The American (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907)/Chapter 19
XIX
He had a rare gift for sitting still when nothing else would serve, and rare was his opportunity to use it on his journey to Switzerland. The successive hours of the night brought him no sleep; but he kept motionless in his corner of the railway-carriage, his eyes closed, and the most observant of his fellow-travellers might have envied him his apparent rest. Toward morning rest really came, as an effect of mental rather than of physical fatigue. He slept for a couple of hours, and at last, waking, found his eyes attach themselves to one of the snow-powdered peaks of the Jura, behind which the sky was just reddening with the dawn. But he took in neither the cold mountain nor the warm light: his consciousness began to throb again, on the very instant, with a sense of his wrong. He got out of the train half an hour before it reached Geneva—alighted in the pale early glow and at the station indicated in Valentin's telegram. A drowsy station-master was on the platform with a lantern and the hood of his overcoat over his head, and near him stood a gentleman who advanced to meet Newman. This personage, a man of about forty, showed a tall lean figure, a long brown face, marked eyebrows, high moustaches and fresh light gloves. He took off his hat, looking very grave, and articulated, "Monsieur!" To which our hero replied: "You 've been acting, in this tragedy, for the Count?"
"I unite with you in having been chosen for that sad honour," said the gentleman. "I had placed myself at M. de Bellegarde's service in this melancholy affair, together with M. de Grosjoyaux, who is now at his bedside. M. de Grosjoyaux, I believe, has had the honour of meeting you in Paris, but as he is a better nurse than I, he remained with our poor friend. Bellegarde has been eagerly expecting you."
"And how is the rascal?" said Newman. "He was badly hit?"
"The doctor has condemned him; we brought a surgeon with us. But he will die in the best sentiments. I sent last evening for the curé of the nearest French village, who spent an hour with him. The curé was quite satisfied."
"Heaven forgive us!" groaned Newman. "I 'd rather the surgeon were so! And can he see me—shall he know me?"
"When I left him, half an hour ago, he had fallen asleep—after a feverish, wakeful night. But we shall see." And this companion proceeded to lead the way out of the station to the village, explaining as he went that the little party was lodged in the humblest of Swiss inns, where, however, they had succeeded in making M. de Bellegarde much more comfortable than could at first have been expected. "We're old companions-in-arms," the personage said; "it's not the first time one of us has helped the other to lie easy. It's a very nasty wound, and the nastiest thing about it is that Valentin's adversary was no shot. He put his beastly bullet where he could. It entered, accursedly, our poor friend's left side, just below the heart."
As they picked their way, in the grey, deceptive dawn, between the manure-heaps of the village street, Newman's new acquaintance narrated the particulars of the meeting. The conditions had been that if the first exchange of shots should fail to satisfy one of the parties a second should take place. Valentin's first bullet had done exactly what Newman's companion was convinced he had intended it to do; it had grazed the arm of M. Stanislas Kapp, just scratching the flesh. M. Kapp's own projectile, meanwhile, had passed at ten good inches from the person of Valentin. The representatives of M. Stanislas had demanded another shot, which was then, on Valentin's absolute insistence, granted. But Valentin had fired into space, and the young Alsatian had done effective execution. "I saw, when we met him on the ground," said Newman's informant, that he was not going to be commode. A mixture of the donkey and the buffalo—with no sense whatever of proportion." Valentin had immediately been installed at the inn, while M. Stanislas and his friends had withdrawn to regions unknown. The police authorities of the canton had waited upon the others, had placed them under technical arrest and had drawn up a long procès-verbal; but as the wine had been drawn—alas!—the powers would have to drink it. Newman asked if a message had not been sent to the family, and learned that up to a late hour of the previous night Valentin had opposed it. He had refused to believe his wound dangerous. After his interview with the curé, however, he had consented, and a telegram had been despatched to his mother. "But the Marquise will scarcely have time—!" So judged Newman's conductor.
"Well, it's a wicked, wanton, infernal affair!" So judged Newman himself.
"Ah, you don't approve?" his friend gravely questioned, while he himself remained passionately careless of the involved reflexion on this gentleman's control of the encounter.
