I Will Repay | Page 6

de Marny are very wide, and Matthieu's lantern only threw a dim,
flickering light upon the floor.
The men stopped outside the Vicomte's room. Matthieu opened it, and
then the five men disappeared within, with their heavy burden.
A moment later old Pétronelle, who had been Juliette's nurse, and was
now her devoted slave, came to her, all bathed in tears.
She had just heard the news, and she could scarcely speak, but she
folded the young girl, her dear pet lamb, in her arms, and rocking
herself to and fro she sobbed and eased her aching, motherly heart.
But Juliette did not cry. It was all so sudden, so awful. She, at fourteen
years of age, had never dreamed of death; and now there was her

brother, her Philippe, in whom she had so much joy, so much pride - he
was dead - and her father must be told...
The awfulness of this task seemed to Juliette like unto the last
Judgment Day; a thing so terrible, so appalling, so impossible, that it
would take a host of angels to proclaim its inevitableness.
The old cripple, with one foot in the grave, whose whole feeble mind,
whose pride, whose final flicker of hope was concentrated in his boy,
must be told that the lad had been brought home dead.
"Will you tell him, Pétronelle?" she asked repeatedly, during the brief
intervals when the violence of the old nurse's grief subsided somewhat.
"No - no - darling, I cannot - I cannot -" moaned Pétronelle, amidst a
renewed shower of sobs.
Juliette's entire soul - a child's soul it was - rose in revolt at thought of
what was before her. She felt angered with God for having put such a
thing upon her. What right had He to demand a girl of her years to
endure so much mental agony?
To lose her brother, and to witness her fathers's grief! She couldn't! she
couldn't! she couldn't! God was evil and unjust!
A distant tinkle of a bell made all her nerves suddenly quiver. Her
father was awake then? He had heard the noise, and was ringing his
bell to ask for an explanation of the disturbance.
With one quick movement Juliette jerked herself free from the nurse's
arms, and before Pétronelle could prevent her, she had run out of the
room, straight across the dark landing to a large panelled door opposite.
The old Duc de Marny was sitting on the edge of his bed, with his long,
thin legs dangling helplessly to the ground.
Crippled as he was, he had struggled to this upright position, he was
making frantic, miserable efforts to raise himself still further. He, too,

had heard the dull thud of feet, the shuffling gait of men when carrying
a heavy burden.
His mind flew back half-a-century, to the days when he had witnessed
scenes wherein he was then merely a half-interested spectator. He knew
the cortège composed of valets and friends, with the leech walking
beside that precious burden, which anon would be deposited on the bed
and left to the tender care of a mourning family.
Who knows what pictures were conjured up before that enfeebled
vision? But he guessed. And when Juliette dashed into his room and
stood behore him, pale, trembling, a world of misery in her great eyes,
she knew that he guessed and that she need not tell him. God had
already done that for her.
Pierre, the old Duc's devoted valet, dressed him as quickly as he could.
M. le Duc insisted on having his habit de cérémonie, the rich suit of
black velvet with the priceless lace and diamond buttons, which he had
worn when they laid le Roi Soleil to his eternal rest.
He put on his orders and buckled on his sword. The gorgeous clothes,
which had suited him so well in the prime of his manhood, hung
somewhat loosely on his attenuated frame, but he looked a grand and
imposing figure, with his white hair tied behind with a great black bow,
and the fine jabot of beautiful point d'Angleterre falling in a soft
cascade below his chin.
Then holding himself as upright as he could, he sat in his invalid chair,
and four flunkeys in full livery carried him to the deathbed of his son.
All the house was astir by now. Torches burned in great sockets in the
vast hall and along the massive oak stairway, and hundreds of candles
flickered ghostlike in the vast apartments of the princely mansion.
The numerous servants were arrayed on the landing, all dressed in the
rich livery of the ducal house.
The death of an heir of the Marnys is an event that history makes a note

of.
The old Duc's chair was placed close to the