“That night, he tried to kill himself. He shut all the windows and lit charcoal fire in his bedroom. The next morning, Assunta came to make his breakfast. She found him lying on the bed. He was very ill, but he was still alive.
“ He walks in the hills on his own. I’ve tried to speak to him. But it’s no good. He runs away whenever I go near him. Assunta comes down here sometimes to see me. I give her some money so that she can buy some tobacco for him. But I don’t know if he gets the tobacco. Perhaps her husband takes the money and keeps it.”
“What a terrible way to live,” I said.
“It was Wilson’s decision,” said my friend. “He lives happily for twenty-five years. He didn’t do any work. Why didn’t he kill himself when he said he would?”
“ He walks in the hills on his own. I’ve tried to speak to him. But it’s no good. He runs away whenever I go near him. Assunta comes down here sometimes to see me. I give her some money so that she can buy some tobacco for him. But I don’t know if he gets the tobacco. Perhaps her husband takes the money and keeps it.”
“What a terrible way to live,” I said.
“It was Wilson’s decision,” said my friend. “He lives happily for twenty-five years. He didn’t do any work. Why didn’t he kill himself when he said he would?”
“I’m going to tell you something, Mrs. Saunders,” he said,
“something that you won’t believe.” He put his hands on top
of the fence and peered at her intently through his thick
spectacles. “You have, this evening, cut a basketful of roses.
You have with a sharp pair of scissors cut through the stems of
living things and each rose that you cut screamed in the most
terrible way. Did you know that, Mrs. Saunders?”
“No,” she said. “I certainly didn’t know that.”
“It happens to be true,” he said. He was breathing rather
rapidly, but he was trying to control his excitement. “I heard
them shrieking. Each time you cut one, I heard the cry of pain.”
“Do you remember that diamond necklace you lent me
to wear at the ministerial ball?”
“Yes. Well?”
“Well, I lost it.”
“What do you mean? You brought it back.”
“I brought you back another exactly like it. And it has
taken us ten years to pay for it. You can understand that it was
not easy for us, for us who had nothing. At last, it is ended and
I am very glad.”
Madame Forestier had stopped.
“You say that you bought a necklace of diamonds to
replace mine?”
“Yes. You never noticed it, then! They were very
similar.”
And she smiled with a joy that was at once proud and
ingenuous. Madame Forestier, deeply moved, took her hands.
“Oh, my poor Mathilde! Why, my necklace was paste! It
was worth at most only five hundred francs!”
People in the village soon noted the absence of the two little girls.
They had died at the lands and were buried there, the family said.
But people noted their ashen, terror- stricken faces and a murmur arose.
What had killed the children, they wanted to know? And the family replied
that they had just died. And people said amongst themselves that it was
strange that the two deaths had occurred at the same time. And there
was a feeling of great unease at the unnatural looks of the family. Soon
the police came around. The family told them the same story of death
and burial at the lands. They did not know what the children had died of.
So the police asked to see the graves. At this, the mother of the
children broke down and told everything.
