Jeanne seemed so astounded at this idea, that she could scarcely get her breath to protest. "Oh, M. l"Inspecteur, oh! Who ever heard of anything so wild! Is _that_ what people are saying? Oh, why!" she laughed out in her amazement, "she hardly knew him by sight."
"Why," said the man evidently not speaking to Jeanne, "didn"t you say that she ran down along the bank of the river, screaming that he had killed himself for her sake?"
"Yes, I said that," answered another man"s voice, astonished and on the defense, "and she _did_ too! and when the body was pulled out she flung herself down on it, and shrieked that she wanted to die with him."
Jeanne broke in now, at the top of her voice, calling Heaven and earth and all the saints to witness that she never heard of anything so preposterous in her life, and that anybody in Bayonne could tell them so, and what crazy stories would people be making up next out of whole cloth? "Some one is trying to play a joke on M. l"Inspecteur from Saint Sauveur. n.o.body _could_ have heard our Madame say such things, because she couldn"t possibly have said them, any more than she could about a clerk who sold her a yard of cloth over the counter. For she didn"t know any more about the young man than that! Why, she _never_ knew him except as the son of one of her friends. He never came to the house, and more than that she hadn"t even laid eyes on him for more than two years. He had been in America and is only just returned, day before yesterday.
_Any_body you ask here can tell you that."
"Nom de Dieu!" said the first man"s voice in extreme surprise. "Hadn"t seen him for two years!"
"No, he hasn"t even been in France since he was a little young boy!" The first man laughed as though the joke were on his comrade.
The second man"s voice said, still defending himself, but now uncertainly, "Very queer his following her right up there, if he scarcely knew her--what was _he_ doing in Saint Sauveur at this season, I"d like to know, if not...."
"Oh, as to that," said Jeanne carelessly, "I happen to know why he was there. I saw the young monsieur day before yesterday, just as he was about to take the seven o"clock train, valise in hand, and I had a talk with him, our young mademoiselle and I."
"Why, I thought you hardly knew him by sight in this house and he never came here," broke in the second policeman suspiciously.
"I didn"t say it was here we saw him," said Jeanne, "and I said it was Madame who hardly knew him. But he is the brother of a little girl cla.s.smate of our mademoiselle. They are all children together. Well, every evening at six, except the days when Mademoiselle takes her music lesson, I go to the school to fetch her home, and that afternoon, as we were coming up the rue Port Neuf, we met the young man going towards the station, and when he saw our mademoiselle, he stopped for a moment for a chat, as young folks will. He was in high good spirits and said he was off for a fine business trip to the mountains and expected to have a good time as well as do business, and would be in Cauterets the next morning. Well, you know Cauterets is just over a ridge of the Pyrenees from Saint Sauveur and Mlle. Marise said, "Why, is not that queer, my maman is at Saint Sauveur just now! Why don"t you take the other train at Pierrefitte-Nestalos and run up to Saint Sauveur for half a day and take Maman a message from me, something I forgot to ask her before she left," and the young man said he had been half planning to go to Saint Sauveur on business anyhow, and to tell him the message and if he saw her maman, he"d repeat it. Only he said, "I don"t believe your maman knows me," and Mlle. Marise said, "Well, you tell her you are Danielle"s big brother, and she"ll know. She knows all about my school-mates," and the young man asked which sanitarium it was in Luz and Mlle. Marise reminded him, "No, it"s at Saint Sauveur where Maman is," and told him the name of the sanitarium, and then he said he hoped he"d get a little fishing in the Gavarnie, and I said the water would be too high, and he said he"d go and have a look at it anyway. And then he went along with his valise. Mlle. Marise is at school or you could ask her all about this too."
"Eh _bien_, my friend from Saint Sauveur!" said the first man"s voice, in a rallying tone of jocularity. "This sounds as though some of you country-people must have lost your heads a bit. Come now. Did you yourself _hear_ her, saying all that?"
"No, of course I didn"t," said the other man stiffly, "I was in the office at Luz. How could I know anything was happening? But the men who got the body out said she was awful to hear."
