第115章

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 down-stairs.

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 pere, mon pere.' 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.