第29章

"WERE there--they aren't now?" I asked, startled by Miss Tita's implication.

She was going to answer, but at that moment the doctor came in--the doctor whom the little maid had been sent to fetch and whom she had at last overtaken.My servant, going on his own errand, had met her with her companion in tow, and in the sociable Venetian spirit, retracing his steps with them, had also come up to the threshold of Miss Bordereau's room, where I saw him peeping over the doctor's shoulder.

I motioned him away the more instantly that the sight of his prying face reminded me that I myself had almost as little to do there--an admonition confirmed by the sharp way the little doctor looked at me, appearing to take me for a rival who had the field before him.

He was a short, fat, brisk gentleman who wore the tall hat of his profession and seemed to look at everything but his patient.

He looked particularly at me, as if it struck him that Ishould be better for a dose, so that I bowed to him and left him with the women, going down to smoke a cigar in the garden.

I was nervous; I could not go further; I could not leave the place.

I don't know exactly what I thought might happen, but it seemed to me important to be there.I wandered about in the alleys--the warm night had come on--smoking cigar after cigar and looking at the light in Miss Bordereau's windows.They were open now, I could see; the situation was different.Sometimes the light moved, but not quickly; it did not suggest the hurry of a crisis.

Was the old woman dying, or was she already dead? Had the doctor said that there was nothing to be done at her tremendous age but to let her quietly pass away; or had he simply announced with a look a little more conventional that the end of the end had come?

Were the other two women moving about to perform the offices that follow in such a case? It made me uneasy not to be nearer, as if Ithought the doctor himself might carry away the papers with him.

I bit my cigar hard as it came over me again that perhaps there were now no papers to carry!

I wandered about for an hour--for an hour and a half.

I looked out for Miss Tita at one of the windows, having a vague idea that she might come there to give me some sign.

Would she not see the red tip of my cigar moving about in the dark and feel that I wanted eminently to know what the doctor had said?

I am afraid it is a proof my anxieties had made me gross that Ishould have taken in some degree for granted that at such an hour, in the midst of the greatest change that could take place in her life, they were uppermost also in Miss Tita's mind.

My servant came down and spoke to me; he knew nothing save that the doctor had gone after a visit of half an hour.

If he had stayed half an hour then Miss Bordereau was still alive:

it could not have taken so much time as that to enunciate the contrary.I sent the man out of the house; there were moments when the sense of his curiosity annoyed me, and this was one of them.

HE had been watching my cigar tip from an upper window, if Miss Tita had not; he could not know what I was after and Icould not tell him, though I was conscious he had fantastic private theories about me which he thought fine and which I, had I known them, should have thought offensive.

I went upstairs at last but I ascended no higher than the sala.The door of Miss Bordereau's apartment was open, showing from the parlor the dimness of a poor candle.

I went toward it with a light tread, and at the same moment Miss Tita appeared and stood looking at me as I approached.

"She's better--she's better," she said, even before I had asked.

"The doctor has given her something; she woke up, came back to life while he was there.He says there is no immediate danger.""No immediate danger? Surely he thinks her condition strange!""Yes, because she had been excited.That affects her dreadfully.""It will do so again then, because she excites herself.

She did so this afternoon."

"Yes; she mustn't come out any more," said Miss Tita, with one of her lapses into a deeper placidity.

"What is the use of making such a remark as that if you begin to rattle her about again the first time she bids you?""I won't--I won't do it any more."

"You must learn to resist her," I went on.

"Oh, yes, I shall; I shall do so better if you tell me it's right.""You mustn't do it for me; you must do it for yourself.

It all comes back to you, if you are frightened.""Well, I am not frightened now," said Miss Tita cheerfully.

"She is very quiet."

"Is she conscious again--does she speak?""No, she doesn't speak, but she takes my hand.She holds it fast."'Yes," I rejoined, "I can see what force she still has by the way she grabbed that picture this afternoon.

But if she holds you fast how comes it that you are here?"Miss Tita hesitated a moment; though her face was in deep shadow (she had her back to the light in the parlor and I had put down my own candle far off, near the door of the sala), I thought I saw her smile ingenuously.

"I came on purpose--I heard your step."

"Why, I came on tiptoe, as inaudibly as possible.""Well, I heard you," said Miss Tita.

"And is your aunt alone now?"

"Oh, no; Olimpia is sitting there."

On my side I hesitated."Shall we then step in there?"And I nodded at the parlor; I wanted more and more to be on the spot.

"We can't talk there--she will hear us."

I was on the point of replying that in that case we would sit silent, but I was too conscious that this would not do, as there was something I desired immensely to ask her.

So I proposed that we should walk a little in the sala, keeping more at the other end, where we should not disturb the old lady.

Miss Tita assented unconditionally; the doctor was coming again, she said, and she would be there to meet him at the door.

We strolled through the fine superfluous hall, where on the marble floor--particularly as at first we said nothing--our footsteps were more audible than I had expected.