VI The Heart of a Woman
When at last Nicole had brought Barabant to his room, she was very tired. Goursac, whom she had summoned to help her, knelt by the bed to examine the unconscious form. Every now and then he turned a questioning look upon the girl, as though to penetrate the indifferent attitude she maintained.
“Why don’t you say something?” Nicole cried at last, her anxiety mastering her prudence. “Is it so serious?”
“A mere scratch,” he grumbled; “nothing to make such a fuss over. If he hadn’t been as weak as a woman—”
Nicole, reassured, smiled at his ill-humor, knowing the mood of old. Goursac, furious at such a reception of his sarcasm, turned on her angrily.
“You are like all the rest—just as stupid. Because a young fellow gets a scratch and you pilot him home, you call that a romance. You know well enough what that leads to!”
“That may be true; why shouldn’t I have my romance as well as another?”
“You say that to plague me. You know that is not so!” he said impatiently. “Now give me a bandage.”
Stooping, Nicole seized her petticoat; but finding it stained with traces of the combat, she dropped it, and calling to him to wait, passed through the window and across the gutter, swaying lithely against the roof. In a moment she returned with half of a sheet, which they quickly tore into bandages.
“There; with a little rest—a chance to recover some blood—the fever will abate!” Preparing a sling, Goursac jerked his head toward the bed and demanded: “You are not going to watch?”
“Certainly I am!”
“Then say at once,” he cried point-blank, “that you imagine you are in love!”
“Goursac, my friend, you are ridiculous with your ideas,” Nicole answered impatiently. “You know that the Citoyen Barabant arrived only yesterday. We are good comrades. That’s all!”
“Yes, yes, yes!”
He wrinkled his lips in scornful unbelief, raised his shoulders to his ears, and disappeared, heavily, down the stairs, grumbling ironically, “A man lies to deceive others; a woman lies to deceive herself!”
A moment later he called back:
“Hé, above there!”
Nicole went to the landing.
“Is that you, the comrade?”
“Yes, old cynic.”
“If you need me, stamp twice on the floor.”
“Agreed.”
“Return now to your—acquaintance.”
Nicole, laughing, returned to the bedside. She placed her hand on the heated forehead, frowned, smoothed down the covers, arranged the discarded clothes, and, after a moment’s reflection, departed over the roof to her room.
When she again appeared, she had removed all traces of the battle. She pulled a chair near the bed, loosened her hair, scattering it over her shoulders, and began to comb it out, unraveling the tangle with many grimaces and an oft-wrung “Aïe! aïe!”
Occasionally she consulted a pocket-mirror, then resumed the combing, humming to herself. Barabant, his forehead enveloped in white, his arm in a sling, lay with his head turned toward her, one arm escaping bare above the covers. She regarded approvingly the lithe muscles suggested under the soft skin, and, ceasing her humming, pronounced:
“He is well made!”
She leaned over the bed and opened the collar of his shirt, revealing the full throat.
“Tiens, he’s as white as a woman.”
She withdrew, and resumed her humming.
“But, Dieu merci, it’s not a woman.” She was taking up another strand when the stairs cried out and Louison entered. Nicole frowned and said curtly:
“Ah, it’s you, is it? Who told you?”
“La Mère Corniche. How goes it?” she asked, indicating Barabant.
“Well.”
“Are you coming to eat something?”
“No, I’m staying here.”
“Is it so serious?”
“I don’t know,” she said, continuing her combing. “He pleases me.”
Louison stood at the bed, looking down. “Not bad; he’s interesting. I noticed he had good eyes.”
Nicole stopped her combing, and a frown gathered above the childish cheeks, as she cried impetuously:
“Louison, no interference, do you hear? Or—”
“Or what?” The dark eyebrows arched slightly, but the deep eyes remained cold. Nicole did not answer. Louison returned to the contemplation of the young man a moment longer, then reluctantly rousing herself from her reverie, turned on her heel. Her eye, falling on Nicole, regarded her with a trace of amusement.
“Child!” she said, standing in the doorway, her face relaxing into a smile. “You have chosen the best moment, my dear: you are adorable!”
Nicole listened, immovable, until the last footstep had grown silent. Then drawing her lips together, she seized her knees with her hands, and thus curbed, her eyes fixed themselves in intense contemplation, while several times a sudden anger knit her features before she shook off the disagreeable emotions and sought the cool of the window.
At a rustling from the bed she returned quickly. Barabant had stirred slightly, but so as to throw his weight upon the wounded arm. She slipped her arm under him and moved him to a more comfortable position. This maternal solicitude, slight as it was, awakened a new emotion in her. She arranged his hair, and seeking hungrily for any further service, began to bathe the hot eyelids.
Barabant, under the gentle stroking, opened his eyes. The confines appeared to him vast and silent, the window far removed and small. The long August twilight invaded the room with the delicious promise of a quieter night, while from without the distant, scattered sounds of rejoicing reached his ears, through the corridors of insensibility, like the tinkle of soft music. He sighed contentedly and closed his eyes again.
Presently he said, turning his head a trifle, but without opening his eyes:
“Thou art really there, Nicole?”
The accent and the caress pierced to the depths the heart of the young girl, already stirred by the maternal impulse of the woman.
“Really here, yes.”
But almost immediately, as though regretting the softness of the response, she added, in remonstrance:
“I have not given you permission to call me thou!”
“It is my gratitude that—that permits me.”
“Ah, that is nice.” She smiled with pleasure. “That was very prettily said.”
“Nicole?”
“Yes.”
“Place your ear to my lips; I cannot talk so far.”
