Chapter Fourteen.
“And looking down I saw the old town lie
Black in the shade of the o’erhanging hill,
Stricken with death, and dreary.”
The Earthly Paradise.
It had come in earnest indeed. Creeping on by little and little, holding the ground it had conquered, fastening every day on fresh territory, the fever was no longer the shadow with which M. Deshoulières did his best to frighten obstinate men, but a grim reality. In the narrow, picturesque, ill-ventilated streets it struck down whole families with deadly effect. Day after day the fierce sun glowed relentlessly overhead, the air throbbed like that at the mouth of a furnace, foul smells rose out of the earth. The churches were crowded, the terrified people put up passionate prayers for rain, for something to lessen the intolerable heat. The Préfet sent for M. Deshoulières.
“This is terrible,” he said. “What are we to do?”
“You must ask others that question, Monsieur le Préfet. I have now no time for the work of prevention.”
“We must draw cordons, endeavour to separate the infected streets.”
“Whatever is done, permit me to offer you my last piece of advice. Lose no more time.”
There was a bright indignant flash in the doctor’s eye, of which the Préfet was not unconscious: M. Deshoulières could not restrain it when he thought of the wasted warnings.
The Préfet was no coward. He went down into the fever-stricken districts, and did his utmost at last to stir the people into exertion. But a kind of despairing apathy hung over them. They resented the attempt to move them into fresh houses. “Better die where one has lived,” was the unfailing answer.
Among the higher classes a panic prevailed, whole families fled; but after a time, when the fever raged more fiercely, the neighbouring towns refused to receive them, and Charville was shunned as a plague-stricken place. The hospital of Saint Jean was full to overflowing; other buildings were hastily fitted up, still more room was needed, and more nurses required. Sisters were sent from the convent, and then the fever attacked the convent itself, and more could not be spared. Others came from Paris, and yet hands were wanted. The doctors were overworked and were in despair. Those who are able to thank God that they have never seen the horrors of a pestilence have no conception of the blight which hangs over the doomed town. There are a certain number who laugh and jest through it all; strange to say, perhaps the number increases as the evil days close in. There are balls, dances, theatres; it is the policy of the authorities to keep up the hideous mask of gaiety, lest people should realise too truly what is beneath. But every thing seems to lie under the ban of fear. A truth, a rumour, becomes a terror, a hundred exaggerated reports add to the actual horrors. Thank God, again, you who have never known it.
In all Charville, perhaps, the most miserable and the most frightened of those who had what Nannon called the fever-fright, was little Monsieur Roulleau. He wanted to go away when first it broke out in any severity, but madame was inexorable. Between his fear of her and his fear of the fever he did not know what to do.
“Zénobie,” he would say imploringly, “it is so long since we have had any change!”
“It will be longer yet,” answered madame, with decision. “You are foolish to attempt to blind me, Ignace. Do you not suppose I know why you want to go?”
For a time she held him in check, but at last the other fear became the strongest. He came in one day with his face white and his hand shaking.
“There is a case in Place Notre Dame.”
“What of that?”
“It is my nerves. They are not like yours, my angel. If we stay here longer I shall have it by to-morrow. I feel it. And the children—”
“Bah! What folly! Do you not know that if this fever carries off some, there will be others wanting to make their testaments? Do you not know that your work will be doubled? Hé! Answer me that!”
Her voice had risen to its stormy pitch, but Ignace was beyond caring.
“I must go,” he said, feebly.
Madame looked at him steadily. She saw that he was speaking truth. He must go, or if he stayed he would soon become a victim to his terror. “Attend then,” she said, changing her tone and speaking with a touch of scorn. “You shall go.”
“Zénobie, my treasure—”
“Hush. You shall go, I say. My mother at Tours will take you in, and you may, if you choose, depart at once.—Charles has been clerk long enough to understand the business with my superintendence.”
“Perfectly, perfectly. You need have no apprehension on that score. To tell the truth, my health is become so indifferent that even without this unhappy state of things I must have sought a little rest.”
Madame looked at him with a peculiar expression in her face.
“That is settled then, monsieur. And I and the children, we remain here?”
“If you think it best, my dear Zénobie. I have the most supreme confidence in your discretion,” said the little man, eagerly. “You will, without doubt, be in perfect security. It is I only who am called out by the peculiar nature of my avocations, who really run any risk. You will remain here with Mademoiselle Veuillot.”
“With Mademoiselle Veuillot. Exactly.” There was something not unlike a thunder-cloud in the extreme quietness of madame’s manner, but the little notary went on unheeding:
“The last letter that was forwarded from Château Ardron we did not answer, you will remember. It was your idea that it might have been supposed to have miscarried. Another would, do you not think so, require a different treatment?”
“Allez,” said madame, more sharply. “Will you then not stay and conduct the affair yourself?”
