The American (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907)/Chapter 22
XXII
I'm very much obliged to you for coming," he began with observing. "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 dry lucidity which added to his sense of having inspired his friend with confidence.
"From the first, you know," he rejoined, "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've done to me I'm sure you are with me all the more."
"They've not done well—I must say it. But you must n't blame the poor Countess; they pressed her cruelly hard."
"I 'd give a million of dollars," he remarked, "to know the secret of such successful pressure as that."
Mrs. Bread sat with a dull, oblique gaze fixed on the Fleurières lights. "They worked on her sentiments, as they call em here; they knew that was the way. She's a delicate creature. They made her feel wicked. She's 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 represented to him for the moment, and quite as to the point of high interest, a wondrous triumph of infernal art.
"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."
"She was afraid," said Mrs. Bread very confidently; "she has always been afraid, or at least for a long time. Her fear was there—it was always like a pit that yawned for her. That was the real trouble, sir. She was just a fair peach, I may say, with but 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. She knew something bad about her mother."
"No, sir, she knew nothing." And Mrs. Bread held her head very stiff and kept her watch on the glimmering windows of the residence.
"She guessed something then, or suspected it."
"She was afraid to know," said Mrs. Bread.
"But you know, at any rate."
She slowly turned her vague eyes on him, squeezing her hands together in her lap. "You're not quite faithful, sir. I thought it was to tell me about the Count you asked me to come."
"Oh, the more we talk of the Count the better," he declared. "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 charming and clever."
"Oh, he 'd 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!" she murmured.
"He said his mother and his brother had once put their heads together to some still more odious effect."
"You should n'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've 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 tell me when it suits you. Only remember that it was the Count's dying 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 did n't he tell you himself?"
"It was too long a story for a dying man; he was incapable of the effort and the pain. 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?" she asked.
"That's for me to decide. The Count believed it would, and that's why he told me. Your name was almost the last word he spoke."
This statement produced in her a sharp checked convulsion; she shook her clasped hands slowly up and down. "Pardon me if I take a great liberty. Is it the solemn truth you're speaking? I must ask you that; don't you see that I must, sir?"
"There's no offence. It is the solemn truth; I solemnly swear it. The Count himself would certainly have told me more if he had been able."
"Oh, sir, if he had known more!"
"Don't you suppose he did know?"
"There's no saying what he knew about anything," she almost wailingly conceded. "He was clever to that grand extent. He could make you believe he knew things he did n't, and that he did n't know others he had better not have known."
"I suspect he knew something about his brother that made the Marquis mind his eye!" Newman propounded. "He made the Marquis feel him pretty badly. 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 malicious we all are, to be sure!"
"I don't know," said Newman; "some of us are malicious, certainly. I'm very angry, I'm very sore, and I'm very bitter, but I don't know that I'm malicious. I've been cruelly injured. They've hurt me and I want to hurt them. I don't deny that; on the contrary, I tell you plainly that that's the use I want to make of any information you're so good as to give me."
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 on 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 profession, which Newman uttered with the greater zeal that it was the first time he had felt the relief words at once as hard and as careful as hammer-taps could give his spirit, kindled two small sparks in Mrs. Bread's fixed eyes. "I suppose you've a right to your anger, sir; but think of the dishonour you 'll draw down on the Countess."
"If the Countess is to be buried alive," he cried, "what's honour or dishonour to her ever again? The door of the living tomb is at this moment closing behind her."
"Yes, it's most awful," Mrs. Bread moaned.
"She has moved off, like her brother Valentin, to give me room to work. It's as if it were all done on purpose."
"Surely," said Mrs. Bread, who seemed impressed by the ingenuity of this reflection. She was silent 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'll 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 his friend intently.
"It would break up the family most terribly, sir!"
"It's high time such a family should be broken up!" he outrageously declared.
"And me at my age out of place, sir!" sighed Mrs. Bread.
"Oh, I'll take care of you! You shall come and live with me. You shall be my housekeeper or anything you like. You shall sit and be waited on and twiddle your thumbs. I'll pension you for life."
