Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 2).djvu/50

 floated out from the open doorways of the baker, and the earliest risers of St. Malo, and presently the pungent, invigorating odour of the sea made itself smelt in spite of the mixed odours of the street. It was new life to be out in the open air again; and I was going to see my mother. But I could not forget Sister Gabrielle."

Several years passed before my husband saw again the old steep streets of St. Malo. These years brought great changes to him. His right arm being no longer capable of using a sword, he retired from the army, took to journalism, and eventually accepted an engagement in London. In the English capital he made his home, marrying and settling down to a quasi-English life, which possessed great interest for him from the first.

One summer (six years after the war) we began to make a yearly journey to a town on the borders of Brittany, and always landed at St. Malo to take train for our destination. Trains ran there only twice a day, and so there was generally time enough to climb the dirty, picturesque street to the hospital and see sweet Sister Gabrielle, whose face would light up at sight of her old patient, and whose voice had still the same sympathetic charm. When the now English-looking traveller presented himself, it was always the Mother Superior who came to him in the bare, cool room reserved for visitors. And then Sister Gabrielle would arrive with a sweet, grave smile playing about her beautiful mouth, and there would be long talks about all that he had been doing; of the pleasant free life in England, of the English wife he had married, and of Bébé, a regular little Norman, whom he promised to bring and show her some day. But that day never came.

One hot August morning, just seven years after he had left the hospital with his arm in a sling, my husband pulled at the big clanging bell, and asked to see Sister Gabrielle. He was ushered into the shady waiting-room, and stood drinking in the perfume of the roses that clambered about the open window. Presently the Mother's steps approached, but when she saw him she had no longer in her voice the cheery notes with which she used to greet, him, nor did she offer to send Sister Gabrielle to him.

In a few sad words she told him his sweet nurse was dead, that she had died as she had lived, beloved by all who were privileged to be near her. There was no positive disease, the doctor had said, but some shock or grief of years before must have undermined her health, and the life of self-sacrifice she led had not been calculated to lengthen the frail strand of her life. Gently and without struggle it had snapped, and she had drooped and died with the early violets.

Touched and saddened, our traveller turned down the steep street to the lower town. More than ever he wondered what had been the history of the brave, beautiful woman who had nursed him seven years before.

Turning the corner of the Place Chateaubriand, he ran against a man.

"Pardon, monsieur!"

"Pardon, monsieur!"

The exclamations were simultaneous. Looking up, the two men recognised each other.

"Ah, my dear Doctor!" exclaimed my husband.

"Sapristi, my dear Lieutenant! What are you doing in St. Malo?"