In their sad task upstairs Attalie held command. Camille went and came on
short errands to and from the door of her room, and was let in only once
or twice when, for lifting or some such thing, four hands were
indispensable. Soon both he and she came down to the door of the vacated
room again together. He was in his shirt sleeves and without his shoes;
but he had resumed command.
"And now, Madame Brouillard, to do this thing in the very best way I ought
to say to you at once that our dear friend--did he ever tell you what he
was worth?" The speaker leaned against the door-post and seemed to concern
himself languidly with his black-rimmed finger-nails, while in fact he was
watching Attalie from head to foot with all his senses and wits. She
looked grief-stricken and thoroughly wretched.
"No," she said, very quietly, then suddenly burst into noiseless fresh
tears, sank into a chair, buried her face in her wet handkerchief, and
cried, "Ah! no, no, no! that was none of my business. He was going to
leave it all to me. I never asked if it was little or much."
While she spoke Camille was reckoning with all his might and speed: "She
has at least some notion as to whether he is rich or poor. She seemed a
few minutes ago to fear he is poor, but I must try her again. Let me see:
if he is poor and I say he is rich she will hope I know better than she,
and will be silent. But if he is rich and she knows it, and I say he is
poor, she will suspect fraud and will out with the actual fact indignantly
on the spot." By this time she had ceased, and he spoke out:
"Well, Madame Brouillard, the plain fact is he was--as you may say--poor."
She looked up quickly from her soaking handkerchief, dropped her hands
into her lap, and gazing at Camille through her tears said, "Alas! I
feared it. That is what I feared. But ah! since it makes no difference to
him now, it makes little to me. I feared it. That accounts for his leaving
it to me, poor _milatraise_."
"But would you have imagined, madame, that all he had was barely three
thousand dollars?"
"Ah! three thousand--ah! Michié Ducour," she said between a sob and a
moan, "that is not so little. Three thousand! In Paris, where my brother
lives, that would be fifteen thousand francs. Ah! Michié Ducour, I never
guessed half that much, Michié Ducour, I tell you--he was too good to be
rich." Her eyes stood full.
Camille started busily from his leaning posture and they began again to be
active. But, as I have said, their relations were reversed once more. He
gave directions from within the room, and she did short errands to and
from the door.
The witnesses came: first Jean d'Eau, then Richard Reau, and almost at the
same moment the aged Ecswyzee. The black maid led them up from below, and
Attalie, tearless now, but meek and red-eyed, and speaking low through the
slightly opened door from within the Englishman's bed-chamber, thanked
them, explained that a will was to be made, and was just asking them to
find seats in the adjoining front room, when the notary, aged, bent,
dark-goggled, and as insensible as a machine, arrived. Attalie's offers to
explain were murmurously waved away by his wrinkled hand, and the four men
followed her into the bedchamber. The black maid-of-all-work also entered.
The room was heavily darkened. There was a rich aroma of fine brandy on
its air. The Englishman's little desk had been drawn up near the bedside.
Two candles were on it, unlighted, in small, old silver candlesticks.
Attalie, grief-worn, distressed, visibly agitated, moved close to the
bedside. Her sad figure suited the place with poetic fitness. The notary
stood by the chair at the desk. The three witnesses edged along the wall
where the curtained windows glimmered, took seats there, and held their
hats in their hands. All looked at one object.
It was a man reclining on the bed under a light covering, deep in pillows,
his head and shoulders much bundled up in wrappings. He moaned faintly and
showed every sign of utmost weakness. His eyes opened only now and then,
but when they did so they shone intelligently, though with a restless
intensity apparently from both pain and anxiety.
He gasped a faint word. Attalie hung over him for an instant, and then
turning quickly to her maid, who was lighting the candles for the notary
and placing them so they should not shine into the eyes of the man in bed,
said:
"His feet--another hot-water bottle."