"Dear, dear, sir, you think of everything." And she seemed to fall a-brooding.
He watched her a while; then he said suddenly: "Ah, Mrs. Bread, you're too foolishly fond of my lady!"
She looked at him as quickly. "I would n't have you say that, sir. I don't think it any part of my duty to be fond of my lady. I've served her faithfully this many a year; but if she were to die tomorrow I believe before heaven I should n't shed a tear for her." Then after a pause, "I've no such great 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 an extraordinary place, 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 bent on her his large benevolence while she nursed her lean elbows. "My lady once did me a great wrong," she went on at last. "She has a terrible tongue when she's put out. It was many a year ago, but I've never forgotten it. I've never mentioned it to a human creature; I've kept my grudge to myself. I dare say I've been wicked, but my grudge has grown old with me. It has grown good for nothing too, I dare say; but it has lived and lived, as I myself have lived. It will die when I die—not before!"
"And what is your grudge, Mrs. Bread?" Newman blandly enquired.
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've picked up too many foreign ways. What I was telling you belongs to a time when I was much younger and of a quite different appearance altogether to what I am now. I had a very high colour, 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, bold spirit; he was a very grand gentleman. He was fond of his pleasure, like most foreigners, and it must be owned 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 honour to have an eye on me. One day I had a red ribbon in my cap, and she 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—look in the way he should n't. I don't know that I was impertinent, but I spoke up like an honest girl and did n'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, yet she never said a word to show she believed it. But the Marquis did—he knew the rights of me," Mrs. Bread presently added; "and 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 touched with old testifying knuckles her black satin bodice.
Newman listened with interest to this decent yet vivid narrative, which seemed to have opened up the deeps of memory to his companion. Then as she remained silent and seemed rather to lose herself in retrospective meditation on her perfect respectability, he ventured on a short cut to his goal. "So Madame de Bellegarde was jealous; I see. And the Marquis admired pretty women without distinction of class. I suppose one must n't be hard on him, for they probably did n't all behave so discreetly as you. But years afterwards it could hardly have been jealousy that turned his wife into a criminal."
Mrs. Bread gave a weary sigh. "We're using dreadful words, sir, but I don't care now. I see you 've your idea, and I 've no will of my own. My will was the will of my children, as I called them; but I 've lost my children now. They're dead and gone—I may say it of both of them; and what should I care for the living? What's any one in the house to me now—what am I to them? My lady objects to me—has objected to me these thirty years. I should have been glad to be something to young Madame Urbain, 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 d like to hear it, sir."
"Oh, would n't I?" Newman almost panted.
"She said that if I 'd 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 on ceremony."
"I never heard of anything so vicious!" Newman rejoicingly declared. "Go on, Mrs. Bread."
