The American by Henry James (free e reader txt) 📕

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.