"Approve? cried Newman. "I wish that when I had him there night before last I had locked him up in my cabinet de toilette!"
Valentin's supporter opened his eyes and shook his head up and down two or three times, portentously, with a little flute-like whistle. But he had evidently been prepared, in respect to this outer barbarian, for some oddity of emotion and expression. They had in any case reached the inn, where a stout maid-servant in a nightcap was on the threshold, with a lantern, to take the traveller's bag from the porter who trudged behind him. Valentin was lodged on the ground floor at the back of the house, and Newman's companion went along a stone-faced passage and softly opened a door. Then he beckoned to the visitor, who advanced and looked into the room, lighted by a single shaded candle. Beside the fire sat M. de Grosjoyaux asleep in his dressing-gown—a short stout fair man, with an air of gay surprise, whom Newman had seen several times in Valentin's company. On the bed lay Valentin, pale and still, his eyes closed—a figure very shocking to Newman, who had known it hitherto awake to its finger-tips. M. de Grosjoyaux's colleague pointed to an open door beyond and whispered that the doctor was within, where he kept guard. So long as Valentin slept, or seemed to sleep, of course he was not to be approached; so our hero withdrew for the present, committing himself to the care of the half-waked bonne. She took him to a room above-stairs and introduced him to a bed on which a magnified bolster, in yellow calico, figured as a counterpane. He lay down and, in spite of his counterpane and most other things, slept for three or four hours. When he awoke the morning was advanced and the sun filling his window, outside of which he heard the clucking of hens.
While he was dressing there came to his door a message from M. de Grosjoyaux and his companion, who amiably proposed he should breakfast with them. Presently he went downstairs to the little stone-paved dining-room, where the maid-servant, who had taken off her nightcap, was serving the repast. M. de Grosjoyaux was there, surprisingly fresh for a gentleman who had been playing sick-nurse half the night; he now rubbed his hands very constantly and very hard and watched the breakfast-table attentively. Newman renewed acquaintance with him and learned that Valentin was still in a doze; the doctor, who had had a fairly tranquil night, was at present sitting with him. Before M. de Grosjoyaux's associate reappeared Newman learned that his name was M. Ledoux and that Bellegarde's acquaintance with him dated from the days when they served together in the Pontifical Zouaves. M. Ledoux was the nephew of a distinguished Ultramontane bishop. At last he came in with an effect of dress in which an ingenious attempt at adjustment at once to a confirmed style and to the peculiar situation was visible, and with a gravity tempered by a decent deference to the best breakfast the Croix Helvétique had ever set forth. Valentin's servant, who was allowed but with restrictions the honour of attending his master, had been lending a light Parisian hand in the kitchen. The two Frenchmen did their best to prove that if circumstances might overshadow they could n't really obscure the national gift for good talk, and M. Ledoux delivered a neat little eulogy on poor Bellegarde, whom he pronounced the most charming Englishman he had ever known.
"Do you call him an Englishman?" Newman asked.
M. Ledoux smiled a moment and then just fell short of an epigram: "C'est plus qu'un Anglais, le cher homme—c'est un Anglomane!" Newman returned, sturdily and handsomely, that any country might have been proud to claim him, and M. de Grosjoyaux remarked that it was really too soon to deliver a funeral oration on poor Bellegarde. "Evidently," said M. Ledoux. "But I could n't help observing this morning to Mr. Newman that when a man has taken such excellent measures for his salvation as our dear friend did last evening, it seems almost a pity he should put it in peril again by coming back to the world." M. Ledoux was a great Catholic, and Newman thought him a queer mixture. His countenance, by daylight, had an amiably saturnine cast; he had a large lean nose and looked like an old Spanish picture. He appeared to think the use of pistols at thirty paces a very perfect arrangement, provided, should one get hit, one might promptly see the priest. He took, clearly, a great satisfaction in Valentin's interview with that functionary, and yet his general tone was far from indicating a sanctimonious habit of mind. M. Ledoux had evidently a high sense of propriety and was furnished, in respect to everything, with an explanation and a grave grin that combined together to push his moustache up under his nose. Savoir-vivre—knowing how to live—was his strong point, in which he included knowing how to die; but, as Newman reflected with a good deal of dumb irritation, he seemed disposed to delegate to others the application of his mastery of this latter resource. M. de Grosjoyaux was quite of another complexion and could but have regarded his friend's theological unction as the sign of an inaccessibly superior spirit. His surprise was so bright that it made him look amused; as if, under the impression of M. Kapp's mere mass, he could n't recover from the oddity of these hazards, that of the translation of so much large looseness into a thing so fine as a direction—even, as it were, a dreadfully wrong one. He could have understood the coup if it had been his own indeed, and he kept looking through the window, over the shoulder of M. Ledoux, at a slender tree by the end of a lane opposite the inn, as if measuring its distance from his extended arm and secretly wishing that, since the association of ideas was so close, he might indulge in a little speculative practice.
