V.
THE NUNCUPATIVE WILL.
In their sad task upstairs Attalie held command. Camille went and came on short errands to and from the door of her room, and was let in only once or twice when, for lifting or some such thing, four hands were indispensable. Soon both he and she came down to the door of the vacated room again together. He was in his shirt sleeves and without his shoes; but he had resumed command.
"And now, Madame Brouillard, to do this thing in the very best way I ought to say to you at once that our dear friend—did he ever tell you what he was worth?" The speaker leaned against the door-post and seemed to concern himself languidly with his black-rimmed finger-nails, while in fact he was watching Attalie from head to foot with all his senses and wits. She looked grief-stricken and thoroughly wretched.
"No," she said, very quietly, then suddenly burst into noiseless fresh tears, sank into a chair, buried her face in her wet handkerchief, and cried, "Ah! no, no, no! that was none of my business. He was going to leave it all to me. I never asked if it was little or much."
While she spoke Camille was reckoning with all his might and speed: "She has at least some notion as to whether he is rich or poor. She seemed a few minutes ago to fear he is poor, but I must try her again. Let me see: if he is poor and I say he is rich she will hope I know better than she, and will be silent. But if he is rich and she knows it, and I say he is poor, she will suspect fraud and will out with the actual fact indignantly on the spot." By this time she had ceased, and he spoke out:
"Well, Madame Brouillard, the plain fact is he was—as you may say—poor."
She looked up quickly from her soaking handkerchief, dropped her hands into her lap, and gazing at Camille through her tears said, "Alas! I feared it. That is what I feared. But ah! since it makes no difference to him now, it makes little to me. I feared it. That accounts for his leaving it to me, poor milatraise."
"But would you have imagined, madame, that all he had was barely three thousand dollars?"
"Ah! three thousand—ah! Michié Ducour," she said between a sob and a moan, "that is not so little. Three thousand! In Paris, where my brother lives, that would be fifteen thousand francs. Ah! Michié Ducour, I never guessed half that much, Michié Ducour, I tell you—he was too good to be rich." Her eyes stood full.
Camille started busily from his leaning posture and they began again to be active. But, as I have said, their relations were reversed once more. He gave directions from within the room, and she did short errands to and from the door.
The witnesses came: first Jean d'Eau, then Richard Reau, and almost at the same moment the aged Ecswyzee. The black maid led them up from below, and Attalie, tearless now, but meek and red-eyed, and speaking low through the slightly opened door from within the Englishman's bed-chamber, thanked them, explained that a will was to be made, and was just asking them to find seats in the adjoining front room, when the notary, aged, bent, dark-goggled, and as insensible as a machine, arrived. Attalie's offers to explain were murmurously waved away by his wrinkled hand, and the four men followed her into the bedchamber. The black maid-of-all-work also entered.
The room was heavily darkened. There was a rich aroma of fine brandy on its air. The Englishman's little desk had been drawn up near the bedside. Two candles were on it, unlighted, in small, old silver candlesticks. Attalie, grief-worn, distressed, visibly agitated, moved close to the bedside. Her sad figure suited the place with poetic fitness. The notary stood by the chair at the desk. The three witnesses edged along the wall where the curtained windows glimmered, took seats there, and held their hats in their hands. All looked at one object.
It was a man reclining on the bed under a light covering, deep in pillows, his head and shoulders much bundled up in wrappings. He moaned faintly and showed every sign of utmost weakness. His eyes opened only now and then, but when they did so they shone intelligently, though with a restless intensity apparently from both pain and anxiety.
He gasped a faint word. Attalie hung over him for an instant, and then turning quickly to her maid, who was lighting the candles for the notary and placing them so they should not shine into the eyes of the man in bed, said:
"His feet—another hot-water bottle."
The maid went to get it. While she was gone the notary asked the butcher, then the baker, and then the candlestick-maker, if they could speak and understand English, and where they resided. Their answers were satisfactory. Then he sat down, bent low to the desk, and wrote on a blank form the preamble of a nuncupative will. By the time he had finished, the maid had got back and the hot bottle had been properly placed. The notary turned his goggles upon the reclining figure and asked in English, with a strong Creole accent:
"What is your name?"
The words of the man in the bed were an inaudible gasp. But Attalie bent her ear quickly, caught them, and turning repeated:
"More brandy."
The black girl brought a decanter from the floor behind the bureau, and a wine-glass from the washstand. Attalie poured, the patient drank, and the maid replaced glass and decanter. The eyes of the butcher and the baker followed the sparkling vessel till it disappeared, and the maker of candlesticks made a dry swallow and faintly licked his lips. The notary remarked that there must be no intervention of speakers between himself and the person making the will, nor any turning aside to other matters; but that merely stopping a moment to satisfy thirst without leaving the room was not a vitiative turning aside and would not be, even if done by others besides the party making the will. But here the patient moaned and said audibly, "Let us go on." And they went on. The notary asked the patient's name, the place and date of his birth, etc., and the patient's answers were in every case whatever the Englishman's would have been. Presently the point was reached where the patient should express his wishes unprompted by suggestion or inquiry. He said faintly, "I will and bequeath"—
The servant girl, seeing her mistress bury her face in her handkerchief, did the same. The patient gasped audibly and said again, but more faintly:
"I will and bequeath—some more brandy."
The decanter was brought. He drank again. He let Attalie hand it back to the maid and the maid get nearly to the bureau when he said in a low tone of distinct reproof:
"Pass it 'round." The four visitors drank.
