyes, and the doctor jumped up and took hold of my lady. He held her for a moment a bit roughly. The marquis was stone dead! This time there were those there that knew.”

Newman felt as if he had been reading by starlight the report of highly important evidence in a great murder case. “And the paper—the paper!” he said, excitedly. “What was written upon it?”

“I can’t tell you, sir,” answered Mrs. Bread. “I couldn’t read it; it was in French.”

“But could no one else read it?”

“I never asked a human creature.”

“No one has ever seen it?”

“If you see it you’ll be the first.”

Newman seized the old woman’s hand in both his own and pressed it vigorously. “I thank you ever so much for that,” he cried. “I want to be the first; I want it to be my property and no one else’s! You’re the wisest old woman in Europe. And what did you do with the paper?” This information had made him feel extraordinarily strong. “Give it to me quick!”

Mrs. Bread got up with a certain majesty. “It is not so easy as that, sir. If you want the paper, you must wait.”

“But waiting is horrible, you know,” urged Newman

“I am sure
I
have waited; I have waited these many years,” said Mrs. Bread.

“That is very true. You have waited for me. I won’t forget it. And yet, how comes it you didn’t do as M. de Bellegarde said, show the paper to someone?”

“To whom should I show it?” answered Mrs. Bread mournfully. “It was not easy to know, and many’s the night I have lain awake thinking of it. Six months afterwards, when they married Mademoiselle to her vicious old husband, I was very near bringing it out. I thought it was my duty to do something with it, and yet I was mightily afraid. I didn’t know what was written on the paper, or how bad it might be, and there was no one I could trust enough to ask. And it seemed to me a cruel kindness to do that sweet young creature, letting her know that her father had written her mother down so shamefully; for that’s what he did I suppose. I thought she would rather be unhappy with her husband than be unhappy that way. It was for her and for my dear Mr. Valentin I kept quiet. Quiet I call it, but for me it was a weary quietness. It worried me terribly, and it changed me altogether. But for others I held my tongue, and no one, to this hour, knows what passed between the poor marquis and me.”

“But evidently there were suspicions,” said Newman. “Where did Mr. Valentin get his ideas?”

“It was the little doctor from Poitiers. He was very ill-satisfied, and he made a great talk. He was a sharp Frenchman, and coming to the house, as he did, day after day, I suppose he saw more than he seemed to see. And indeed the way the poor marquis went off as soon as his eyes fell on my lady was a most shocking sight for anyone. The medical gentleman from Paris was much more accommodating, and he hushed up the other. But
for all he could do Mr. Valentin and Mademoiselle heard something; they knew their father’s death was somehow against nature. Of course they couldn’t accuse their mother, and, as I tell you, I was as dumb as that stone. Mr. Valentin used to look at me sometimes, and his eyes seemed to shine, as if he were thinking of asking me something. I was dreadfully afraid he would speak, and I always looked away and went about my business. If I were to tell him, I was sure he would hate me afterwards, and that I could never have borne. Once I went up to him and took a great liberty; I kissed him, as I had kissed him when he was a child. ‘You oughtn’t to look so sad, sir,’ I said; ‘believe your poor old Bread. Such a gallant, handsome young man can have nothing to be sad about.’ And I think he understood me; he understood that I was begging off, and he made up his mind in his own way. He went about with his unasked question in his mind, as I did with my untold tale; we were both afraid of bringing dishonour on a great house. And it was the same with Mademoiselle. She didn’t know what had happened; she wouldn’t know. My lady and Mr. Urbain asked me no questions because they had no reason. I was as still as a mouse. When I was younger my lady thought me a hussy, and now she thought me a fool. How should I have any ideas?”

“But you say the little doctor from Poitiers made a talk,” said Newman. “Did no one take it up?”

“I heard nothing of it, sir. They are always talking scandal in these foreign countries—you may have noticed—and I suppose they shook their heads over Madame de Bellegarde. But after all, what could they say? The marquis had been ill, and the marquis had died; he had as good a right to die as anyone. The doctor couldn’t say he had not come honestly by his cramps. The next year the little doctor left the place and bought a practice in Bordeaux, and if there has been any gossip it died out. And I don’t think there could have been
much gossip about my lady that anyone would listen to. My lady is so very respectable.”