The maid went to get it. While she was gone the notary asked the butcher,
then the baker, and then the candlestick-maker, if they could speak and
understand English, and where they resided. Their answers were
satisfactory. Then he sat down, bent low to the desk, and wrote on a blank
form the preamble of a nuncupative will. By the time he had finished, the
maid had got back and the hot bottle had been properly placed. The notary
turned his goggles upon the reclining figure and asked in English, with a
strong Creole accent:
"What is your name?"
The words of the man in the bed were an inaudible gasp. But Attalie bent
her ear quickly, caught them, and turning repeated:
"More brandy."
The black girl brought a decanter from the floor behind the bureau, and a
wine-glass from the washstand. Attalie poured, the patient drank, and the
maid replaced glass and decanter. The eyes of the butcher and the baker
followed the sparkling vessel till it disappeared, and the maker of
candlesticks made a dry swallow and faintly licked his lips. The notary
remarked that there must be no intervention of speakers between himself
and the person making the will, nor any turning aside to other matters;
but that merely stopping a moment to satisfy thirst without leaving the
room was not a vitiative turning aside and would not be, even if done by
others besides the party making the will. But here the patient moaned and
said audibly, "Let us go on." And they went on. The notary asked the
patient's name, the place and date of his birth, etc., and the patient's
answers were in every case whatever the Englishman's would have been.
Presently the point was reached where the patient should express his
wishes unprompted by suggestion or inquiry. He said faintly, "I will and
bequeath"--
The servant girl, seeing her mistress bury her face in her handkerchief,
did the same. The patient gasped audibly and said again, but more faintly:
"I will and bequeath--some more brandy."
The decanter was brought. He drank again. He let Attalie hand it back to
the maid and the maid get nearly to the bureau when he said in a low tone
of distinct reproof:
"Pass it 'round." The four visitors drank.
Then the patient resumed with stronger voice. "I will and bequeath to my
friend Camille Ducour"--
Attalie started from her chair with a half-uttered cry of amazement and
protest, but dropped back again at the notary's gesture for silence, and
the patient spoke straight on without hesitation--"to my friend Camille
Ducour, the sum of fifteen hundred dollars in cash."
Attalie and her handmaiden looked at each other with a dumb show of
lamentation; but her butcher and her baker turned slowly upon her
candlestick-maker, and he upon them, a look of quiet but profound
approval. The notary wrote, and the patient spoke again:
"I will everything else which I may leave at my death, both real and
personal property, to Madame Attalie Brouillard."
"Ah!" exclaimed Attalie, in the manner of one largely, but not entirely,
propitiated. The maid suited her silent movement to the utterance, and the
three witnesses exchanged slow looks of grave satisfaction. Mistress and
maid, since the will seemed to them so manifestly and entirely finished,
began to whisper together, although the patient and the notary were still
perfecting some concluding formalities. But presently the notary began to
read aloud the instrument he had prepared, keeping his face buried in the
paper and running his nose and purblind eyes about it nervously, like a
new-born thing hunting the warm fountain of life. All gave close heed. We
need not give the document in its full length, nor its Creole accent in
its entire breadth. This is only something like it:
"Dthee State of Louisiana," etc. "Be h-it known dthat on dthees h-eighth
day of dthee month of May, One thousan' h-eight hawndred and fifty-five,
dthat I, Eugene Favre, a not-arie pewblic een and for dthe State of
Louisiana, parrish of Orleans, duly commission-ed and qualeefi-ed, was
sue-mon-ed to dthe domee-ceel of Mr. [the Englishman's name], Number
[so-and-so] Bienville street; ...dthat I found sayed Mr. [Englishman]
lyingue in heez bade in dthee rear room of dthee second floor h-of dthee
sayed house ... at about two o'clawk in dthee h-afternoon, and beingue
informed by dthee sayed Mr. [Englishman] dthat he _diz_-i-red too make
heez weel, I, sayed not-arie, sue-mon-ed into sayed bedchamber of dthe
sayed Mr. [Englishman] dthe following nam-ed wit_nes_ses of lawfool h-age
and residents of dthe sayed cittie, parrish, and State, to wit: Mr. Jean
d'Eau, Mr. Richard Reau, and Mr. V. Deblieux Ecswyzee. That there _up_-on
sayed Mr. [Englishman] being seek in bodie but of soun' mine, which was
_hap_parent to me not-arie and dthe sayed wit_nes_ses by heez lang-uage
and h-actions then and there in dthe presence of sayed wit_nes_ses
_dic_tated to me not-arie dthe following as heez laz weel and tes_tam_ent,
wheech was written by me sayed not-arie as _dic_tated by the sayed Mr.
