[CHAPTER XI]
The scene shifted to the bedroom at La Croix-de-Maufras, the room hung in red damask, with the two high windows looking on the railway line a few yards away. From the bedstead—an old four-poster facing the windows—the trains could be seen passing. And not an object had been removed, not a piece of furniture disturbed for years.
Séverine had the wounded Jacques, who was unconscious, carried up to this apartment; while Henri Dauvergne was left in a smaller bedroom on the ground floor. For herself, she kept a room close to the one occupied by Jacques, and only separated from it by the landing. A couple of hours sufficed to make everything sufficiently comfortable, for the house had remained fully set up, and even linen was stowed away in the cupboards. Séverine, with an apron over her gown, found herself transformed into a lady nurse. She had simply telegraphed to Roubaud not to expect her, as she would no doubt remain at the house a short time, attending to the wounded she had put up there.
On the following day, the doctor announced that he thought he could answer for Jacques, indeed he hoped to put him on his feet again in a week; his case proved a perfect miracle, for he had barely received some slight internal injury. But the doctor insisted on the greatest care being taken of him, and on absolute rest. So when the invalid opened his eyes Séverine, who watched over him as over a child, begged him to be good and to obey her in everything. Still very weak, he promised with a nod.
He was in possession of all his faculties. He recognised the room which she had described on the night of her confession. He was lying on the bed. There were the windows through which, without even raising his head, he could see the trains flash past, suddenly shaking the whole house. And he felt by the surroundings, that this house was just as he had so often seen it, when he went by on his engine. He saw it again now in his mind, set down aslant beside the line, in its distress and abandonment, with its closed shutters. The aspect had become more lamentable and dubious, since it had been for sale, with the immense board adding to the melancholy appearance of the garden overgrown with briars. He recalled the frightful sadness he had felt each time he passed the place, the uneasiness with which it haunted him as if it stood at this spot to be the calamity of his existence. And now, as he lay so weak in this room, he seemed to understand it all, there could be no other solution to the matter—he was assuredly going to die there.
As soon as Séverine perceived he was in a condition to understand her, she hastened to set his mind at ease in regard to a subject which she fancied might be worrying him, whispering in his ear as she drew up the bedclothes:
"You need not be anxious. I emptied your pockets, and took the watch."
He gazed at her with wide open eyes, making an effort to remember.
"The watch! Ah! yes! the watch," he murmured.