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 Ihaven'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 child-birth, but that he promised to set out for Fleurieres 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 chateau, 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 Fleurieres.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 some one?""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.