Who had brought it? Who had given it to grand'mère? Why was she so
still? Why were her eyes open, without seeing? Claire René wanted to
scream again; but instead, she made her feet take her to the chair by
the window; she made her fingers pull the thin envelope from between the
stiff fingers. Grand'mère's hands were cold. Her silence was more
terrible than any silence Claire René had known before. The glazed, open
eyes looked as if they hurt; she closed the lids with the tips of her
fingers. She had seen dead birds in the forest and she knew that
grand'mère was now like them.
The telegram was better burned in the fire; there it could bring no more
sorrow. She watched the thin paper curl and smolder among the smoking
embers of last night's blaze. She looked again toward the still figure
by the window. If grand'mère was dead, why did she stay on the earth?
Why didn't the Holy Mother send an angel to carry her away into the
heaven of the good God?
Claire René began to tremble. What if the angels were too tired to come,
were as faint and hungry as she! What, then, would become of grand'mère?
Clément and Fernand and Alphonse would be very angry to find her so cold
and still and dead; they would be, perhaps, as angry to find her gone
away to heaven. But grand'mère had so much of sorrow here on earth;
Claire René thought the room was growing very dark; she flung her arms
above her head and faintly screamed. But there was no one to hear. She
fell on the hearthstone beside the red berries and the red leaves.
There was scarcely a breath left in her body when Jacques found her at
dusk.
Three days later she opened her eyes in her little bed beside
grand'mère's bed. Grand'mère's bed was smooth and high and white. Claire
René was puzzled.