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.