Mrs. Bread, however, relapsed again into troubled reserve, and all he 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—as you might talk of sending a heifer to market. The Marquis's health was bad; he was sadly 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 catch all that's under and behind. Old M. de Cintré was very high, and my lady thought him almost as good as herself; that's saying as much as you please. Mr. Urbain took sides with his mother, as he always did. The trouble, I believe, was that my lady would give very little money—to go with the young lady; and all the other gentlemen wanted a bigger settlement. It was only M. de Cintré who was content. The Lord willed it he should have that one soft spot; it was the only one he had. He may have had very grand connexions, and he certainly made grand bows and speeches and flourishes; but that, I think, was all the measure of his honour. I think he was like what I've heard of comedians; not that I 've ever seen one. But I know he painted his strange face. He might paint it all he would, he could never make me like it! The Marquis could n't abide him, and declared that sooner than take such a husband as that, his daughter, whom he was so fond of, should stop as she was. 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 did n't often come to words, because after a while neither had them to waste; they had too much use for them elsewhere and otherwise. My lady had long ago got over 'minding'—minding, I mean, the worst; for she had had plenty of assistance for throwing things off. In this, I must say, they were very well matched. The Marquis was one who would but too easily go as you please—he had the temper of the perfect gentleman. He got angry once a year—he kept to that; 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 he was paying for the free life he had led; is n't it true they mostly do, sir, when they get old and sad? 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 gave him up too, and if the truth must be told she gave him up as I've seen her clap together—with a sound to make you jump—the covers of a book she has read enough of. When once he was out of the way she could do what she wished with her daughter, and it was all arranged that my poor child and treasure should be handed over to M. de Cintré. You don't know what Mademoiselle was in those days, sir; she was the sweetest, gentlest, fairest!—and guessed as little of what was going on around her as the lamb can guess the butcher. I used to nurse my unhappy master and 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 the Marquis could n't come round. After this they went off, pocketing their fees, but the other one stopped over and did what he could. M. de Bellegarde himself kept crying out that he refused to be given up, that he insisted on getting better, that he would live and look after his daughter. Mademoiselle Claire and the Vicomte—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 the Marquis might recover with just the right things carefully done. 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 took a better turn and came up so wonderfully that 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 before I knew it he had begun again to have his joke at me. The doctor found something that gave him great comfort—some grand light-coloured mixture, a wonderful drug (I'm sure I forget the name) that we kept in a great bottle on the chimney-piece. I used to give it to him through a glass tube; it always made him easier. Presently the doctor went away, after telling me to keep on with the medicine whenever he was bad. After that there was a different sort of person from Poitiers—he came every day. So we were alone in the house—my lady and her poor husband and their three children. Madame Urbain had gone away, with her first small child, but a baby then, to her mother's. You know she's very lively, and her maid told me she did n't like to be where people were dying." Mrs. Bread had again a drop, but she went on soon and with the same quiet consistency: "I think you've guessed, sir, that when the Marquis began to give hopes again my lady was disappointed." And once more she paused, bending on Newman a face that seemed to grow whiter as the darkness settled down on them.
He had listened eagerly—with an eagerness greater even than that with which he had bent his ear to poor Valentin's weak lips. Every now and then, as his companion looked up at him, she reminded him of some old black cat, mild and sleek, protracting the enjoyment of a dish of rich milk. Even her triumph was measured and decorous; even her justice forbore to rattle the scales. "Late one night," she soon continued, "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 had given him a spoonful of the remedy that so seldom failed to ease him. My lady had been there in the early part of the evening; she sat for more than an hour by his bed. Then she went away and left me alone. After midnight she came back and Mr. Urbain 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 a word, 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 did n't think he was very bad, and she told me to go to bed—she would sit a while with him. When he saw me going he gave a sound like a scared child 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 've noticed, sir—has a very high way of giving orders, and I was there to take orders. I went to my room, but I was n't easy; I could n't tell you why. I did n't undress; I sat there waiting and listening. For what would you have said, sir? I could n't have told you, since surely a poor gentleman, however helpless, might be in safety at such a crisis with his wife and his son. It was as if I expected to hear his voice moan 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 where his father was, I found the Count, as he then was, walking up and down. He asked me what I wanted, and I said I had returned 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 herself came out. I noticed she was very pale; she was altogether extraordinary. She looked a moment at the Count and at me, and then held out her arms to the Count. He went to her and she fell upon him and hid her face. I brushed quickly past her into the room and came to the Marquis's bed. He was lying there very white and with his eyes shut; you could have taken him for a corpse. I took hold of his hand and spoke to him, but it was as if I had been dealing with the dead. 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 most prodigious, and asked my lady what in the world had happened and why she had n't called me. She said nothing had happened; that she had only been sitting there with him in perfect stillness. She had closed her eyes, thinking she might sleep, and she had slept she did n't know how long. When she woke up all was over. 'It's surely death, my son, it's unmistakeably 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—oh!—and then he kissed his mother and went away. My lady and I stood there at the bedside. As I looked at my poor master it came to me ever so sharply that he was n't dead, that he was only in a stupor of weakness. And then my lady repeated 'My poor Bread, it's death, it's just death'; and I said 'Yes, my lady, it's certainly death.' I said just the opposite to what I believed; it was my particular 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've seen death before,' said my lady, 'and it's terribly like this.' 'Yes, please, my lady,' said I; and I thought things I did n't say. The night wore away without the Count's coming back, and the Marquise began to be frightened. She was afraid he had had an accident in the dark or met with some prowling people. At last she got so restless that she went below to watch in the court for his return. I sat there alone and the Marquis never stirred."