Newman found his company depressing, almost irritating. He himself could neither eat nor talk; his soul was sore with grief and anger and the weight of his double sorrow intolerable. He sat with his eyes on his plate, counting the minutes, wishing at one moment that Valentin would see him and leave him free to go in quest of Madame de Cintré and his lost happiness, and mentally calling himself a vile brute the next, for the egotism of his impatience. He at least was poor enough company, and even his acute preoccupation and his general lack of the habit, determined by all his need, of pondering the impression he produced, did n't prevent his guessing the others to be puzzled at poor Bellegarde's taking such a fancy to a dull barbarian as to desire him at his deathbed. After breakfast he strolled forth alone into the village and looked at the fountain, the geese, the open barn doors, the brown, bent old women who showed their hugely-darned stocking-heels at the end of their slowly-clicking sabots, as well as at the beautiful view of snowy Alp and purple Jura hanging across either end of the rude street. The day was brilliant; early spring was in the air and the sunshine, and the winter's damp trickled out of the cottage eaves. It was birth and brightness for all nature, even for chirping chickens and other feathered waddling particles, and it was to be death and burial for poor foolish, generous, precious Valentin. Newman walked as far as the village church and went into the small graveyard beside it, where he sat down and looked at the awkward tablets planted about. They were all sordid and hideous, and he could feel only the hardness and coldness of death. He got up and came back to the inn, where he found M. Ledoux having coffee and a cigarette at a little green table which he had caused to be carried into the small garden. Newman, learning that the doctor was still sitting with Valentin, asked if he might n't be allowed to relieve him; he had a great desire to be useful to their patient. This was, through M. Ledoux, easily arranged; the doctor was very glad to go to bed. He was a youthful and rather jaunty practitioner, but he had a clever face and the ribbon of the Legion of Honour in his buttonhole; Newman listened attentively to his instructions and took mechanically from his hand an old book that had lain on the windowseat of the inn, recommended by him as a help to wakefulness and which proved an odd volume of "Les Liaisons Dangereuses."
Valentin still lay with his eyes closed and without visible change of condition. Newman sat down near him and for a long time narrowly watched him. Then he let his vision stray with his consciousness of his own situation—range away and rest on the chain of the Alps disclosed by the drawing of the scant white cotton curtain of the window, through which the sunshine passed and lay in squares on the red-tiled floor. He tried to interweave his gloom with strains of hope, but only half succeeded. What had happened to him was violent and insolent, like all great strokes of evil; unnatural and monstrous, it showed the hard hand of the Fate that rejoices in the groans and the blood of men, in the tears and the terrors of women, and he had no arms against it. At last a sound struck on the stillness and he heard Valentin's voice.
"It can't be about me you're pulling that long face!" He found when he turned that his patient lay in the same position, but with eyes now open and showing the glimmer of a smile. It was with a very slender strength that he felt the pressure of his hand answered. "I've been watching you for a quarter of an hour," Valentin went on; "you've been looking as if you too had had to swallow some vile drug. You're greatly disgusted with me, I see. Well, of course! So am I!"
"Oh, I shan't abuse you," said Newman. "I feel too badly. And how are you getting on?"
"Oh, I'm getting off! They've quite settled that. Are n't you here to see me off?"
"That 's for you to settle; you can get well if you try," Newman declared with a queer strained quaver.
