Short Stories, vol 10 | Page 8

money, and started the pair of them on a farm--this very farm.
I did not see them for three years, and then I learned that Louise had
died of consumption. But my father and mother died, too, in their turn,
and it was two years more before I found myself face to face with Jean.
"At last one autumn day about the end of October the idea came into
my head to go hunting on this part of my estate, which my father had
told me was full of game.
"So one evening, one wet evening, I arrived at this house. I was
shocked to find my father's old servant with perfectly white hair,
though he was not more than forty-five or forty-six years of age. I made
him dine with me, at the very table where we are now sitting. It was
raining hard. We could hear the rain battering at the roof, the walls, and
the windows, flowing in a perfect deluge into the farmyard; and my
dog was howling in the shed where the other dogs are howling to-night.
"All of a sudden, when the servant-maid had gone to bed, the man said
in a timid voice:
"'M'sieu le Baron.'
"'What is it, my dear Jean?'
"'I have something to tell you.'
"'Tell it, my dear Jean.'
"'You remember Louise, my wife.'
"'Certainly, I remember her.'
"'Well, she left me a message for you.'
"'What was it?'
"'A--a--well, it was what you might call a confession.'
"'Ha--and what was it about?'
"'It was--it was--I'd rather, all the same, tell you nothing about it-- but I
must--I must. Well, it's this--it wasn't consumption she died of at all. It
was grief--well, that's the long and short of it. As soon as she came to
live here after we were married, she grew thin; she changed so that you
wouldn't know her, M'sieu le Baron. She was just as I was before I
married her, but it was just the opposite, just the opposite.
"'I sent for the doctor. He said it was her liver that was affected--he said

it was what he called a "hepatic" complaint--I don't know these big
words, M'sieu le Baron. Then I bought medicine for her, heaps on
heaps of bottles that cost about three hundred francs. But she'd take
none of them; she wouldn't have them; she said: "It's no use, my poor
Jean; it wouldn't do me any good." I saw well that she had some hidden
trouble; and then I found her one time crying, and I didn't know what to
do, no, I didn't know what to do. I bought her caps, and dresses, and
hair oil, and earrings. Nothing did her any good. And I saw that she
was going to die. And so one night at the end of November, one snowy
night, after she had been in bed the whole day, she told me to send for
the cure. So I went for him. As soon as he came--
"Jean," she said, "I am going to make a confession to you. I owe it to
you, Jean. I have never been false to you, never! never, before or after
you married me. M'sieu le Cure is there, and can tell you so; he knows
my soul. Well, listen, Jean. If I am dying, it is because I was not able to
console myself for leaving the chateau, because I was too fond of the
young Baron Monsieur Rene, too fond of him, mind you, Jean, there
was no harm in it! This is the thing that's killing me. When I could see
him no more I felt that I should die. If I could only have seen him, I
might have lived, only seen him, nothing more. I wish you'd tell him
some day, by and by, when I am no longer here. You will tell him,
swear you, will, Jean--swear it--in the presence of M'sieu le Cure! It
will console me to know that he will know it one day, that this was the
cause of my death! Swear it!"
'Well, I gave her my promise, M'sieu It Baron, and on the faith of an
honest man I have kept my word.'
"And then he ceased speaking, his eyes filling with tears.
"Good God! my dear boy, you can't form any idea of the emotion that
filled me when I heard this poor devil, whose wife I had killed without
suspecting it, telling me this story on that wet night in this very kitchen.
"I exclaimed: 'Ah! my poor Jean! my poor Jean!'
"He murmured: 'Well, that's all, M'sieu le Baron. I could not help it,
one way or the other--and now it's all over!'
"I caught his hand across the table, and I began to weep.