Thérèse turned a little pale. “Does it not seem cruel?”
“I cannot help it. It is necessary. Would you rather that I saw her?”
“No, no. I will try, but I dread it.”
She was absent so long that he had risen to follow her, when she came into the room again, white and trembling. “No, I have done nothing,” she said, in answer to his look. “She only rocks herself backwards and forwards on the ground. She never looked up—I do not know whether she heard me; but yet she must have, for when I came away at last, I heard her spring up and bolt the door. Nannon is out, and there she is quite alone. It cannot matter so greatly. Fabien can wait for his papers another day—” A shade that unconsciously crossed his face made her cry out quickly, “They will trust you unreservedly!”
“Scarcely that, perhaps,” he said, with a smile and a sigh. “Well, we must wait; this fit may possibly pass off. I will go and ask Sister Gabrielle to come here. Whether that poor woman will see her or not, she will be some one in the house, for you must take Nannon with you to the Cygne soon after twelve. You understand that it is on account of the fever that I do not bring M. Saint-Martin here?”
“Yes, yes. But ought I to see him? You are sure there is no danger?” she asked piteously.
“Not with the usual precautions. Can I help you in any way?”
“No, thank you. Père Gaspard has been very kind.”
Thérèse never knew how those hours passed. She tried to go into the room where madame lay in her awful depth of despair, but the door was locked, and Thérèse, who could not keep down the well of joy that seemed to come dancing up from her heart, felt indeed as if this happiness separated them more than any bolts. She called herself cruel, inhuman; she thought of little Adolphe, the weariness, the fever, the pain; but even while her tears fell, those glad visions would intrude themselves. When we are quite young we are so rigorous over our sorrows that we are impatient of comfort; it is in after life that we learn to refuse no consolations. She scolded herself, and then when Sister Gabrielle came, fell into her arms, and laughed and cried together. Sister Gabrielle, who had a way of soothing people, listened quietly, and seemed to lift that little burden of self-reproach from her heart. She dressed her, and called Nannon, and stood on the top of the steps watching the two go away together down the street, and under the dark archway. Charville had broken out into its cheerfulness again; the fever was dying away, only here and there was still the sharp anguish of recent loss like Madame Roulleau’s. Thérèse went off with a buoyant step into the sunshine, and the merry jangle of voices. Sister Gabrielle turned back into the house, took her knitting, and sat patiently on the stairs outside the room, where the mother had shut herself in with her despair.
When Thérèse reached the Cygne, something of her brightness had fled. She hung back with a little dread; it was Nannon who pushed forward, and made Toinette show them the room which M. Deshoulières had set apart for them.