Mathieu Ropars: et cetera Part 2

--"It's ... nothing, ..." returned Josephe, her accent belying her words, ... "I was taken by surprise...."

--"Have the men gone?" asked Francine, looking with frightened glance towards the grave.

--"You see they have," answered Josephe shuddering.

--"What did they come here to do? They were carrying something. It was a dead body, wasn't it?"

Her sister put her hand upon her lips.

--"Don't talk of that, Zine!" murmured she, her sobs again overpowering her.

--"You saw it?" asked the child, frightened, yet curious.

--"Yes, O G.o.d!" faltered forth her sister in reply; "... and ... I knew it again ... it was Monsieur Gabriel!"

--"Your good friend, Josey?" cried Francine; "are you sure? And he's there ... there, under the ground? ... Oh! let's go, let's go; I'm afraid ... I'm afraid!"

And again she threw herself into her sister's arms, who exerted herself to the utmost to re-a.s.sure her, and at the same time to control her own tears.

--"There, stop, Zine!" said she, with broken voice; "... we must be calm ... we must dry up our eyes ... or mother will be uneasy." Then raising herself suddenly, "Hark," she added, "I fancied I heard some one calling us; quick, quick, let's go up!"

With these words the two little maidens rose from the ground; quitting the ravine, they hastily regained the platform, trembling and out of breath when they reached it.

Genevieve was waiting there for them; but it was already dark, and this prevented her noticing their trouble. She took them by the hand, to lead them in, and made them repeat their joint prayers; both went to bed, without speaking of the adventure at the ravine.

III

Josephe slept badly; and the next morning, when she got up, was pale and drooping. Genevieve, who did not fail to notice it, questioned her with nervous solicitude; but the child answered that nothing was the matter.

Only, at every inquiry, her eyes filled with tears, and her voice trembled. Thus languidly for her did the day wear away. In the evening she was still more depressed, but still not suffering pain. She pa.s.sed a restless night; and on the following morning Ropars went for the Surgeon of the lazaretto. He examined the child, and put several questions that darkened the brow of Mathieu. Genevieve, whose looks went direct from the Surgeon to her husband, perceived this; and she felt a blow stricken upon her heart. At the moment when the two crossed the thresh-hold, she followed, shut the door abruptly, and stopped them.

--"It is the ... disease, ... is it not?" she asked in anguish. She had not dared to name the yellow fever; the Surgeon seemed to hesitate in his reply.

--"Ah! I'm certain of it," she exclaimed, confirmed by this very hesitation; "so, our precautions have all been useless! The blow has come, and all is over!"

She could not avoid sinking down upon the stone bench, placed beside the door; and she covered her face with her ap.r.o.n. The Surgeon taxed himself to console her with vague a.s.surances; but it was evident that he himself had no longer confidence in his efforts. Overcome by the implacable power of the contagion, he persevered in struggling against it, without hope and from a sense of duty, as soldiers, for the honour of their flag, defend silently a post that has been abandoned. So, perceiving that his words, far from soothing the grief of Genevieve, did but redouble it, he turned towards the keeper, and, having briefly repeated to him some directions already given for the child, he went his way.

Ropars remained some moments on one spot, with his arms crossed and his head upon his breast; but a still deeper groan from Genevieve caused him to raise his eyes. He took her hand.

--"It isn't time for despair yet," said he, with gentle firmness; "when G.o.d shall have decided against us, your whole life-time will be left for grief. At present, let us devote ourselves to our duty, and follow strictly the injunctions of the doctor."

--"And he has told us nothing at all!" said the mother, who at heart felt half-incensed against the Surgeon, for not having more vigorously combatted her fears; "he has not given us any hope!"

--"G.o.d is the master," replied Mathieu, in all simplicity, "and so long as he has not declared his pleasure, we may believe that all will work well; but if the darling creature must be taken from our hands, let us at least to the last moment show him, how keen is our desire to keep her."

Hereupon the feverish voice of the child reached their ears.

--"Hark, she's calling me!" cried Genevieve, rising in urgent haste to go in. Ropars stopped her.

--"Dry your eyes first," said he, pa.s.sing his own hand with fond compa.s.sion over the poor mother's moistened eyelids; "Josephe mustn't think that you are anxious. Don't you know that her life may depend on this?"

--"Yes, yes," she answered, "fear not, Mathieu, I will not cry any more;" and she forcibly restrained the tears that were filling her eyes afresh... "Look, no one would notice it now... And the doctors, besides, may be mistaken, mayn't they?... And after all, G.o.d will have pity on us."

--"We must hope so," replied the keeper, much moved; "but if it is his part to have pity, it is ours to show resignation. Bear up, then, good heart; go to the child with a smile; it will do her good; and first of all ... kiss me ... that we may keep up each other's resolution."

Josephe's mother threw her arms around her husband's neck, and gave way to a new flood of tears. But she checked them at the sound of the sick one's voice calling her for the second time, and, by a supreme effort thrusting down her despair into the very depths of her heart, she rushed into the house with calm brow and a smile upon her lips.

Josephe, nevertheless, grew rapidly worse. In the evening the fever was doubly hot upon her. One after another, she spoke of sister Francine, of Michael, of the cherry-tree in blossom, and of her good friend Monsieur Gabriel. At one moment she fancied that she heard the last-named; she called him; she wished to know if he had brought her the promised presents. At another time, the scene in the ravine appeared to be vividly in her recollection; she cried out that Monsieur Gabriel was dead; and she heard the earth grating over him in the pit. The Surgeon came to see her repeatedly, and multiplied his prescriptions, without power to arrest the onward march of the disease. That night was an awful one for the hapless mother; she kept her child clasped in her arms, the little one's mind wandering more and more. At sunrise the turbulent delirium was over, to give place to the torpor that precedes death. At length, towards the middle of the day, Josephe opened her eyes, and uttered one sigh--it was the last.

