The Message | Page 6

instinct of despair, she had buried herself deep
in the hay, hiding her face in it to deaden those dreadful cries--pudency
even stronger than grief. She was sobbing and crying like a child, but
there was a more poignant, more piteous sound in the sobs. There was
nothing left in the world for her. The maid pulled the hay from her, her
mistress submitting with the supine listlessness of a dying animal. The
maid could find nothing to say but "There! madame; there, there----"
"What is the matter with her? What is it, niece?" the old canon kept on
exclaiming.
At last, with the girl's help, I carried Juliette to her room, gave orders
that she was not to be disturbed, and that every one must be told that
the Countess was suffering from a sick headache. Then we came down
to the dining-room, the canon and I.
Some little time had passed since we left the dinner-table; I had
scarcely given a thought to the Count since we left him under the
peristyle; his indifference had surprised me, but my amazement
increased when we came back and found him seated philosophically at
table. He had eaten pretty nearly all the dinner, to the huge delight of
his little daughter; the child was smiling at her father's flagrant
infraction of the Countess' rules. The man's odd indifference was
explained to me by a mild altercation which at once arose with the
canon. The Count was suffering from some serious complaint. I cannot
remember now what it was, but his medical advisers had put him on a
very severe regimen, and the ferocious hunger familiar to convalescents,
sheer animal appetite, had overpowered all human sensibilities. In that
little space I had seen frank and undisguised human nature under two
very different aspects, in such a sort that there was a certain grotesque
element in the very midst of a most terrible tragedy.
The evening that followed was dreary. I was tired. The canon racked
his brains to discover a reason for his niece's tears. The lady's husband
silently digested his dinner; content, apparently, with the Countess'
rather vague explanation, sent through the maid, putting forward some
feminine ailment as her excuse. We all went early to bed.
As I passed the door of the Countess' room on the way to my night's
lodging, I asked the servant timidly for news of her. She heard my
voice, and would have me come in, and tried to talk, but in vain--she
could not utter a sound. She bent her head, and I withdrew. In spite of

the painful agitation, which I had felt to the full as youth can feel, I fell
asleep, tired out with my forced march.
It was late in the night when I was awakened by the grating sound of
curtain rings drawn sharply over the metal rods. There sat the Countess
at the foot of my bed. The light from a lamp set on my table fell full
upon her face.
"Is it really true, monsieur, quite true?" she asked. "I do not know how
I can live after that awful blow which struck me down a little while
since; but just now I feel calm. I want to know everything."
"What calm!" I said to myself as I saw the ghastly pallor of her face
contrasting with her brown hair, and heard the guttural tones of her
voice. The havoc wrought in her drawn features filled me with dumb
amazement.
Those few hours had bleached her; she had lost a woman's last glow of
autumn color. Her eyes were red and swollen, nothing of their beauty
remained, nothing looked out of them save her bitter and exceeding
grief; it was as if a gray cloud covered the place through which the sun
had shone.
I gave her the story of the accident in a few words, without laying too
much stress on some too harrowing details. I told her about our first
day's journey, and how it had been filled with recollections of her and
of love. And she listened eagerly, without shedding a tear, leaning her
face towards me, as some zealous doctor might lean to watch any
change in a patient's face. When she seemed to me to have opened her
whole heart to pain, to be deliberately plunging herself into misery with
the first delirious frenzy of despair, I caught at my opportunity, and told
her of the fears that troubled the poor dying man, told her how and why
it was that he had given me this fatal message. Then her tears were
dried by the fires that burned in the dark depths within her. She grew
even paler. When I drew the letters from beneath my pillow and held
them out to her,