IV.
“Katrine,” said madame, “go and call Julie. Why, here it’s seven o’clock, and she not up yet! I never knew her to lie abed like this before. Tell her she must come down right away and dress the baby.”
Katrine came back in a few minutes, looking frightened.
“I calls von, dwo, dree dimes. She vill not hear. Den I goes oop der shtep und calls von more dime. She vill not ondershtand. She shtare mit de eyes vide—und see notting! Den she schream like murter.”
“Why, mercy on us, Dolf!” exclaimed madame, glancing across the breakfast-table at her husband, “what if the child’s sick! some fever or other!—something catching!—and these children!—she ought to be got out of the house immediately!... St. Mary’s Hospital! Yes, that’s the place. She’s Catholic, I believe. Katrine!—no, wait! perhaps it isn’t anything serious, after all. We must find out first. Dolf, what if you leave word for Dr. Smith to call round as you go down street? No, stay!” in an undertone, “don’t send him. Get some one that doesn’t go in our set—some stranger. Being up in the attic so, it might get out that we didn’t treat her well. You know how absurdly people will talk, sometimes. Can’t you think of some one else we can call in?”
“Well, I d-o-n’-t know. Let me see. Why, yes, there’s that young fellow who has stuck up his shingle a few doors off from the office. Foreigner, I believe. Hasn’t any too much custom, should judge. Might get him.”
“A foreigner. Oh, yes; that will do very well.”
In half an hour the young physician rang the door-bell. He was shown up to the attic by Katrine. As he mounted the stairs, a pitiful little wail came floating down:
“Oh, Julien, Julien, tu es bien longtemps à venir. Helas! ne te reverrai-je plus?”[5]
Madame, waiting below, wondered if the stranger wasn’t “some exiled nobleman, he looks so distinguished. Rather seedy, though.”
Soon she grew impatient.
“What is he keeping me so long in suspense for, I should like to know?”
When he came down at last, his eyes burned like hot coals, and he had for her questions never a word of answer. He walked swiftly away, and returned with a carriage before she had recovered from her amazement. Still speechless, he again made his way to the attic, and when he descended this time he bore something in his arms very tenderly.
It was little Julie, wrapped in his cloak.
“You are behaving very strangely, sir! What are you doing? Where are you taking her?”
“Where she will be cared for, rest assured!”
“What do you mean, sir?” cried madame, following down the steps. “Do you dare insinuate that she wouldn’t be cared for here? I want to know what right you have to be meddling with that child?”
“The best right in the world, madame—a brother’s right.” To the coachman: “Drive on!” and the carriage rolled away.
A passing glimpse of a tiny, fever-flushed face, wild, unconscious, restless eyes, and lips that moved continually, was the last madame saw of the “delicate little creature” she had “adopted” for a nurse-girl.
When she had recovered breath and collected her scattered wits, she put on her shawl and bonnet, and went down town to the office.
“Dolf, what’s that young doctor’s name, do you know?”
“Name? Never noticed, ’pon my word. Why?”
“It’s out there on his door, or somewhere, isn’t it? Just step out and see, please.”
“Leblanc,” said “Dolf,” returning.
“Leblanc—Leblanc ... yes, and that’s the child’s name, now I recall it. Do you know, he’s her brother!”
The next place madame visited was the jeweler’s. She was very glad she had not purchased the watered silk or the Brussels carpet, and that the silver service had not yet been sent up to the house.
“Mr. Forsyth,” she said, laying a roll of bank-notes on the counter, “I regret our little transaction yesterday. I prefer to keep the cross myself.”
“Well—a—hem!—a bargain’s a bargain, you know.”
“Oh, don’t talk to me about ‘bargains’! we’re old acquaintances. I want that cross. I must have it.”
The jeweler colored, and coughed, and objected. But madame was obstinate. Finally, as they were “old acquaintances,” and as madame’s husband was a lawyer, and as he hadn’t told her anywhere near the full value of the cross, he yielded—on one condition—that it should remain a few days longer in his show-case. It added greatly to the display there, especially since a card had been attached to it, reading thus:
ANTIQUE CROSS,
Formerly owned by the
EMPRESS EUGENIE,
Sold by her in her flight from Paris, to defray the expenses of the journey.
Madame agreed to the condition, thinking:
“If Doctor Leblanc cares anything for his sister he won’t be gaping at jewelers’ windows for some time to come. (Doubtful if she recovers. It’s some fever or other she must have caught on board that emigrant ship. And the children! bless me, I must go the very next thing to Doctor Smith and see if he thinks there’s any danger.) And then if he shouldn’t happen to ask for it, or make any fuss about it, why, I can wear it myself, and everybody in town will suppose it has once been worn by Eugenie!”
A week from that morning little Julie came back from her wanderings, looked up into the face bending over her, and knew it for the first time.
“C’est lui!”[6] she whispered, smiling faintly, closed her weary eyes and fell into a sweet slumber.
“Thank God! she is going to live.”
[5] Thou art very long in coming. Alas! shall I never see thee more?
[6] It is he!