Her father darted towards her; her mother sustained her, throwing her
arms around her like invincible armor which would shield her from all
harm.
"Don't talk like that, you unhappy girl! It is nothing; it is only
another attack which will pass away. Get into bed again, for mercy's
sake. Your old friend Boutan is on his way here. You will be up and well
again to-morrow."
"No, no, I am going to die; it is all over."
She fell back in their arms; they only had time to lay her on her bed.
And the thunderbolt fell: without a word, without a glance, in a few
minutes she died of congestion of the lungs.
Ah! the imbecile thunderbolt! Ah! the scythe, which with a single stroke
blindly cuts down a whole springtide! It was all so brutally sudden, so
utterly unexpected, that at first the stupefaction of Marianne and
Mathieu was greater than their despair. In response to their cries the
whole farm hastened up, the fearful news filled the place, and then all
sank into the deep silence of death--all work, all life ceasing. And the
other children were there, scared and overcome: little Nicolas, who did
not yet understand things; Grégoire, the page of the previous day;
Louise, Madeleine, and Marguerite, the three maids of honor, and their
elders, Claire and Gervais, who felt the blow more deeply. And there were
yet the others journeying away, Blaise, Denis, and Ambroise, travelling
to Paris at that very moment, in ignorance of the unforeseen, frightful
hatchet-stroke which had fallen on the family. Where would the terrible
tidings reach them? In what cruel distress would they return! And the
doctor who would soon arrive too! But all at once, amid the terror and
confusion, there rang out the cries of Frédéric, the poor dead girl's
affianced lover. He shrieked his despair aloud, he was half mad, he
wished to kill himself, saying that he was the murderer and that he ought
to have prevented Rose from so rashly riding home through the storm! He
had to be led away and watched for fear of some fresh misfortune. His
sudden frenzy had gone to every heart; sobs burst forth and lamentations
arose from the woful parents, from the brothers, the sisters, from the
whole of stricken Chantebled, which death thus visited for the first
time.
Ah, God! Rose on that bed of mourning, white, cold, and dead! She, the
fairest, the gayest, the most loved! She, before whom all the others were
ever in admiration--she of whom they were so proud, so fond! And to think
that this blow should fall in the midst of hope, bright hope in long life
and sterling happiness, but ten days before her wedding, and on the
morrow of that day of wild gayety, all jests and laughter! They could
again see her, full of life and so adorable with her happy youthful
fancies--that princely reception and that royal procession. It had seemed
as if those two coming weddings, celebrated the same day, would be like
the supreme florescence of the family's long happiness and prosperity.
Doubtless they had often experienced trouble and had even wept at times,
but they had drawn closer together and consoled one another on such
occasions; none had ever been cut off from the good-night embraces which
healed every sore. And now the best was gone, death had come to say that
absolute joy existed for none, that the most valiant, the happiest; never
reaped the fulness of their hopes. There was no life without death. And
they paid their share of the debt of human wretchedness, paid it the more
dearly since they had made for themselves a larger sum of life. When
everything germinates and grows around one, when one has determined on
unreserved fruitfulness; on continuous creation and increase, how awful
is the recall to the ever-present dim abyss in which the world is
fashioned, on the day when misfortune falls, digs its first pit, and
carries off a loved one! It is like a sudden snapping, a rending of the
hopes which seemed to be endless, and a feeling of stupefaction comes at
the discovery that one cannot live and love forever!
Ah! how terrible were the two days that followed: the farm itself
lifeless, without sound save that of the breathing of the cattle, the
whole family gathered together, overcome by the cruel spell of waiting,
ever in tears while the poor corpse remained there under a harvest of
flowers. And there was this cruel aggravation, that on the eve of the
funeral, when the body had been laid in the coffin, it was brought down
into that gallery where they had lunched so merrily while discussing how
magnificently they might decorate it for the two weddings. It was there
that the last funeral watch, the last wake, took place, and there were no
evergreen shrubs, no garlands of foliage, merely four tapers which burnt
there amid a wealth of white roses gathered in the morning, but already
fading. Neither the mother nor the father was willing to go to bed that
night. They remained, side by side, near the child whom mother-earth was
taking back from them. They could see her quite little again, but sixteen
months old, at the time of their first sojourn at Chantebled in the old
tumbledown shooting-box, when she had just been weaned and they were wont
to go and cover her up at nighttime. They saw her also, later on, in
Paris, hastening to them in the morning, climbing up and pulling their
bed to pieces with triumphant laughter. And they saw her yet more
clearly, growing and becoming more beautiful even as Chantebled did, as
if, indeed, she herself bloomed with all the health and beauty of that
now fruitful land. Yet she was no more, and whenever the thought returned
to them that they would never see her again, their hands sought one
another, met in a woful clasp, while from their crushed and mingling
hearts it seemed as if all life, all future, were flowing away to
nihility. Now that a breach had been made, would not every other
happiness be carried off in turn? And though the ten other children were
there, from the little one five years old to the twins who were
four-and-twenty, all clad in black, all gathered in tears around their
sleeping sister, like a sorrow-stricken battalion rendering funeral
honors, neither the father nor the mother saw or counted them: their
hearts were rent by the loss of the daughter who had departed, carrying
away with her some of their own flesh. And in that long bare gallery
which the four candles scarcely lighted, the dawn at last arose upon that
death watch, that last leave-taking.
Then grief again came with the funeral procession, which spread out along
the white road between the lofty poplars and the green corn, that road
over which Rose had galloped so madly through the storm. All the
relations of the Froments, all their friends, all the district, had come
to pay a tribute of emotion at so sudden and swift a death. Thus, this
time, the _cortège_ did stretch far away behind the hearse, draped with
white and blooming with white roses in the bright sunshine. The whole
family was present; the mother and the sisters had declared that they
would only quit their loved one when she had been lowered into her last
resting-place. And after the family came the friends, the Beauchênes, the
Séguins, and others. But Mathieu and Marianne, worn out, overcome by
suffering, no longer recognized people amid their tears. They only
remembered on the morrow that they must have seen Morange, if indeed it
were really Morange--that silent, unobtrusive, almost shadowy gentleman,
who had wept while pressing their hands. And in like fashion Mathieu
fancied that, in some horrible dream, he had seen Constance's spare
figure and bony profile drawing near to him in the cemetery after the
coffin had been lowered into the grave, and addressing vague words of
consolation to him, though he fancied that her eyes flashed the while as
if with abominable exultation.
What was it that she had said? He no longer knew. Of course her words
must have been appropriate, even as her demeanor was that of a mourning
relative. But a memory returned to him, that of other words which she had
spoken when promising to attend the two weddings. She had then in bitter
fashion expressed a wish that the good fortune of Chantebled might
continue. But they, the Froments, so fruitful and so prosperous, were now
stricken in their turn, and their good fortune had perhaps departed
forever! Mathieu shuddered; his faith in the future was shaken; he was
haunted by a fear of seeing prosperity and fruitfulness vanish, now that
there was that open breach.