Chapter Sixteen.
“No tear relieved the burden of her heart;
Stunn’d with the heavy woe.”
Thalaba.
The days went on for Thérèse very much as they had done at the hospital. She had but one patient instead of many, it is true, but that one absorbed all her care. Octavie had been sent from the house; the file, who was in the habit of coming for a certain number of hours daily, took fright and kept away. Nannon took her place, but she was not permitted to enter the sick-room, and madame was utterly incapable of those little feminine cares which nursing demands. So it all rested upon Thérèse, and even when the child was unconscious there seemed to be an increase of disquietude if she was not close at hand. She thought it a bad case, and longed for M. Deshoulières’ swift perception to be brought to bear upon it, and she could not help remembering Nannon’s irreverent simile when little Pinot came into the room, with his little attempt at imitation of the other’s manner. But madame broke out violently when she suggested that M. Deshoulières should be sent for. And so there was nothing for it but to remember his injunctions, and patiently to do what was needed for the poor little man, whose naughtinesses and obstinacies were forgotten now, or recalled only with shame at her own want of forbearance.
She wondered sometimes at madame’s strange ways. It was impossible to say in what mood the next hour would find her, fierce or remorseful, snappish or affectionate. Thérèse would have understood better had she known what coals of fire her unconscious hands were heaping and shovelling upon madame’s head just then. Nothing could have been so terrible to her as to see this girl whom she had injured sitting with the little hot hand in hers which the mother loved above all others in the world, and longed to tear away out of her clasp. Nothing. It almost maddened her.
At last one morning M. Pinot also told her that he would suggest her sending for M. Deshoulières. “It would be a satisfaction to himself,” he said. Thérèse, who knew what those words meant, turned a little pale, and looked tenderly down upon the little ugly brown face, now so pinched and wizened and changed, which kept slipping down from the pillow.
“M. Deshoulières shall not come,” answered madame, in her strange defiant tone. “The child is no worse.”
“Pardon, madame. It grieves me to say—”
“He is not worse, I tell you. The fever must run its course, and I have heard you say it is now only weakness.”
“Madame, at this stage—”
“He is not worse, I repeat again. I do not choose that M. Deshoulières should come.”
“In that case—Is Monsieur Roulleau aware of the extent of this illness, may I inquire of madame?”
“My husband comes to-day.”
“How has she brought him?” thought Thérèse, who knew something of the force of the little notary’s fears. She had brought him by not telling him of the illness at all. There was business waiting for him, and she had told him that after it had rained she should demand his return. In her next letter she said that it had rained, that the fever was diminishing, and that on such a day he was to be at Rue St. Servan. That was all. Nannon, who admitted him, wondered as much as any one. Madame come slowly down the stairs and signed to him to enter the little bureau.
“Zénobie, my angel,” he said, turning to meet her as she followed him. Something, it might have been a grey look on her face, arrested him, “What is the matter?” he said, faltering.
She was a woman, after all,—wicked, cruel, but a woman. Her sin was smiting her sorely; there were those terrible coals of fire scorching, consuming her. And he was her husband, the father of her children. “Oh, Ignace, Ignace, mon ami,” she cried, piteously, stretching out her arms for support, “our little Adolphe!”
“What then?”
“Ah, he suffers so!”
“Suffers! Is he ill?”
“The fever—”
“The fever!” he cried, springing back with one bound against the wall. “The fever is in this house and you let me come?”
She would be patient yet. It was the first shock. He had not realised her words. “He will not know you, Ignace; he is changed and so weak; it is terrible to see him.”
“Keep back!” he cried out, for she was drawing closer; “keep back! You have been nursing him, and now you speak to me! Let me go out into the air. Zénobie, how could you be so imprudent?”
“You will not see him—your son?”
“What is the good, what is the good? I can do nothing. See here, what a palpitation you have given me. Let me pass! I will go back to Tours at once. Let me pass! I shall be a dead man if I stay in the house with a fever.”