"My dear fellow, how can I try? Trying's violent exercise, and that sort of thing is n't in order for a man with a hole in his side as big as your hat, which begins to bleed if he moves a hair's breadth. I knew you 'd come," he continued; "I knew I should wake up and find you here; so I'm not surprised. But last night I was very impatient. I did n't see how I could keep still without you. It was a matter of keeping still, just like this; as still as a mummy in his case. You talk about trying; I tried that! Well, here I am yet—these twenty hours. It's more like twenty days." Valentin's speech was slowly taken, with strange precautions and punctuations, but it had, however faint, the flicker of his gaiety, and he seemed almost to say what he wanted. It was visible, however, that he was in extreme pain, and at last he again closed his eyes. Newman begged him to make no effort—just, as he called it, to take his ease; the doctor had left urgent orders against worry. "Oh," returned Valentin, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow—to-morrow—!" And he paused again. "No, not to-morrow, perhaps, but to-day. I can't eat and drink, but I can talk. What's to be gained, at this pass, by renun—renunciation? I must n't use such big words. I was always a chatterer; Lord, how I've bavardé in my day!"
"That's a reason for keeping quiet now," said Newman. "We know how beautifully you talk—it's all right about that."
But Valentin, without heeding him, went on with the same effect of trouble and of pluck. "I wanted to see you because you've seen my sister. Does she know—will she come?"
Newman felt himself the poorest of deceivers. "Yes, by this time she must know."
"Did n't you tell her?" Valentin asked. And then, in a moment: "Did n't you bring me any message from her?" His eyes now covered his friend like lifted lamps.
"I did n't see her after I got your telegram. I wrote to her."
"And she sent you no answer?"
Newman managed to reply that Madame de Cintré had left Paris. "She went yesterday to Fleurières."
"Yesterday—to Fleurières? Why did she go to Fleurières? What day is this? What day was yesterday? Ah then, I shan't see her," Valentin moaned. "Fleurières is too far!" And he became dark and dumb again, only breathing a little harder. Newman sat silent, invoking duplicity, but was relieved at being able soon to believe him really too weak to be curious. He did, however, at last break out again. "And my mother—and my brother—will they come? Are they at Fleurières?"
"They were in Paris, but I did n't see them either," Newman answered. "If they received your telegram in time they 'll have started this morning. Otherwise they 'll be obliged to wait for the night express and change, and will arrive at the same hour I did."
"They won't thank me—they won't thank me," Valentin murmured. "They 'll pass an atrocious night, and Urbain does n't like the early morning air. I don't remember ever in my life to have seen him before noon—before breakfast. No one ever saw him. We don't know how he is then. Perhaps he's different. Who knows? Posterity perhaps will know. That's the time he works in his cabinet, at the history of the Princesses. But I had to send for them—had n't I? And then I want to see my mother sit there where you sit and say good-bye to her—hear her above all say hers to me. Perhaps, after all, I don't know her—she may have some surprise for me. Don't think you know her yet, yourself; perhaps she may surprise you. But if I can't see Claire I don't care—what do you call it?—a red cent. Have you then green sous or blue ones or any other colour? Ah vous, mon cher, vous en avez, vous, de toutes les couleurs! But what's the matter—while I've been dreaming of her? Why did she go to Fleurières to-day? She never told me. What has happened? Ah, she ought to have guessed I'm here—in this bad way. It's the first time in her life she ever disappointed me. Poor, poor Claire!"
"You know we're not man and wife quite yet—your sister and I," said Newman. "She does n't yet account to me for all her actions." He tried to throw off this statement with grace, but felt how little the muscles of his face served him.
Valentin looked at him harder. "Have you two unimaginably quarrelled?"
"Never, never, never!" Newman exclaimed.
"How happily you say that!" said Valentin. "You're going to be happy—la-la!" In answer to this stroke of irony, none the less powerful for being so unconscious, all poor Newman could do was to give a helpless and ridiculous grin, for the conscious failure of which he then more ridiculously blushed. Valentin, still playing over him the fitful light of fever, presently said: "But something is the matter with you. I watched you just now; you have n't a bridegroom's face."
"My dear fellow," Newman desperately pleaded, "how can I show you a bridegroom's face? If you think I enjoy seeing you lie here and not being able to help you—!"
