“She has killed herself!”
As it happens strangely enough, but too frequently, in such cases, all
hesitated.
“I am going for the police,” said at last Master Chevassat.
“That’s right!” replied the merchant. “Now there is, perhaps, a chance
yet to save the poor girl; and, when you come back, it will of course be
too late.”
“What’s to be done, then?”
“Break in the door.”
“I dare not.”
“Well, I will.”
The kind-hearted man put his shoulder to the worm-eaten door, and in a
moment the lock gave way. The bystanders shrank instinctively back; they
were frightened. The door was wide open, and masses of vapors rolled
out. Soon, however, curiosity triumphed over fear. No one doubted any
longer that the poor girl was lying in there dead; and each one tried
his best to see where she was.
In vain. The feeble light of the lamp had gone out in the foul air; and
the darkness was frightful.
Nothing could be seen but the reddish glow of the charcoal, which was
slowly going out under a little heap of white ashes in two small stoves.
No one ventured to enter.
But Papa Ravinet had not gone so far to stop now, and remain in the
passage.
“Where is the window?” he asked the concierge.
“On the right there.”
“Very well; I’ll open it.”
And boldly the strange man plunged into the dark room; and almost
instantly the noise of breaking glass was heard. A moment later, and the
air in the room had become once more fit for breathing, and everybody
rushed in.
Alas! it was the death-rattle which M. Ravinet had heard.
On the bed, on a thin mattress, without blankets or bedclothes, lay a
young girl about twenty years old, dressed in a wretched black merino
dress, stretched out at full-length, stiff, lifeless.
The women sobbed aloud.
“To die so young!” they said over and over again, “and to die thus.”
In the meantime the merchant had gone up to the bed, and examined the
poor girl.
“She is not dead yet!” he cried. “No, she cannot be dead! Come, ladies,
come here and help the poor child, till the doctor comes.”
And then, with strange self-possession, he told them what to do for the
purpose of recalling her to life.
“Give her air,” he said, “plenty of air; try to get some air into her
lungs. Cut open her dress; pour some vinegar on her face; rub her with
some woollen stuff.”
He issued his orders, and they obeyed him readily, although they had no
hope of success.
“Poor child!” said one of the women. “No doubt she was crossed in love.”
“Or she was starving,” whispered another.
There was no doubt that poverty, extreme poverty, had ruled in that
miserable chamber: the traces were easily seen all around. The whole
furniture consisted of a bed, a chest of drawers, and two chairs. There
were no curtains at the window, no dresses in the trunk, not a ribbon
in the drawers. Evidently everything that could be sold had been sold,
piece by piece, little by little. The mattresses had followed the
dresses,--first the wool, handful by handful, then the covering.
Too proud to complain, and cut off from society by bashfulness, the poor
girl who was lying there had evidently gone through all the stages of
suffering which the shipwrecked mariner endures, who floats, resting on
a stray spar in the great ocean.
Papa Ravinet was thinking of all this, when a paper lying on the bureau
attracted his eye. He took it up. It was the last will of the poor girl,
and ran thus:--
“Let no one be accused; I die voluntarily. I beg Mrs. Chevassat will
carry the two letters which I enclose to their addresses. She will be
paid whatever I may owe her. Henrietta.”