Here Mrs. Bread paused again, and, for her listener, the most expert story-teller could n't have been more thrilling. Newman made almost the motion of turning the page of a "detective story." "So he was dead!" he exclaimed.
"Three days later 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 stopped below and I returned to the other room. I went to the bed and held up the light to him, but I don't know why I did n't let the candle stick 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 holy name of wonder, if he was truly alive or what or where he was. Still he looked at me a long time, and then made me a sign to put my ear close to him. 'I'm dead, my dear,' he said, 'I'm dreadfully dead. The Marquise has killed me. Yes.' I was all in a tremble. I did n't understand him. I did n't know what had become of him: it was so as if the dead had been speaking. 'But you'll get well now, sir,' I said. And then he whimpered again, ever so weak: 'I would n't get well for a kingdom. I would n'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 and I remember his very words: 'She has cruelly taken my life, as true as I lie here finished. And she'll do the same to my daughter,' he said; 'my poor unhappy child.' And he begged me to prevent that, and then he said he was dying, he was 'knowingly' dead. I was afraid to move or to leave him; I was almost as dead as himself. All of a sudden he asked me to get a pencil and write for him; and then I had to tell him I could n't manage that sort of thing. He asked me to hold him up in bed while he wrote himself, and I said he could never, never trace a line. 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 I moved the candle near him. You 'll think all this monstrous strange, sir—and I shall understand if you scarce believe me. But I must tell things as they happened to me—the rest is with Them that know all! Strangest of all was it, no doubt, that I believed it had somehow been done to him as he said 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 when it came to that; 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, but at last 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 to give it to those who 'd act on it according to right. 'Who do you mean?' I said. W'ho are those who'll act on it?' But he made some sound for all answer; he could n't speak—he was spent. 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 remedy we were never without and that we felt to be regularly precious. I went and looked at it, but it was empty of every drop, as if it had been turned upside down. When I came back his eyes were open—oh so pitifully!—and he was staring at me; but soon he closed them and he said no more. I hid the paper in my dress; I did n't look at what was written on it, though I can read very well, sir, if I have n't a hand for the pen. 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 lost as when they had left him, and I never said a word of his having revived. Mr. Urbain said the doctor had been called to a person in childbirth, but had promised to set out for Fleurières immediately. In another half-hour he arrived, and as soon as he had examined his patient he said we had had a false alarm. The poor gentleman was very low, but was still living. I watched my lady and her son, on that, to see if they looked at each other, and I'm obliged to admit they did n'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 taken such a turn; he had left him so quiet and natural. 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, and I think I may assure you at least that I lost nothing. Mademoiselle and the Vicomte 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 and hard, as I had seen her look when her orders or her wishes had been disobeyed. It was as if the poor Marquis had gone against her intention; and the way she took it from him made me afraid of her. The local apothecary kept him along through the day, and we waited for the gentleman from Paris, who, as I tell you, had already stayed here. They had telegraphed for him early in the morning, and in the evening he arrived. He talked a bit outside with the other one, and then they came in to see their malade together. I was with him, and so was Mr. Urbain. My lady had been to receive the great man, and she did n'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 them with a little looking-glass in his hand. 'I'm sure he's better,' said our country doctor; 'I'm sure he'll come back.' A few moments after he had spoken the Marquis opened his eyes, as if he were waking up, and looked from one of us to the other. I saw him look at me from very, very far off, and yet very hard indeed, as you might 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 sound like the wail of a lost soul. He said something we could n't understand and then a convulsion seemed to take him. He shook all over and closed his eyes, and the doctor jumped up and took hold of my lady. He held her for a moment harder than I've ever seen a gentleman hold a lady. The Marquis was stone dead—the sight of her had done for him. This time there were those there who 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 from a dry throat. "What was written on it?"
