Tatterdemalion | Page 6

sort which declares for life or death in forty-eight hours. At
her age a desperate case. Her children must be wired to at once. She
had sunk back, seemingly unconscious; and Augustine, approaching the
drawer where she knew the letters were kept, slipped out the lavender
sachet and gave it to the doctor. When he had left the room to extract
the addresses and send those telegrams, the girl sat down by the foot of
the couch, leaning her elbows on her knees and her face on her hands,
staring at that motionless form, while the tears streamed down her
broad cheeks. For many minutes neither of them stirred, and the only
sound was the restless stropping of the parrot's beak against a wire of
his cage. Then her mistress's lips moved, and the girl bent forward. A
whispering came forth, caught and suspended by breathless pausing:
"Mind, Augustine 1 ho one is to tell my children I can't have them
disturbed over a little thing like this and in my purse you'll find another
hundred-franc note. I shall want some more francs for the day after
to-morrow. Be a good girl and don't fuss, and kiss poor Polly, and mind
I won't have a doctor taking him away from his work. Give me my
gelseminum and my prayer-book. And go to bed just as usual we must
all keep smiling like the dear soldiers ' ' The whispering ceased, then
began again at once in rapid delirious incoherence. And the girl sat
trembling, covering now her ears from those uncanny sounds, now her
eyes from the flush and the twitching of that face, usually so pale and

still. She could not follow with her little English the swerving, intricate
flights of that old spirit mazed by fever the memories released, the
longings disclosed, the half-uttered prayers, the curious little
halfconscious efforts to regain form and dignity. She could only pray to
the Virgin. When relieved by the daughter of Madame s French friend,
who spoke good English, she murmured desperately: " Oh!
Mademoiselle, Madame est tres, tres fatiguee la pauvre tete faut-il
enlever les cheveux? Elle fait $a toujours pour elle-mme." For, to the
girl, with her reverence for the fastidious dignity which never left her
mistress, it seemed sacrilege to divest her of her crown of fine grey hair.
Yet, when it was done and the old face crowned only by the thin white
hair of nature, there was that dignity still surmounting the wandering
talk and the moaning from her parched lips, which every now and then
smiled and pouted in a kiss, as if remembering the maxims of the parrot.
So the night passed, with all that could be done for her, whose most
collected phrase, frequently uttered in the doctor's face, was: " Mind,
Augustine, I won't have a doctor I can manage for myself quite well."
Once for a few minutes her spirit seemed to recover its coherence, and
she was heard to whisper: " God has given me this so that I may know
what the poor soldiers suffer. Oh! they've forgotten to cover Polly's
cage." But high fever soon passes from the very old; and early morning
brought a deathlike exhaustion, with utter silence, save for the licking
of the flames at the olive-wood logs, and the sound as they slipped or
settled down, calcined. The firelight crept fantastically about the walls
covered with tapestry of French-grey silk, crept round the screen-head
of the couch, and betrayed the ivory pallor of that mask-like face,
which covered now such tenuous threads of life. Augustine, who had
come on guard when the fever died away, sat in the armchair before
those flames, trying hard to watch, but dropping off into the healthy
sleep of youth. And out in the clear, hard, shivering Southern cold, the
old clocks chimed the hours into the winter dark, where, remote from
man's restless spirit, the old town brooded above plain and river under
the morning stars. And the girl dreamed dreamed of a sweetheart under
the acacias by her home, of his pinning their white flowers into her hair;
and she woke with a little laugh. Light was already coming through the
shutter chinks, the fire was but red embers and white ash. She gathered

it stealthily together, put on fresh logs, and stole over to the couch. Oh!
how white! how still! Was her mistress dead? The icy clutch of that
thought jerked her hands up to her full breast, and a cry mounted in her
throat. The eyes opened. The white lips, parted, as if to smile; the voice
whispered: ' Now, don't be silly! " The girl's cry changed into a little
sob, and bending down she put her lips to the ringed hand which lay
outside