Germinie Lacerteux Part 18

"Forty-one years old! it's amazing!" the physician repeated.

After a moment's reflection, he continued:

"So far as you know, is there any hereditary lung trouble in her family?

Has she had any relatives who have died young?"

"She lost a sister by pleurisy; but she was older. She was forty-eight, I think."

The doctor had become very grave. "However, the lung is getting freer,"

he said, in an encouraging tone. "But it is absolutely necessary that she should have rest. And send her to me once a week. Let her come and see me. And let her take a pleasant day for it,--a bright, sunny day."

LIX

Mademoiselle talked and prayed and implored and scolded to no purpose: she could not induce Germinie to lay aside her work for a few days.

Germinie would not even listen to the suggestion that she should have an a.s.sistant to do the heavier work. She declared that it was useless, impossible; that she could never endure the thought of another woman approaching her, waiting upon her, attending to her wants; that it would give her a fever simply to think of such a thing as she lay in bed; that she was not dead yet; and she begged that she might be allowed to go on as usual, so long as she could put one foot before the other. She said it in such an affectionate tone, her eyes were so beseeching, her feeble voice was so humble and so pa.s.sionate in making the request, that mademoiselle had not the courage to force her to accept an a.s.sistant.

She simply called her a "blockhead," who believed, like all country-people, that a few days in bed means death.

Keeping on her feet, with an apparent improvement due to the physician's energetic treatment, Germinie continued to make mademoiselle's bed, accepting her a.s.sistance to turn the mattresses. She also continued to prepare her food, and that was an especially distasteful task to her.

When she was preparing mademoiselle's breakfast and dinner, she felt as if she should die in her kitchen, one of the wretched little kitchens common in great cities, which are the cause of so much pulmonary trouble in women. The embers that she kindled, and from which a thread of suffocating smoke slowly arose, began to stir her stomach to revolt; soon the charcoal that she bought from the charcoal dealer next door, strong Paris charcoal, full of half-charred wood, enveloped her in its stifling odor. The dirty, smoking funnel, the low chimney-piece poured back into her lungs the corroding heat of the waist-high oven. She suffocated, she felt the fiery heat of all her blood surge upward to her face and cause red blotches to appear on her forehead. Her head whirled.

In the half-asphyxiated condition of laundresses who pa.s.s back and forth through the vapor of their charcoal stoves, she would rush to the window and draw a few breaths of the icy outside air.

She had other motives for suffering on her feet, for keeping constantly about her work despite her increasing weakness, than the repugnance of country-people to take to their beds, or her fierce, jealous determination that no one but herself should attend to mademoiselle's needs: she had a constant terror of denunciation, which might accompany the installation of a new servant. It was absolutely necessary that she should be there, to keep watch on mademoiselle and prevent anyone from coming near her. It was necessary, too, that she should show herself, that the quarter should see her, and that she should not appear to her creditors with the aspect of a dead woman. She must make a pretence of being strong, she must a.s.sume a cheerful, lively demeanor, she must impart confidence to the whole street with the doctor's studied words, with a hopeful air, and with the promise not to die. She must appear at her best in order to rea.s.sure her debtors and to prevent apprehensions on the subject of money from ascending the stairs and applying to mademoiselle.

She acted up to her part in this horrible, but necessary, comedy. She was absolutely heroic in the way she made her whole body lie,--in drawing up her enfeebled form to its full height as she pa.s.sed the shops, whose proprietors' eyes were upon her; in quickening her trailing footsteps; in rubbing her cheeks with a rough towel before going out in order to bring back the color of blood to them; in covering the pallor of her disease and her death-mask with rouge.

Despite the terrible cough that racked her sleepless nights, despite her stomach's loathing for food, she pa.s.sed the whole winter conquering and overcoming her own weakness and struggling with the ups and downs of her disease.

At every visit that he made, the doctor told mademoiselle that he was unable to find that any of her maid's vital organs were seriously diseased. The lungs were a little ulcerated near the top; but people recovered from that. "But her body seems worn out, thoroughly worn out,"

he said again and again, in a sad tone, with an almost embarra.s.sed manner that impressed mademoiselle. And he always had something to say, at the end of his visit, about a change of air--about the country.

LX

When August arrived, the doctor had nothing but that to advise or prescribe--the country. Notwithstanding the repugnance of elderly people to move, to change their abode and the habits and regular hours of their life; despite her domestic nature and the sort of pang that she felt at being torn from her hearthstone, mademoiselle decided to take Germinie into the country. She wrote to the _chick's_ daughter, who lived, with a brood of children, on a small estate in a village of Brie, and who had been, for many years, begging her to pay her a long visit. She requested her hospitality for a month or six weeks for herself and her sick maid.

They set out. Germinie was delighted. On their arrival she felt decidedly better. For some days her disease seemed to be diverted by the change. But the weather that summer was very uncertain, with much rain, sudden changes, and high winds. Germinie had a chill, and mademoiselle soon heard again, overhead, just above the room in which she slept, the frightful cough that had been so painful and hard to bear at Paris.

There were hurried paroxysms of coughing that seemed almost to strangle her; spasms that would break off for a moment, then begin again; and the pauses caused the ear and the heart to experience a nervous, anxious antic.i.p.ation of what was certain to come next, and always did come,--racking and tearing, dying away again, but still vibrating in the ear, even when it had ceased: never silent, never willing to have done.

And yet Germinie rose from those horrible nights with an energy and activity that amazed mademoiselle and at times rea.s.sured 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; a.s.sisted 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, pa.s.sionately 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 s.p.a.ce 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, a.s.sist 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 G.o.d!"

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 inst.i.tution?" 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 G.o.d, 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 a.s.sumed, 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 s.p.a.ce.