Chapter Thirteen.
“There are always a number of people who have the nature of stones; they fall on other persons and crush them. Some again have the nature of weeds, and twist about other people’s feet, and entangle them. More have the nature of logs, and lie in the way, so that every one falls over them. And most of all have the nature of thorns.”
Modern Painters.
Months passed. Charville had its own events to talk about. Madame, the wife of the Préfet, died, there was a change of regiments, a fresh company took the theatre. These were the topics about which people spoke, keeping their own little subjects of interest under the surface, as people do.
Thérèse, who had no one with whom to converse after this fashion, became in time grateful for the hard work which took her thoughts out of the groove along which they travelled incessantly. It seemed as if the key had been put into her hands which opens the treasure-house of life. Before this she had been groping with the wrong instrument. The key lies before us all, only we are so dull and so blind that unless something forces it upon us we often take no notice, or merely play with it. Not our own, but another’s. When we have learned that lesson, the treasure doors fly open.
There had been no news of Fabien, and she was often very sad, very desponding, but never with such a sense of dreariness as before. There seemed something to live for besides that bright hope of happiness which used almost to mock her by its very brilliancy. Her buoyancy came back; she could sing over her work, laugh sometimes at madame’s tyranny. Above all, the teaching lost some of its horrors. Octavie was as disagreeable as ever, but Adolphe was more teachable, more affectionate; Thérèse began to feel a little fond of him at the bottom of her heart. She used to tell him stories about her life in Rouen, or legends of the Brittany which was her mother’s province. Adolphe was an insatiable listener. “Encore, encore,” he would cry peremptorily, and then Thérèse had to begin all over again. Occasionally he would reward her with a story of his own. “Écoute toi,” was always the beginning, and then perhaps, “il y avait un géant.” But the giant never accomplished much beyond the mere fact of existence.
The spring this year was unusually early at Charville—unusually early and unusually mild. When the young green leaves began to show themselves it seemed impossible not to believe but that Fabien would come with them. While people are young—and, thank Heaven, with a good many youth is not to be measured by years—the spring has a brightness which is irresistible. M. Deshoulières, too, with more uneasiness than he liked to confess, felt that tidings should have come by this time. He and Thérèse did not meet very often that winter. Whenever it happened she knew that he was on the watch to prevent her from feeling uneasy or pained by his presence, with a simple straightforward kindness which touched her unutterably. He saw that she was more content, and rejoiced at it. Once or twice he questioned Nannon about her, but the prejudiced old woman would not give him much information. If M. Deshoulières set himself against M. Fabien’s return, she thought, what would become of them? Any thing, even Madame Roulleau’s conduct, was preferable to such a misfortune. All this while he had another anxiety in his mind. His own sweet dreams of happiness were at an end, the balcony must remain unfilled, no loving eyes watch through the darkness for his return. Utterly and for ever he had put these visions aside. Thérèse loved another. He looked it in the face, and accepted his fate bravely. He understood that she was young, solitary, weak perhaps, from these circumstances. He had read her heart so well as to know, moreover, that were he to press his own suit, she, out of this youth and solitariness and weakness, might in time give herself to him. I do not say that he scorned the temptation, but that, with a man of Max Deshoulières’ nature, it could not so much as exist for one moment in his heart. To him such an advantage would have been an impossibility. To love her was to be bound in all noble fashion to guard her and to help her. Guard her and help her he would; yes, help her, although his own heart lay in the path over which she desired to walk. All this Max, who was little given to self-pity, recognised and accepted; what troubled him with anxious thoughts was the doubt whether Fabien was worthy. It seemed to him as if there was something selfish and petty about the manner in which he had broken away from the difficulties surrounding him; something heartless in his allowing so long a period to pass without communication. Those boyish letters tied up and labelled with a trembling hand were proof of the old man’s love. Was Fabien more unforgiving than his uncle? Had he ceased to remember his little playmate? Or—was he dead?
The young horse-chestnut trees budded and blossomed, the great cornfields lay round Charville like an emerald sea, everywhere there was the pleasant stir of spring, the smell of fresh-turned earth, the women hoeing and weeding in the fields, above them the larks singing jubilantly. The time of M. Moreau’s death came and passed away. There was no news of Fabien. Madame Roulleau began to feel as if all prospered.
Every one talked about the early season, the warmth of the spring, but the doctors, it was noticed, made no answer to these congratulations. Monseigneur at the Evêché, the Préfet, and a few of the leading men were aware of the cause of this silence. Certain of the number had it dinned persistently into their ears by M. Deshoulières whenever he had the chance, or could make it. What healthiness Charville possessed it owed to its situation, to the broad plains around, and the winds that rushed up and carried away the foul, bad exhalations. The town itself was shamefully mismanaged. The narrow streets, the old tumble-down, crowded, picturesque houses went on from year to year untouched, and the population increased and were crammed into the same space as their forefathers occupied with a quarter of their number. The old walls no longer existed, it is true, except in name, and the people had broken through, crossed the river, and spread out a straggling suburb. But all the houses in that part were miserably squalid, and lay low with water standing about them, so that they were, to say the least, no less unhealthy than the habitations in Charville proper.
