Читать книгу Brigadier Frederick, The Dean's Watch - Erckmann-Chatrian - Страница 4

In the depth of the winter, while all the roads and the mountain paths were covered with snow, and we heard every night the branches of the beech trees breaking like glass under their load of ice, to the right and left of the house, one evening my wife, who, since the commencement of the season, had gone to and fro looking very pale and without speaking, said to me, towards six o'clock, after having lighted the fire in the fireplace, "Frederick, I am going to bed. I do not feel well. I am cold."

She had never said anything like that before. She was a woman who never complained and who, during her youth, had looked after her house up to the very day before her confinements. I suspected nothing, and I replied to her:

"Catherine, do not put yourself out. You work too hard. Go and rest. Marie-Rose will do the cooking."

I thought "once in twenty years is not too much; she may well rest herself a little."

Marie-Rose heated a jug of water to put under her feet, and we took our supper of potatoes and clotted milk as tranquilly as usual. We were not at all uneasy, and about nine o'clock, having smoked my pipe near the stove, I was about to go to bed, when, on coming near the bed, I saw my wife, white as a sheet, and with her eyes wide open. I said to her,

"Helloa, Catherine!"

But she did not stir. I repeated "Catherine," and shook her by the arm. She was already cold. The courageous woman had not lain down till the last moment, so to speak; she had lost much blood without complaining. I was a widower. My poor Marie-Rose no longer had a mother.

That crushed me terribly. I thought I should never recover from the blow.

The old grandmother, who for some time had scarcely ever stirred from her arm-chair, and who seemed always in a dream, awoke. Marie-Rose uttered cries and sobs which could be heard out of doors, and even Calas, the poor idiot, stammered:

"Oh, if I had only died instead of her!"

And as we were far away in the woods, I was forced to transport my poor wife to bury her, to the church at Dôsenheim, through the great snows. We went in a line, with the coffin before us in the cart. Marie-Rose wept so much that I was forced to support her at every step. Fortunately the grandmother did not come; she sat at home in her arm-chair, reciting the prayers for the dead. We did not return that evening till it was dark night. And now the mother was yonder under the snow, with the old Burat family, who are all in the cemetery of Dôsenheim behind the church; she was there, and I thought:

"What will become of the house? Frederick, you will never marry again; you have had a good wife and who knows if the second would not be the worst and the most extravagant in the country. You will never take another. You will live like that, all alone. But what will you do? Who will take care of everything? Who will look after your interest day and night? The grandmother is too old and the girl is still a mere child."

I was miserable, thinking that everything would go to ruin and that my savings of so many years would be wasted from day to day.

But my little Marie-Rose was a real treasure, a girl full of courage and good sense, and no sooner was my wife dead than she put herself at the head of our affairs, looking after the fields, the cattle, and the household, and ruling Calas like her mother. The poor fellow obeyed her; he understood in his simplicity that she was now the mistress and that she had the right to speak for everybody.

And so things go on earth. When we have had such trials we think that nothing worse can happen to us, but all that was merely the beginning, and when I think of it, it seems to me that our greatest happiness would have been, all to have died together upon the same day.