The threat had the effect of stopping all Monsieur Roulleau’s injunctions. He was restless and anxious to be gone. Thérèse, when she heard of it at their dinner, had no difficulty in discovering the motive, although husband and wife put it upon business at Tours, which required his presence. Nannon confirmed her idea.
“I shall not soon forget his face when I told him it was so near.” It meant the fever at this time in Charville.
“Will it come to us I wonder, Nannon?”
“Dame, who knows? It has its road and it will keep to it. One or two have died of fright, that I do know, for I heard M. Deshoulières say so.”
Nannon’s cheery old face had grown sad and haggard. She knew too well what was going on.
“This heat will kill us all, I believe,” said Thérèse, sighing. “I feel as if I would give any thing to get down by the river. Do let me go, Nannon!”
“Mademoiselle must not dream of it,” answered the old woman with decision. “As it is, I believe Monsieur Deshoulières would say I was doing wrong in coming up here. But he positively forbade me to let mademoiselle pass through those streets.”
Amid all his labours he had thought of her.
“Do you love Monsieur Deshoulières better by this time?” asked the girl, suddenly.
There was a minute’s silence.
“Monsieur is admirable at present,” said Nannon at last, stubbornly. “Admirable. But then it is his métier, mademoiselle must understand. It has absolutely nothing to do with those other matters we have talked about. For the sick he devotes himself like a saint. I do not know how he can do all he does. If it were not for mademoiselle I believe I should go to him and ask to be allowed to nurse. One can do that though one is old and stupid. And they want nurses so terribly, the poor things.”
“How I wish I might be one.”
“Mademoiselle! You!”
“Yes, I. Do you think nobody can have any good idea but you?”
“Mademoiselle jests.”
“On such a subject!” Thérèse answered, gravely.
“But mademoiselle might catch the fever.”
“One would suppose you were talking to Monsieur Roulleau,” said the girl, with impatience. “What makes my life of greater value than the lives of those good women who risk theirs now? Bah, Nannon! I did not expect you to take the fever-fright.”
“It is not for myself. I am no longer in my youth; the fever, or whatever it may please the good God to send, will be all one to me soon,” answered the old woman, unconsciously pathetic. “But with mademoiselle it is different. She is young and inexperienced, and does not know what she is asking. It is all too sad for her.”
“Is it very dreadful at the hospital?”
“Not so bad as in the houses where the poor things are all together, one lying dead on the floor and another unconscious by the side; and then there is the weeping and the wailing which they manage to shut out of the hospital.”
Thérèse shuddered.
“Oh, Nannon, if it would but rain!”
She said no more on the subject, but one day when she was alone she ventured a little way along one of the least affected of the lower streets, one which was not closed like certain of the others to the public. Yet this struck the girl as being, deserted: the old sleepy cheerfulness that she remembered was gone, no knots of chatterers stood about, one or two people might be seen on their stone house-steps, but they looked sad and spiritless. The workshops were shut up, a heavy languid, stagnant air was about the place. It seemed the sadder for that brilliant sunshine streaming down upon it all. The poor pet flowery drooped thirsty and uncared for. Thérèse felt a sense of frightened guilt in being there. It was as if she had no right to intrude, as if—as, indeed, was the case—she had come into the valley of the shadow of death. From the door of one house some little children looked at her wonderingly; she stopped, wishing to speak to the poor little things; and then she heard inside low feeble moans, which scared her away. Her heart was beating fast, a strange sort of oppression had seized hold of her; Nannon was right, she thought, she had not known for what she was wishing. The street was full of angles and twists and crookednesses; she went on a little further, stumbling over the rough paving and gasping for breath, it was so stifling between the tall overhanging houses. Always the same deserted look, the bright cruel sunshine, the hot sickening smells, the horror of a nameless something in the air. Thérèse could bear it no longer: the moans she had heard were in her ears, her heart beat almost to suffocation, and she turned and ran back with all her might.
Afterwards in her room she reproached herself and cried bitterly over what she called her cowardice. It was not cowardice, although she would have it so. If she had been brought face to face with the fever she would not have feared it. It was imagination which had conquered her,—imagination acting upon Nannon’s keenly drawn pictures, and quickened by the most vivid impression she had yet received of the heavy, death-laden atmosphere. But she did not make this excuse for herself. She felt humiliated, almost desperate with shame. The next day she went to the curé at a neighbouring church, and spoke more freely than was her wont, although she told him nothing of a half-formed resolution. Perhaps he did not quite understand her, but he helped her as much as he could; Thérèse had never before looked upon him as so nearly a friend.
Then she went back to Rue St. Servan, and sought Madame Roulleau. Madame was sitting in the office, with a pen behind her ear, and her thin hair drawn up tighter, doing her husband’s work with considerable acerbity. She would not in the least have minded bearing its whole weight upon her shoulders had it not been that certain foolish legal impediments in the way of women cut her off from the most lucrative part of his profession. It was a folly, but it was undeniable. And Ignace’s cowardice just now stood in the way of golden gains. No wonder that madame was sharp in the midst of her astonishment at seeing Thérèse before her.