Her wrath blazed out. “Coward!” she said, standing between him and the door, and holding him immovable with a look of supreme scorn. “Coward! And while you stand there trembling, shaking, do you know who it is who is there by his side, nursing and tending him until I am driven mad? That girl. Do you know that while I hate her, it is all I can do sometimes not to fall on my knees before her and tell her all? Do you know that he cares for her more than for me,—me, his mother?”
“Zénobie, Zénobie, have patience! You will ruin us with your impetuosity.”
“Listen, then. You who have not so much as the bravery of a woman in your miserable little heart—it is your child whom that girl is nursing night and day. You have no courage—have you no pity? Do you, remembering who she is, and what she is doing,—do you refuse to let her know that this man, her lover, is alive,—that you could lay your hand upon him, and bring him back to her? Do you refuse that? She may die, remember, die of nursing your child!”
“Not so loud, not so loud,” said the little man uneasily. “If she were to die, we should lose the money, it is true, but it might be the safest. There would be fewer complications.”
She turned from him with a look of unutterable horror. In his cowardice, and in his cruelty, he had fallen far below even her measure of wrongdoing. With a pale scared face, he was watching the door with the hope of escape, but she, like an avenging fury, stood between it and him.
“Let us go into the street,” he said feebly. “I have always heard there is less danger in the open air. You will not? N’importe. Do not let me keep you, my Zénobie. Can I convey any message to your mother?”
She faced him again. “If he dies!”
“He will not die—no, no, he will not die, believe me. You are a little nervous, that is all. Oh, he will not die; he has an excellent constitution—Holy Virgin, what is that!”
It was M. Deshoulières knocking sharply at the door. Madame Roulleau, rigid and defiant again, opened it; the little notary shrank further into the corner; the doctor entered hastily.
“Mademoiselle Thérèse?” he said, looking round. “Ah, madame, may I ask you to request her to descend at once. I bring news, or, believe me, I would not incommode you at such a time.”
“What news, monsieur?” asked madame, still erect.
“Monsieur Saint-Martin has arrived.”
Her head sank, she went out of the room and up the stairs slowly. There was a tempest in her heart when she opened the door of the sick-room. It was all very solemn and quiet, solemn with the foreshadowing of that quietness which is infinite. The child lay on the little white bed, Thérèse knelt by its side, the persiennes were half closed, one quivering ray of sunlight touched the girl’s head, the sweet young face was full of tender sorrow. For a moment she stood speechless, watching; the next Thérèse heard a sharp keen voice in her ear:—
“Why do you look like that, you! He is mine, I will not have you take away his love. And I have hated you and done you all the harm I could—do you hear?”
“Hush, hush, madame,” said Thérèse softly. She looked at her, and knew that this woman in her strange excitement was speaking truth; at another time she might have been angry at the confession, but for weeks past she had been walking on the borders of that land where wrath and bitterness are hushed. She lifted her hand and pointed to the little face on the pillow. Madame dared not speak, she fell on her knees and trembled. Thérèse gently drew back the persiennes; a sweet cool breeze came into the room, the plains were all steeped in a kind of subdued sunshine, silvery, and broken with clouds. There were long shadows on the roofs and gables, birds singing in the gardens of the Evêché; presently the murmur of a distant chant came swinging up from the Cathedral, where all the windows were open. No service was going on, but the choristers were practising a requiem, very sad and sweet, yet now and then breaking into triumphant chorus. Thérèse fancied she caught the words,—“requiem, dona eis requiem,” shrill, clear, boyish voices answering one another. Rest was very near one of the three in that room. She touched madame, and said, “See, I think he knows us.”
Yes. For the last time the dim eyes turned and looked into theirs,—for the last time the little weak hand just moved as if to seek their clasp; the little voice, so strangely pathetic in its hoarse unchildlike accent, tried to reach Thérèse. For the last time. After that there was peace—the peace echoed by the choristers in the Cathedral—the peace that could never any more be broken. So best!