Tatterdemalion | Page 4

your kind of church.
You do not pray there, do you?"
"Of course I pray there. I am very fond of the dear old church. God is in
every church, Augustine; you ought to know that at your age."
"But Madame has her own religion?"
"Now, don't be silly. What does that matter? Help me into my cloth
coat-- not the fur it's too heavy --and then go and get that money
changed."
"But Madame should see a doctor. If Madame faints again I shall die
with fright. Madame has no colour --but no colour at all; it must be that
there is something wrong."
Madame rose, and taking the girl's ear between thumb and finger

pinched it gently.
"You are a very silly girl. What would our poor soldiers do if all the
nurses were like you?"
Reaching the church she sat down gladly, turning her face up toward
her favourite picture, a Virgin standing with her Baby in her arms. It
was only faintly coloured now; but there were those who said that an
Arlesienne must have sat for it. Why it pleased her so she never quite
knew, unless it were by its cool, unrestored devotion, and the faint
smiling in the eyes. Religion with her was a strange yet very real thing.
Conscious that she was not clever, she never even began to try and
understand what she believed. Probably she believed nothing more than
that if she tried to be good she would go to God whatever and wherever
God might be some day when she was too tired to live any more; and,
rarely indeed did she forget to try to be good. As she sat there she
thought, or perhaps prayed, whichever it should be called: " Let me
forget that I have a body, and remember all the poor soldiers who have
them."
It struck cold that morning in the church the wind was bitter from the
north-east; some poor women in black were kneeling, and four candles
burned in the gloom of a side aisle thin, steady little spires of gold.
There was no sound at all. A smile came on her lips. She was forgetting
that she had a body, and remembering all those young faces in the
wards, the faces too of her own children far away, the faces of all she
loved. They were real and she was not she was nothing but the devotion
she felt for them; yes, for all the poor souls on land and sea, fighting
and working and dying. Her lips moved; she was saying below her
breath, " I love them all "; then, feeling a shiver run down her spine,
she compressed those lips and closed her eyes, letting her mind alone
murmur her chosen prayer: " O God, who makes the birds sing and the
stars shine and gives us little children, strengthen my heart so that I
may forget my own aches and wants and think of those of other
people."
On reaching home again she took gelseminum, her favourite remedy
against that shivering, which, however hard she tried to forget her own

body, would keep coming; then, covering herself with her fur coat, she
lay down, closing her eyes. She was seemingly asleep, so that
Augustine, returning with the hundred single francs, placed them
noiselessly beside the little pile of envelopes, and after looking at the
white, motionless face of her mistress and shaking her own bonny head,
withdrew. When she had gone, two tears came out of those closed eyes
and clung on the pale cheeks below. The seeming sleeper was thinking
of her children, away over there in England, her children and their
children. Almost unbearably she was longing for a sight of them, not
seen for so long now, recalling each face, each voice, each different
way they had of saying " Mother darling," or "Granny, look what I've
got! " and thinking that if only the war would end how she would pack
at once and go to them, that is, if they would not come to her for a nice
long holiday in this beautiful place. She thought of spring too, and how
lovely it would be to see the trees come out again, and almond blossom
against a blue sky. The war seemed so long, and winter too. But she
must not complain; others had much greater sorrows than she the poor
widowed women kneeling in the church; the poor boys freezing in the
trenches. God in His great mercy could not allow it to last much longer.
It would not be like Him! Though she felt that it would be impossible
to eat, she meant to force herself to make a good lunch so as to be able
to go down as usual