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the pillow on which rested his brother’s head. A little streamlet of blood coursed over the dying man’s brow, his eyes were closed. And four factory hands held the shafts of the stretcher. Their heavy shoes crushed down the carpet, and fragile articles of furniture were thrust aside anyhow to open a passage for this invasion of horror and of fright.
Amid his bewilderment, an idea occurred to Beauchene, who continued to direct the operation.
“No, no, don’t leave him there. There is a bed in the next room. We will take him up very gently with the mattress, and lay him with it on the bed.”
It was Maurice’s room; it was the bed in which Maurice had died, and which Constance with maternal piety had kept unchanged, consecrating the room to her son’s memory. But what could she say? How could she prevent Blaise from dying there in his turn, killed by her?
The abomination of it all, the vengeance of destiny which exacted this sacrilege, filled her with such a feeling of revolt that at the moment when vertigo was about to seize her and the flooring began to flee from beneath her feet, she was lashed by it and kept erect. And then she displayed extraordinary strength, will, and insolent courage. When the stricken man passed before her, her puny little frame stiffened and grew. She looked at him, and her yellow face remained motionless, save for a flutter of her eyelids and an involuntary nervous twinge on the left side of her mouth, which forced a slight grimace. But that was all, and again she became perfect both in words and gesture, doing and saying what was necessary without lavishness, but like one simply thunderstruck by the suddenness of the catastrophe.
However, the orders had been carried out in the bedroom, and the bearers withdrew greatly upset. Down below, directly the accident had been discovered, old Moineaud had been told to take a cab and hasten to Dr. Boutan’s to bring him back with a surgeon, if one could be found on the way.
“All the same, I prefer to have him here rather than in the basement,” Beauchene repeated mechanically as he stood before the bed. “He still breathes. There! see, it is quite apparent. Who knows? Perhaps Boutan may be able to pull him through, after all.”
Denis, however, entertained no illusions. He had taken one of his brother’s cold yielding hands in his own and he could feel that it was again becoming a mere thing, as if broken, wrenched away from life in that great fall. For a moment he remained motionless beside the deathbed, with the mad hope they he might, perhaps, by his clasp infuse a little of the blood in his own heart into the veins of the dying man. Was not that blood common to them both? Had not their twin brotherhood drunk life from the same source? It was the other half of himself that was about to die. Down below, after raising a loud cry of heartrending distress, he had said nothing. Now all at once he spoke.
“One must go to Ambroise’s to warn my mother and father. Since he still breathes, perhaps they will arrive soon enough to embrace him.”
“Shall I go to fetch them?” Beauchene goodnaturedly inquired.
“No, no! thanks. I did at first think of asking that service of you, but I have reflected. Nobody but myself can break this horrible news to mamma. And nothing must be done as yet with regard to Charlotte. We will see about that by and by, when I come back. I only hope that death will have a little patience, so that I may find my poor brother still alive.”
He leant forward and kissed Blaise, who with his eyes closed remained motionless, still breathing faintly. Then distractedly Denis printed another kiss upon his hand and hurried off.
Constance meantime was busying herself, calling the maid, and requesting her to bring some warm water in order that they might wash the sufferer’s bloodstained brow. It was impossible to think of taking off his jacket; they had to content themselves with doing the little they could to improve his appearance pending the arrival of the doctor. And during these preparations, Beauchene, haunted, worried by the accident, again began to speak of it.
“It is incomprehensible. One can hardly believe such a stupid mischance to be possible. Down below the transmission gearing gets out of order, and this prevents the mechanician from sending the trap up again. Then, up above, Bonnard gets angry, calls, and at last decides to go down in a fury when he finds that nobody answers him. Then Morange arrives, flies into a temper, and goes down in his turn, exasperated at receiving no answer to his calls for Bonnard. Poor Bonnard! he’s sobbing; he wanted to kill himself when he saw the fine result of his absence.”
At this point Beauchene abruptly broke off and turned to Constance. “But what about you?” he asked. “Morange told me that he had left you up above near the trap.”
She was standing in front of her husband, in the full light which came through the window. And again did her eyelids beat while a little nervous twinge slightly twisted her mouth on the left side. That was all.
“I? Why I had gone down the passage. I came back here at once, as Morange knows very well.”
A moment previously, Morange, annihilated, his legs failing him, had sunk upon a chair. Incapable of rendering any help, he sat there silent, awaiting the end. When he heard Constance lie in that quiet fashion, he looked at her. The assassin was herself, he no longer doubted it. And at that moment he felt a craving to proclaim it, to cry it aloud.
“Why, he thought that he had begged you to remain there on the watch,” Beauchene resumed, addressing his wife.
“At all events his words never reached me,” Constance duly answered. “Should I have moved if he had asked me to do that?” And turning towards the accountant she, in her turn, had the courage to fix her pale eyes upon him. “Just remember, Morange, you rushed down like a madman, you said nothing to me, and I went on my way.”
Beneath those pale eyes, keen as steel, which dived into his own, Morange was seized with abject fear. All his weakness, his cowardice of heart returned. Could he accuse her of such an atrocious crime? He pictured the consequences. And then, too, he no longer knew if he were right or not; his poor maniacal mind was lost.
“It is possible,” he stammered, “I may simply have thought I spoke. And it must be so since it can’t be otherwise.”
Then he relapsed into silence with a gesture of utter lassitude. The complicity demanded was accepted. For a moment he thought of rising to see if Blaise still breathed; but he did not dare. Deep peacefulness fell upon the room.
Ah! how great was the anguish, the torture in the cab, when Blaise brought Mathieu and Marianne back with him. He had at first spoken to them simply of an accident, a rather serious fall. But as the vehicle rolled along he had lost his self-possession, weeping and confessing the truth in response to their despairing questions. Thus, when they at last reached the factory, they doubted no longer, their child was dead. Work had just been stopped, and they recalled their visit to the place on the morrow of Maurice’s death. They were returning to the same stillness, the same grave-like silence. All the rumbling life had suddenly ceased, the machines were cold and mute, the workshops darkened and deserted. Not a sound remained, not a soul, not a puff of that steam which was like the very breath of the place. He who had watched over its work was dead, and it was dead like him. Then their affright increased when they passed from the factory to the house amid that absolute solitude, the gallery steeped in slumber, the staircase quivering, all the doors upstairs open, as in some uninhabited place long since deserted. In the anteroom they found no servant. And it was indeed in the same tragedy of sudden death that they again participated, only this time it was their own son whom they were to find in the same room, on the same bed, frigid, pale, and lifeless.
Blaise had just expired. Boutan was there at the head of the bed, holding the inanimate hand in which the final pulsation of blood was dying away. And when he saw Mathieu and Marianne, who had instinctively crossed the disorderly drawingroom, rushing into that bedchamber whose odor of nihility they recognized, he could but murmur in a voice full of sobs:
“My poor friends, embrace him; you will yet have a little of his last breath.”
That breath had scarce ceased, and the unhappy mother, the unhappy father, had already sprung forward, kissing those lips that exhaled the final quiver of life, and sobbing and crying their distress aloud.