"I thought madam would perhaps like to take advantage of the opportunity, to have a look at her property. So I managed to slip away for a moment. If madam wishes I will accompany her."
And as the young woman still refused, he continued in a doleful voice:
"Madam was perhaps surprised in regard to the fruit. It was all wormeaten, and was really not worth packing up. Then we had a gale that did a lot of harm. Ah! it's a pity madam cannot sell the place! One gentleman came who wanted some repairs done. Anyhow, I am at the disposal of madam; and madam may be sure that I replace her here, as if she were here herself."
Then he insisted on giving her bread and pears, pears from his own garden, which were not wormeaten, and she accepted.
As Misard crossed the kitchen he told the passengers that the work of clearing away the snow was proceeding, but it would take another four or five hours. It had struck midday, and there ensued more lamentation, for all were becoming very hungry. Flore had just declared that she would not have sufficient bread for everyone. But she had plenty of wine. She had brought ten quarts up from the cellar, and only a moment before, had set them in a line on the table.
Then there were not enough glasses, and they had to drink by groups, the English lady with her two daughters, the old gentleman with his young wife. The latter had found a zealous, inventful groom in the young man from Havre, who watched over her well-being. He disappeared and returned with apples and a loaf which he had found in the woodhouse. Flore was angry, saying this was bread for her sick mother. But he had already commenced cutting it up, and handing pieces to the ladies, beginning with the young wife, who smiled at him amiably, feeling very much flattered at his attention.
Her husband was not offended; indeed, he no longer paid any attention to her, being engaged with the American in exalting the commercial customs of New York. The two English girls had never munched apples so heartily. Their mother, who felt very weary, was half asleep. Two ladies were seated on the ground before the hearth, overcome by waiting. Men who had gone out to smoke, in front of the house to kill a quarter of an hour, returned perishing and shivering with cold. Little by little the uneasy feeling increased, partly from hunger having only been half satisfied and partly from fatigue, augmented by impatience and absence of all comfort. The scene was assuming the aspect of a shipwrecked camp, of the desolation of a band of civilised people, cast by the waves on a desert island.
And as Misard, going backward and forward, left the door open, Aunt Phasie gazed on the picture from her bed of sickness. So these were the kind of people whom she had seen flash past, during close upon a year that she had been dragging herself from her mattress to her chair. It was now but rarely that she could go on to the siding. She passed her days and nights alone, riveted there, her eyes on the window, without any other company than those trains which flew by so swiftly.
She had always complained of this outlandish place, where they never received a visit; and here was quite a small crowd come from the unknown. And only to think that among them—among those people in a hurry to get to their business—not one had the least idea of the thing that troubled her, of that filth which had been mixed with her salt! She had taken that device to heart, and she asked herself how it was possible for a person to be guilty of such cunning rascality without anybody perceiving it. A sufficient multitude passed by them, thousands and thousands of people; but they all dashed on, not one would have imagined that a murder was calmly being committed in this little, low-roofed dwelling, without any set out. And Aunt Phasie looked at one after the other of these persons, fallen as it were from the moon, reflecting that when people have their minds so occupied with other things, it is not surprising that they should walk into pools of mire, and not know it.
"Are you going back there?" Misard inquired of Jacques.