"Oh, I don"t doubt," agreed Jeanne, "that she was. Any woman would have been driven half crazy by such an awful thing, the only son of a friend, killed before your eyes. And she is terribly nervous into the bargain, the least little thing sends her off into hysteria. Some nights I have to rub her back until eleven o"clock to quiet her. And the doctor has warned her against the least excitement. Why, two days ago there was an important prize-contest at our mademoiselle"s school and the poor woman, although she would have given anything to go, was forbidden by the doctor. He said the excitement would be too much for her, and she would feel it so if her daughter were defeated. You can ask any one whether she was there! And that evening, although Mlle. Marise had won the prize, she was so worked up, I had to give her a sleeping draught to get her a little rest, poor thing...."
"Were they _sure_ of what she said?" asked the first man of the other.
"Would they swear to it?"
"I don"t see how anybody could hear anything!" put in Jeanne. "In ordinary weather the gave of Gavarnie makes such a noise down there in that gorge, you can"t hear your own voice even if you yell. I remember last summer when Madame was taking the cure, when we went to see her ...
and now in flood...."
"They"d certainly swear to her being in a terrible state of agitation,"
said the other in a rather nettled tone. He went on, "You saw for yourself what was put in the paper about it this morning, how they had met there by design and spent the night together at the hotel and all."
"You won"t get far in an inquest, my young friend, if you take what a newspaper says. Newspapers are always wrong," said the first man pityingly, in a tone of experienced scepticism. "If this happened at ten in the morning, they can"t have been together more than an hour. If he was seen here in Bayonne at six o"clock the evening before, he couldn"t possibly have reached Saint Sauveur before nine the next morning. You know you wait three or four hours for the connection at Lourdes. To my mind there"s nothing in it. I will take you to the convent to see her, if you insist, but I have no liking for scenes with hysteric women."
"Oh, messieurs!" said Jeanne shocked at the idea, "you couldn"t possibly expect to see her _now_! Not for a week, at least, the doctor said."
"A _week_!" cried the second voice, dismayed, "sacrebleu, I can"t kick my heels for a week, waiting."
"Well, suppose we go through the usual routine?" suggested the other.
"Go to see the family of the young man, and if they confirm all this ...
there"s no use going further. There is plenty of time for you to get all the facts you need for your report, and catch the one o"clock train back to Saint Sauveur."
Jeanne said now jocularly, with a change of manner to the intimate knowing tone of a servant-girl speaking to a policeman, "If you"re not in a hurry, you must stay to have a gla.s.s in honor of the house. We have an excellent white wine, and the patron never counts the bottles."
Marise heard her lead them down the hall and across the landing to the dining-room, and then in an instant heard her come back and run on tip-toe up the hall. She thrust her head through the curtains, showing a haggard gray face, glistening with sweat, and whispered, "Don"t move, don"t speak to a soul till I get back. I must see the Garniers before they do."
Even without this, Marise would have been incapable of moving hand or foot. Half an hour later, she was sitting in exactly the same position frozen and deathly sick, when Jeanne let herself in cautiously. From the gust of sounds that came in from across the landing, as the door was opened, the two policemen seemed to be greatly enjoying both Isabelle and the white wine.
Then Jeanne shut the door on the loud voices and laughter; and in their place Marise heard the sound of dreadful hoa.r.s.e gasps as Jeanne tried to get her breath after running. It did not sound like the breathing of a human being, but like that of some large animal, like a horse or cow, exhausted and panting.
Jeanne came up the hall, fighting thus for her breath, and dragging her feet. She shuffled heavily into the salon, and across to the closed curtains, where locked in her nightmare, the child waited for some one to come to the rescue.
The old woman drew the curtain a little aside. Marise caught one glimpse of her face, now swollen and darkly congested. She saw that Jeanne was nodding rea.s.suringly at her; she heard Jeanne say in a whisper, "They understood, it"s all right, they...." Then, without the slightest warning, she turned to one side and fell headlong inside the curtains.
For an instant she lay as if dead, her ghastly face at Marise"s feet.
But almost at once she opened her eyes and tried to smile and to speak.