“You were speaking yesterday of the children having their vacation, madame,” said Thérèse quietly. “I am thinking of taking advantage of it to leave you for the present.”
Madame laid down her papers, stood up behind the bureau, and resting her hands on it said, in a low furious voice, “You are going?”
“For a time only, I repeat, madame.”
“Oh, I comprehend. It is the fever-fright that has hold of you,” she said, contemptuously. “Understand, however, mademoiselle, that by leaving Charville you lose even the pitiful sum provided for your support.”
Thérèse winced under the scorn as the young do wince. She grew very red, and said quickly, “You are mistaken, madame. What I propose doing is to offer myself as a nurse at the hospital. I have no intention of leaving Charville.”
“You! A nurse!”
“Exactly so, madame.”
“See then,” cried madame, volubly, sinking back among her papers,—“see then how the ingratitude I knew would come to pass, has come! We take her in when no one else would do so, nourish her as a daughter, disarrange ourselves, slave,—when I think of it, there is nothing we have not done. Ah, my poor Ignace, what will it not cost you to learn that I was right!”
“What have I said?” asked Thérèse, appalled at the storm.
“Oh, do not consider it, do not consider us, mademoiselle. If others may think it base that at the time when my husband’s health has failed, and I must struggle for bread for my children, you should take the opportunity of depriving them of even that little which might assist them, I say nothing. I make no reproaches, I leave them to your own heart.”
Thérèse drew herself up proudly. “You talk strangely, Madame Roulleau,” she said. “At one moment I am a burden, at another an assistance. Do not fear for the little you receive from me. So long as I am provided with a bare support, the rest may remain in your hands until my return. Only these scenes are not agreeable.”
Madame recognised her false step, and did her best to retrieve it. She calmed, not suddenly, but by degrees, and tried to draw out the girl’s sympathy for her position, with so many business matters on her hands. There was the risk that Thérèse might catch the fever and die, but she did not dread the fever herself sufficiently to fear that inconvenience greatly. At all events Thérèse meant to go, and therefore it only remained for her to put matters in the best train for herself. The girl, who was sweet-tempered, came round before long. Madame threw herself into her idea at last with enthusiasm. But Thérèse shook her head when she asked her plans.
“I am going at once, and I do not think I shall come back again,” was all she would say.
Then she went upstairs, put what things she wanted quietly and expeditiously into a bundle, and left the house. “M. Deshoulières may not allow it,” madame had objected, and Thérèse, who thought the same, was bringing some feminine tact to bear upon that probability. She was passing the Cathedral, but suddenly turned and went in. There was a little dark corner in a side aisle, which only caught a few rays of light through the nearest window, gorgeous with painted glass in glowing prodigality of colour. She drew her chair there and knelt down. Presently, far away in the choir, half-a-dozen priests began reciting their office with deep, rich voices. Thérèse fancied it was like the distant roll of the sea. There was not much music in it, but it was full and solemn-sounding; she stopped her prayer and listened. And then her heart went up in a cry, “O my God, make this work I desire a psalm of Thine.”
She went out of the Cathedral, crossed the Place, and turned down the street from which she had fled only the day before. There was the same strange oppressive stillness about it, but her steps only faltered for a moment. Then she went on bravely, except that she drew her breath a little quicker. She reached the house from which the children had looked out at her, her heart sank a little when she saw they were not there; she had somehow trusted to them as friends. A woman came to a narrow quaint window opposite and stared indifferently at her. Thérèse went slowly up the steps, hot from the burning sun, and softly opened a door.
If it was hot outside, what was this room like? It was all she could do in her first horror to keep her ground, and not to run away as once before. She stood still, however, and a woman, who was sitting by a low miserable bed, glanced languidly at this strange young figure who was standing there with the old street behind her, and the glow of the sunshine round her head. In another minute or two Thérèse recovered herself and came forward timidly.
“Can I do any thing for you?” she asked in a low voice full of awe.
“No.”
It was not repulse, but simply despair.
“I think I could help you a little,” Thérèse said gently. “Once my aunt had a fever, and I used to nurse her. And you seem so ill yourself.”
This time there was no answer. The woman, who had her arm on the pillow of the bed, on which lay a girl, a little younger than Thérèse, neither moved nor objected, but watched mechanically while Thérèse drew off the quilt from the bed, fastened open the window, and moistened the lips of the sufferer, who was unconscious of her presence. Afterwards the woman said she had believed it was the Blessed Virgin, or one of the saints, who came in so strangely; but even this conviction did not astonish her. She sat there, and watched dully until the sick girl started up, and poured out a wild torrent of delirious words. They were obliged to hold and soothe her while it lasted; but when it was over she sank down in utter exhaustion.