"Why, you're just the man to be jolly and—what do you call it?—to crow; don't forfeit your right to it! I 'm a proof of your wisdom. When was a man ever down when he could say 'I told you so!' You told me so, you know. You did what you could about it. You said some very good things; I've thought them carefully over. But, my dear friend, I was right, all the same. This is the regular way."
"I didn't do what I ought," said Newman. "I ought to have done something better."
"For instance?"
"Oh, something or other. I ought to have treated you as a vicious small boy and have locked you up."
"Well, I'm a very small boy now," Valentin softly sighed, "and God knows I've been vicious enough! I'm even rather less than an infant. An infant's helpless, but it's generally voted promising. I'm not promising, eh? Society can't lose a less valuable member." Newman was strongly moved. He got up and turned his back on his friend and walked away to the window, where he stood looking out but only vaguely seeing. "No, I don't like the look of your back," Valentin continued. "I've always been an observer of backs; yours is quite out of sorts."
Newman returned to his bedside and begged him to be quiet. "Only rest and get well, give yourself the very best chance. That's what you want and what you must do. Get well and help me."
"I told you you were in trouble! But how can I 'help' you?" Valentin wailed.
"I 'll let you know when you're better. You were always awfully enquiring; there's something to get well for!" Newman answered with resolute animation.
Valentin relapsed once more and lay a long time without speaking. He seemed even to have fallen asleep. But at the end of half an hour he was again conversing. "I'm rather sorry about that place in the bank. Who knows but I might have become another Rothschild? But I was n't meant for a banker; bankers are not so easy to kill. Don't you think I've been very easy to kill? It's not like a serious man. It's really very mortifying. It's like telling your hostess you must go, when you count upon her begging you to stay, and then finding she does no such thing. 'Really—so soon? You've only just come!' This beastly underbred life of ours does n't make me any such polite little speech."
Newman for some time said nothing, but at last he broke out. "It's a bad case—it's a bad case—it's the worst case I ever met. I don't want to say anything unpleasant, but I can't help it. I've seen men dying before—and I've seen men shot. I've seen men in the worst kind of holes—worse even than yours. But it always seemed more natural; they were of no account compared to you—and at any rate I did n't care. But now—damnation, damnation! You might have done something more to the purpose. It's about the meanest wind-up of a man's legitimate business I can imagine!"
Valentin feebly waved his hand to and fro. "Don't insist—don't insist! It's taking a mean advantage. For you see at the bottom—down at the bottom in a little place as small as the end of a wine-funnel—I agree with you! A few moments after this the doctor put his head through the half-opened door and, perceiving his charge was awake, came in to feel his pulse. He shook his head and declared he had talked too much—ten times too much. "Nonsense!" his patient protested; "a man sentenced to death is allowed to get in first all he can. He can't talk after, and if he was ever a talker—! Have you never read an account of an execution in a newspaper?" he went on. "Don't they always set a lot of people at the prisoner—lawyers, reporters, priests—to make him talk? But it's not Newman's fault; he sits there as mum as a death's-head."
The doctor observed that it was time the wound should be dressed again; MM. de Grosjoyaux and Ledoux, who had already witnessed this delicate operation, taking Newman's place as assistants. Newman withdrew, learning from his fellow-watchers in the other room that they had received a telegram from the Marquis to the effect that their message had been delivered in the Rue de l'Université too late to allow him to take the morning train, but that he would start with his mother in the evening. Our friend wandered away into the village again and walked about restlessly for two or three hours. The day had, in its regulated gloom, the length of some interminable classic tragedy. At dusk he came back and dined with the doctor and M. Ledoux. The dressing of Valentin's wound had been a very critical business; the question was definitely whether he could bear a repetition of it. He then declared that he must beg of Mr. Newman to deny himself for the present the satisfaction of sitting with M. de Bellegarde; more than any one else, apparently, he had the flattering but fatal gift of interesting him more than he could bear. M. Ledoux, at this, swallowed a glass of wine in silence; he must have been wondering what the deuce Bellegarde found so exciting in the American.
