Newman possessed a remarkable talent for sitting still when it was
necessary, and he had an opportunity to use it on his journey to
Switzerland. The successive hours of the night brought him no sleep,
but he sat motionless in his corner of the railway-carriage, with his
eyes closed, and the most observant of his fellow-travelers might have
envied him his apparent slumber. Toward morning slumber really came, as
an effect of mental rather than of physical fatigue. He slept for a
couple of hours, and at last, waking, found his eyes resting upon one
of the snow-powdered peaks of the Jura, behind which the sky was just
reddening with the dawn. But he saw neither the cold mountain nor the
warm sky; his consciousness began to throb again, on the very instant,
with a sense of his wrong. He got out of the train half an hour before
it reached Geneva, in the cold morning twilight, at the station
indicated in Valentin’s telegram. A drowsy station-master was on the
platform with a lantern, and the hood of his overcoat over his head,
and near him stood a gentleman who advanced to meet Newman. This
personage was a man of forty, with a tall lean figure, a sallow face, a
dark eye, a neat moustache, and a pair of fresh gloves. He took off his
hat, looking very grave, and pronounced Newman’s name. Our hero
assented and said, “You are M. de Bellegarde’s friend?”
“I unite with you in claiming that sad honor,” said the gentleman. “I
had placed myself at M. de Bellegarde’s service in this melancholy
affair, together with M. de Grosjoyaux, who is now at his bedside. M.
de Grosjoyaux, I believe, has had the honor of meeting you in Paris,
but as he is a better nurse than I he remained with our poor friend.
Bellegarde has been eagerly expecting you.”
“And how is Bellegarde?” said Newman. “He was badly hit?”
“The doctor has condemned him; we brought a surgeon with us. But he
will die in the best sentiments. I sent last evening for the curé of
the nearest French village, who spent an hour with him. The curé was
quite satisfied.”
“Heaven forgive us!” groaned Newman. “I would rather the doctor were
satisfied! And can he see me—shall he know me?”
“When I left him, half an hour ago, he had fallen asleep after a
feverish, wakeful night. But we shall see.” And Newman’s companion
proceeded to lead the way out of the station to the village, explaining
as he went that the little party was lodged in the humblest of Swiss
inns, where, however, they had succeeded in making M. de Bellegarde
much more comfortable than could at first have been expected. “We are
old companions in arms,” said Valentin’s second; “it is not the first
time that one of us has helped the other to lie easily. It is a very
nasty wound, and the nastiest thing about it is that Bellegarde’s
adversary was not shot. He put his bullet where he could. It took it
into its head to walk straight into Bellegarde’s left side, just below
the heart.”
As they picked their way in the gray, deceptive dawn, between the
manure-heaps of the village street, Newman’s new acquaintance narrated
the particulars of the duel. The conditions of the meeting had been
that if the first exchange of shots should fail to satisfy one of the
two gentlemen, a second should take place. Valentin’s first bullet had
done exactly what Newman’s companion was convinced he had intended it
to do; it had grazed the arm of M. Stanislas Kapp, just scratching the
flesh. M. Kapp’s own projectile, meanwhile, had passed at ten good
inches from the person of Valentin. The representatives of M. Stanislas
had demanded another shot, which was granted. Valentin had then fired
aside and the young Alsatian had done effective execution. “I saw, when
we met him on the ground,” said Newman’s informant, “that he was not
going to be _commode_. It is a kind of bovine temperament.” Valentin
had immediately been installed at the inn, and M. Stanislas and his
friends had withdrawn to regions unknown. The police authorities of the
canton had waited upon the party at the inn, had been extremely
majestic, and had drawn up a long _procès-verbal_; but it was probable
that they would wink at so very gentlemanly a bit of bloodshed. Newman
asked whether a message had not been sent to Valentin’s family, and
learned that up to a late hour on the preceding evening Valentin had
opposed it. He had refused to believe his wound was dangerous. But
after his interview with the curé he had consented, and a telegram had
been dispatched to his mother. “But the marquise had better hurry!”
said Newman’s conductor.
“Well, it’s an abominable affair!” said Newman. “That’s all I have to
say!” To say this, at least, in a tone of infinite disgust was an
irresistible need.
“Ah, you don’t approve?” questioned his conductor, with curious
urbanity.
