“On such a subject!” Thérèse answered, gravely.
“But mademoiselle might catch the fever.”
“One would suppose you were talking to Monsieur Roulleau,” said the girl, with impatience. “What makes my life of greater value than the lives of those good women who risk theirs now? Bah, Nannon! I did not expect you to take the fever-fright.”
“It is not for myself. I am no longer in my youth; the fever, or whatever it may please the good God to send, will be all one to me soon,” answered the old woman, unconsciously pathetic. “But with mademoiselle it is different. She is young and inexperienced, and does not know what she is asking. It is all too sad for her.”
“Is it very dreadful at the hospital?”
“Not so bad as in the houses where the poor things are all together, one lying dead on the floor and another unconscious by the side; and then there is the weeping and the wailing which they manage to shut out of the hospital.”
Thérèse shuddered.
“Oh, Nannon, if it would but rain!”
She said no more on the subject, but one day when she was alone she ventured a little way along one of the least affected of the lower streets, one which was not closed like certain of the others to the public. Yet this struck the girl as being, deserted: the old sleepy cheerfulness that she remembered was gone, no knots of chatterers stood about, one or two people might be seen on their stone house-steps, but they looked sad and spiritless. The workshops were shut up, a heavy languid, stagnant air was about the place. It seemed the sadder for that brilliant sunshine streaming down upon it all. The poor pet flowery drooped thirsty and uncared for. Thérèse felt a sense of frightened guilt in being there. It was as if she had no right to intrude, as if—as, indeed, was the case—she had come into the valley of the shadow of death. From the door of one house some little children looked at her wonderingly; she stopped, wishing to speak to the poor little things; and then she heard inside low feeble moans, which scared her away. Her heart was beating fast, a strange sort of oppression had seized hold of her; Nannon was right, she thought, she had not known for what she was wishing. The street was full of angles and twists and crookednesses; she went on a little further, stumbling over the rough paving and gasping for breath, it was so stifling between the tall overhanging houses. Always the same deserted look, the bright cruel sunshine, the hot sickening smells, the horror of a nameless something in the air. Thérèse could bear it no longer: the moans she had heard were in her ears, her heart beat almost to suffocation, and she turned and ran back with all her might.
Afterwards in her room she reproached herself and cried bitterly over what she called her cowardice. It was not cowardice, although she would have it so. If she had been brought face to face with the fever she would not have feared it. It was imagination which had conquered her,—imagination acting upon Nannon’s keenly drawn pictures, and quickened by the most vivid impression she had yet received of the heavy, death-laden atmosphere. But she did not make this excuse for herself. She felt humiliated, almost desperate with shame. The next day she went to the curé at a neighbouring church, and spoke more freely than was her wont, although she told him nothing of a half-formed resolution. Perhaps he did not quite understand her, but he helped her as much as he could; Thérèse had never before looked upon him as so nearly a friend.