Part 26

And yet Germinie rose from those horrible nights with an energy and activity that amazed mademoiselle and at times reassured her. She was out of bed as early as anybody in the house. One morning, at five o'clock, she went with the man-servant in a char-a-banc to a mill-pond three leagues away, for fish; at another time she dragged herself to the saint's day ball, with the maids from the house, and did not return until they did, at daybreak. She worked all the time; assisted the servants. She was always sitting on the edge of a chair, in a corner of the kitchen, doing something with her fingers. Mademoiselle was obliged to force her to go out, to drive her into the garden to sit. Then Germinie would sit on the green bench, with her umbrella over her head, and the sun in her skirts and on her feet. Hardly moving, she would forget herself utterly as she inhaled the light and air and warmth, passionately and with a sort of feverish joy. Her distended lips would part to admit the fresh, clear air. Her eyes burned, but did not move; and in the light shadow of the silk umbrella her gaunt, wasted, haggard face stared vacantly into space like an amorous death's head.

Weary as she was at night, no persuasion could induce her to retire before her mistress. She insisted upon being at hand to undress her. Seated by her side, she would rise from time to time to wait upon her as best she could, assist her to take off a petticoat, then sit down again, collect her strength for a moment, rise again, and insist upon doing something for her. Mademoiselle had to force her to sit down and order her to keep quiet. And all the time that the evening toilet lasted she had always upon her lips the same tiresome chatter about the servants of the house.

"Why, mademoiselle, you haven't an idea of the eyes they make at each other when they think no one sees them--the cook and the man--I mean. They keep quiet when I am by; but the other day I surprised them in the bakery. They were kissing, fancy! Luckily madame here don't suspect it."

"Ah! there you are again with your tale-bearing! Why, good God!" mademoiselle would exclaim, "what difference does it make to you whether they coo or don't coo? They're kind to you, aren't they? That's all that's necessary."

"Oh! very kind, mademoiselle; as far as that's concerned I haven't a word to say. Marie got up in the night last night to give me some water--and as for him, when there's any dessert left, it's always for me. Oh! he's very polite to me--in fact, Marie don't like it very well that he thinks so much about me. You understand, mademoiselle----"

"Come, come! go to bed with all your nonsense!" said her mistress sharply, sad, and annoyed as well, to find such a keen interest in others' love-affairs in one so ill.

LXI

When they returned from the country, the doctor, after examining Germinie, said to Mademoiselle: "It has been very rapid, very rapid. The left lung is entirely gone. The right has begun to be affected at the top, and I fear that there is more or less difficulty all through it. She's a dead woman. She may live six weeks, two months at most."

"Great Heaven!" said Mademoiselle de Varandeuil, "everyone I have ever loved will go before me! Tell me, must I wait until everybody has gone?"

"Have you thought of placing her in some institution?" said the doctor, after a moment's silence. "You can't keep her here. It's too great a burden, too great a grief for you to have her with you," he added, at a gesture from mademoiselle.

"No, monsieur, no, I haven't thought of it. Oh! yes, I am likely to send her away. Why you must have seen, monsieur: that girl isn't a maid, she isn't a servant in my eyes; she's like the family I never had! What would you have me say to her: 'Be off with you now!' Ah! I never suffered so much before on account of not being rich and having a wretched four-sou apartment like this. I, mention such a thing to her! why, it's impossible! And where could she go? To the Maison Dubois? Oh! yes, to the Dubois! She went there once to see the maid I had before, who died there. You might as well kill her! The hospital, then? No, not there; I don't choose to have her die in that place!"

"Good God, mademoiselle, she'll be a hundred times better off there than here. I would get her admitted at Lariboisiere, during the term of service of a doctor who is a friend of mine. I would recommend her to an intern, who is under great obligations to me. She would have a very excellent Sister to nurse her in the hall to which I would have her sent. If necessary, she could have a private room. But I am sure she would prefer to be in a common room. It's the essential thing to do, you see, mademoiselle. She can't stay in that chamber up there. You know what these horrible servants' quarters are. Indeed, it's my opinion that the health authorities ought to compel the landlords to show common humanity in that direction; it's an outrage! The cold weather is coming; there's no fireplace; with the window and the roof it will be like an ice-house. You see she still keeps about. She has a marvelous stock of courage, prodigious nervous vitality. But, in spite of everything, the bed will claim her in a few days,--she won't get up again. Come, listen to reason, mademoiselle. Let me speak to her, will you?"

"No, not yet. I must get used to the idea. And then, when I see her around me I imagine she isn't going to die so quickly as all that. There's time enough. Later, we'll see about it,--yes, later."

"Excuse me, mademoiselle, if I venture to say to you that you are quite capable of making yourself sick nursing her."