“Is there medicine to give her?” asked Thérèse. The woman nodded, and pointed to a bottle, on which the directions were clearly written. Thérèse poured out the quantity and gave it to her.
“See there,” she said cheerfully; “she is tranquil now. Is she your daughter?”
“My daughter,” answered the woman in a low hoarse voice. “As you know, her father is dead, and they have just carried him away. I have had it, too, and she nursed me.”
Thérèse, wondering over the phrase “as you know,” asked where were the children.
“M. Pinot has taken them.”
“Is M. Pinot coming again?”
“He or the other. I do not know,” said the woman wearily. She would not speak again, but she did not interfere with any of Thérèse’s movements. The girl found wine in a bottle, and made her drink a little, after she had poured some between poor Fanchon’s lips; the same girl who had chattered so merrily at the fountain the year before. Then she heated some soup for the poor mother, and made the room look a little less deplorable than it had done when she entered it. Her fear had left her utterly—a great pity had swallowed it. But her heart beat fast, when as evening was coming on she heard a step at the door.
It was M. Deshoulières. Thérèse saw that with a glad throb, but she was standing a little behind the door in the shadow, and he came in quickly, and passed to the bed without noticing that a third person was in the room. Neither did he speak for a few moments, but at last turned to the poor mother and said,—
“This is good. She is a little better. Have you given her the medicine?”
The woman pointed behind him and said,—
“She has,” and M. Deshoulières turned round and saw Thérèse.
She trembled violently, fearing lest after all she had done wrong, and then she looked in his face and saw a sudden agony in it, and recovered herself at once.
He crossed the room and stood before her in the dim corner, at first speechless. When he did at last speak, his voice was so changed, so rough and broken, that she hardly recognised it.
“Child, child!” he said, “what madness have you done?”
“Do not send me away,” she said, gently. “I could not help it, I could not sleep at night for thinking of all this misery. And what was there to keep me? I am free if any one in the world is free. You must let me remain. I am not afraid.” He answered her sharply, like a person in keen pain.
“What you ask is impossible, ridiculous! I insist upon your returning at once.”
Thérèse shook her head.
“I cannot go back to the Roulleaus from this house. You see that, do you not, monsieur? It would be simply wicked.”
“Then I must find you a lodging. Heavens, mademoiselle, what has possessed you?”
She did not answer. He looked at her there in the grey dusk, the little window open behind her, the old blackened discoloured walls, the poor meagre fittings, the wretchedness around, and she standing, so womanly, so brave, so patient, as she was under his upbraidings. He longed to take her hand and draw her away out of that hot foul atmosphere. He could give himself without a murmur, but his heart cried out against her making a choice like this. Is it not always easier to give ourselves than to give our dearest?
“Come,” he said, almost passionately.
But she made no movement. She only said,—“If you order it, I must go, of course. But what would be the good? If any mischief is done it must be done by this time. Pray, pray let me stay!”
She had the advantage of being perfectly self-possessed, while he was deeply moved and very pale.
“I will find some one to come here. Indeed, you must not remain.”
She saw he was wavering.
“Then let me go to the hospital. You know you want nurses.”
“Yes, but they are trained, experienced nurses that we want.”
“I can learn quickly,” Thérèse said, eagerly. “Allons, M. Deshoulières, when those that you seek come, I can go away. Or leave me here.”
“No, no,” he answered again. “This is far worse than the hospital. How could you be so imprudent?”
“You are going to accept me,” she said, joyfully.
He took her hand and looked into her face.
“Do you know what you are asking? Do you know what you must bear? Have you courage enough, strength enough, devotion enough?” There was a little silence, and then Thérèse looked up and answered, humbly,—
“No. But, monsieur, I will ask for all these; and I think that, perhaps, He who has given me the will will send me what I want.”
After that he could say no more. He may have put up a different prayer for her in his own heart, but of it she knew nothing. He said no more to her; he promised the poor, half-stupefied mother that some one should be sent for the night, and then those two went away together. It was evening now, the sun had set, a golden glimmer just lingered on the plains. Far away, in other parts of bright France, the goats would be trooping home from breezy uplands in tinkling herds, soft sweet breezes tossing the hay, fresh mountain streams gurgling along their rocky beds, dewy grass waving, leaves rustling: here, the hot thirsty air still filled the narrow streets, the summer evening brought no relief from the invisible pestilential cloud that hung and penetrated, and stifled. Together those two went—under the quaint houses, so sadly stricken, along the rough pavement, over which many little feet were never now any more to patter—solemnly and silently, because their hearts were very full, and a great shadow hung over them. They passed under an ancient gateway, crossed a bridge; and, in another few minutes, the two—still silent—went together up a flight of steps, and into the hospital of St. Jean.