"I can't tell you, sir," Mrs. Bread replied. "I could n't read it. It was French."
"But could no one else read it?"
"I never asked a human creature."
"No one has ever seen it?"
"If you do you 'll be the first."
Newman seized his companion's hand in both his own and pressed it almost with passion. "I thank you as I've never thanked any one for anything. I want to be the first; I want it to be mine as this closed fist is mine. You're the wisest old woman in Europe. And what did you do with the blest thing?" Her information had made him feel extraordinarily strong. "For God's sake, let me have it!"
Mrs. Bread got up with a certain majesty. "It's not so easy as that, sir. When you want great things you must wait for great things."
"But waiting's horrible, you know," he candidly smiled.
"I'm sure I've waited; I've waited these many years," she quavered.
"That's very true. You have waited for me. I won't forget it. And yet how comes it you did n't do as M. de Bellegarde said—show the right people what you had got?"
"To whom should I show it and who were the right people?" she asked with high lucidity. "It was n't easy to know, and many's the night I have lain awake thinking of it. Six months afterwards, when they married Mademoiselle to the last person they ought to, I was very near bringing it out. I thought it my duty to do something with such a proof of what had happened, and yet I was terribly afraid. I did n't know what the Marquis had put there, nor 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 the person in the world I cared most for, letting her know her father had written her mother down so shamefully; for that's what he did, I suppose. I thought she would rather suffer from her husband than suffer from them. It was for her and for my dear Mr. Valentin I kept quiet. Quiet I call it, yet it was a queer enough quietness. It worried me and changed me altogether. But for others I held my tongue, and no one, to this hour, knows what had passed there between my poor prostrate master and his wife."
"But evidently there were suspicions," Newman urged. "Where did Count Valentin get his ideas?"
"From our little local man—who has yet never been in the house, as you may imagine, since. He was very ill-satisfied and he did n't care who knew it. He had a very good opinion of his own sharpness, as Frenchmen mostly have, and coming to the house, as he did, day after day, he had more ideas—as a consequence—than he had had, before, any call to put about. And indeed the way the poor Marquis went off as soon as his eyes fell on my lady was a most shocking sight for any kind person. The great man from Paris may have known, after he had taken things in, what to think, but he also knew what not to say, and he hushed it up. But for all he could do the Vicomte and Mademoiselle heard something; they knew their father's death was somehow against nature. Of course they could n'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 some question he could ask me. I was dreadfully afraid he would speak, and always looked away and went about my business. If I were to tell him I was sure he would hate me afterwards, which was what 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 ought n't to look so sad, sir,' I said; 'believe your poor decent old Bread. Such a gallant, handsome young man can have nothing to be sad about.' And I think he understood me; he understood 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 disgrace on a great house. And it was the same with my dear young lady. She did n't know what had happened; she wouldn't hear of knowing. The Marquise and Mr. Urbain asked me no questions, because they had no reason. I was as still as a stopped clock. When I was younger her ladyship thought me false, and now she thought me bête, as they say. How should I have any ideas?"
Newman turned it all gravely over. "But you say that doctor made a talk. Did no one take it up?"
"I don't know how far they went. They're always talking scandal in these foreign countries—you may have noticed—and they must have had their stories about my lady. 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 any one. The doctor could n't say he had n't come honestly by what he suffered. The next year he left the place and bought a practice at Bordeaux, and if there had been ugly tales the worst of them were among ugly people. There could n't have been any very bad ones that those who were respectable believed. My lady herself is so very respectable."
