Germinie Lacerteux Part 20

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

She had lost the animation that she displayed at the beginning of the visit. The little blood that had mounted to her cheeks remained there in one spot only. Her face seemed closed; it was cold and deaf, like a wall. Her drawn-in lips were sealed, as it were. Her features were concealed beneath the veil of infinite dumb agony. There was nothing caressing or eloquent in her staring eyes, absorbed as they were and filled with one fixed thought. You would have said that all exterior signs of her ideas were drawn within her by an irresistible power of concentration, by a last supreme effort of her will, and that her whole being was clinging in desperation to a sorrow that drew everything to itself.

The visitors she had just received were the grocer, the fish-woman, the b.u.t.ter woman and the laundress--all her debts, incarnate! The kisses were the kisses of her creditors, who came to keep on the scent of their claims and to extort money from her death-agony!

LXVI

Mademoiselle had just risen on Sat.u.r.day morning. She was making a little package of four jars of Bar preserves, which she intended to carry to Germinie the next day, when she heard low voices, a colloquy between the housekeeper and the concierge in the reception room. Almost immediately the door opened and the concierge came in.

"Sad news, mademoiselle," he said.

And he handed her a letter he had in his hand; it bore the stamp of the Lariboisiere hospital: Germinie was dead; she died at seven o'clock that morning.

Mademoiselle took the letter; she saw only the letters that said: "Dead!

dead!" And they repeated the word: "Dead! dead!" to no purpose, for she could not believe it. As is always the case with a person of whose death one learns abruptly, Germinie appeared to her instinct with life, and her body, which was no more, seemed to stand before her with the awe-inspiring presence of a ghost. Dead! She should never see her more!

So there was no longer a Germinie on earth! Dead! She was dead! And the person she should hear henceforth moving about in the kitchen would not be she; somebody else would open the door for her, somebody else would potter about her room in the morning! "Germinie!" she cried at last, in the tone with which she was accustomed to call her; then, collecting her thoughts: "Machine! creature! What's your name?" she cried, savagely, to the bewildered housekeeper. "My dress--I must go there."

She was so taken by surprise by this sudden fatal termination of the disease, that she could not accustom her mind to the thought. She could hardly realize that sudden, secret, vague death, of which her only knowledge was derived from a sc.r.a.p of paper. Was Germinie really dead?

Mademoiselle asked herself the question with the doubt of persons who have lost a dear one far away, and, not having seen her die, do not admit that she is dead. Was she not still alive the last time she saw her? How could it have happened? How could she so suddenly have become a thing good for nothing except to be put under ground? Mademoiselle dared not think about it, and yet she kept on thinking. The mystery of the death-agony, of which she knew nothing, attracted and terrified her. The anxious interest of her affection turned to her maid's last hours, and she tried gropingly to take away the veil and repel the feeling of horror. Then she was seized with an irresistible longing to know everything, to witness, with the help of what might be told her, what she had not seen. She felt that she must know if Germinie had spoken before she died,--if she had expressed any desire, spoken of any last wishes, uttered one of those sentences which are the final outcry of life.

When she reached Lariboisiere, she pa.s.sed the concierge,--a stout man reeking with life as one reeks with wine,--pa.s.sed through the corridors where pallid convalescents were gliding hither and thither, and rang at a door, veiled with white curtains, at the extreme end of the hospital.

The door was opened: she found herself in a parlor, lighted by two windows, where a plaster cast of the Virgin stood upon an altar, between two views of Vesuvius, which seemed to s.h.i.+ver against the bare wall.

Behind her, through an open door, came the voices of Sisters and little girls chattering together, a clamor of youthful voices and fresh laughter, the natural gayety of a cheery room where the sun frolics with children at play.

Mademoiselle asked to speak with the _mother_ of Salle Sainte-Josephine.

A short, half-deformed Sister, with a kind, homely face, a face alight with the grace of G.o.d, came in answer to her request. Germinie had died in her arms. "She hardly suffered at all," the Sister told mademoiselle; "she was sure that she was better; she felt relieved; she was full of hope. About seven this morning, just as her bed was being made, she suddenly began vomiting blood, and pa.s.sed away without knowing that she was dying." The Sister added that she had said nothing, asked for nothing, expressed no wish.

Mademoiselle rose, delivered from the horrible thoughts she had had.

Germinie had been spared all the tortures of the death-agony that she had dreamed of. Mademoiselle was grateful for that death by the hand of G.o.d which gathers in the soul at a single stroke.

