Never had her demeanour, the crushed look of a neglected woman, her listless movements, her slow speech, her indifference for everything but the passion that was consuming her, moved him so deeply. For the last week, perhaps, she had not put a chair in its place, or dusted a piece of furniture; she left the place to go to wreck and ruin, scarcely having the strength to drag herself about. And it was enough to break one’s heart to behold that misery ending in filth beneath the glaring light from the big window; to gaze on that ill-pargetted shanty, so bare and disorderly, where one shivered with melancholy although it was a bright February afternoon.
Christine had slowly sat down beside an iron bedstead, which Sandoz had not noticed when he came in.
‘Hallo,’ he said, ‘is Jacques ill?’
She was covering up the child, who constantly flung off the bedclothes.
‘Yes, he hasn’t been up these three days. We brought his bed in here so that he might be with us. He was never very strong. But he is getting worse and worse, it’s distracting.’
She had a fixed stare in her eyes and spoke in a monotonous tone, and Sandoz felt frightened when he drew up to the bedside. The child’s pale head seemed to have grown bigger still, so heavy that he could no longer support it. He lay perfectly still, and one might have thought he was dead, but for the heavy breathing coming from between his discoloured lips.
‘My poor little Jacques, it’s I, your godfather. Won’t you say how d’ye do?’
The child made a fruitless, painful effort to lift his head; his eyelids parted, showing his white eyeballs, then closed again.
‘Have you sent for a doctor?’
Christine shrugged her shoulders.