All this time John and I lingered in the dusky passage, in which that door ajar made a cleft of yellow light. Every now and then a dim figure stole up to us with an eager sad whisper, asking, "How goes it? how goes it?" and slipped away down-stairs with the comfortless answer.
It was poor Jules, who could do nothing for his Rose but this. She had thrown herself on the floor in a darkening room, and lay there moaning. Her dire anguish, sharp as a mother's for the little one, was cruelly and unduly aggravated by self-reproach, and by the self-inflicted agony of her exile from that room up-stairs. She dared not enter Jean's presence. She felt that he must for ever abhor the sight of her; she was afraid he [{116}] might curse her! She rejected all kindness, all sympathy, especially from Jules, whom she quite fiercely ordered to quit her. But when it got quite dark, the poor fellow took in a candle, and set it on a table; and he spent the time in going up and down-stairs to fetch her that whisper of news, which, perhaps, he sweetened with a little false hope before he offered it to her.
At last we outside heard a movement—a stifled exclamation; and then one of the women ran out.
"The child has opened his eyes!" said she, as she hurried down-stairs for some article required.
Presently we heard a man sobbing softly; and then—yes, a faint tiny voice. And after that—nothing, for a long while. But at last at last! a miserable, awful cry, and a heavy, heavy fall. And then came out John's wife, at sight of whose face we turned sick at heart, and followed her silently down-stairs. We knew what had happened: the little one was dead.
He had opened his eyes, and had probably known his father; for the light that his presence always kindled there had come into the little white face. Jean, too ready to clutch the delusive hope, fell a-sobbing with rapture, and kissing the little fair head. The child tried to speak, and did speak, though but once.
"He said, 'Ba-Bou' quite distinctly," said John's wife, "and then such a pretty smile came; and it's—it's there still, on his little dear dead face, John."
Here she broke down, and went into a passion of tears, sobbing for "poor Jean! poor Jean!"
He had fainted for the first time in his strong life, and so that blessed unconsciousness was deadening the first insupportable agony of his dreadful wound. They carried him out, and laid him on his bed, and I believe the doctor bled him. They hoped he would sleep afterward from sheer exhaustion.
Presently poor Jules came to us, crying like a child, and begging us to go to his Rose to try to rouse her, if only to make her weep. She had fallen into a dry depth and abyss of despair—an icy crevasse, where even his love could not reach her.