Part 27

At two o'clock the next day the doctor brought the order for her admission to Lariboisiere. The invalid was ready to start. Mademoiselle suggested that they should send to the hospital for a litter. "Oh! no," said Germinie, hastily, "I should think I was dead." She was thinking of her debts; she must show herself to her creditors on the street, alive, and on her feet to the last!

She got out of bed. Mademoiselle de Varandeuil assisted her to put on her petticoat and her dress. As soon as she left her bed, all signs of life disappeared from her face, the flush from her complexion: it seemed as if earth suddenly took the place of blood under her skin. She went down the steep servants' stairway, clinging to the baluster, and reached her mistress's apartments. She sat down in an arm-chair near the window in the dining-room. She insisted upon putting on her stockings without assistance, and as she pulled them on with her poor trembling hands, the fingers striking against one another, she afforded a glimpse of her legs, which were so thin as to make one shudder. The housekeeper, meanwhile, was putting together in a bundle a little linen, a glass, a cup, and a pewter plate, which she wished to carry with her. When that was done, Germinie looked about her for a moment; she cast one last glance around the room, a glance that seemed to long to take everything away with her. Then, as her eyes rested on the door through which the housekeeper had just gone out, she said to mademoiselle: "At all events I leave a good woman with you."

She rose. The door closed noisily behind her, as if to say adieu, and, supported by Mademoiselle de Varandeuil, who almost carried her, she went down the five flights of the main stairway. At every landing she paused to take breath. In the vestibule she found the concierge, who had brought her a chair. She fell into it. The vulgar fellow laughingly promised her that she would be well in six weeks. She moved her head slightly as she said yes, a muffled yes.

She was in the cab, beside her mistress. It was an uncomfortable cab and jolted over the pavements. She sat forward on the seat to avoid the concussion of the jolting, and clung to the door with her hand. She watched the houses pass, but did not speak. When they reached the hospital gate, she refused to be carried. "Can you walk as far as that?" said the concierge, pointing to the reception-room some sixty feet distant. She made an affirmative sign and walked: it was a dead woman walking, because she was determined to walk!

At last she reached the great hall, cold and stiff and clean and bare and horrible, with a circle of wooden benches around the waiting litter. Mademoiselle de Varandeuil led her to a straw chair near a glazed door. A clerk opened the door, asked Mademoiselle de Varandeuil Germinie's name and age, and wrote for a quarter of an hour, covering ten or more sheets of paper with a religious emblem at the top. That done, Mademoiselle de Varandeuil kissed her and turned to go; she saw an attendant take her under the arms, then she saw no more, but turned and fled, and, throwing herself upon the cushions of the cab, she burst into sobs and gave vent to all the tears with which her heart had been suffocated for an hour past. The driver on his box was amazed to hear such violent weeping.

LXV

On the visiting day, Thursday, mademoiselle started at half-past twelve to go and see Germinie. It was her purpose to be at her bedside at the moment the doors were thrown open, at one o'clock precisely. As she rode through the streets she had passed through four days before, she remembered the ghastly ride of Monday. It seemed to her as if she were incommoding a sick person in the cab, of which she was the only occupant, and she sat close in the corner in order to make room for the memory of Germinie. In what condition should she find her? Should she find her at all? Suppose her bed should be empty?

The cab passed through a narrow street filled with orange carts, and with women sitting on the sidewalk offering biscuit for sale in baskets. There was something unspeakably wretched and dismal in this open-air display of fruit and cakes,--the delicacies of the dying, the viaticum of invalids, craved by feverish mouths, longed for by the death-agony,--which workingmen's hands, black with toil, purchase as they pass, to carry to the hospital and offer death a tempting morsel. Children carried them with sober faces, almost reverentially, and without touching them, as if they understood.

The cab stopped before the gate of the courtyard. It was five minutes to one. There was a long line of women crowding about the gate, women with their working clothes on, sorrowful, depressed and silent. Mademoiselle de Varandeuil took her place in the line, went forward with the others and was admitted: they searched her. She inquired for Salle Sainte-Josephine, and was directed to the second wing on the second floor. She found the hall and the bed, No. 14, which was, as she had been told, one of the last at the right. Indeed, she was guided thither, as it were, from the farther end of the hall, by Germinie's smile--the smile of a sick person in a hospital at an unexpected visit, which says, so gently, as soon as you enter the room: "Here I am."

She leaned over the bed. Germinie tried to push her away with a gesture of humility and the shamefacedness of a servant.

Mademoiselle de Varandeuil kissed her.

"Ah!" said Germinie, "the time dragged terribly yesterday. I imagined it was Thursday and I longed so for you."

"My poor girl! How are you?"

"Oh! I'm getting on finely now--the swelling in my bowels has all gone. I have only three weeks to stay here, mademoiselle, you'll see. They talk about a month or six weeks, but I know better. And I'm very comfortable here, I don't mind it at all. I sleep all night now. My! but I was thirsty, when you brought me here Monday! They wouldn't give me wine and water."

One and all, after a moment's conversation, leaned over Germinie to kiss her, and with every kiss Mademoiselle de Varandeuil could hear an indistinct murmur as of words exchanged; a whispered question from those who kissed, a hasty reply from her who was kissed.]

"What have you there to drink?"

"Oh! what I had at home--lime-water. Would you mind pouring me out some, mademoiselle? their pewter things are so heavy!"

She raised herself with one arm by the aid of the little stick that hung over the middle of the bed, and putting out the other thin, trembling arm, left bare by the sleeve falling back from it, she took the glass mademoiselle held out to her, and drank.

"There," said she when she had done, and she placed both her arms outside the bed, on the coverlid.

"What a pity that I have to put you out in this way, my poor demoiselle!" she continued. "Things must be in a horribly dirty state at home!"

"Don't worry about that."

There was a moment's silence. A faint smile came to Germinie's lips. "I am sailing under false colors," she said, lowering her voice; "I have confessed so as to get well."

Then she moved her head on the pillow in order to bring her mouth nearer to Mademoiselle de Varandeuil's ear:

"There are tales to tell here. I have a funny neighbor yonder." She indicated with a glance and a movement of her shoulder the patient to whom her back was turned. "There's a man who comes here to see her. He talked to her an hour yesterday. I heard them say they'd had a child. She has left her husband. He was like a madman, the man was, when he was talking to her."

As she spoke, Germinie's face lighted up as if she were still full of the scene of the day before, still stirred up and feverish with jealousy, so near death as she was, because she had heard love spoken of beside her!

Suddenly her expression changed. A woman came toward her bed. She seemed embarrassed when she saw Mademoiselle de Varandeuil. After a few moments, she kissed Germinie, and hurriedly withdrew as another woman came up. The new-comer did the same, kissed Germinie and at once took her leave. After the women a man came; then another woman. One and all, after a moment's conversation, leaned over Germinie to kiss her, and with every kiss Mademoiselle de Varandeuil could hear an indistinct murmur as of words exchanged; a whispered question from those who kissed, a hasty reply from her who was kissed.

"Well!" she said to Germinie, "I hope you are well taken care of!"

"Oh! yes," Germinie answered in a peculiar tone, "they take excellent care of me!"