“I am very much obliged to you for coming,” Newman said. “I hope it
won’t get you into trouble.”
“I don’t think I shall be missed. My lady, in these days, is not fond
of having me about her.” This was said with a certain fluttered
eagerness which increased Newman’s sense of having inspired the old
woman with confidence.
“From the first, you know,” he answered, “you took an interest in my
prospects. You were on my side. That gratified me, I assure you. And
now that you know what they have done to me, I am sure you are with me
all the more.”
“They have not done well—I must say it,” said Mrs. Bread. “But you
mustn’t blame the poor countess; they pressed her hard.”
“I would give a million of dollars to know what they did to her!” cried
Newman.
Mrs. Bread sat with a dull, oblique gaze fixed upon the lights of the
château. “They worked on her feelings; they knew that was the way. She
is a delicate creature. They made her feel wicked. She is only too
good.”
“Ah, they made her feel wicked,” said Newman, slowly; and then he
repeated it. “They made her feel wicked,—they made her feel wicked.”
The words seemed to him for the moment a vivid description of infernal
ingenuity.
“It was because she was so good that she gave up—poor sweet lady!”
added Mrs. Bread.
“But she was better to them than to me,” said Newman.
“She was afraid,” said Mrs. Bread, very confidently; “she has always
been afraid, or at least for a long time. That was the real trouble,
sir. She was like a fair peach, I may say, with just one little speck.
She had one little sad spot. You pushed her into the sunshine, sir, and
it almost disappeared. Then they pulled her back into the shade and in
a moment it began to spread. Before we knew it she was gone. She was a
delicate creature.”
This singular attestation of Madame de Cintré’s delicacy, for all its
singularity, set Newman’s wound aching afresh. “I see,” he presently
said; “she knew something bad about her mother.”
“No, sir, she knew nothing,” said Mrs. Bread, holding her head very
stiff and keeping her eyes fixed upon the glimmering windows of the
château.
“She guessed something, then, or suspected it.”
“She was afraid to know,” said Mrs. Bread.
“But _you_ know, at any rate,” said Newman.
She slowly turned her vague eyes upon Newman, squeezing her hands
together in her lap. “You are not quite faithful, sir. I thought it was
to tell me about Mr. Valentin you asked me to come here.”
“Oh, the more we talk of Mr. Valentin the better,” said Newman. “That’s
exactly what I want. I was with him, as I told you, in his last hour.
He was in a great deal of pain, but he was quite himself. You know what
that means; he was bright and lively and clever.”
“Oh, he would always be clever, sir,” said Mrs. Bread. “And did he know
of your trouble?”
“Yes, he guessed it of himself.”
“And what did he say to it?”
“He said it was a disgrace to his name—but it was not the first.”
“Lord, Lord!” murmured Mrs. Bread.
“He said that his mother and his brother had once put their heads
together and invented something even worse.”
“You shouldn’t have listened to that, sir.”
“Perhaps not. But I _did_ listen, and I don’t forget it. Now I want to
know what it is they did.”
Mrs. Bread gave a soft moan. “And you have enticed me up into this
strange place to tell you?”
“Don’t be alarmed,” said Newman. “I won’t say a word that shall be
disagreeable to you. Tell me as it suits you, and when it suits you.
Only remember that it was Mr. Valentin’s last wish that you should.”
“Did he say that?”
“He said it with his last breath—‘Tell Mrs. Bread I told you to ask
her.’”
“Why didn’t he tell you himself?”
“It was too long a story for a dying man; he had no breath left in his
body. He could only say that he wanted me to know—that, wronged as I
was, it was my right to know.”
“But how will it help you, sir?” said Mrs. Bread.
“That’s for me to decide. Mr. Valentin believed it would, and that’s
why he told me. Your name was almost the last word he spoke.”
Mrs. Bread was evidently awe-struck by this statement; she shook her
clasped hands slowly up and down. “Excuse me, sir,” she said, “if I
take a great liberty. Is it the solemn truth you are speaking? I _must_
ask you that; must I not, sir?”