"I? Oh! as for me!" And Mademoiselle de Varandeuil made a gesture indicating that her life was of no consequence.

LXII

Amid Mademoiselle de Varandeuil's desperate anxiety concerning her maid's health, she became conscious of a strange feeling, a sort of fear in the presence of the new, unfamiliar, mysterious creature that sickness had made of Germinie. Mademoiselle had a sense of discomfort beside that hollow, ghostly face, which was almost unrecognizable in its implacable rigidity, and which seemed to return to itself, to recover consciousness, only furtively, by fits and starts, in the effort to produce a pallid smile. The old woman had seen many people die; her memories of many painful years recalled the expressions of many dear, doomed faces, of many faces that were sad and desolate and grief-stricken in death; but no face of all those she remembered had ever assumed, as the end drew near, that distressing expression of a face retiring within itself and closing the doors.

Enveloped in her suffering, Germinie maintained her savage, rigid, self-contained, impenetrable demeanor. She was as immovable as bronze. Mademoiselle, as she looked at her, asked herself what it could be that she brooded over thus without moving; whether it was her life rising in revolt, the dread of death, or a secret remorse for something in her past. Nothing external seemed to affect the sick woman. She was no longer conscious of things about her. Her body became indifferent to everything, did not ask to be relieved, seemed not to desire to be cured. She complained of nothing, found no pleasure or diversion in anything. Even her longing for affection had left her. She no longer made any motion to bestow or invite a caress, and every day something human left her body, which seemed to be turning to stone. Often she would bury herself in profound silence that made one expect a heart-rending shriek or word; but after glancing about the room, she would say nothing and begin again to stare fixedly, vacantly, at the same spot in space.

When mademoiselle returned from the friend's house with whom she dined, she would find Germinie in the dark, sunk in an easy-chair with her legs stretched out upon a chair, her head hanging forward on her breast, and so profoundly absorbed that sometimes she did not hear the door open. As she walked forward into the room it seemed to Mademoiselle de Varandeuil as if she were breaking in upon a ghastly tete-a-tete between Disease and the Shadow of Death, wherein Germinie was already seeking, in the terror of the Invisible, the blindness of the grave and the darkness of death.

LXIII

Throughout the month of October, Germinie obstinately refused to take to her bed. Each day, however, she was weaker and more helpless than the day before. She was hardly able to ascend the flight of stairs that led to her sixth floor, dragging herself along by the railing. One day she fell on the stairs: the other servants picked her up and carried her to her chamber. But that did not stop her; the next day she went downstairs again, with the fitful gleam of strength that invalids commonly have in the morning. She prepared mademoiselle's breakfast, made a pretence of working, and kept moving about the apartment, clinging to the chairs and dragging herself along. Mademoiselle took pity on her; she forced her to lie down on her own bed. Germinie lay there half an hour, an hour, wide awake, not speaking, but with her eyes open, fixed, and staring into vacancy like the eyes of a person in severe pain.

One morning she did not come down. Mademoiselle climbed to the sixth floor, turned into a narrow corridor in which the air was heavy with the odors from servants' water-closets and at last reached Germinie's door, No. 21. Germinie apologized for having compelled her to come up. It was impossible for her to put her feet out of the bed. She had terrible pains in her bowels and they were badly swollen. She begged mademoiselle to sit down a moment and, to make room for her, removed the candlestick that stood on the chair at the head of her bed.

Mademoiselle sat down and remained a few moments, looking about the wretched room,--one of those where the doctor has to lay his hat on the bed, and where there is barely room to die! It was a small attic room, without a chimney, with a scuttle window in the sloping roof, which admitted the heat of summer and the cold of winter. Old trunks, clothes bags, a foot-bath, and the little iron bedstead on which Germinie's niece had slept, were heaped up in a corner under the sloping roof. The bed, one chair, a little disabled washstand with a broken pitcher, comprised the whole of the furniture. Above the bed, in an imitation violet-wood frame, hung a daguerreotype of a man.

The doctor came during the day. "Aha! peritonitis," he said, when mademoiselle described Germinie's condition.

He went up to see the sick woman. "I am afraid," he said, when he came down, "that there's an abscess in the intestine communicating with an abscess in the bladder. It's a serious case, very serious. You must tell her not to move about much in her bed, to turn over with great care. She might die suddenly in horrible agony. I suggested to her to go to Lariboisiere,--she agreed at once. She seemed to have no repugnance at all. But I don't know how she will bear the journey. However, she has such an unlimited stock of energy; I have never seen anything like it. To-morrow morning you shall have the order of admission."

When mademoiselle went up to Germinie's room again, she found her smiling in her bed, gay as a lark at the idea of going away.

"It's a matter of six weeks at most, mademoiselle," said she.

LXIV