Mère Girauds Little Daughter | Page 7

awakened from her sleep one night, and found Laure standing at her bedside looking down at her and shuddering. She started up with an exclamation of terror.
"Mon Dieu!" she said. "What is it?"
She was answered in a voice she had never heard before,--Laure's, but hoarse and shaken. Laure had fallen upon her knees, and grasped the bedclothes, hiding her face in the folds.
"I am ill," she answered in this strange, changed tone. "I am--I am cold and burning--I am--dying."
In an instant Mère Giraud stood upon the floor holding her already insensible form in her arm'. She was obliged to lay her upon the floor while she rang the bell to alarm the servants. She sent for Valentin and a doctor. The doctor, arriving, regarded the beautiful face with manifest surprise and alarm. It was no longer pale, but darkly flushed, and the stamp of terrible pain was upon it.
"She has been exposed to infection," he said. "This is surely the case. It is a malignant fever."
Then Mère Giraud thought of the poor mother and child.
"O my God!" she prayed, "do not let her die a martyr."
But the next day there was not a servant left in the house; but Valentin was there, and there had come a Sister of Mercy. When she came, Valentin met her, and led her into the salon. They remained together for half an hour, and then came out and went to the sick-room, and there were traces of tears upon the Sister's face. She was a patient, tender creature, who did her work well, and she listened with untiring gentleness to Mère Giraud's passionate plaints.
"So beautiful, so young, so beloved," cried the poor mother; "and Monsieur absent in Normandy, though it is impossible to say where! And if death should come before his return, who could confront him with the truth? So beautiful, so happy, so adored!"
And Laure lay upon the bed, sometimes wildly delirious, sometimes a dreadful statue of stone,--unhearing, unseeing, unmoving,--death without death's rest,--life in death's bonds of iron.
But while Mère Giraud wept, Valentin had no tears. He was faithful, untiring, but silent even at the worst.
"One would think he had no heart," said Mère Giraud; "but men are often so,--ready to work, but cold and dumb. Ah! it is only a mother who bears the deepest grief."
She fought passionately enough for a hope at first, but it was forced from her grasp in the end. Death had entered the house and spoken to her in the changed voice which had summoned her from her sleep.
"Madame," said the doctor one evening as they stood over the bed while the sun went down, "I have done all that is possible. She will not see the sun set again. She may not see it rise."
Mère Giraud fell upon her knees beside the bed, crossing herself and weeping.
"She will die," she said, "a blessed martyr. She will die the death of a saint."
That very night--only a few hours later--there came to them a friend,--one they had not for one moment even hoped to see,--a gentle, grave old man, in a thin, well-worn black robe,--the Curé of St. Croix.
Him Valentin met also, and when the two saw each other, there were barriers that fell away in their first interchange of looks.
"My son," said the old man, holding out his hands, "tell me the truth."
Then Valentin fell into a chair and hid his face
"She is dying," he said, "and I cannot ask that she should live."
"What was my life"--he cried passionately, speaking again--"what was my life to me that I should not have given it to save her,--to save her to her beauty and honor, and her mother's love! I would have given it cheerfully,--a thousand times,--a thousand times again and again. But it was not to be; and, in spite of my prayers, I lost her. O my God!" with a sob of agony, "if to-night she were in St. Croix and I could hear the neighbors call her again as they used, 'Mère Giraud's little daughter!'"
The eyes of the Curé had tears in them also.
"Yesterday I returned to St. Croix and found your mother absent," he said. "I have had terrible fears for months, and when I found her house closed, they caused me to set out upon my journey at once."
He did not ask any questions. He remembered too well the man of whom Valentin had written; the son who was "past his youth, and had evidently seen the world;" the pale aristocrat, who had exclaimed "Mon Dieu!" at the sight of Laure's wondrous beauty.
"When the worst came to the worst," said Valentin, "I vowed myself to the labor of sparing our mother. I have worked early and late to sustain myself in the part I played. It was not from Laure the money came.