“There’s no offense. It _is_ the solemn truth; I solemnly swear it. Mr.
Valentin himself would certainly have told me more if he had been
able.”
“Oh, sir, if he knew more!”
“Don’t you suppose he did?”
“There’s no saying what he knew about anything,” said Mrs. Bread, with
a mild head-shake. “He was so mightily clever. He could make you
believe he knew things that he didn’t, and that he didn’t know others
that he had better not have known.”
“I suspect he knew something about his brother that kept the marquis
civil to him,” Newman propounded; “he made the marquis feel him. What
he wanted now was to put me in his place; he wanted to give me a chance
to make the marquis feel _me_.”
“Mercy on us!” cried the old waiting-woman, “how wicked we all are!”
“I don’t know,” said Newman; “some of us are wicked, certainly. I am
very angry, I am very sore, and I am very bitter, but I don’t know that
I am wicked. I have been cruelly injured. They have hurt me, and I want
to hurt them. I don’t deny that; on the contrary, I tell you plainly
that it is the use I want to make of your secret.”
Mrs. Bread seemed to hold her breath. “You want to publish them—you
want to shame them?”
“I want to bring them down,—down, down, down! I want to turn the tables
upon them—I want to mortify them as they mortified me. They took me up
into a high place and made me stand there for all the world to see me,
and then they stole behind me and pushed me into this bottomless pit,
where I lie howling and gnashing my teeth! I made a fool of myself
before all their friends; but I shall make something worse of them.”
This passionate sally, which Newman uttered with the greater fervor
that it was the first time he had had a chance to say all this aloud,
kindled two small sparks in Mrs. Bread’s fixed eyes. “I suppose you
have a right to your anger, sir; but think of the dishonor you will
draw down on Madame de Cintré.”
“Madame de Cintré is buried alive,” cried Newman. “What are honor or
dishonor to her? The door of the tomb is at this moment closing behind
her.”
“Yes, it’s most awful,” moaned Mrs. Bread.
“She has moved off, like her brother Valentin, to give me room to work.
It’s as if it were done on purpose.”
“Surely,” said Mrs. Bread, apparently impressed by the ingenuity of
this reflection. She was silent for some moments; then she added, “And
would you bring my lady before the courts?”
“The courts care nothing for my lady,” Newman replied. “If she has
committed a crime, she will be nothing for the courts but a wicked old
woman.”
“And will they hang her, sir?”
“That depends upon what she has done.” And Newman eyed Mrs. Bread
intently.
“It would break up the family most terribly, sir!”
“It’s time such a family should be broken up!” said Newman, with a
laugh.
“And me at my age out of place, sir!” sighed Mrs. Bread.
“Oh, I will take care of you! You shall come and live with me. You
shall be my housekeeper, or anything you like. I will pension you for
life.”
“Dear, dear, sir, you think of everything.” And she seemed to fall
a-brooding.
Newman watched her a while, and then he said suddenly. “Ah, Mrs. Bread,
you are too fond of my lady!”
She looked at him as quickly. “I wouldn’t have you say that, sir. I
don’t think it any part of my duty to be fond of my lady. I have served
her faithfully this many a year; but if she were to die to-morrow, I
believe, before Heaven I shouldn’t shed a tear for her.” Then, after a
pause, “I have no reason to love her!” Mrs. Bread added. “The most she
has done for me has been not to turn me out of the house.” Newman felt
that decidedly his companion was more and more confidential—that if
luxury is corrupting, Mrs. Bread’s conservative habits were already
relaxed by the spiritual comfort of this preconcerted interview, in a
remarkable locality, with a free-spoken millionaire. All his native
shrewdness admonished him that his part was simply to let her take her
time—let the charm of the occasion work. So he said nothing; he only
looked at her kindly. Mrs. Bread sat nursing her lean elbows. “My lady
once did me a great wrong,” she went on at last. “She has a terrible
tongue when she is vexed. It was many a year ago, but I have never
forgotten it. I have never mentioned it to a human creature; I have
kept my grudge to myself. I dare say I have been wicked, but my grudge
has grown old with me. It has grown good for nothing, too, I dare say;
but it has lived along, as I have lived. It will die when I die,—not
before!”