Newman, at this last affirmation, broke into a re sounding 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, my lady's respectability's a treasure; I shall have a great deal of use for my lady's respectability." They reached the empty space in front of the church, where they stopped a moment, looking at each other with something of closer fellowship, like a pair of sociable conspirators. "But what was it," Newman insisted, "what was it she did to the miserable man? She did n't stab him or throttle him or poison him."
"I don't know, sir. No one saw it."
"Unless it was Mr. Urbain," he thoughtfully suggested. "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 'd take it on trust."
"You may be sure I've often thought of it," Mrs. Bread almost cheerfully returned. "I'm sure she did n'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, not speaking, only looking at him, so that he might have the scare and the shock and the horror of it. Then he saw what she meant and, weak and helpless, took fright, was terrified. 'You want to kill me,' he must have said—do you see? 'Yes, M. le Marquis, I want to kill you,' says my lady, and sits down and keeps her dreadful eyes on him. You know my lady's eyes, I think, sir; it was with that look of hers she killed him; it was with the terrible strong will and all the cruelty she put into it. It was as if she had pushed him out of her boat, fevered and sick, into the cold sea, and remained there to push him again should he try to scramble back; making him feel he was lost, by her intention, and watching him awfully sink and drown. It was enough indeed to take the heart out of him, and that, in his state, was enough for a death-stroke."
Newman rendered this vivid image, which in truth did great honour to the old woman's haunted sensibility, the tribute of a comprehensive gasp. "Well, you've got right hold of it—you make me see it and hate it and want to go for it. But I've got to keep tight hold of you too, you know."
They had begun to descend the hill, and she said nothing till they reached the foot. He moved beside her as on air, his hands in his pockets, his head thrown back while he gazed at the stars: he seemed to himself to be riding his vengeance along the Milky Way. "So you're serious about that?" she sighed.
"About your living with me? Why, you don't suppose I've turned you inside out this way not to want to get you into shape again. You're in no kind of shape for these people now—even if they were in any for you; after your seeing what they've done to me—and to her. You just give me the thing I'm after and then you move out."
"I never thought I should have lived to take a new place—unless," Mrs. Bread made moan, "I should have gone some day to Mr. Valentin or, in her own establishment, to my young lady."
"Come to me and you 'll come to her establishment yet, I guess—you 'll come at least to where both those names will be cherished and sacred."
She considered a little and then replied: "Oh, I shall like to pronounce them to you, sir! And if you're going to pull the house down," she added, "I had surely better be clear of it."
"Ah," said Newman almost with the gaiety of a dazzle of alternatives, "it won't be quite my idea to appeal—if that's what you mean—to the police. The meanest and the damnedest things are always beyond their ken and out of their hands. Which has the merit in this case, however, that it leaves the whole story in mine. And to mine," he declared, "you've given power!"
"Ah, you're bolder than I ever was!" she resignedly sighed; and he felt himself now, to whatever end, possessed of her. He walked back with her to the château; the curfew—it could n't have been anything but the curfew, he was sure—had tolled for the weary serfs and villains (as he could also quite have believed) and the small street of Fleurières was unlighted and empty. She promised he should have what he was after, as he had called it, 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 re-enter the house from behind. Newman arranged with her that he should await outside the wall her return with his prize.
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 and dearer to his sight than any love-token ever brought of old by bribed duenna to lurking cavalier. 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're to settle your future, you know; and I'll 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 eyes had followed the disappearance of her treasure, and she gave a heavy sigh. "Well, you've done what you would with me, sir, and I suppose you 'll do it again. You must take care of me now. You're a terribly positive gentleman."
"Just now," said Newman, "I'm a terribly impatient one!" And he bade her good-night and walked rapidly back to the inn. He ordered his vehicle to be prepared for the 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 his fierce curiosity forced a meaning from the tremulous signs, the free English of which might have been, without the hopelessly obscure date:
"My wife has tried to kill me and has done it; I'm horribly, helplessly dying. It 's in order to marry my beloved daughter to M. de Cintré and then go on herself all the same. With all my soul I protest—I forbid it. I'm 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's murder if murder ever was. Ask the doctors, tell every one, show every one this.