"Why?" Jack repeated indignantly. "I couldn't prevent them from bringing her here; but I could have burnt the house down over their heads, if they had dared to put her into a coffin! Are you stupid enough to suppose that Mistress is dead? Don't you know that I'm watching and waiting here till she wakes? Ah! I beg your pardon—you don't know. The rest of them would have let her die. I saved her life. Come here, and I'll tell you how."
He dragged Schwartz into the cell. As the watchman disappeared from view, the wild white face of Madame Fontaine appeared between the curtains of her hiding-place, listening to Jack's narrative of the opening of the cupboard, and the discovery that had followed.
Schwartz humored his little friend (evidently, as he now concluded, his crazy little friend), by listening in respectful silence. Instead of making any remark at the end, he mentioned once more that the wine was handy. "Come!" he reiterated; "come to the table!"
Madame Fontaine drew back again behind the curtains. Jack remained obstinately in the cell. "I mean to see it," he said, "the moment she moves."
"Do you think your eyes will tell you?" Schwartz remonstrated. "You look dead-beat already; your eyes will get tired. Trust the bell here, over the door. Brass and steel don't get tired; brass and steel don't fall asleep; brass and steel will ring, and call you to her. Take a rest and a drink."
These words reminded Jack of the doctor's experiment with the alarm-bell. He could not disguise from himself the stealthily-growing sense of fatigue in his head and his limbs. "I'm afraid you're right," he said sadly. "I wish I was a stronger man." He joined Schwartz at the table, and dropped wearily into the watchman's chair.
His head sank on his breast, his eyes closed. He started up again. "She may want help when she wakes!" he cried, with a look of terror. "What must we do? Can we carry her home between us? Oh! Schwartz, I was so confident in myself a little while since—and it seems all to have left me now!"
"Don't worry that weary little head of yours about nothing," Schwartz answered, with rough good-nature. "Come along with me, and I'll show you where help's to be got when help's wanted. No! no! you won't be out of hearing of the bell—if it rings. We'll leave the door open. It's only on the other side of the passage here."
He lighted a lantern, and led Jack out.
Leaving the courtyard and the waiting-room on their left hand, he advanced along the right-hand side of the passage, and opened the door of a bed-chamber, always kept ready for use. A second door in the bed-chamber led to a bath-room. Here, opposite the bath, stood the cabinet in which the restorative applications were kept, under the care of the overseer.