“And what _is_ your grudge?” Newman asked.
Mrs. Bread dropped her eyes and hesitated. “If I were a foreigner, sir,
I should make less of telling you; it comes harder to a decent
Englishwoman. But I sometimes think I have picked up too many foreign
ways. What I was telling you belongs to a time when I was much younger
and very different looking to what I am now. I had a very high color,
sir, if you can believe it, indeed I was a very smart lass. My lady was
younger, too, and the late marquis was youngest of all—I mean in the
way he went on, sir; he had a very high spirit; he was a magnificent
man. He was fond of his pleasure, like most foreigners, and it must be
owned that he sometimes went rather below him to take it. My lady was
often jealous, and, if you’ll believe it, sir, she did me the honor to
be jealous of me. One day I had a red ribbon in my cap, and my lady
flew out at me and ordered me to take it off. She accused me of putting
it on to make the marquis look at me. I don’t know that I was
impertinent, but I spoke up like an honest girl and didn’t count my
words. A red ribbon indeed! As if it was my ribbons the marquis looked
at! My lady knew afterwards that I was perfectly respectable, but she
never said a word to show that she believed it. But the marquis did!”
Mrs. Bread presently added, “I took off my red ribbon and put it away
in a drawer, where I have kept it to this day. It’s faded now, it’s a
very pale pink; but there it lies. My grudge has faded, too; the red
has all gone out of it; but it lies here yet.” And Mrs. Bread stroked
her black satin bodice.
Newman listened with interest to this decent narrative, which seemed to
have opened up the deeps of memory to his companion. Then, as she
remained silent, and seemed to be losing herself in retrospective
meditation upon her perfect respectability, he ventured upon a short
cut to his goal. “So Madame de Bellegarde was jealous; I see. And M. de
Bellegarde admired pretty women, without distinction of class. I
suppose one mustn’t be hard upon him, for they probably didn’t all
behave so properly as you. But years afterwards it could hardly have
been jealousy that turned Madame de Bellegarde into a criminal.”
Mrs. Bread gave a weary sigh. “We are using dreadful words, sir, but I
don’t care now. I see you have your idea, and I have no will of my own.
My will was the will of my children, as I called them; but I have lost
my children now. They are dead—I may say it of both of them; and what
should I care for the living? What is anyone in the house to me
now—what am I to them? My lady objects to me—she has objected to me
these thirty years. I should have been glad to be something to young
Madame de Bellegarde, though I never was nurse to the present marquis.
When he was a baby I was too young; they wouldn’t trust me with him.
But his wife told her own maid, Mamselle Clarisse, the opinion she had
of me. Perhaps you would like to hear it, sir.”
“Oh, immensely,” said Newman.
“She said that if I would sit in her children’s schoolroom I should do
very well for a penwiper! When things have come to that I don’t think I
need stand upon ceremony.”
“Decidedly not,” said Newman. “Go on, Mrs. Bread.”
Mrs. Bread, however, relapsed again into troubled dumbness, and all
Newman could do was to fold his arms and wait. But at last she appeared
to have set her memories in order. “It was when the late marquis was an
old man and his eldest son had been two years married. It was when the
time came on for marrying Mademoiselle Claire; that’s the way they talk
of it here, you know, sir. The marquis’s health was bad; he was very
much broken down. My lady had picked out M. de Cintré, for no good
reason that I could see. But there are reasons, I very well know, that
are beyond me, and you must be high in the world to understand them.
Old M. de Cintré was very high, and my lady thought him almost as good
as herself; that’s saying a good deal. Mr. Urbain took sides with his
mother, as he always did. The trouble, I believe, was that my lady
would give very little money, and all the other gentlemen asked more.