The blow had been so decidedly expected, that the despair of Ropars and of Genevieve could scarcely be violent. The bitterness of their loss had, so to say, preceded it; both had tasted it, drop by drop, during the protracted agony. And yet the mother's calmness had in it a something haggard, that would have startled a looker-on less troubled than Mathieu himself. Bent upon rendering the last offices to her daughter, she was long occupied in combing out her beautiful black hair; she dressed the body in her best clothes, and laid it out with the hands crossed over the breast, as Josephe had been used to carry them when asleep. All this was done slowly, tranquilly, with a sort of complacency even, and often intermingled with kisses. It was but at intervals that a tear trickled over her cheeks, that were marbled with glowing spots; it was but a slight trembling that shook the hand, as it performed its sorrowful duty. At length, when she who had brought this child into the world, and who had nourished it with her milk and with her affection, had herself sewed it up in its shroud, she went to the window, broke the stalk of a gilly-flower--the only one that the sea-winds had spared--pulled off its leaves, and scattered them over the winding sheet.

In the meantime, night had fallen. Deposited at the head of the darkened alcove, the dead form might indistinctly be traced through its covering of linen, as though it were sketched in marble. Higher up hung a Christ, in ivory, the head bent forward, and the arms extended. Genevieve knelt down near the bed, and remained there for a long time, with her head leaning upon her joined hands. Half-aloud she murmured a prayer; but whilst her lips repeated faithfully every word, their meaning was not taken in by her mind. When she had finished it, she raised herself up mechanically, and looked about her; her brain was a gloomy chaos.

Putting up both hands to her forehead, she pressed it, with a stifled cry, as though she sought to stay that whirlwind of confused and lacerating thoughts. There was, for some few moments, a struggle between her will and her despair; finally the former gained the ascendant; she stepped towards the door and opened it.

Her husband had taken refuge on the platform with Francine, to remove her from the harrowing sight of placing the body in its shroud.

Genevieve could see him standing near the parapet; the little girl was at his feet, with her head resting on his knees. Since the death of her sister, she had not spoken a word. Fixed in one place, with eyes dilated and lips compressed, she seemed to be endeavouring to comprehend what had occurred. Her two small hands hung down inactive, and her naked feet appeared to be glued to the ground. Seeing her thus, under the early rays of the moon that were playing in her light-coloured tresses, Genevieve was, as it were, brought back to herself. A flash pa.s.sed across the blankness of her expression; her nostrils dilated; a flood of tears gushed from her eyes. Springing towards the child, she seized it in her arms with a sort of doleful pa.s.sionateness, to which Francine at once and amply responded, by an outburst of sobs and caresses. For a long time there was nothing but an interchange of broken appeals and unfinished phrases. The little girl would go on asking for her sister, while the mother, whose despair was revived by such demands, compelled herself to smother them beneath her kisses. At last, her strength exhausted, she let her arms, that upheld Francine, drop down, and felt that she was gently withdrawn from her. It was Mathieu, who placed the child upon the ground. He then led the mother a little further apart, and obliged her to sit down upon the stone-bench, leaning her back against the parapet. She tried to raise herself up, as she stretched out her hands.

--"My child!" she stammered through her sobbings; "I want my child!"

--"In good time thou shalt see her," said Ropars, who according to the custom of the Bretagne peasantry only _thee'd_ and _thou'd_ Genevieve, when under the influence of strong emotion; "but first thou must listen with all attention, for what I have to tell thee is of the deepest consequence."

--"Ah! I would, I would!" was her reply, putting both hands up to her head; "but don't be hurt, Mathieu, if it be impossible. I hear yonder, look you, something that hushes up all the rest; it is her death-rattle, my good man!... And ... do you know?... I like the anguish that it causes me, to hear it; I can fancy that there still is breath in her.

Oh! Jesus! who would have told me, that I should yearn after the dying breath of my child?" Ropars laid a hand upon the head of the miserable woman, whose sobbings had recommenced.

--"Be soothed at heart," he said to her with touching firmness; "the good G.o.d wills that we should submit, and not thus give way. The dead one is now in her Paradise, where she has no more need of us; but she leaves behind her a sister, whose life is in our charge."

--"How do you mean?" asked Genevieve, raising towards him her eyes, in which alarm had arrested the tears.

--"Don't you understand?" returned the keeper, lowering his voice; "the breath of the disease is like the sea-wind; it spares no one; and it may send, at any instant, the living to rejoin the dead."

--"Heavenly Saviour! is this a warning?" demanded Genevieve, clasping her hands. "Must this child too, be struck down?... Have you remarked any thing?... Ah! tell the truth, Mathieu, tell it at once; I would rather be killed at one blow."

--"So far, the child suffers from nothing but her distress," rejoined Ropars; "but if she remains in this deadly air, who can guarantee us that she will escape?"

--"Evil upon us!" cried Genevieve, raising her joined hands over her head; "why did you remind me of it, Mathieu? I did not wish to think of it; and now I shall see her dying, every hour. G.o.d forgive you for thus turning the blade that is within my heart!"

--"If I touch it, it is but to withdraw it," was the quarter-master's answer. "It won't do now to shut one's eyes and let the squall overtake us; we must work ship with all our might for the little one's safety....

If she remains on the island, you have too many chances of sewing up her winding-sheet, Genevieve; she must leave it forthwith."

--"But how?"

Ropars threw his eyes around him, to satisfy himself that he was not overheard.

--"There is a way," he replied cautiously.

--"The powder-magazine skiff?"

--"No!"