Water covered the floor, two candles were burning on a table; behind the bed, in a little wicker cradle, a child was crying, and, at each of its cries, the tortured mother would try to move, shivering under the icy compresses.
She was bleeding, wounded to death, killed by this birth. Her life was slipping away; and, in spite of the ice, in spite of all care, the haemorrhage continued, hastening her last hour.
She recognized Jacques, and tried to raise her hand. She was too weak for that, but the warm tears began to glide down her cheeks.
He fell on his knees beside the bed, seized one of her hands and kissed it frantically; then, little by little, he approached nearer to the wan face, which quivered at his touch. One of the nurses, standing with a candle in her hand, threw the light upon them, and the doctor, who had stepped into the background, looked at them from the end of the room.
With a far-off voice, breathing hard, she said: “I am going to die, dearest; promise me you will remain till the end. Oh! do not leave me now, not at the last moment!”
He kissed her brow, her hair, with a groan. “Do not be uneasy,” he murmured, “I will stay.”
It was some minutes before she was able to speak again, she was so weak and overcome. Then she continued: “It is yours, the little one. I swear it before God, I swear it to you upon my soul, I swear it at the moment of death. I have never loved any man but you—promise me not to abandon it—” He tried to take in his arms the poor, weak body, emptied of its life blood. He stammered, moved by remorse and grief: “I swear to you I will bring it up and love it. It shall never be separated from me.” Then she held Jacques in an embrace. Powerless to raise her head, she held up her blanched lips in an appeal for a kiss. He bent his mouth to receive this poor, suppliant caress.
Calmed a little, she murmured in a low tone: “Take it, that I may see that you love it.”
He went to the cradle and took up the child.
He placed it gently on the bed between them. The little creature ceased to cry. She whispered: “Do not stir!” And he remained motionless. There he stayed, holding in his burning palms a hand that shook with the tremor of death, as he had held, an hour before, another hand that had trembled with the tremor of love. From time to time he looked at the hour, with a furtive glance of the eye, watching the hand as it passed midnight, then one o’clock, then two.
The doctor had retired. The two nurses, after roaming around for some time with light step, slept now in their chairs. The child slept, and the mother, whose eyes were closed, seemed to be resting also.
Suddenly, as the pale daylight began to filter through the torn curtains, she extended her arms with so startling and violent a motion that she almost threw the child upon the floor. There was a rattling in her throat; then she lay on her back motionless, dead.
The nurses, who had hastened to her side, said: “It is over.”
He looked once at this woman he had loved, then at the hand that marked four o’clock, and, forgetting his overcoat, fled in his evening clothes with the child in his arms.
After she had been left alone, his young bride had waited calmly at first, in the Japanese boudoir. Then, seeing that he did not return, she went back to the drawing room, indifferent and quiet in appearance, but frightfully disturbed. Her mother, perceiving her alone, asked where her husband was. She replied: “In his room; he will return presently.”
After an hour, as everybody asked about him, she told of the letter, of the change in Jacques’ face, and her fears of some misfortune.
They still waited. The guests gone; only the parents and near relatives remained. At midnight, they put the bride in her bed, shaking with sobs. Her mother and two aunts were seated on the bed listening to her weeping. Her father had gone to the police headquarters to make inquiries. At five o’clock a light sound was heard in the corridor. The door opened and closed softly. Then suddenly a cry, like the mewing of a cat, went through the house, breaking the silence.
All the women of the house were up with one bound, and Berthe was the first to spring forward, in spite of her mother and her aunts, clothed only in her night-robe.
Jacques was standing in the middle of the room, livid, breathing hard, holding a child in his arms.
The four frightened women looked at him, but Berthe suddenly took courage, her heart wrung with anguish, and ran to him saying: “What is it? Tell me! What is it?”
He looked as if he had lost his senses and answered in a husky voice: “It is—it is—I have a child, and its mother has just died.” And he put into her arms the howling little baby.
Berthe, without saying a word, seized the child and embraced it, straining it to her heart. Then, turning toward her husband with her eyes full of tears, she said: “The mother is dead, you say?” He answered: “Yes, just died—in my arms—I had broken with her since last summer—I knew nothing about it—only the doctor sent for me and—”
Then Berthe murmured: “Well, we will bring up this little one.”
Maître Saval, a notary, was considered an artist in Vernon, where he lived. He was passionately fond of music; though still young, he was bald, always carefully shaved, stoutish but not disagreeably so—and wore gold eyeglasses, instead of old-fashioned spectacles. He played the piano a little, also the violin, and gave musical evenings for