“Approve?” cried Newman. “I wish that when I had him there, night
before last, I had locked him up in my _cabinet de toilette!_”
Valentin’s late second opened his eyes, and shook his head up and down
two or three times, gravely, with a little flute-like whistle. But they
had reached the inn, and a stout maid-servant in a night-cap was at the
door with a lantern, to take Newman’s traveling-bag from the porter who
trudged behind him. Valentin was lodged on the ground-floor at the back
of the house, and Newman’s companion went along a stone-faced passage
and softly opened a door. Then he beckoned to Newman, who advanced and
looked into the room, which was lighted by a single shaded candle.
Beside the fire sat M. de Grosjoyaux asleep in his dressing-gown—a
little plump, fair man whom Newman had seen several times in Valentin’s
company. On the bed lay Valentin, pale and still, with his eyes
closed—a figure very shocking to Newman, who had seen it hitherto awake
to its fingertips. M. de Grosjoyaux’s colleague pointed to an open door
beyond, and whispered that the doctor was within, keeping guard. So
long as Valentin slept, or seemed to sleep, of course Newman could not
approach him; so our hero withdrew for the present, committing himself
to the care of the half-waked _bonne_. She took him to a room
above-stairs, and introduced him to a bed on which a magnified bolster,
in yellow calico, figured as a counterpane. Newman lay down, and, in
spite of his counterpane, slept for three or four hours. When he awoke,
the morning was advanced and the sun was filling his window, and he
heard, outside of it, the clucking of hens. While he was dressing there
came to his door a messenger from M. de Grosjoyaux and his companion
proposing that he should breakfast with them. Presently he went
downstairs to the little stone-paved dining-room, where the
maid-servant, who had taken off her night-cap, was serving the repast.
M. de Grosjoyaux was there, surprisingly fresh for a gentleman who had
been playing sick-nurse half the night, rubbing his hands and watching
the breakfast table attentively. Newman renewed acquaintance with him,
and learned that Valentin was still sleeping; the surgeon, who had had
a fairly tranquil night, was at present sitting with him. Before M. de
Grosjoyaux’s associate reappeared, Newman learned that his name was M.
Ledoux, and that Bellegarde’s acquaintance with him dated from the days
when they served together in the Pontifical Zouaves. M. Ledoux was the
nephew of a distinguished Ultramontane bishop. At last the bishop’s
nephew came in with a toilet in which an ingenious attempt at harmony
with the peculiar situation was visible, and with a gravity tempered by
a decent deference to the best breakfast that the Croix Helvétique had
ever set forth. Valentin’s servant, who was allowed only in scanty
measure the honor of watching with his master, had been lending a light
Parisian hand in the kitchen. The two Frenchmen did their best to prove
that if circumstances might overshadow, they could not really obscure,
the national talent for conversation, and M. Ledoux delivered a neat
little eulogy on poor Bellegarde, whom he pronounced the most charming
Englishman he had ever known.
“Do you call him an Englishman?” Newman asked.
M. Ledoux smiled a moment and then made an epigram. _“C’est plus qu’un
Anglais—c’est un Anglomane!”_ Newman said soberly that he had never
noticed it; and M. de Grosjoyaux remarked that it was really too soon
to deliver a funeral oration upon poor Bellegarde. “Evidently,” said M.
Ledoux. “But I couldn’t help observing this morning to Mr. Newman that
when a man has taken such excellent measures for his salvation as our
dear friend did last evening, it seems almost a pity he should put it
in peril again by returning to the world.” M. Ledoux was a great
Catholic, and Newman thought him a queer mixture. His countenance, by
daylight, had a sort of amiably saturnine cast; he had a very large
thin nose, and looked like a Spanish picture. He appeared to think
dueling a very perfect arrangement, provided, if one should get hit,
one could promptly see the priest. He seemed to take a great
satisfaction in Valentin’s interview with the curé, and yet his
conversation did not at all indicate a sanctimonious habit of mind. M.