[Englishman], to wit:
"'My name ees [John Bull]. I was born in,' etc. 'My father and mother are
dade. I have no chil'ren. I have never had annie brawther or seester. I
have never been marri-ed. Thees is my laz weel. I have never made a weel
befo'. I weel and _bick_weath to my fran' Camille Ducour dthe sawm of
fifteen hawndred dollars in cash. I weel h-everything h-else wheech I may
leave at my daith, both real and personal property, to Madame Attalie
Brouillard, leevingue at Number,' etc. 'I appoint my sayed fran' Camille
Ducour as my testamentary executor, weeth-out bon', and grant heem dthe
seizin' of my h-estate, h-and I dir-ect heem to pay h-all my juz debts.'
"Thees weel and tes_tam_ent as thus _dic_tated too me by sayed _tes_tator
and wheech was wreeten by me notarie by my h-own han' jus' as _dic_tated,
was thane by me not-arie rade to sayed Mr. [Englishman] in an au_dib_le
voice and in the presence of dthe aforesayed three witnesses, and dthe
sayed Mr. [Englishman] _dic_lar-ed that he well awnder-stood me not-arie
and per_sev_er-ed een _dic_laring the same too be his laz weel; all of
wheech was don' at one time and place weethout in_ter_'uption and weethout
turningue aside to other acts.
"Thus done and pass-ed," etc.
The notary rose, a wet pen in one hand and the will--with his portfolio
under it for a tablet--in the other. Attalie hurried to the bedside and
stood ready to assist. The patient took the pen with a trembling hand. The
writing was laid before him, and Attalie with a knee on the bed thrust her
arm under the pillows behind him to make a firmer support.
The patient seemed to summon all his power to poise and steady the pen,
but his hand shook, his fingers loosened, and it fell upon the document,
making two or three blots there and another on the bed-covering, whither
it rolled. He groped faintly for it, moaned, and then relaxed.
"He cannot sign!" whispered Attalie, piteously.
"Yes," gasped the patient.
The notary once more handed him the pen, but the same thing happened
again.
The butcher cleared his throat in a way to draw attention. Attalie looked
towards him and he drawled, half rising from his chair:
"I t'ink--a li'l more cognac"--
"Yass," murmured the baker. The candlestick-maker did not speak, but
unconsciously wet his lips with his tongue and wiped them with the back of
his forefinger. But every eye turned to the patient, who said:
"I cannot write--my hand--shakes so."
The notary asked a formal question or two, to which the patient answered
"yes" and "no." The official sat again at the desk, wrote a proper
statement of the patient's incapacity to make his signature, and then read
it aloud. The patient gave assent, and the three witnesses stepped forward
and signed. Then the notary signed.
As the four men approached the door to depart the baker said, lingeringly,
to Attalie, smiling diffidently as he spoke:
"Dat settin' still make a man mighty dry, yass."
"Yass, da's true," said Attalie.
"Yass," he added, "same time he dawn't better drink much _water_ dat hot
weader, no." The butcher turned and smiled concurrence; but Attalie,
though she again said "yass," only added good-day, and the maid led them
and the notary down stairs and let them out.