Newman, after dinner, went up to his room, where, flinging himself too on his bed at his grim length, he lay staring, for blank weariness, at the lighted candle and thinking that Valentin was dying downstairs. Late, when the candle had burnt low, came a soft tap at his door. The doctor stood there with another light and a motion of despair.
"He must faire la fête toujours! He insists on seeing you, and I 'm afraid you must come. I think that at this rate he 'll hardly outlast the night."
Newman went back to Valentin's room, which he found lighted by a taper on the hearth, but with its occupant begging for something brighter. "I want to see your face. They say you work me up," he went on as Newman complied with this request, and I confess I 've felt worked up; but it is n't you—it's my own great intelligence, that sacred spark, of which you 've such an opinion. Sit down there and let me look at you again." Newman seated himself, folded his arms and bent a heavy gaze on his friend. He felt as if he were now playing a part, mechanically, in the most lugubrious of comedies. Valentin faced him thus for some time. "Yes, this morning I was right; you've something on your mind heavier than ever I've had. Come, I'm a dying man, and it's indecent to deceive me. Something happened after I left Paris. It was n't for nothing that my sister started off at this season of the year for Fleurières. Why was it? It sticks in my crop. I've been thinking it over, and if you don't tell me I shall guess."
"I had better not tell you," Newman mildly reasoned. "It won't do you any good."
"If you think it will do me any good not to tell me you're very much mistaken. There's trouble about your marriage."
"Yes. There's trouble about my marriage."
"Good!" With which Valentin again waited a little. "They've stopped it off."
"They've stopped it off," Newman admitted. Now that he had spoken out he found in it a relief that deepened as he went on. "Your mother and brother have broken faith. They've decided that it can't take place. They've decided I'm not good enough—when they come to think of it. They 've taken back their word. Since you want to know, there it is!" Valentin uttered a strange sound, thrice lifting his hands and letting them drop. "I'm sorry not to have anything better to tell you of them," Newman pursued. "But it's not my fault. I was indeed bewildered enough when your telegram reached me; I was quite upside down. You may imagine whether I feel any better now."
Valentin gasped and moaned as if his wound were throbbing. "Broken faith, broken faith! And my sister—my sister?"
"Your sister's very unhappy; she has consented to give me up. I don't know why—I don't know what they've done to her; it must be something pretty bad. In justice to her you ought to know. They've made her suffer—what it is they must have put her through! I have n't seen her alone, but only before them. We had an interview yesterday morning. They let me have it full in the face. They told me to go about my business. It seems to me a very bad case. I'm sorry to have such a report to make of them. I'm angry, I'm sore, I'm sick."
Valentin lay there staring, his eyes more brilliantly lighted, his lips soundlessly parted, a flush of colour in his pale face. Newman had never before uttered so many words in the plaintive key, but now, in speaking to his friend in that friend's extremity, he had a sense of making his lament somewhere within the presence of the power that men pray to in trouble; he felt his outgush of resentment as a spiritual act, an appeal to higher protection. "And Claire," the young man breathed; "Claire? She has given you up?"
"I don't really believe it."
"No, don't believe it, don't believe it. She's gaining time. Believe that."
"I immensely pity her!" said Newman.
"Poor, poor Claire!" Valentin sighed. "But they—but they—?" And he paused again. "You saw them; they dismissed you, face to face?"
"Face to face—rather!"
"What did they say?"
"They said they could n't stand a commercial person."
Valentin put out his hand and laid it on Newman's arm. "And about their promise—their engagement with you?"
"They made a distinction. They said it was to hold good only until Madame de Cintré accepted me."
"But since she did—!"
"Well, since she did—after she did—they found, as I understand, that they could n't."
Valentin lay staring—his flush died away. "Don't tell me any more. I'm ashamed."
"You? You're the soul of honour," said Newman very simply.
Valentin groaned and averted his head. For some time nothing more was said. Then he turned back again and found a certain force to press Newman's arm. "It's very bad—very bad. When my people—when my 'race'—come to that, it is time for me to pass away. I believe in my sister; she 'll explain. Pardon her, allow for her, be patient with her; wait for that. If she can't—if she can't make her conduct clear: well, forgive her somehow; at any rate don't curse her. She'll pay—she has paid; with her one chance of happiness. But for the others it's very bad—very bad. You take it very hard? No, it's a shame to make you say so." He closed his eyes and again there was a silence. Newman felt almost awed; he had stirred his companion to depths down into which he now shrank from looking. Presently Valentin fixed him again, releasing his arm. "I apologise. Do you understand? Here on my death-bed. I apologise for my family. For my mother. For my brother. For the name I was proud of. Voilà!" he added softly.
