"Madame, you have put some one in the next room who seems to be very ill indeed--""Oh! don't talk to me about it!" cried the mistress of the house. "Ihave just sent some one for the mayor. Just imagine it; it is a woman, a poor unfortunate creature that came here last night on foot. She comes from Spain; she has no passport and no money; she was carrying her baby on her back, and the child was dying. I could not refuse to take her in. I went up to see her this morning myself; for when she turned up yesterday, it made me feel dreadfully bad to look at her.
Poor soul! she and the child were lying in bed, and both of them at death's door. 'Madame,' says she, pulling a gold ring off her finger, 'this is all that I have left; take it in payment, it will be enough;I shall not stay here long. Poor little one! we shall die together soon!' she said, looking at the child. I took her ring, and I asked her who she was, but she never would tell me her name. . . . I have just sent for the doctor and M. le Maire.""Why, you must do all that can be done for her," cried the Marquise.
"Good heavens! perhaps it is not too late! I will pay for everything that is necessary----""Ah! my lady, she looks to me uncommonly proud, and I don't know that she would allow it.""I will go to see her at once."
The Marquise went up forthwith to the stranger's room, without thinking of the shock that the sight of her widow's weeds might give to a woman who was said to be dying. At the sight of that dying woman the Marquise turned pale. In spite of the changes wrought by fearful suffering in Helene's beautiful face, she recognized her eldest daughter.
But Helene, when she saw a woman dressed in black, sat upright in bed with a shriek of horror. Then she sank back; she knew her mother.
"My daughter," said Mme. d'Aiglemont, "what is to be done?
Pauline! . . . Moina! . . ."
"Nothing now for me," said Helene faintly. "I had hoped to see my father once more, but your mourning--" she broke off, clutched her child to her heart as if to give it warmth, and kissed its forehead.
Then she turned her eyes on her mother, and the Marquise met the old reproach in them, tempered with forgiveness, it is true, but still reproach. She saw it, and would not see it. She forgot that Helene was the child conceived amid tears and despair, the child of duty, the cause of one of the greatest sorrows in her life. She stole to her eldest daughter's side, remembering nothing but that Helene was her firstborn, the child who had taught her to know the joys of motherhood. The mother's eyes were full of tears. "Helene, my child! . . ." she cried, with her arms about her daughter.
Helene was silent. Her own babe had just drawn its last breath on her breast.
Moina came into the room with Pauline, her maid, and the landlady and the doctor. The Marquise was holding her daughter's ice-cold hand in both of hers, and gazing at her in despair; but the widowed woman, who had escaped shipwreck with but one of all her fair band of children, spoke in a voice that was dreadful to hear. "All this is your work,"she said. "If you had but been for me all that--""Moina, go! Go out of the room, all of you!" cried Mme. d'Aiglemont, her shrill tones drowning Helene's voice.--"For pity's sake," she continued, "let us not begin these miserable quarrels again now----""I will be silent," Helene answered with a preternatural effort. "I am a mother; I know that Moina ought not . . . Where is my child?"Moina came back, impelled by curiosity.
"Sister," said the spoiled child, "the doctor--""It is all of no use," said Helene. "Oh! why did I not die as a girl of sixteen when I meant to take my own life? There is no happiness outside the laws. Moina . . . you . . ."Her head sank till her face lay against the face of the little one; in her agony she strained her babe to her breast, and died.
"Your sister, Moina," said Mme. d'Aiglemont, bursting into tears when she reached her room, "your sister meant no doubt to tell you that a girl will never find happiness in a romantic life, in living as nobody else does, and, above all things, far away from her mother."
