The doctor frowned. The Curé had never revealed to him what his ambition for Jean was, but the doctor had long ago guessed it. You cannot know a man for thirty years and be entirely ignorant of his favourite idea, especially when he has not got more than one. The Curé wished Jean to become a priest, and the doctor hated the idea with all his heart. He was a Socialist, you must remember, a Radical and a cynic, so of course he wanted Jean to become a grand seigneur—a man of the world, and at the same time noted for his domestic happiness, with a large family of sons.
As for Jean himself, he wanted to become a musician, but nobody minded very much what Jean wanted.
“It has occurred to me,” said the Curé, after he had finished saying his Ave, “that we have been sent for—of course, you must understand that I have no authority for my idea; I am merely expressing what has passed through my mind—that we may be asked to consult with Mademoiselle Prenderghast on the subject of Monsieur Jean’s future.” The Curé coughed.
“There’s his uncle,” growled the doctor. “He ought to settle the question.”
“I think the boy’s taste should be considered,” suggested the Curé. He thought that he had formed Jean’s taste, and that he might safely leave it to settle matters his way.
“I wish he could have done his military service,” said the doctor. “If I had been the fool at the Maire de Valbranche I would have passed him; he is delicate, but it’s only raw, untrained nerves and morbid religious fancies. The old adhesion in the left lung they thought themselves so clever in spotting, why, it’s nothing—nothing at all, I tell you; just the result of that English spinster’s notion of how to treat a delicate child with measles. But there! modern science only goes by what’s at the end of a stethoscope, or a microscope, or a misanthrope,” said the doctor. He was not quite sure what a misanthrope was; however, it sounded all right, and, after all, the Curé wouldn’t know any better. “It doesn’t allow for life forces.”
“I have often told you that,” said the Curé complacently; “only I expressed it better. Science has tried to lead faith when she should have knelt before her.”
“Rubbish!” said the doctor.
By this time they had reached the house. Ucelles did not look quite so grand on a near approach. The long French windows opening on the terrasse had a cold and vacant air, most of the house was closed, so that it appeared half blind and wholly dumb; it needed all the sunshine of summer to help the observer to bear the freezing sense of departed life. When the doctor rang the bell it echoed hauntingly through the empty corridors, and it was a long while before Miss Prenderghast’s reliable English maid answered it. She did at last, and received the men’s greetings with all the sourness of an exiled mind. If Miss Prenderghast was not at home in France, Elizabeth was still less likely to be so. Miss Prenderghast regarded it with suspicion, but Elizabeth with open-eyed hostility. Everything was different from what Elizabeth had been accustomed to, and Elizabeth knew that everything which was different was wrong. But all human consistency breaks down somewhere; Elizabeth’s broke down over Jean. When she first saw him he was a little French boy, very French indeed, and a Catholic; and he was not the less French now nor less Catholic at twenty; but Elizabeth was human and she loved him. That was why she stayed in a heathen country.
“If you will please to come this way, sir,” she said, addressing the doctor—she pretended not to see the Curé, she was Protestant to the core; then she led them along the polished parquet corridor, till at last they reached the smallest of a suite of reception-rooms. It was full of sunshine and golden dust that glistened in the sunbeams between the ceiling and the floor, but there was very little else in the room except Miss Prenderghast; she was knitting.