Newman for all answer took his hand and kept it in his own. He remained quiet, and at the end of half an hour the doctor noiselessly returned. Behind him, through the half-open door, Newman saw the two questioning faces of MM. de Grosjoyaux and Ledoux. The doctor laid a hand on the patient's wrist and sat looking at him. He gave no sign, and the two gentlemen came in, M. Ledoux having first beckoned to some one outside. This was M. le curé, who carried in his hand an object unknown to Newman and covered with a white napkin. M. le curé was short, round and red: he advanced, pulling off his little black cap to Newman, and deposited his burden on the table; and then he sat down in the best armchair, folding his hands across his person. The other gentlemen had exchanged glances which expressed unanimity as to the timeliness of their presence. But for a long time Valentin neither spoke nor moved. It was Newman's belief afterwards that M. le curé had gone to sleep. At last, abruptly, their friend pronounced Newman's name. This visitor went to him and he said in French: "You're not alone. I want to speak to you alone."
Newman looked at the doctor and the doctor looked at the curé, who looked back at him; and then the doctor and the curé together gave a shrug. "Alone—for five minutes," Valentin repeated. "Please leave us." The curé took up his burden again and led the way out, followed by his companions. Newman closed the door behind them and came back to Valentin, who had watched all this intently.
"It 's very bad, it 's very bad," he said after Newman had seated himself close. "The more I think of it the worse it is."
"Oh, don't think of it!" Newman groaned.
But his friend went on without heeding him. "Even if they should come round again the shame—the baseness—is there."
"Oh, they won't come round!" said Newman.
"Well, you can make them."
"Make them?"
"I can tell you something—a great secret—an immense secret. You can use it against them—frighten them, coerce them."
"A secret!" Newman repeated. The idea of letting Valentin, on his deathbed, confide to him any matter sacredly intimate, shocked him, for the moment, and made him draw back. It seemed an illicit way of arriving at information and even had a vague analogy with listening at a keyhole. Then suddenly the thought of reducing Madame de Bellegarde and her son to the forms of submission became attractive, and, as to lose in any case no last breath of the spirit for which he had felt such a kindness, he brought his head nearer. For some time, however, nothing more came. Valentin but covered him with kindled, expanded, troubled eyes, and he began to believe he had spoken in delirium. But at last he spoke again.
"There was something done—something done at Fleurières. It was some wrong, some violence, I believe some cruelty. It may have been—God forgive me now—some crime. My father—something happened to him: I don't know what; I Ve been ashamed, afraid, to know. But a bad business—a worse even than yours—there was that. My mother knows—Urbain knows."
"Something happened to your father?" Newman permitted himself to ask.
Valentin looked at him still more wide-eyed. "He did n't get well. They did n't let him."
"'Let' him?"—Newman stared back. "Get well of what?"
But the immense effort he had made, first to decide to utter these words and then to bring them out, appeared to have taken his last strength. He lapsed again into silence and Newman sat watching him. "Do you understand?" he began again presently. "At Fleurières. You can find out. Mrs. Bread knows. Tell her I made this point—at this hour—of your asking her. She 'll give you the truth itself—and then you 'll show them you know it. It may do something for you. It may make the difference. If it does n't, tell every one. It will—it will"—here Valentin's voice sank to the feeblest murmur—"it will pay them."
"Pay them?"—Newman wondered.
"What you owe them!"
The words died away in a long vague wail. Newman stood up, deeply impressed, not knowing what to say; his heart was beating as never. "Thank you," he said at last. "I'm much obliged." But Valentin seemed not to hear him; he remained silent and his silence continued. At last Newman went and opened the door. M. le curé re-entered, bearing his sacred vessel and followed by a young ministrant at his altar in a white stole, by the three gentlemen and by Valentin's servant. It was quite processional.