Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/444

406 Not a trace nor a whiff of it, nor of any other drug, could they detect; their scandalous theory was, of necessity, abandoned. The old lady who was responsible for it fell down, with a resounding bang, from the pedestal upon which her astuteness had placed her.

What did greet their nostrils, in place of the paregoric, was the sweetest odor imaginable, of fresh linen and of dainty soaps and baby-powders—such an odor as every mother knows when she kisses her baby, fresh from his bath, right in the nape of his neck, between the down of his hair and the dimples under the frill of his gown. If Monsieur le Bébé had been what is called in nursery phraseology "a sour baby" this tale would never have been written.

As it was, drawn on by the seductive fragrance, there was not a woman in the pension who did not, when she thought no one was watching her, stop the nurse with a civil word—civil, if not cordial,—and peering in under the laces of the parasol that shielded the little fellow, look long and searchingly at him. If each had been asked to describe her first impression of what she saw, she would have answered, in one word, "Eyes." Nothing but "eyes"—great, wistful, pleading blue eyes, looking at her as though all the submissive, unresisting sorrow the world had ever known was pouring itself out through them. Then she would have borne witness that she became conscious of a little white wan face surrounding the eyes, of curling yellow hair, and of a mouth that smiled up sweetly at her as she gazed, and that with the smile the look of wistfulness changed to one of utterly irresistible childish friendliness and trust.

Each woman who met this smile and this look went away with the consciousness brooding over her of a hundred sweet and womanly things of which she had lost sight in her belittling, self-comforting life.

Another month went by, after the confounding, in this fashion, of Monsieur le Bébé's enemies. His carriage was seen no more on the quay by the lake; the old nurse never walked with him under the trees of the garden—the strange artificially pruned and stunted trees that made a matted, impervious shade over the garden walks. Instead, his little bed, dainty as everything else about him, was rolled out on to the balcony upon which his room opened. The cool, green-striped awnings were drawn; the little birds hopped about him; the sun, even, of a warm afternoon, stole by as gently as he could, seeming to call out as he did so: "If I could only set! If I could only set! Believe me that I will as soon as I can! I am aiming for the highest peak on the mountain yonder and I shall get there soon. I do not like to be disagreeable, but I cannot help myself. It is a terrible thing to be of an all-consuming majesty and of an accommodating disposition as well."

Monsieur le Bébé was growing rapidly worse. It was noised abroad in the pension that he was. The old ladies did not dare to be left alone with their consciences. A little, fatherless, motherless child, stricken with illness, had come among them, and how had they treated him? How had they treated the woman who was carrying him in her strong arms over the rough places of illness and pain?

A week went by. The August moon poured down one night in a flood of glory upon the lake, upon the arborlike trees of the garden, and upon the balconies. With it came a subtle restlessness upon the world. The birds called to each other from their nests; they were not sure if it were night or day.

Madame, like the birds, was wakeful. Her conscience was disturbed. It troubled her more, even, than those of the other old ladies because there was more of her to trouble. She was of a larger, nobler make. That was what had given her her supremacy over them.

From the neighboring room, as she lay waking, she could hear hushed and smothered sounds; some one moving gently about; now and then a tender crooning word. She knew that Monsieur le Bébé was waking also, and that the old nurse, weary as she must be unto death, was watching over him.

Madame knew little of the care of babies. She had never bad a child of her own. Her most intimate experience of them had come to her through her niece Eliza Marshall's twins, and there had been nothing in their short cometlike passage through this world of woe to aid