Tatterdemalion | Page 6

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 the quilt. The hand moved faintly as if responding, the voice whispered: ' The emerald ring is for you, Augustine. Is it morning? Uncover Polly's cage and open his door."
Madame spoke no more that morning. A telegram had come. Her son and daughter would arrive next morning early. They waited for a moment of consciousness