augustine did not come the next day, nor the next, for the paper. the unhappy looking child who had returned for more foolscap, informed mamzelle fleurette that he had heard his mother say that monsieur lacodie was very sick, and the bellhanger had sat up all night with him. the following day mamzelle fleurette saw choppin’s coupé pass clattering over the cobblestones and stop before the locksmith’s 283door. she knew that with her class it was only in a case of extremity that the famous and expensive physician was summoned. for the first time she thought of death. she prayed all day, silently, to herself, even while waiting upon customers.
in the evening she took an abeille from the top of the pile on the counter, and throwing a light shawl over her head, started with the paper over to the locksmith’s shop. she did not know if she were committing a sin in so doing. she would ask father fochelle on saturday, when she went to confession. she did not think it could be a sin; she would have called long before on any other sick neighbor, and she intuitively felt that in this distinction might lie the possibility of sin.
the shop was deserted except for the presence of lacodie’s little boy of five, who sat upon the floor playing with the tools and contrivances which all his days he had coveted, and which all his days had been denied to him. mamzelle fleurette mounted the narrow stairway in the rear of the shop which led to an upper landing and then into the room of the married couple. she stood a while hesitating 284upon this landing before venturing to knock softly upon the partly open door through which she could hear their voices.
“i thought,” she remarked apologetically to augustine, “that perhaps monsieur lacodie might like to look at the paper and you had no time to come for it, so i brought it myself.”
“come in, come in, mamzelle fleurette. it’s mamzelle fleurette who comes to inquire about you, lacodie,” augustine called out loudly to her husband, whose half consciousness she somehow confounded with deafness.
mamzelle fleurette drew mincingly forward, clasping her thin hands together at the waist line, and she peeped timorously at lacodie lying lost amid the bedclothes. his black mane was tossed wildly over the pillow and lent a fictitious pallor to the yellow waxiness of his drawn features. an approaching chill was sending incipient shudders through his frame, and making his teeth claque. but he still turned his head courteously in mamzelle fleurette’s direction.
285“bien bon de votre part, mamzelle fleurette—mais c’est fini. j’suis flambé, flambé, flambé!”
oh, the pain of it! to hear him in such extremity thanking her for her visit, assuring her in the same breath that all was over with him. she wondered how augustine could hear it so composedly. she whisperingly inquired if a priest had been summoned.
“inutile; il n’en veut pas,” was augustine’s reply. so he would have no priest at his bedside, and here was a new weight of bitterness for mamzelle fleurette to carry all her days.
she flitted back to her store through the darkness, herself like a slim shadow. the november evening was chill and misty. a dull aureole shot out from the feeble gas jet at the corner, only faintly and for an instant illumining her figure as it glided rapidly and noiselessly along the banquette. mamzelle fleurette slept little and prayed much that night. saturday morning lacodie died. on sunday he was buried and mamzelle fleurette did not go to the funeral, because father fochelle told her plainly she had no business there.
286it seemed inexpressibly hard to mamzelle fleurette that she was not permitted to hold lacodie in tender remembrance now that he was dead. but father fochelle, with his practical insight, made no compromise with sentimentality; and she did not question his authority, or his ability to master the subtleties of a situation utterly beyond reach of her own powers.
it was no longer a pleasure for mamzelle fleurette to go to confession as it had formerly been. her heart went on loving lacodie and her soul went on struggling; for she made this delicate and puzzling distinction between heart and soul, and pictured the two as set in a very death struggle against each other.
“i cannot help it, father. i try, but i cannot help it. to love him is like breathing; i do not know how to help it. i pray, and pray, and it does no good, for half of my prayers are for the repose of his soul. it surely cannot be a sin, to pray for the repose of his soul?”
father fochelle was heartily sick and tired of mamzelle fleurette and her stupidities. oftentimes he was tempted to drive her from 287the confessional, and forbid her return until she should have regained a rational state of mind. but he could not withhold absolution from a penitent who, week after week, acknowledged her shortcoming and strove with all her faculties to overcome it and atone for it.