Only a guttural sound came from her lips. A look of terrible anxiety came into her face. She motioned with one hand pa.s.sionately, that the curtain should be drawn shut to conceal her.
Marise, frightened out of her palsy, was kneeling by her sobbing, "Jeanne, Jeanne."
She thought of what Jeanne had done for her mother, and flinging her arms around her as she lay, she kissed her furiously, the tears coming in a flood and pouring down on the dreadful face, now strangely twisted to one side. Jeanne put one arm around her, and tried again to say something. But her tongue moved senselessly in her distorted mouth; the sweat stood out on her forehead as she struggled to speak.
Finally she gave up her desperate attempt, and put her finger to her lips, exhorting Marise to silence. Such a wildness of apprehension was in her eyes, that the girl m.u.f.fled her sobs, hiding her face on the inert breast, clinging with all her might to the half-dead body.
She thought that Jeanne was dying. She thought that she herself was dying. She longed to die, there, that instant, and escape the shame and sorrow and misery that buried her so deep, so much deeper even than Jeanne knew.
The sound of laughter and voices chimed out merrily again. Isabelle had opened the other door. Marise held her breath, her face buried on Jeanne"s breast. The old woman tightened the clasp of her arm. They strained their ears.
Then they heard the men"s feet clatter down the stairs.
CHAPTER XXI
I
It was Mlle. Hasparren who found them so, Mlle. Hasparren with her shabby coat b.u.t.toned crookedly, who ran up the stairs as the sergents de ville went down, who came in without a word of explanation to take charge of things.
She expressed no surprise at finding Marise where she was, nor at Jeanne"s condition. She acted as if nothing she found could have surprised her. She lifted Marise up with strong loving arms, led her into her own room and made her lie down with a handkerchief soaked in smelling salts under her nose, and a cold bandage across her forehead, while Isabelle stayed with Jeanne. She did not pet Marise or kiss her, but from all her quiet presence breathed an a.s.surance that she was there to take care of her, and when she said, "I"ll stay right here, dear, till your father comes," Marise fell into a fit of quiet thankful weeping that washed away the nervous trembling of her hands and lips.
She lay, turned on her side, sobbing, the tears running fast from her eyes, and thought of nothing, except the steady look on Mlle.
Hasparren"s face. "Now I must leave you here, dear child. I will send Isabelle for the doctor, and I will stay with Jeanne."
Presently Mlle. Hasparren came back and sat down again by the bed. She looked perfectly self-possessed and exactly as usual, which gave Marise the most inexpressible comfort. She said that the doctor was there, had seen Jeanne and that she was not dying at all, not likely to, but had simply had a partial stroke of paralysis, such as often happened to people of her age--nothing in the least unusual about it. Jeanne was so old, that any little thing might bring on a stroke of this sort and she had worked so valiantly all her life, she was really older than her age.
She and Isabelle and the doctor had got Jeanne undressed and in her own bed, and now she would be all right, only she had made them understand that she wanted to see Marise. The doctor had told her that she mustn"t see any one, but she had become so agitated that he thought it best to humor her. "Only, of course, poor thing, she can"t say a word that any one can understand. It"s just an old woman"s whim." Marise thought to herself that it might be more than an old woman"s whim, and getting up at once went with Mlle. Hasparren into the room where Jeanne lay on the bed. The doctor was on one side; on the other was Isabelle, half frightened and half delighted with the excitement; a visit from gallant sergents de ville, and from the doctor all in one day!
Jeanne motioned them all out with her one arm, and only when the door had closed after them, did she beckon Marise to her. She did not try to speak now. She only looked at the girl, with a terrible concentration, and put her finger to her lips.
"Do you mean, Jeanne?" whispered Marise, her lips trembling, "that I am not to tell any one?"
Jeanne closed her eyes rapidly in a.s.sent.
"Oh, no, no, _no_," cried the poor child. "Of course not, never, never, never!"
But the old woman was not satisfied. She reached out for Marise"s hand and drew her close, her eyes burning in her disfigured face. She struck her lips repeatedly with her fingers, as though, try as she might, she could not express the urgency of her command.