Ledoux had evidently a high sense of the becoming, and was prepared to
be urbane and tasteful on all points. He was always furnished with a
smile (which pushed his moustache up under his nose) and an
explanation. _Savoir-vivre_—knowing how to live—was his specialty, in
which he included knowing how to die; but, as Newman reflected, with a
good deal of dumb irritation, he seemed disposed to delegate to others
the application of his learning on this latter point. M. de Grosjoyaux
was of quite another complexion, and appeared to regard his friend’s
theological unction as the sign of an inaccessibly superior mind. He
was evidently doing his utmost, with a kind of jovial tenderness, to
make life agreeable to Valentin to the last, and help him as little as
possible to miss the Boulevard des Italiens; but what chiefly occupied
his mind was the mystery of a bungling brewer’s son making so neat a
shot. He himself could snuff a candle, etc., and yet he confessed that
he could not have done better than this. He hastened to add that on the
present occasion he would have made a point of not doing so well. It
was not an occasion for that sort of murderous work, _que diable!_ He
would have picked out some quiet fleshy spot and just tapped it with a
harmless ball. M. Stanislas Kapp had been deplorably heavy-handed; but
really, when the world had come to that pass that one granted a meeting
to a brewer’s son!... This was M. de Grosjoyaux’s nearest approach to a
generalization. He kept looking through the window, over the shoulder
of M. Ledoux, at a slender tree which stood at the end of a lane,
opposite to the inn, and seemed to be measuring its distance from his
extended arm and secretly wishing that, since the subject had been
introduced, propriety did not forbid a little speculative
pistol-practice.
Newman was in no humor to enjoy good company. He could neither eat nor
talk; his soul was sore with grief and anger, and the weight of his
double sorrow was intolerable. He sat with his eyes fixed upon his
plate, counting the minutes, wishing at one moment that Valentin would
see him and leave him free to go in quest of Madame de Cintré and his
lost happiness, and mentally calling himself a vile brute the next, for
the impatient egotism of the wish. He was very poor company, himself,
and even his acute preoccupation and his general lack of the habit of
pondering the impression he produced did not prevent him from
reflecting that his companions must be puzzled to see how poor
Bellegarde came to take such a fancy to this taciturn Yankee that he
must needs have him at his death-bed. After breakfast he strolled forth
alone into the village and looked at the fountain, the geese, the open
barn doors, the brown, bent old women, showing their hugely darned
stocking-heels at the ends of their slowly-clicking sabots, and the
beautiful view of snowy Alps and purple Jura at either end of the
little street. The day was brilliant; early spring was in the air and
in the sunshine, and the winter’s damp was trickling out of the cottage
eaves. It was birth and brightness for all nature, even for chirping
chickens and waddling goslings, and it was to be death and burial for
poor, foolish, generous, delightful Bellegarde. Newman walked as far as
the village church, and went into the small graveyard beside it, where
he sat down and looked at the awkward tablets which were planted
around. They were all sordid and hideous, and Newman could feel nothing
but the hardness and coldness of death. He got up and came back to the
inn, where he found M. Ledoux having coffee and a cigarette at a little
green table which he had caused to be carried into the small garden.
Newman, learning that the doctor was still sitting with Valentin, asked
M. Ledoux if he might not be allowed to relieve him; he had a great
desire to be useful to his poor friend. This was easily arranged; the
doctor was very glad to go to bed. He was a youthful and rather jaunty
practitioner, but he had a clever face, and the ribbon of the Legion of
Honor in his buttonhole; Newman listened attentively to the
instructions he gave him before retiring, and took mechanically from
his hand a small volume which the surgeon recommended as a help to
wakefulness, and which turned out to be an old copy of “Les Liaisons
Dangereuses.”
Valentin was still lying with his eyes closed, and there was no visible
change in his condition. Newman sat down near him, and for a long time
narrowly watched him. Then his eyes wandered away with his thoughts
upon his own situation, and rested upon the chain of the Alps,
disclosed by the drawing of the scant white cotton curtain of the
window, through which the sunshine passed and lay in squares upon the
red-tiled floor. He tried to interweave his reflections with hope, but
he only half succeeded. What had happened to him seemed to have, in its
violence and audacity, the force of a real calamity—the strength and
insolence of Destiny herself. It was unnatural and monstrous, and he
had no arms against it. At last a sound struck upon the stillness, and
he heard Valentin’s voice.