Then the patient resumed with stronger voice. "I will and bequeath to my friend Camille Ducour"—
Attalie started from her chair with a half-uttered cry of amazement and protest, but dropped back again at the notary's gesture for silence, and the patient spoke straight on without hesitation—"to my friend Camille Ducour, the sum of fifteen hundred dollars in cash."
Attalie and her handmaiden looked at each other with a dumb show of lamentation; but her butcher and her baker turned slowly upon her candlestick-maker, and he upon them, a look of quiet but profound approval. The notary wrote, and the patient spoke again:
"I will everything else which I may leave at my death, both real and personal property, to Madame Attalie Brouillard."
"Ah!" exclaimed Attalie, in the manner of one largely, but not entirely, propitiated. The maid suited her silent movement to the utterance, and the three witnesses exchanged slow looks of grave satisfaction. Mistress and maid, since the will seemed to them so manifestly and entirely finished, began to whisper together, although the patient and the notary were still perfecting some concluding formalities. But presently the notary began to read aloud the instrument he had prepared, keeping his face buried in the paper and running his nose and purblind eyes about it nervously, like a new-born thing hunting the warm fountain of life. All gave close heed. We need not give the document in its full length, nor its Creole accent in its entire breadth. This is only something like it:
"Dthee State of Louisiana," etc. "Be h-it known dthat on dthees h-eighth day of dthee month of May, One thousan' h-eight hawndred and fifty-five, dthat I, Eugene Favre, a not-arie pewblic een and for dthe State of Louisiana, parrish of Orleans, duly commission-ed and qualeefi-ed, was sue-mon-ed to dthe domee-ceel of Mr. [the Englishman's name], Number [so-and-so] Bienville street; ...dthat I found sayed Mr. [Englishman] lyingue in heez bade in dthee rear room of dthee second floor h-of dthee sayed house ... at about two o'clawk in dthee h-afternoon, and beingue informed by dthee sayed Mr. [Englishman] dthat he diz-i-red too make heez weel, I, sayed not-arie, sue-mon-ed into sayed bedchamber of dthe sayed Mr. [Englishman] dthe following nam-ed witnesses of lawfool h-age and residents of dthe sayed cittie, parrish, and State, to wit: Mr. Jean d'Eau, Mr. Richard Reau, and Mr. V. Deblieux Ecswyzee. That there up-on sayed Mr. [Englishman] being seek in bodie but of soun' mine, which was happarent to me not-arie and dthe sayed witnesses by heez lang-uage and h-actions then and there in dthe presence of sayed witnesses dictated to me not-arie dthe following as heez laz weel and testament, wheech was written by me sayed not-arie as dictated by the sayed Mr. [Englishman], to wit:
"'My name ees [John Bull]. I was born in,' etc. 'My father and mother are dade. I have no chil'ren. I have never had annie brawther or seester. I have never been marri-ed. Thees is my laz weel. I have never made a weel befo'. I weel and bickweath to my fran' Camille Ducour dthe sawm of fifteen hawndred dollars in cash. I weel h-everything h-else wheech I may leave at my daith, both real and personal property, to Madame Attalie Brouillard, leevingue at Number,' etc. 'I appoint my sayed fran' Camille Ducour as my testamentary executor, weeth-out bon', and grant heem dthe seizin' of my h-estate, h-and I dir-ect heem to pay h-all my juz debts.'
"Thees weel and testament as thus dictated too me by sayed testator and wheech was wreeten by me notarie by my h-own han' jus' as dictated, was thane by me not-arie rade to sayed Mr. [Englishman] in an audible voice and in the presence of dthe aforesayed three witnesses, and dthe sayed Mr. [Englishman] diclar-ed that he well awnder-stood me not-arie and persever-ed een diclaring the same too be his laz weel; all of wheech was don' at one time and place weethout inter'uption and weethout turningue aside to other acts.
"Thus done and pass-ed," etc.
The notary rose, a wet pen in one hand and the will—with his portfolio under it for a tablet—in the other. Attalie hurried to the bedside and stood ready to assist. The patient took the pen with a trembling hand. The writing was laid before him, and Attalie with a knee on the bed thrust her arm under the pillows behind him to make a firmer support.
The patient seemed to summon all his power to poise and steady the pen, but his hand shook, his fingers loosened, and it fell upon the document, making two or three blots there and another on the bed-covering, whither it rolled. He groped faintly for it, moaned, and then relaxed.
"He cannot sign!" whispered Attalie, piteously.
"Yes," gasped the patient.
The notary once more handed him the pen, but the same thing happened again.
The butcher cleared his throat in a way to draw attention. Attalie looked towards him and he drawled, half rising from his chair:
"I t'ink—a li'l more cognac"—
"Yass," murmured the baker. The candlestick-maker did not speak, but unconsciously wet his lips with his tongue and wiped them with the back of his forefinger. But every eye turned to the patient, who said:
"I cannot write—my hand—shakes so."
The notary asked a formal question or two, to which the patient answered "yes" and "no." The official sat again at the desk, wrote a proper statement of the patient's incapacity to make his signature, and then read it aloud. The patient gave assent, and the three witnesses stepped forward and signed. Then the notary signed.
As the four men approached the door to depart the baker said, lingeringly, to Attalie, smiling diffidently as he spoke:
"Dat settin' still make a man mighty dry, yass."
"Yass, da's true," said Attalie.
"Yass," he added, "same time he dawn't better drink much water dat hot weader, no." The butcher turned and smiled concurrence; but Attalie, though she again said "yass," only added good-day, and the maid led them and the notary down stairs and let them out.