CHAPTER THE SIXTEENTH.
SENT BY GOD.
I discovered that mademoiselle's opinion was shared by all the people in Ville-en-bois, and Monsieur Laurentie favored the universal impression. I had been sent to them by a special providence. There was something satisfactory and consolatory to them all in my freedom from personal anxieties and cares like their own. I had neither parent, nor husband, nor child to be attacked by the prevailing infection. As soon as Minima had passed safely through the most dangerous stages of the fever, I was at leisure to listen to and sympathize with each one of them. Possibly there was something in the difficulty I still experienced in expressing myself fluently which made me a better listener, and so won them to pour out their troubles into my attentive ear. Jean and Pierre especially were devoted to me, since the child that had belonged to them had died upon my lap.
Through March, April, and May, the fever had its fling, though we were not very long without a doctor. Monsieur Laurentie found one who came and, I suppose, did all he could for the sick; but he could not do much. I was kept too busily occupied to brood much either upon the past or the future, of my own life. Not a thought crossed my mind of deserting the little Norman village where I could be of use. Besides, Minima gained strength very slowly, too slowly to be removed from the place, or to encounter any fresh privations.
When June came there were no new cases in the village, though the summer-heat kept our patients languid. The last person who died of the fever was Mademoiselle Pineau, in the mill-cottage. The old man and his son had died before her, the former of old age, the latter of fever. Who was the heir to the ruined factory and the empty cottage no one as yet knew, but, until he appeared, every thing had to be left as it was. The curé kept the key of the dwelling, though there was no danger of any one trespassing upon the premises, as all the villagers regarded it as an accursed place. Of the four hundred and twenty-two souls which had formed the total of Monsieur le Curé's flock, he had lost thirty-one.
In July the doctor left us, saying there was no fear of the fever breaking out again at present. His departure seemed the signal for mine. Monsieur Laurentie was not rich enough to feed two idle mouths, like mine and Minima's, and there was little for me to do but sit still in the uncarpeted, barely-furnished salon of the presbytery, listening to the whirr of mademoiselle's spinning-wheel, and the drowsy, sing-song hum of the village children at school, in a shed against the walls of the house. Every thing seemed falling back into the pleasant monotony of a peaceful country life, pleasant after the terror and grief of the past months. The hay-harvest was over, and the cherry-gathering; the corn and the apples were ripening fast in the heat of the sun. In this lull, this pause, my heart grew busy again with itself.
"My child," said the curé to me, one evening, when his long day's work was over, "your face is triste. What are you thinking of?"
I was seated under a thick-leaved sycamore, a few paces from the church-porch. Vespers were just ended; the low chant had reached my ears, and I missed the soothing undertone. The women, in their high white caps, and the men, in their blue blouses, were sauntering slowly homeward. The children were playing all down the village street, and not far away a few girls and young men were beginning to dance to the piping of a flute. Over the whole was creeping the golden twilight of a summer evening.
"I am very triste" I replied; "I am thinking that it is time for me to go away from you all. I cannot stay in this tranquil place."
"But wherefore must you leave us?" he asked, sitting down on the bench beside me; "I found two little stray lambs, wandering without fold or shepherd, and I brought them to my own house. What compels them to go into the wide world again?"
"Monsieur, we are poor," I answered, "and you are not rich. We should be a burden to you, and we have no claim upon you."
"You have a great claim," he said; "there is not a heart in the parish that does not love you already. Have not our children died in your arms? Have you not watched over them? spent sleepless nights and watchful days for them? How could we endure to see you go away? Remain with us, madame; live with us, you and my mignonne, whose face is white yet."
Could I stay then? It was a very calm, very secure refuge. There was no danger of discovery. Yet there was a restlessness in my spirit at war with the half-mournful, half-joyous serenity of the place, where I had seen so many people die, and where there were so many new graves in the little cemetery up the hill. If I could go away for a while, I might return, and learn to be content amid this tranquillity.
"Madame," said the pleasant tones of Monsieur Laurentie, "do you know our language well enough to tell me your history now? You need not prove to me that you are not wicked; tell me how you are unfortunate. Where were you wandering to that night when I found you at the foot of the Calvary?"
There, in the cool, deepening twilight, I told him my story, little by little; sometimes at a loss for words, and always compelled to speak in the simplest and most direct phrases. He listened, with no other interruption than to supply me occasionally with an expression when I hesitated. He appeared to understand me almost by intuition. It was quite dark before I had finished, and the deep blue of the sky above us was bright with stars. A glow-worm was moving among the tufts of grass growing between the roots of the tree; and I watched it almost as intently as if I had nothing else to think of.
"Speak to me as if I were your daughter," I said. "Have I done right or wrong? Would you give me up to him, if he came to claim me?"
"I am thinking of thee as my daughter," he answered, leaning his hands and his white head above them, upon the top of the stick he was holding, and sitting so for some moments in silent thought. "Thy voice is not the voice of passion," he continued; "it is the voice of conviction, profound and confirmed. Thou mayst have fled from him in a paroxysm of wrath, but thy judgment and conscience acquit thee of wrong. In my eyes it is a sacrament which thou hast broken; yet he had profaned it first. My daughter, if thy husband returned to thee, penitent, converted, confessing his offences against thee, couldst thou forgive him?"
"Yes," I answered, "yes! I could forgive him."
"Thou wouldst return to him?" he said, in calm, penetrating accents, but so low as to seem almost the voice of my own heart; "thou wouldst be subject to him as the Church is subject to Christ? He would be thy head; wouldst thou submit thyself unto him as unto the Lord?"
"I shivered with dread as the quiet, solemn tones fell upon my ear, poignantly, as if they must penetrate to my heart. I could not keep myself from sobbing. His face was turned toward me in the dusk, and I covered mine with my hands.
"Not now," I cried; "I cannot, I cannot. I was so young, monsieur; I did not know what I was promising. I could never return to him, never."
"My daughter," pursued the inexorable voice beside me, "is it because there is any one whom thou lovest more?"
"Oh!" I cried, almost involuntarily, and speaking now in my own language, "I do not know. I could have loved Martin dearly—dearly."
"I do not understand thy words," said Monsieur Laurentie, "but I understand thy tears and sighs. Thou must stay here, my daughter, with me, and these poor, simple people who love thee. I will not let thee go into temptation. Courage; thou wilt be happy among us, when thou hast conquered this evil. As for the rest, I must think about it. Let us go in now. The lamp has been lit and supper served this half-hour. There is my sister looking out at us. Come, madame. You are in my charge, and I will take care of you."
A few days after this, the whole community was thrown into a tumult by the news that their curé was about to undertake the perils of a voyage to England, and would be absent a whole fortnight. He said it was to obtain some information as to the English system of drainage in agricultural districts, which might make their own valley more healthy and less liable to fever. But it struck me that he was about to make some inquiries concerning my husband, and perhaps about Minima, whose desolate position had touched him deeply. I ventured to tell him what danger might arise to me if any clew to my hiding-place fell into Richard Foster's hands.
"My poor child," he said, "why art thou so fearful? There is not a man here who would not protect thee. He would be obliged to prove his identity, and thine, before he could establish his first right to claim thee. Then we would enter a procés. Be content. I am going to consult some lawyers of my own country and thine."
He bade us farewell, with as many directions and injunctions as a father might leave to a large family of sons and daughters. Half the village followed his char-à-banc as far as the cross where he had found Minima and me, six miles on his road to Noireau. His sister and I, who had ridden with him so far, left him there, and walked home up the steep, long road, in the midst of that enthusiastic crowd of his parishioners.