The girl, with a smile, divining the ruse, leaned over him. But Barabant making no sound, she withdrew, scrutinizing anxiously the hot face.
“Nicole.”
“I am here.”
Again she stooped, and this time so close that her hair swept his forehead.
“You are there?”
“Yes.”
“I love you,” he said drowsily.
“Oh, oh!” Nicole started back, blushing and amused; but looking down, she saw he had dropped again into the wanderings of delirium.
“He does not know what he says,” she said, shaking her head. “Poor fellow!”
She watched him in his helplessness, and all at once she sighed; but it was a sigh that rose from the soul, and while it filled her heart, it passed on and awakened in her a famine of tenderness, leaving a longing for tears.
Motionless and perplexed, she stood staring down at the dim bed, her lips parted, her breast filling with deep breaths, until at last she turned reluctantly and sought the window, still uncertain, nor comprehending what was germinating within her.
The night was beginning; in the clear heavens the high moon was strengthening in luster at every moment. Across the stretch of window lights the sounds of revelry and rejoicing persisted faintly to her ears. The courtyard, deserted by the men, was hushed with the silence of fatigue. The laugh of a girl mounted at times, clear and playful, mingling with the deeper, good-humored protests of her companion. From a window a hag, chin in hand, followed the lovers with due interest. In another room a weary mother had fallen asleep with her baby still feeding at her breast. At other windows the women waited patiently the return of the men, bending mechanically over their knitting or crooning to the sleepy children. There, under the enduring, tedious night, Nicole stayed from minute to minute, pressing her clenched hand tensely against her lips; while within her breast beat tumult and a revolt against the slavery of women. She returned to the bedside, rebelling against this helpless man who drew her irresistibly from her independence.
“Nicole—”
It was Goursac calling, and she sprang furiously to the landing, rebuking him with a low: “Silence! he is asleep. What do you want?”
“If you are tired, I’ll watch.”
“No, no!” she answered angrily. The cry seemed to burst from her heart, threatened by the very thought of such exile.
She knelt at the bed hungrily, waiting jealously for an opportunity to ease the restless body, her revolt forgotten in the defense of her right to soothe and minister. She slipped her arm under his body, and drew his head upon her shoulder. A sigh of contentment rewarded her. He grew more quiet, breathing gentle breaths that disturbed her hair and fanned her throat. In the half-darkness she remained, with aching shoulder, holding him in her arms as though to defend him from all who would separate them. Several times, in an access of tenderness, she approached her lips to the unconscious forehead, but each time instinctively drew back from the surrender. She had a desire for tears, for laughter, for swift anger, that he should wake at last. She would have kept him there forever, weak and helpless, turning to her in trust and necessity. At times, with a sudden alarm, she asked herself what had happened, what could be these new emotions, until at last, in the disturbance and bewilderment of her soul, she saw the utter loneliness of her life, and the cry went up from her:
“Ah, mon Dieu, how unhappy I am!”
The full sun was beating into the room when Barabant awoke. His forehead was cold, his senses were sharp; but his memory struggled in vain to reconstruct the events of the afternoon. His arm confined in a sling brought back his wound, and Nicole, and the beginning of the tedious journey; beyond that a black wall rose up and shut out all vision. He turned over, calculating his strength, when, his eye traveling over the bedside, what was his stupefaction to behold Nicole stretched upon the floor. Her hands were pillowed under her cheek, where the long eyelashes showed sharply against the heightened color. She slept easily, the lips slightly parted as though smiling under happy dreams. Barabant watched her breathlessly, jealously putting off the awakening. But at this moment, as though aware of the intensity of his gaze, the girl opened her eyes, met the enraptured glance of Barabant a moment only, then sprang to her feet with a confusion which she sought to cover with a laughing “Good morning!”
“You have been here all night?” Barabant said, in astonishment.
“Why not?” Nicole noticed that he did not address her as “thou.” She rearranged her dress and said with forced naturalness, “Do you think that is much to do for a patriot who is wounded?”
Barabant, displeased with the answer, made no reply.
“So you have decided to return to this world, citoyen?”
“Have I been delirious?”
“Do you remember nothing?”
“Nothing since—since the Place de la Grève.” As this answer seemed to plunge Nicole into silence, he asked, “How did you get me here?”
“It wasn’t difficult,” she began more gaily. “I begged your way from block to block. Let me see; two water-carriers brought you half-way, then a coachman a block on his route, then another block on a litter, and finally a fishwife helped me to the end.”
“You carried me?”
“Indeed, I am not a weakling; look at that.” She extended her arms, laughing. “They are solid.”
“And this?” Barabant touched the sling.
“Oh, that was the Citoyen Goursac.”
“Who?”
“Your neighbor below, a brown man who buries his chin like this, and scowls. That reminds me, it is time he should see you.”
“Nicole!”
“Well, what?”
“Not now; not just yet.”
“Why not?”
“I wish to talk with you.”
“The idea, as though I had nothing to do!” She raised her foot and stamped twice. “I have a desire to dine to-night, thank you.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to work.” She picked up her possessions and made for the window, while Barabant cried excitedly:
“Nicole, I have not thanked you. Wait, let me thank you.”
“Why?” She shrugged her shoulders. “I’d do that for any one.”
Barabant raised himself on his elbow and threatened, half angrily: “Nicole, if you go, I’ll follow you. I swear I’ll follow you. I will. Look at me. I swear I will!”
“What good will it do you? I’ll be gone.”
She shook her head, and, deaf to his entreaties, disappeared; while Barabant, furious, fell back, baffled and perplexed, little suspecting the awakening that was taking place in Nicole.