There was always illness. But this year there was something about the illness which caused considerable anxiety to the doctors. Something, in the way in which a fever clung and lingered, and sprang up, and held its ground, even when it was winter, with snow and frost on the ground, and it was not, as Nannon said with indignation, fever weather. It was this impossibility of beating it out which made M. Deshoulières speak of it with gravity. People laughed at him for it. “Fever? But, monsieur, there is always fever at Charville. It is almost an institution.”
“Monsieur le Préfet, it is an institution with which we could well dispense.”
“Eh bien, we shall see. It seems to me you are disturbing yourself unnecessarily. Next winter, perhaps, there may be a possibility of accomplishing some of these improvements that you so much desire. My dear monsieur, you do not know how many important matters call for my devotion to them at this moment.”
M. Deshoulières had some idea. There was an old underground cave at Charville, where the Préfet proposed establishing his mushroom-beds. It was a scheme with which the wants of the town could not possibly be expected to interfere. He went home terribly disheartened.
The Bishop did his best for him, but, as he had said, he was an old man, and in his comfortable room, in the Evêché, he could not, perhaps, estimate the extent of the danger. After all, too, this danger depended in great measure upon certain conditions. There had been a warm, damp spring. If the summer were unusually hot the chances were very much in favour of the fever. Otherwise it might tide over again, carry off one here, one there, and not at all interfere with the Préfet’s mushroom-beds. M. Deshoulières was looked upon as an uncomfortable prophet. Why should he talk of evils before they arrived? He would not consent to hold his peace as they desired, but he was thrown very much upon his own resources. A little beyond the suburbs I have described, a hospital had been built, the Hospital St. Jean. M. Deshoulières busied himself with improving its working capabilities. He had a certain authority there of which he made good use. And it seemed to him as if there was little else he could do. The men in whose hands power rested met him with the never-failing “nous verrons,” which did not abate his indignation, and the poor clung to their poverty and their filth.
And meanwhile the fever gained a little ground. It was of a low typhoid character, and it kept entirely in the lower town. As yet not a single case had occurred elsewhere to frighten the mothers when they looked at their little ones sleeping, with, perhaps, a little flush upon the soft sweet cheek. The lower town was privileged, as it were, to possess a certain amount of unhealthiness, and no one troubled their heads much about the matter except the doctors, whose business it was supposed to be. It was a lovely summer. There was the promise of an abundant harvest, always an important question in Charville. The plains, flat and ugly as they were, could boast a certain beauty in their aspect of fertility. Little stone-coloured villages, with a church in the centre of each, were dotted here and there. Canals or small streams trickled slowly along, the course of the river was broken by water-mills, every thing seemed full of fat promise. The sun glowed down upon it all,—a peaceful, contented scene. What more was wanted? The Préfet looked at it one day from his window with a smile of satisfaction, and went away to his mushroom-beds. He saw Monsieur Deshoulières in the distance, and crossed over to avoid him. “That man has become a perfect pest,” he said severely. “I incline to think that after all there may be something in these stories that one hears now and then about him and the old man who died. It appears to me that he never knows when to be content, and discontent is the mother of all the vices, one with which, I am thankful to say, I have no sympathy.”
“It is the bane of our century,” said Monsieur de Blainville, with whom he was walking.
“Precisely. And in my opinion the Government should put it down with more determination than they do.”
“Hydra-headed, remember.”
“Raison de plus, mon cher. In this century we should be able to cope with monsters. Allons! I long for your opinion about the depth of the beds. You say eighteen inches, and my man maintains twenty to be the minimum depth. I shall hear the reason on both sides before deciding. It is an important question, on which one should not pronounce hastily.”
About a week after, Thérèse, who had resumed her favourite walks by the river, asked Nannon:
“What is this about the fever? I heard Monsieur Roulleau talking of it yesterday.”
“There is no use in talking, particularly when it is a little creature like that who talks. All they may say will not stop the fever.”
“It increases then?”
“Increases? But yes. This morning we hear that it is in our street. Louise Gouÿe’s child, of whom I have sometimes told mademoiselle, has it.”
“What, that pretty little blue-eyed thing?”
“Yes, yes. The poor mother is in despair.”
“But, Nannon, it seems to spread terribly. Can nothing be done? What does Monsieur Deshoulières say?”
The old woman made a gesture of impatience. “Monsieur Deshoulières is always poking and meddling—for what good? All the doctors in the world will not stop the fever if it pleases the good God to send it to us. If He means it to come it will come. I have heard my mother talk of it years ago in Charville, just the same. She lost her father and two brothers—fine strong young men they were—and the dead lay there in the houses, for they could not get any one to bury them. Mademoiselle sees that it was intended. What the doctors have to do is to try and cure the people who catch it.”
Indifference in the rich, fatalism in the poor, helped the fever along mightily. A dry, hot summer succeeded to the green promise of the spring. When July came the plains lay scorching under the fiery sunshine, and fever raged in Charville like a pestilence.