It was only M. de Cintré that was satisfied. The Lord willed it he
should have that one soft spot; it was the only one he had. He may have
been very grand in his birth, and he certainly was very grand in his
bows and speeches; but that was all the grandeur he had. I think he was
like what I have heard of comedians; not that I have ever seen one. But
I know he painted his face. He might paint it all he would; he could
never make me like it! The marquis couldn’t abide him, and declared
that sooner than take such a husband as that Mademoiselle Claire should
take none at all. He and my lady had a great scene; it came even to our
ears in the servants’ hall. It was not their first quarrel, if the
truth must be told. They were not a loving couple, but they didn’t
often come to words, because, I think, neither of them thought the
other’s doings worth the trouble. My lady had long ago got over her
jealousy, and she had taken to indifference. In this, I must say, they
were well matched. The marquis was very easy-going; he had a most
gentlemanly temper. He got angry only once a year, but then it was very
bad. He always took to bed directly afterwards. This time I speak of he
took to bed as usual, but he never got up again. I’m afraid the poor
gentleman was paying for his dissipation; isn’t it true they mostly do,
sir, when they get old? My lady and Mr. Urbain kept quiet, but I know
my lady wrote letters to M. de Cintré. The marquis got worse and the
doctors gave him up. My lady, she gave him up too, and if the truth
must be told, she gave him up gladly. When once he was out of the way
she could do what she pleased with her daughter, and it was all
arranged that my poor innocent child should be handed over to M. de
Cintré. You don’t know what Mademoiselle was in those days, sir; she
was the sweetest young creature in France, and knew as little of what
was going on around her as the lamb does of the butcher. I used to
nurse the marquis, and I was always in his room. It was here at
Fleurières, in the autumn. We had a doctor from Paris, who came and
stayed two or three weeks in the house. Then there came two others, and
there was a consultation, and these two others, as I said, declared
that the marquis couldn’t be saved. After this they went off, pocketing
their fees, but the other one stayed and did what he could. The marquis
himself kept crying out that he wouldn’t die, that he didn’t want to
die, that he would live and look after his daughter. Mademoiselle
Claire and the viscount—that was Mr. Valentin, you know—were both in
the house. The doctor was a clever man,—that I could see myself,—and I
think he believed that the marquis might get well. We took good care of
him, he and I, between us, and one day, when my lady had almost ordered
her mourning, my patient suddenly began to mend. He got better and
better, till the doctor said he was out of danger. What was killing him
was the dreadful fits of pain in his stomach. But little by little they
stopped, and the poor marquis began to make his jokes again. The doctor
found something that gave him great comfort—some white stuff that we
kept in a great bottle on the chimney-piece. I used to give it to the
marquis through a glass tube; it always made him easier. Then the
doctor went away, after telling me to keep on giving him the mixture
whenever he was bad. After that there was a little doctor from
Poitiers, who came every day. So we were alone in the house—my lady and
her poor husband and their three children. Young Madame de Bellegarde
had gone away, with her little girl, to her mothers. You know she is
very lively, and her maid told me that she didn’t like to be where
people were dying.” Mrs. Bread paused a moment, and then she went on
with the same quiet consistency. “I think you have guessed, sir, that
when the marquis began to turn my lady was disappointed.” And she
paused again, bending upon Newman a face which seemed to grow whiter as
the darkness settled down upon them.
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 far 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_.’ 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. 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 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 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. ‘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 dishonor on a great
house. And it was the same with Mademoiselle. She didn’t know what
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.”
Newman, at this last affirmation, broke into an immense, resounding
laugh. Mrs. Bread had begun to move away from the spot where they were
sitting, and he helped her through the aperture in the wall and along
the homeward path. “Yes,” he said, “my lady’s respectability is
delicious; it will be a great crash!” They reached the empty space in
front of the church, where they stopped a moment, looking at each other
with something of an air of closer fellowship—like two sociable
conspirators. “But what was it,” said Newman, “what was it she did to
her husband? She didn’t stab him or poison him.”
“I don’t know, sir; no one saw it.”
“Unless it was Mr. Urbain. You say he was walking up and down, outside
the room. Perhaps he looked through the keyhole. But no; I think that
with his mother he would take it on trust.”