“It can’t be about _me_ you are pulling that long face!” He found, when
he turned, that Valentin was lying in the same position; but his eyes
were open, and he was even trying to smile. It was with a very slender
strength that he returned the pressure of Newman’s hand. “I have been
watching you for a quarter of an hour,” Valentin went on; “you have
been looking as black as thunder. You are greatly disgusted with me, I
see. Well, of course! So am I!”
“Oh, I shall not scold you,” said Newman. “I feel too badly. And how
are you getting on?”
“Oh, I’m getting off! They have quite settled that; haven’t they?”
“That’s for you to settle; you can get well if you try,” said Newman,
with resolute cheerfulness.
“My dear fellow, how can I try? Trying is violent exercise, and that
sort of thing isn’t in order for a man with a hole in his side as big
as your hat, that begins to bleed if he moves a hair’s-breadth. I knew
you would come,” he continued; “I knew I should wake up and find you
here; so I’m not surprised. But last night I was very impatient. I
didn’t see how I could keep still until you came. It was a matter of
keeping still, just like this; as still as a mummy in his case. You
talk about trying; I tried that! Well, here I am yet—these twenty
hours. It seems like twenty days.” Bellegarde talked slowly and feebly,
but distinctly enough. It was visible, however, that he was in extreme
pain, and at last he closed his eyes. Newman begged him to remain
silent and spare himself; the doctor had left urgent orders. “Oh,” said
Valentin, “let us eat and drink, for to-morrow—to-morrow”—and he paused
again. “No, not to-morrow, perhaps, but to-day. I can’t eat and drink,
but I can talk. What’s to be gained, at this pass, by
renun—renunciation? I mustn’t use such big words. I was always a
chatterer; Lord, how I have talked in my day!”
“That’s a reason for keeping quiet now,” said Newman. “We know how well
you talk, you know.”
But Valentin, without heeding him, went on in the same weak, dying
drawl. “I wanted to see you because you have seen my sister. Does she
know—will she come?”
Newman was embarrassed. “Yes, by this time she must know.”
“Didn’t you tell her?” Valentin asked. And then, in a moment, “Didn’t
you bring me any message from her?” His eyes rested upon Newman’s with
a certain soft keenness.
“I didn’t see her after I got your telegram,” said Newman. “I wrote to
her.”
“And she sent you no answer?”
Newman was obliged to reply that Madame de Cintré had left Paris. “She
went yesterday to Fleurières.”
“Yesterday—to Fleurières? Why did she go to Fleurières? What day is
this? What day was yesterday? Ah, then I shan’t see her,” said Valentin
sadly. “Fleurières is too far!” And then he closed his eyes again.
Newman sat silent, summoning pious invention to his aid, but he was
relieved at finding that Valentin was apparently too weak to reason or
to be curious. Bellegarde, however, presently went on. “And my
mother—and my brother—will they come? Are they at Fleurières?”
“They were in Paris, but I didn’t see them, either,” Newman answered.
“If they received your telegram in time, they will have started this
morning. Otherwise they will be obliged to wait for the night-express,
and they will arrive at the same hour as I did.”
“They won’t thank me—they won’t thank me,” Valentin murmured. “They
will pass an atrocious night, and Urbain doesn’t like the early morning
air. I don’t remember ever in my life to have seen him before
noon—before breakfast. No one ever saw him. We don’t know how he is
then. Perhaps he’s different. Who knows? Posterity, perhaps, will know.
That’s the time he works, in his _cabinet_, at the history of the
Princesses. But I had to send for them—hadn’t I? And then I want to see
my mother sit there where you sit, and say good-bye to her. Perhaps,
after all, I don’t know her, and she will have some surprise for me.
Don’t think you know her yet, yourself; perhaps she may surprise _you_.
But if I can’t see Claire, I don’t care for anything. I have been
thinking of it—and in my dreams, too. Why did she go to Fleurières
to-day? She never told me. What has happened? Ah, she ought to have
guessed I was here—this way. It is the first time in her life she ever
disappointed me. Poor Claire!”
“You know we are not man and wife quite yet,—your sister and I,” said
Newman. “She doesn’t yet account to me for all her actions.” And, after
a fashion, he smiled.
Valentin looked at him a moment. “Have you quarreled?”
“Never, never, never!” Newman exclaimed.
