Tatterdemalion | Page 4

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 and give her little presents. They would miss them so if she didn't. Her eyes, opening, rested almost gloatingly on the piles of francs and envelopes. And she began to think how she could reduce still further her personal expenditure. It was so dreadful to spend anything on oneself an old woman like