As she was going away an attendant came to her and said: "Will you be kind enough to identify the body?"

_The body!_ The words gave mademoiselle a terrible shock. Without awaiting her reply, the attendant led the way to a high yellow door, over which was written: _Amphitheatre_. He knocked; a man in s.h.i.+rt sleeves, with a pipe in his mouth, opened the door and bade them wait a moment.

Mademoiselle waited. Her thoughts terrified her. Her imagination was on the other side of that awful door. She tried to antic.i.p.ate what she was about to see. And her mind was so filled with confused images, with fanciful alarms, that she shuddered at the thought of entering the room, of recognizing that disfigured face among a number of others, if, indeed, she could recognize it! And yet she could not tear herself away; she said to herself that she should never see her again!

The man with the pipe opened the door: mademoiselle saw nothing but a coffin, the lid of which extended only to the neck, leaving Germinie's face uncovered, with the eyes open, and the hair erect upon her head.

LXVII

Prostrated by the excitement and by this last spectacle, Mademoiselle de Varandeuil took to her bed on returning home, after she had given the concierge the money for the purchase of a burial lot, and for the burial. And when she was in bed the things she had seen arose before her. The horrible dead body was still beside her, the ghastly face framed by the coffin. That never-to-be-forgotten face was engraved upon her mind; beneath her closed eyelids she saw it and was afraid of it.

Germinie was there, with the distorted features of one who has been murdered, with sunken orbits and eyes that seemed to have withdrawn into their holes! She was there with her mouth still distorted by the vomiting that accompanied her last breath! She was there with her hair, her terrible hair, brushed back and standing erect upon her head!

Her hair!--that haunted mademoiselle more persistently than all the rest. The old maid thought, involuntarily, of things that had come to her ears when she was a child, of superst.i.tions of the common people stored away in the background of her memory; she asked herself if she had not been told that dead people whose hair is like that carry a crime with them to the grave. And at times it was such hair as that that she saw upon that head, the hair of crime, standing on end with terror and stiffened with horror before the justice of Heaven, like the hair of the condemned man before the scaffold in La Greve!

On Sunday mademoiselle was too ill to leave her bed. On Monday she tried to rise and dress, in order to attend the funeral; but she was attacked with faintness, and was obliged to return to her bed.

LXVIII

"Well! is it all over?" said mademoiselle from her bed, as the concierge entered her room about eleven o'clock, on his return from the cemetery, with the black coat and the sanctimonious manner suited to the occasion.

"_Mon Dieu_, yes, mademoiselle. Thank G.o.d! the poor girl is out of pain."

"Stay! I have no head to-day. Put the receipts and the rest of the money on my table. We will settle our accounts some other day."

The concierge stood before her without moving or evincing any purpose to go, s.h.i.+fting from one hand to the other a blue velvet cap made from the dress of one of his daughters. After a moment's reflection, he decided to speak.

"This burying is an expensive business, mademoiselle. In the first place, there's----"

"Who asked you to give the figures?" Mademoiselle de Varandeuil interrupted, with the haughty air of superb charity.

The concierge continued: "And as I was saying, a lot in the cemetery, which you told me to get, ain't given away. It's no use for you to have a kind heart, mademoiselle, you ain't any too rich,--everyone knows that,--and I says to myself: 'Mademoiselle's going to have no small amount to pay out, and I know mademoiselle, she'll pay.' So it'll do no harm to economize on that, eh? It'll be just so much saved. The other'll be just as safe under ground. And then, what will give her the most pleasure up yonder? Why, to know that she isn't making things hard for anybody, the excellent girl."

"Pay? What?" said mademoiselle, out of patience with the concierge's circ.u.mlocution.

"Oh! that's of no account," he replied; "she was very fond of you, all the same. And then, when she was very sick, it wasn't the time. Oh! _Mon Dieu_, you needn't put yourself out--there's no hurry about it--it's money she owed a long while. See, this is it."

He took a stamped paper from the inside pocket of his coat.

"I didn't want her to make a note,--she insisted."

Mademoiselle de Varandeuil seized the stamped paper and saw at the foot:

_"I acknowledge the receipt of the above amount._

"GERMINIE LACERTEUX."

It was a promise to pay three hundred francs in monthly installments, which were to be endorsed on the back.

"There's nothing there, you see," said the concierge, turning the paper over.

Mademoiselle de Varandeuil took off her spectacles. "I will pay," she said.

The concierge bowed. She glanced at him; he did not move.