“How happily you say that!” said Valentin. “You are going to be
happy—_va!_” In answer to this stroke of irony, none the less powerful
for being so unconscious, all poor Newman could do was to give a
helpless and transparent stare. Valentin continued to fix him with his
own rather over-bright gaze, and presently he said, “But something _is_
the matter with you. I watched you just now; you haven’t a bridegroom’s
face.”
“My dear fellow,” said Newman, “how can I show _you_ a bridegroom’s
face? If you think I enjoy seeing you lie there and not being able to
help you”—
“Why, you are just the man to be cheerful; don’t forfeit your rights!
I’m a proof of your wisdom. When was a man ever gloomy when he could
say, ‘I told you so?’ You told me so, you know. You did what you could
about it. You said some very good things; I have thought them over.
But, my dear friend, I was right, all the same. This is the regular
way.”
“I didn’t do what I ought,” said Newman. “I ought to have done
something else.”
“For instance?”
“Oh, something or other. I ought to have treated you as a small boy.”
“Well, I’m a very small boy, now,” said Valentin. “I’m rather less than
an infant. An infant is helpless, but it’s generally voted promising.
I’m not promising, eh? Society can’t lose a less valuable member.”
Newman was strongly moved. He got up and turned his back upon his
friend and walked away to the window, where he stood looking out, but
only vaguely seeing. “No, I don’t like the look of your back,” Valentin
continued. “I have always been an observer of backs; yours is quite out
of sorts.”
Newman returned to his bedside and begged him to be quiet. “Be quiet
and get well,” he said. “That’s what you must do. Get well and help
me.”
“I told you you were in trouble! How can I help you?” Valentin asked.
“I’ll let you know when you are better. You were always curious; there
is something to get well for!” Newman answered, with resolute
animation.
Valentin closed his eyes and lay a long time without speaking. He
seemed even to have fallen asleep. But at the end of half an hour he
began to talk again. “I am rather sorry about that place in the bank.
Who knows but that I might have become another Rothschild? But I wasn’t
meant for a banker; bankers are not so easy to kill. Don’t you think I
have been very easy to kill? It’s not like a serious man. It’s really
very mortifying. It’s like telling your hostess you must go, when you
count upon her begging you to stay, and then finding she does no such
thing. ‘Really—so soon? You’ve only just come!’ Life doesn’t make me
any such polite little speech.”
Newman for some time said nothing, but at last he broke out. “It’s a
bad case—it’s a bad case—it’s the worst case I ever met. I don’t want
to say anything unpleasant, but I can’t help it. I’ve seen men dying
before—and I’ve seen men shot. But it always seemed more natural; they
were not so clever as you. Damnation—damnation! You might have done
something better than this. It’s about the meanest winding-up of a
man’s affairs that I can imagine!”
Valentin feebly waved his hand to and fro. “Don’t insist—don’t insist!
It is mean—decidedly mean. For you see at the bottom—down at the
bottom, in a little place as small as the end of a wine funnel—I agree
with you!”
A few moments after this the doctor put his head through the
half-opened door and, perceiving that Valentin was awake, came in and
felt his pulse. He shook his head and declared that he had talked too
much—ten times too much. “Nonsense!” said Valentin; “a man sentenced to
death can never talk too much. Have you never read an account of an
execution in a newspaper? Don’t they always set a lot of people at the
prisoner—lawyers, reporters, priests—to make him talk? But it’s not Mr.
Newman’s fault; he sits there as mum as a death’s-head.”
The doctor observed that it was time his patient’s wound should be
dressed again; MM. de Grosjoyaux and Ledoux, who had already witnessed
this delicate operation, taking Newman’s place as assistants. Newman
withdrew and learned from his fellow-watchers that they had received a
telegram from Urbain de Bellegarde to the effect that their message had
been delivered in the Rue de l’Université too late to allow him to take
the morning train, but that he would start with his mother in the
evening. Newman wandered away into the village again, and walked about
restlessly for two or three hours. The day seemed terribly long. At
dusk he came back and dined with the doctor and M. Ledoux. The dressing
of Valentin’s wound had been a very critical operation; the doctor
didn’t really see how he was to endure a repetition of it. He then
declared that he must beg of Mr. Newman to deny himself for the present
the satisfaction of sitting with M. de Bellegarde; more than anyone
else, apparently, he had the flattering but inconvenient privilege of
exciting him. M. Ledoux, at this, swallowed a glass of wine in silence;
he must have been wondering what the deuce Bellegarde found so exciting
in the American.
