Then, after a struggle, she replied with a tone and manner so spiteful and icy that it would have deceived even us who know her had we heard it."He has plenty of nurses without me." She added, almost violently, "My husband, if he were wounded, would not have so many, perhaps not have one."With this she rose and went out, leaving them aghast.She sat down in the passage on a window-seat, and laughed hysterically.Rose heard her and ran to her.Josephine told her what her mother had said to her.Rose soothed her."Never mind, you have your sister who understands you: don't you go back till they have got some other topic."Rose out of curiosity went in, and found a discussion going on.The doctor was fathoming Josephine, for the benefit of his companion.
"It is a female jealousy, and of a mighty innocent kind.We are so taken up with this poor fellow, she thinks her soldier is forgotten.""Surely, doctor, our Josephine would not be so unreasonable, so unjust," suggested her mother.
"She belongs to a ***, be it said without offending you, madame, among whose numberless virtues justice does not fill a prominent place."The baroness shook her head."That is not it.It is a piece of prudery.This young gentleman was a sort of admirer of hers, though she did not admire him much, as far as I remember.But it was four years ago; and she is married to a man she loves, or is going to love.""Well, but, mamma, a trifling excess of delicacy is surely excusable." This from Rose.
"No, no; it is not delicacy; it is prudery.And when people are sick and suffering, an honest woman should take up her charity and lay down her prudery, or her coquetry: two things that I suspect are the same thing in different shapes."Here Jacintha came in."Mademoiselle, here is the colonel's broth;Madame Raynal has flavored it for him, and you are to take it up to him, and keep him company while he eats it.""Come," cried the baroness, "my lecture has not been lost."Rose followed Jacintha up-stairs.
Rose was heart and head on Raynal's side.
She had deceived him about Josephine's attachment, and felt all the more desirous to guard him against any ill consequences of it.Then he had been so generous to her: he had left her her sister, who would have gone to Egypt, and escaped this misery, but for her.
But on the other hand, --Gentle pity Tugged at her heartstrings with complaining cries.
This watching of Camille saddened even her.When she was with him his pride bore him up: but when he was alone as he thought, his anguish and despair were terrible, and broke out in so many ways that often Rose shrank in terror from her peep hole.
She dared not tell Josephine the half of what she saw: what she did tell her agitated her so terribly: and often Rose had it on the tip of her tongue to say, "Do pray go and see if you can say nothing that will do him good;" but she fought the impulse down.This battle of feeling, though less severe than her sister's, was constant; it destroyed her gayety.She, whose merry laugh used to ring like chimes through the house, never laughed now, seldom smiled, and often sighed.
Dr.Aubertin was the last to succumb to the deep depression, but his time came: and he had been for a day or two as grave and as sad as the rest, when one day that Rose was absent, spying on Camille, he took the baroness and Josephine into his confidence; and condescended finally to ask their advice.
"It is humiliating," said he, "after all my experience, to be obliged to consult unprofessional persons.Forty years ago I should have been TOO WISE to do so.But since then I have often seen science baffled and untrained intelligences throw light upon hard questions: and your *** in particular has luminous instincts and reads things by flashes that we men miss with a microscope.Our dear Madame Raynal suspected that plausible notary, and to this day I believe she could not tell us why."Josephine admitted as much very frankly.
"There you see," said the doctor."Well, then, you must help me in this case.And this time I promise to treat your art with more respect.""And pray who is it she is to read now?" asked the baroness.
"Who should it be but my poor patient? He puzzles me.I never knew a patient so faint-hearted.""A soldier faint-hearted!" exclaimed the baroness."To be sure these men that storm cities, and fire cannon, and cut and hack one another with so much spirit, are poor creatures compared with us when they have to lie quiet and suffer."The doctor walked the room in great excitement."It is not his wound that is killing him, there's something on his mind.You, Josephine, with your instincts do help me: do pray, for pity's sake, throw off that sublime indifference you have manifested all along to this man's fate.""She has not," cried the baroness, firing up."Did I not see her lining his dressing-gown for him? and she inspects everything that he eats: do you not?""Yes, mother." She then suggested in a faltering voice that time would cure the patient, and time alone.
"Time! you speak as if time was a quality: time is only a measure of events, favorable or unfavorable; it kills as many as it cures.""Why, you surely would not imply his life is in any danger?" This was the baroness.
"Madame, if the case was not grave, should I take this unusual step?
I tell you if some change does not take place soon, he will be a dead man in another fortnight.That is all TIME will do for him."The baroness uttered an exclamation of pity and distress.Josephine put her hand to her bosom, and a creeping horror came over her, and then a faintness.She sat working mechanically, and turning like ice within.After a few minutes of this, she rose with every appearance of external composure and left the room.In the passage she met Rose coming hastily towards the salon laughing: the first time she had laughed this many a day.Oh, what a contrast between the two faces that met there--the one pale and horror stricken, the other rosy and laughing!
"Well, dear, at last I am paid for all my trouble, and yours, by a discovery; he never drinks a drop of his medicine; he pours it into the ashes under the grate; I caught him in the fact.""Then this is too much: I can resist no longer.Come with me," said Josephine doggedly.
"Where?"
"To him."
