he said: “She was a saint” in the same tone as he said “Dominus vobiscum.”
The vicomte in his ordinary tone then asked: “Are you not going to eat something?” Jeanne did not reply, not knowing he was speaking to her, and he repeated: “You had better eat something to keep up your stomach.” She replied in a bewildered manner: “Send at once for papa.” And he went out of the room to send someone on horseback to Rouen.
She remained plunged in a sort of motionless grief, seeing nothing, feeling nothing, understanding nothing. She only wanted to be alone. Julien came back. He had dined and he asked her again: “Won’t you take something?” She shook her head. He sat down with an air of resignation rather than sadness, without speaking, and they both sat there silent, till at length Julien arose, and approaching Jeanne, said: “Would you like to stay alone now?” She took his hand impulsively and replied: “Oh, yes! leave me!”
He kissed her forehead, murmuring: “I will come in and see you from time to time.” He went out with Widow Dentu, who rolled her easy chair into the next room.
Jeanne shut the door and opened the windows wide. She felt the soft breath from the mown hay that lay in the moonlight on the lawn. It seemed to harrow her feelings like an ironical remark.
She went back to the bed, took one of the cold, inert hands and looked at her mother earnestly. She seemed to be sleeping more peacefully than she had ever done, and the pale flame of the tapers which flickered at every breath made her face appear to be alive, as if she had stirred. Jeanne remembered all the little incidents of her childhood, the visits of little mother to the “parloir” of the convent, the manner in which she handed her a little paper bag of cakes, a multitude of little details, little acts, little caresses, words, intonations, familiar gestures, the creases at the corner of her eyes when she laughed, the big sigh she gave when she sat down.
And she stood there looking at her, repeating half mechanically: “She is dead,” and all the horror of the word became real to her. It was mamma lying there — little mother — Mamma Adelaide who was dead. She would never move about again, nor speak, nor laugh, nor sit at dinner opposite little father. She would never again say: “Good-morning, Jeannette.” She was dead!
And she fell on her knees in a paroxysm of despair, her hands clutching the sheet, her face buried in the covers as she cried in a heartrending tone: “Oh, mamma, my poor mamma!” Then feeling that she was losing her reason as she had done on the night when she fled across the snow, she rose and ran to the window to drink in the fresh air. The soothing calmness of the night entered her soul and she began to weep quietly.
Presently she turned back into the room and sat down again beside her mother. Other remembrances came to her: those of her own life — Rosalie, Gilberte, the bitter disillusions of her heart. Everything, then, was only misery, grief, unhappiness and death. Everyone tried to deceive, everyone lied, everyone made you suffer and weep. Where could one find a little rest and happiness? In another existence no doubt, when the soul is freed from the trials of earth. And she began to ponder on this insoluble mystery.
A tender and curious thought came to her mind. It was to read over in this last watch, as though they were a litany, the old letters that her mother loved. It seemed to her that she was about to perform a delicate and sacred duty which would give pleasure to little mother in the other world.
She rose, opened the writing desk and took from the lower drawer ten little packages of yellow letters, tied and arranged in order, side by side. She placed them all on the bed over her mother’s heart from a sort of sentiment and began to read them. They were old letters that savored of a former century. The first began, “My dear little granddaughter,” then again “My dear little girl,” “My darling,” “My dearest daughter,” then “My dear child,” “My dear Adelaide,” “My dear daughter,” according to the periods — childhood, youth or young womanhood. They were all full of little insignificant details and tender words, about a thousand little matters, those simple but important events of home life, so petty to outsiders: “Father has the grip; poor Hortense burnt her finger; the cat, ‘Croquerat,’ is dead; they have cut down the pine tree to the right of the gate; mother lost her prayerbook on the way home from church, she thinks it was stolen.”
All these details affected her. They seemed like revelations, as though she had suddenly entered the past secret heart life of little mother. She looked at her lying there and suddenly began to read aloud, to read to the dead, as though to distract, to console her.
And the dead woman appeared to be pleased.
Jeanne tossed the letters as she read them to the foot of the bed. She untied another package. It was a new handwriting. She read: “I cannot do without your caresses. I love you so that I am almost crazy.”
That was all; no signature.
She put back the letter without understanding its meaning. The address was certainly “Madame la Baronne Le Perthuis des Vauds.”
Then she opened another: “Come this evening as soon as he goes out; we shall have an hour together. I worship you.” In another: “I passed the night longing in vain for you, longing to look into your eyes, to press my lips to yours, and I am insane enough to throw myself from the window at the thought that you are another’s….”
Jeanne was perfectly bewildered. What did that mean? To whom, for whom, from whom were these words of love?
She went on reading, coming across fresh impassioned declarations, appointments with warnings as to prudence, and always at the end the six words: “Be sure to burn this letter!”
At last she opened an ordinary note, accepting an invitation to dinner, but in the same handwriting and signed: “Paul d’Ennemare,” whom the baron called, whenever he spoke of him, “My poor old Paul,” and whose wife had been the baroness’ dearest friend.
Then a suspicion, which immediately became a certainty, flashed across Jeanne’s mind: He had been her mother’s lover.
And, almost beside herself, she suddenly threw aside these infamous letters as she would have thrown off some venomous reptile and ran to the window and began to cry piteously. Then, collapsing, she sank down beside the wall, and hiding her face in the curtain so that no one should hear her, she sobbed bitterly as if in hopeless despair.
She would have remained thus probably all night, if she had not heard a noise in the adjoining room that made her start to her feet. It might be her father. And all the letters were lying on the floor! He would have to open only one of them to know all! Her father!
She darted into the other room and seizing the letters in handfuls, she threw them all into the fireplace, those of her grandparents as well as those of the lover; some that she had not looked at and some that had remained tied up in the drawers of the desk. She then took one of the tapers that burned beside the bed and set fire to this pile of letters. When they were reduced to ashes she went back to the open window, as though she no longer dared to sit beside the dead, and began to cry again with her face in her hands: “Oh, my poor mamma! oh, my poor mamma!”
The stars were paling. It was the cool hour that precedes the dawn. The moon was sinking on the horizon and turning the sea to mother of pearl. The recollection of the night she passed at the window when she first came to the “Poplars” came to Jeanne’s mind. How far away it seemed, how everything was changed, how different the future now seemed!
The sky was becoming pink, a joyous, love-inspiring, enchanting pink. She looked at it in surprise, as at some phenomenon, this radiant break of day, and asked herself if it were possible that, on