Newman, after dinner, went up to his room, where he sat for a long time
staring at his lighted candle, and thinking that Valentin was dying
downstairs. Late, when the candle had burnt low, there came a soft rap
at his door. The doctor stood there with a candlestick and a shrug.
“He must amuse himself still!” said Valentin’s medical adviser. “He
insists upon seeing you, and I am afraid you must come. I think at this
rate, that he will hardly outlast the night.”
Newman went back to Valentin’s room, which he found lighted by a taper
on the hearth. Valentin begged him to light a candle. “I want to see
your face,” he said. “They say you excite me,” he went on, as Newman
complied with this request, “and I confess I do feel excited. But it
isn’t you—it’s my own thoughts. I have been thinking—thinking. Sit down
there and let me look at you again.” Newman seated himself, folded his
arms, and bent a heavy gaze upon his friend. He seemed to be playing a
part, mechanically, in a lugubrious comedy. Valentin looked at him for
some time. “Yes, this morning I was right; you have something on your
mind heavier than Valentin de Bellegarde. Come, I’m a dying man and
it’s indecent to deceive me. Something happened after I left Paris. It
was not for nothing that my sister started off at this season of the
year for Fleurières. Why was it? It sticks in my crop. I have been
thinking it over, and if you don’t tell me I shall guess.”
“I had better not tell you,” said Newman. “It won’t do you any good.”
“If you think it will do me any good not to tell me, you are very much
mistaken. There is trouble about your marriage.”
“Yes,” said Newman. “There is trouble about my marriage.”
“Good!” And Valentin was silent again. “They have stopped it.”
“They have stopped it,” said Newman. Now that he had spoken out, he
found a satisfaction in it which deepened as he went on. “Your mother
and brother have broken faith. They have decided that it can’t take
place. They have decided that I am not good enough, after all. They
have taken back their word. Since you insist, there it is!”
Valentin gave a sort of groan, lifted his hands a moment, and then let
them drop.
“I am sorry not to have anything better to tell you about them,” Newman
pursued. “But it’s not my fault. I was, indeed, very unhappy when your
telegram reached me; I was quite upside down. You may imagine whether I
feel any better now.”
Valentin moaned gaspingly, as if his wound were throbbing. “Broken
faith, broken faith!” he murmured. “And my sister—my sister?”
“Your sister is very unhappy; she has consented to give me up. I don’t
know why. I don’t know what they have done to her; it must be something
pretty bad. In justice to her you ought to know it. They have made her
suffer. I haven’t seen her alone, but only before them! We had an
interview yesterday morning. They came out flat, in so many words. They
told me to go about my business. It seems to me a very bad case. I’m
angry, I’m sore, I’m sick.”
Valentin lay there staring, with his eyes more brilliantly lighted, his
lips soundlessly parted, and a flush of color in his pale face. Newman
had never before uttered so many words in the plaintive key, but now,
in speaking to Valentin in the poor fellow’s extremity, he had a
feeling that he was making his complaint somewhere within the presence
of the power that men pray to in trouble; he felt his outgush of
resentment as a sort of spiritual privilege.
“And Claire,”—said Bellegarde,—“Claire? She has given you up?”
“I don’t really believe it,” said Newman.
“No. Don’t believe it, don’t believe it. She is gaining time; excuse
her.”
“I pity her!” said Newman.
“Poor Claire!” murmured Valentin. “But they—but they”—and he paused
again. “You saw them; they dismissed you, face to face?”
“Face to face. They were very explicit.”
“What did they say?”
“They said they couldn’t stand a commercial person.”
Valentin put out his hand and laid it upon Newman’s arm. “And about
their promise—their engagement with you?”
“They made a distinction. They said it was to hold good only until
Madame de Cintré accepted me.”
Valentin lay staring a while, and his flush died away. “Don’t tell me
any more,” he said at last. “I’m ashamed.”
“You? You are the soul of honor,” said Newman simply.