“You may be sure I have often thought of it,” said Mrs. Bread. “I am
sure she didn’t touch him with her hands. I saw nothing on him,
anywhere. I believe it was in this way. He had a fit of his great pain,
and he asked her for his medicine. Instead of giving it to him she went
and poured it away, before his eyes. Then he saw what she meant, and,
weak and helpless as he was, he was frightened, he was terrified. ‘You
want to kill me,’ he said. ‘Yes, M. le Marquis, I want to kill you,’
says my lady, and sits down and fixes her eyes upon him. You know my
lady’s eyes, I think, sir; it was with them she killed him; it was with
the terrible strong will she put into them. It was like a frost on
flowers.”
“Well, you are a very intelligent woman; you have shown great
discretion,” said Newman. “I shall value your services as housekeeper
extremely.”
They had begun to descend the hill, and Mrs. Bread said nothing until
they reached the foot. Newman strolled lightly beside her; his head was
thrown back and he was gazing at all the stars; he seemed to himself to
be riding his vengeance along the Milky Way. “So you are serious, sir,
about that?” said Mrs. Bread, softly.
“About your living with me? Why of course I will take care of you to
the end of your days. You can’t live with those people any longer. And
you oughtn’t to, you know, after this. You give me the paper, and you
move away.”
“It seems very flighty in me to be taking a new place at this time of
life,” observed Mrs. Bread, lugubriously. “But if you are going to turn
the house upside down, I would rather be out of it.”
“Oh,” said Newman, in the cheerful tone of a man who feels rich in
alternatives. “I don’t think I shall bring in the constables, if that’s
what you mean. Whatever Madame de Bellegarde did, I am afraid the law
can’t take hold of it. But I am glad of that; it leaves it altogether
to me!”
“You are a mighty bold gentleman, sir,” murmured Mrs. Bread, looking at
him round the edge of her great bonnet.
He walked with her back to the château; the curfew had tolled for the
laborious villagers of Fleurières, and the street was unlighted and
empty. She promised him that he should have the marquis’s manuscript in
half an hour. Mrs. Bread choosing not to go in by the great gate, they
passed round by a winding lane to a door in the wall of the park, of
which she had the key, and which would enable her to enter the château
from behind. Newman arranged with her that he should await outside the
wall her return with the coveted document.
She went in, and his half hour in the dusky lane seemed very long. But
he had plenty to think about. At last the door in the wall opened and
Mrs. Bread stood there, with one hand on the latch and the other
holding out a scrap of white paper, folded small. In a moment he was
master of it, and it had passed into his waistcoat pocket. “Come and
see me in Paris,” he said; “we are to settle your future, you know; and
I will translate poor M. de Bellegarde’s French to you.” Never had he
felt so grateful as at this moment for M. Nioche’s instructions.
Mrs. Bread’s dull eyes had followed the disappearance of the paper, and
she gave a heavy sigh. “Well, you have done what you would with me,
sir, and I suppose you will do it again. You _must_ take care of me
now. You are a terribly positive gentleman.”
“Just now,” said Newman, “I’m a terribly impatient gentleman!” And he
bade her good-night and walked rapidly back to the inn. He ordered his
vehicle to be prepared for his return to Poitiers, and then he shut the
door of the common salle and strode toward the solitary lamp on the
chimney-piece. He pulled out the paper and quickly unfolded it. It was
covered with pencil-marks, which at first, in the feeble light, seemed
indistinct. But Newman’s fierce curiosity forced a meaning from the
tremulous signs. The English of them was as follows:—
“My wife has tried to kill me, and she has done it; I am dying, dying
horribly. It is to marry my dear daughter to M. de Cintré. With all my
soul I protest,—I forbid it. I am not insane,—ask the doctors, ask Mrs.
B——. It was alone with me here, to-night; she attacked me and put me to
death. It is murder, if murder ever was. Ask the doctors.
“HENRI-URBAIN DE BELLEGARDE”