"Patience, Mere Marchette," he said, nodding encouragingly; "all goes well."
She did not speak, but she gave him a look so eloquent with grat.i.tude that words were not needed. Then she lay quiet again and the silent watch went on. Five minutes pa.s.sed, ten, fifteen; the young doctor became extremely uneasy. At last in the distance he heard a clock strike one. At the sound Mere Marchette opened her eyes with a quick, startled glance.
"Pierre!" she cried, in a voice of intense love and terror.
"Victor has gone to the station to meet him; patience yet a little."
The old woman regarded him with a look of terrible pathos.
"G.o.d could not let me die without seeing Pierre," she murmured.
At that moment, through the still afternoon, was heard the sound of a carriage. Mere Marchette"s eyes shone with a wild and fevered expression.
"You must be calm," Lommel said. "I will bring him to you."
He administered the little stimulant she could take, and pa.s.sed quickly out into the corridor.
V.
Dr. Lommel closed the door of the ward behind him and started down the corridor, but at the first step he stopped suddenly with a terrible sinking of the heart. Victor was coming toward him, but alone, and with a white face.
"Victor," Jean cried, in a voice intense but low, "what has happened?
Where is Pierre?"
"There has been an accident," Victor returned. "A bridge broke under his train."
"But you do not know--" began Lommel.
"Yes," the other interrupted; "M. de Brue, who was on the train and escaped with a broken arm, was in the same compartment with Pierre. He rode through on the engine that came in for help. Pierre had told him I was to meet him, and so when M. de Brue saw me he stopped to say that the soldier was struck on the chest and killed instantly."
Dr. Lommel stood regarding his companion with terror and compa.s.sion in his look.
"_O mon Dieu!_" he said; "poor Mere Marchette!"
"It will kill her," Victor responded.
"That is nothing," was the doctor"s reply. "It is not death, but the agony she will suffer."
At that moment the nurse came out of the ward and hurried down the corridor to join them.
"M. le Docteur," she said, "I beg your pardon, but the excitement of Mere Marchette is so great that I venture to suggest that her grandson hurry."
She glanced around as she spoke, and saw that he was not there. An exclamation rose to her lips; the doctor checked her by a glance.
"Go back to Mere Marchette," said he, "and say that I am cautioning Pierre-- Stay, I will go myself. Wait here, Victor."
He went back into the ward and pa.s.sed down between the cots, from which eyes that the indifference of illness scarcely left human, watched him with faint curiosity. Mere Marchette was sitting up in bed, trembling with eagerness and excitement. All the reserve which she had maintained for weeks had been swept aside. The moment for which she had kept herself alive had come at last, and there was no longer any need to save her energy. Her eyes shone, a feverish glow was on her cheek, even her withered lips had taken on for the moment a wan and ghostly red. It seemed to the doctor, as he looked at her, as if all the vitality which remained in her feeble frame was being expended in a last quick fire.
"Ah," he said, "I have been warning Pierre to be calm, when it is you to whom I should speak. Come, it will take only a moment, but I must give you treatment before I can let you see him."
As he spoke he put his forefinger up to her forehead with a gesture he always used in hypnotizing her. Mere Marchette struggled a moment as if she could not yield to anything which delayed her reunion with Pierre; then she sank into a hypnotic sleep. The doctor leaned forward and spoke with an emphasis which he had never before used with his patient.
"When you awake," he said, "you will see Pierre; the person I shall bring to you is your grandson. Remember," he repeated, "it is Pierre who will come in with me."
He breathed on her eyelids in the usual method of awaking her.
"Now," he said, "I will bring him, Mere Marchette."
He went back to where Victor and the nurse were awaiting him.
"Victor," he said quickly, "you know the experiment M. Charcot tried yesterday when he made a hypnotized patient believe one person was another; I have told Mere Marchette that you are Pierre. You must take his place; come quickly."
The young man drew back.
"I cannot," he protested.
"You must," Lommel returned, almost fiercely. "Come."
VI.
It was with terrible inward misgiving that Jean and Victor entered the ward; but as soon as the eyes of Mere Marchette fell upon the latter they knew that the experiment was a success. Such a look of yearning love illumined the withered old features, such an unspeakable joy shone in the sunken eyes, such quivering eagerness was expressed by the outstretched hands, that the young men found their way to the bedside blinded by tears. An inarticulate cry, that was half moan and half sob, burst from the lips of Mere Marchette as Victor fell on his knees by the bedside. Carried out of himself by genuine feeling, the young man had no need to simulate the emotions necessary for the part he was playing.
Seizing the wrinkled hand which lay before him on the bed he covered it with tears and kisses; then, with a cry of piercing sweetness, Mere Marchette flung herself forward into his arms.
"O Pierre, Pierre!" she sobbed. "Oh, the good G.o.d, the good G.o.d!"
She clasped her arms about his neck, she strained him to her breast, the feebleness of her dying embrace transformed to strength by the divine fervor of maternal love. She mingled her kisses with a soft and hardly articulate babble of endearing words; the terms which she had used over his cradle she mingled with the pet names of his childhood and the loving speech which belonged to maturer years. She held him away from her that she might look at him, and her eyes were holden so that she saw in his face the changes that her fancy had pictured in thinking of the real Pierre.
"Ah," she said, "how brown thou hast grown; and thou art such a man now!
Ah, thou rogue," she went on, laughing softly, "I knew thou hadst grown a beard--and not a word of it in thy letters. But I knew."
She put her thin fingers under his chin and with a sudden gravity lifted his face.
"Look in my eyes," she said; "why dost thou turn away? Hast thou not been a good boy; hast thou not loved the good G.o.d?"
Poor Victor, overwhelmed with the dreadful consciousness of deceit, found it almost impossible, in face of this touching and pious affection, to meet the old woman"s glance. He struggled to force himself to look into her eyes unwaveringly. Dr. Lommel laid his hand upon his companion"s shoulder.
"Yes, Mere Marchette," said he, "Pierre is a good lad; that I will answer for."
The old woman raised her eyes toward heaven, and her lips moved. She was evidently praying. She had received extreme unction just before noon, but this moment in which she commended her grandson to G.o.d was to her no less solemn than that of her own last communion. Then she put out her hand to Dr. Lommel with her smile of wonderful sweetness and an air of n.o.ble simplicity.
"You have been so kind to old Mere Marchette," were her words; "the good G.o.d will reward you."
He looked at the old dying peasant woman and tried to speak, but his sobs choked him. He bent and kissed her hand and laid it back gently in that of Victor. Her little strength was evidently failing fast. With a last effort she made a movement to drag herself nearer to Victor. He understood her wish and supported her in his arms.
"Promise me," she murmured, her voice wasted almost to a whisper, "that thou wilt be good."