A Dead Woman’s Secret
By Guy de Maupassant
The woman
had died without pain, quietly, as a woman should whose life had been
blameless. Now she was resting in her bed, lying on her back, her eyes closed,
her features calm, her long white hair carefully arranged as though she had
done it up ten minutes before dying. The whole pale countenance of the dead
woman was so collected, so calm, so resigned that one could feel what a sweet
soul had lived in that body, what a quiet existence this old soul had led, how
easy and pure the death of this parent had been.
Kneeling
beside the bed, her son, a magistrate with inflexible principles, and her
daughter, Marguerite, known as Sister Eulalie, were weeping as though their
hearts would break. She had, from childhood up, armed them with a strict moral
code, teaching them religion, without weakness, and duty, without compromise.
He, the man, had become a judge and handled the law as a weapon with which he
smote the weak ones without pity. She, the girl, influenced by the virtue which
had bathed her in this austere family, had become the bride of the Church
through her loathing for man.
They had
hardly known their father, knowing only that he had made their mother most
unhappy, without being told any other details.
The nun
was wildly-kissing the dead woman's hand, an ivory hand as white as the large
crucifix lying across the bed. On the other side of the long body the other
hand seemed still to be holding the sheet in the death grasp; and the sheet had
preserved the little creases as a memory of those last movements which precede
eternal immobility.
A few
light taps on the door caused the two sobbing heads to look up, and the priest,
who had just come from dinner, returned. He was red and out of breath from his
interrupted digestion, for he had made himself a strong mixture of coffee and
brandy in order to combat the fatigue of the last few nights and of the wake
which was beginning.
He looked
sad, with that assumed sadness of the priest for whom death is a bread winner.
He crossed himself and approaching with his professional gesture: "Well,
my poor children! I have come to help you pass these last sad hours." But
Sister Eulalie suddenly arose. "Thank you, "father, but my brother
and I prefer to remain alone with her. This is our last chance to see her, and
we wish to be together, all three of us, as we--we--used to be when we were
small and our poor mo--mother----"
Grief and
tears stopped her; she could not continue.
Once more
serene, the priest bowed, thinking of his bed. "As you wish, my
children." He kneeled, crossed himself, prayed, arose and went out
quietly, murmuring: "She was a saint!"
They
remained alone, the dead woman and her children. The ticking of the clock,
hidden in the shadow, could be heard distinctly, and through the open window
drifted in the sweet smell of hay and of woods, together with the soft
moonlight. No other noise could be heard over the land except the occasional
croaking of the frog or the chirping of some belated insect. An infinite peace,
a divine melancholy, a silent serenity surrounded this dead woman, seemed to be
breathed out from her and to appease nature itself.
Then the
judge, still kneeling, his head buried in the bed clothes, cried in a voice
altered by grief and deadened by the sheets and blankets: "Mamma, mamma,
mamma!" And his sister, frantically striking her forehead against the
woodwork, convulsed, twitching and trembling as in an epileptic fit, moaned:
"Jesus, Jesus, mamma, Jesus!" And both of them, shaken by a storm of
grief, gasped and choked.
The crisis
slowly calmed down and they began to weep quietly, just as on the sea when a
calm follows a squall.
A rather
long time passed and they arose and looked at their dead. And the memories,
those distant memories, yesterday so dear, to-day so torturing, came to their
minds with all the little forgotten details, those little intimate familiar
details which bring back to life the one who has left. They recalled to each
other circumstances, words, smiles, intonations of the mother who was no longer
to speak to them. They saw her again happy and calm. They remembered things
which she had said, and a little motion of the hand, like beating time, which
she often used when emphasizing something important.
And they
loved her as they never had loved her before. They measured the depth of their
grief, and thus they discovered how lonely they would find themselves.
It was
their prop, their guide, their whole youth, all the best part of their lives
which was disappearing. It was their bond with life, their mother, their mamma,
the connecting link with their forefathers which they would thenceforth miss.
They now became solitary, lonely beings; they could no longer look back.
The nun
said to her brother: "You remember how mamma used always to read her old
letters; they are all there in that drawer. Let us, in turn, read them; let us
live her whole life through tonight beside her! It would be like a road to the
cross, like making the acquaintance of her mother, of our grandparents, whom we
never knew, but whose letters are there and of whom she so often spoke, do you
remember?"
Out of the
drawer they took about ten little packages of yellow paper, tied with care and
arranged one beside the other. They threw these relics on the bed and chose one
of them on which the word "Father" was written. They opened and read
it.
It was one
of those old-fashioned letters which one finds in old family desk drawers,
those epistles which smell of another century. The first one started: "My
dear," another one: "My beautiful little girl," others: "My
dear child," or: "My dear daughter." And suddenly the nun began
to read aloud, to read over to the dead woman her whole history, all her tender
memories. The judge, resting his elbow on the bed, was listening with his eyes
fastened on his mother. The motionless body seemed happy.
Sister
Eulalie, interrupting herself, said suddenly:
"These
ought to be put in the grave with her; they ought to be used as a shroud and
she ought to be buried in it." She took another package, on which no name
was written. She began to read in a firm voice: "My adored one, I love you
wildly. Since yesterday I have been suffering the tortures of the damned,
haunted by our memory. I feel your lips against mine, your eyes in mine, your
breast against mine. I love you, I love you! You have driven me mad. My arms
open, I gasp, moved by a wild desire to hold you again. My whole soul and body
cries out for you, wants you. I have kept in my mouth the taste of your
kisses--"
The judge
had straightened himself up. The nun stopped reading. He snatched the letter
from her and looked for the signature. There was none, but only under the
words, "The man who adores you," the name "Henry." Their
father's name was Rene. Therefore this was not from him. The son then quickly
rummaged through the package of letters, took one out and read: "I can no
longer live without your caresses." Standing erect, severe as when sitting
on the bench, he looked unmoved at the dead woman. The nun, straight as a
statue, tears trembling in the corners of her eyes, was watching her brother,
waiting. Then he crossed the room slowly, went to the window and stood there,
gazing out into the dark night.
When he
turned around again Sister Eulalie, her eyes dry now, was still standing near
the bed, her head bent down.
He stepped
forward, quickly picked up the letters and threw them pell-mell back into the
drawer. Then he closed the curtains of the bed.
When
daylight made the candles on the table turn pale the son slowly left his
armchair, and without looking again at the mother upon whom he had passed
sentence, severing the tie that united her to son and daughter, he said slowly:
"Let us now retire, sister."