Valentin groaned and turned away his head. For some time nothing more
was said. Then Valentin turned back again and found a certain force to
press Newman’s arm. “It’s very bad—very bad. When my people—when my
race—come to that, it is time for me to withdraw. I believe in my
sister; she will explain. Excuse her. If she can’t—if she can’t,
forgive her. She has suffered. But for the others it is very bad—very
bad. You take it very hard? No, it’s a shame to make you say so.” He
closed his eyes and again there was a silence. Newman felt almost awed;
he had evoked a more solemn spirit than he expected. Presently Valentin
looked at him again, removing his hand from his arm. “I apologize,” he
said. “Do you understand? Here on my death-bed. I apologize for my
family. For my mother. For my brother. For the ancient house of
Bellegarde. _Voilà!_” he added softly.
Newman for an answer took his hand and pressed it with a world of
kindness. Valentin remained quiet, and at the end of half an hour the
doctor softly came in. Behind him, through the half-open door, Newman
saw the two questioning faces of MM. de Grosjoyaux and Ledoux. The
doctor laid his hand on Valentin’s wrist and sat looking at him. He
gave no sign and the two gentlemen came in, M. Ledoux having first
beckoned to someone outside. This was M. le Curé, who carried in his
hand an object unknown to Newman, and covered with a white napkin. M.
le Curé was short, round, and red: he advanced, pulling off his little
black cap to Newman, and deposited his burden on the table; and then he
sat down in the best armchair, with his hands folded across his person.
The other gentlemen had exchanged glances which expressed unanimity as
to the timeliness of their presence. But for a long time Valentin
neither spoke nor moved. It was Newman’s belief, afterwards, that M. le
Curé went to sleep. At last abruptly, Valentin pronounced Newman’s
name. His friend went to him, and he said in French, “You are not
alone. I want to speak to you alone.” Newman looked at the doctor, and
the doctor looked at the curé, who looked back at him; and then the
doctor and the curé, together, gave a shrug. “Alone—for five minutes,”
Valentin repeated. “Please leave us.”
The curé took up his burden again and led the way out, followed by his
companions. Newman closed the door behind them and came back to
Valentin’s bedside. Bellegarde had watched all this intently.
“It’s very bad, it’s very bad,” he said, after Newman had seated
himself close to him. “The more I think of it the worse it is.”
“Oh, don’t think of it,” said Newman.
But Valentin went on, without heeding him. “Even if they should come
round again, the shame—the baseness—is there.”
“Oh, they won’t come round!” said Newman.
“Well, you can make them.”
“Make them?”
“I can tell you something—a great secret—an immense secret. You can use
it against them—frighten them, force them.”
“A secret!” Newman repeated. The idea of letting Valentin, on his
death-bed, confide him an “immense secret” shocked him, for the moment,
and made him draw back. It seemed an illicit way of arriving at
information, and even had a vague analogy with listening at a keyhole.
Then, suddenly, the thought of “forcing” Madame de Bellegarde and her
son became attractive, and Newman bent his head closer to Valentin’s
lips. For some time, however, the dying man said nothing more. He only
lay and looked at his friend with his kindled, expanded, troubled eye,
and Newman began to believe that he had spoken in delirium. But at last
he said,—
“There was something done—something done at Fleurières. It was foul
play. My father—something happened to him. I don’t know; I have been
ashamed—afraid to know. But I know there is something. My mother
knows—Urbain knows.”
“Something happened to your father?” said Newman, urgently.
Valentin looked at him, still more wide-eyed. “He didn’t get well.”
“Get well of what?”
But the immense effort which Valentin had made, first to decide to
utter these words and then to bring them out, appeared to have taken
his last strength. He lapsed again into silence, and Newman sat
watching him. “Do you understand?” he began again, presently. “At
Fleurières. You can find out. Mrs. Bread knows. Tell her I begged you
to ask her. Then tell them that, and see. It may help you. If not, tell
everyone. It will—it will”—here Valentin’s voice sank to the feeblest
murmur—“it will avenge you!”
The words died away in a long, soft groan. Newman stood up, deeply
impressed, not knowing what to say; his heart was beating violently.
“Thank you,” he said at last. “I am much obliged.” But Valentin seemed
not to hear him, he remained silent, and his silence continued. At last
Newman went and opened the door. M. le Curé re-entered, bearing his
sacred vessel and followed by the three gentlemen and by Valentin’s
servant. It was almost processional.