Fever.
For more than two uneventful years Madelon remained in the
convent; but early in the third spring after her arrival, a
low fever broke out, which for the time completely disturbed
the peaceful, even current of existence there, and, by its
results, altered, as it happened, the whole course of her own
life.
She was between twelve and thirteen then, and had grown into a
slim little maiden, rather tall for her age, with a little
pale face as in old days, but with her wavy brown hair all
braided now, and fastened in long plaits round her head. In
these two years she has become somewhat reconciled to her
convent life; not, indeed, as a permanent arrangement--it never
occurred to her to regard it in that light--but as something
that must be endured till a new future should open out before
her. She learns her lessons, sings in the chapel, knows
something of compote-making, and can embroider with skilful
little fingers almost after Soeur Lucie's own heart. She still
holds aloof from her companions, turning to Soeur Lucie for
society, though rather with the feeling of the simple-hearted
little nun being _bon camarade_, than with any deeper sentiment
of friendship or respect. She is rarely _en pénitence_ now; the
vehement little spirit seems laid; and if something of her old
spring and energy have gone with it, if she is sometimes sad,
and almost always quiet, there is no one to note it much, or
to heed the change that has apparently come over her. And yet
Madelon was in truth little altered, and was scarcely less of
a child than when Graham had brought her to the convent. She
had learned a variety of things, it is true; she could have
named all the principal cities in Europe now; and though she
still stumbled over the kings of France, her multiplication-
table was unexceptionable; but her education had been one of
acquisition rather than of development. Her mind had not yet
had time to assimilate itself with those around her, nor to
become reconciled to the life that was so at variance with all
her old traditions; and she maintained a nucleus, as it were,
of independent thought, which no mere extraneous influences or
knowledge could affect. In the total silence imposed upon
herself, and those around her, concerning her past life, there
had been no possibility of modifying her ideas on that
subject, and they were still at the same point as when she
entered the convent. She still clung to her father's memory,
with all the passionate love of which her ardent little soul
was capable; she still believed in his perfection, and held to
her recollections of the old days with a strength and tenacity
only enhanced by the contrast which her present life daily
forced upon her. The past lived in her memory as a bright,
changeful dream, varying from one pleasure to another, with an
ever-shifting background of fair, foreign towns and cities,
Kursaals, palaces, salons, gardens, mountains, and lakes, and
quiet green nooks of country--all, as it seemed to her, with
the power of generalization that seizes on the most salient
points, and takes them as types of the whole, shining in
sunlight that never clouded, under clear blue skies that never
darkened. Madelon knew that that time had gone by for ever;
and yet, in all her dreams for the future, her imagination
never went beyond a repetition of it all--only for her father
she, perhaps, substituted Monsieur Horace: for Monsieur
Horace, we may be sure, was not forgotten, any more than her
promise to him; though, indeed, this last had been so long in
abeyance that she had ceased to think of it as likely to be
speedily fulfilled. She had almost come to regard it as one of
the many things referred to that somewhat vague period when
she should be grown up, and when, in some way--how she did not
know--she would be released from the convent and from Aunt
Thérèse, and be at liberty to come and go as she pleased. In
the meantime she had almost given up hoping for Monsieur
Horace's return. The time when she had last seen him and heard
from him already seemed so remote to her childish memory. No
one ever spoke to her about him, and he never wrote to her.
She did not for a moment think he had forgotten her; she had
too much confidence in him for that; but by degrees a notion,
vague at first, but gradually becoming a fixed idea destined
to have results, established itself in foolish little
Madelon's head, that he was waiting till he should hear from
her that his fortune was made before he would come back to
her. Madelon would get quite unhappy when she thought of this--
he must think her so faithless and forgetful, yet how could
she help it? That the promise had made as deep an impression
upon him as upon her she never doubted for a moment; and was
it not most possible, and even probable, that he was expecting
to hear of the result, perhaps even in want of this wonderful
fortune, on which he must be counting? It was a sad thought,
this, to our Madelon, but gradually it became a confirmed one
in her mind.
How long this state of things would have lasted--whether, with
the fading of childish impressions, present abiding influences
might have taken possession of her, whether, some few years
hence, some sudden development of her devotional tendencies
might have roused her latent powers of enthusiasm, and turned
them in a new direction just at the moment when youthful
ardour is most readily kindled, and tender, fervent hearts
most easily touched--whether, in such a case, our little
Madelon, inspired with new beliefs, would have renounced her
old life in the fervour of her acceptance of the new, and,
after all, have taken the nun's vows, and been content to
allow her native energy and earnestness to find scope in the
loftiest aspirations of a convent life--all this can never now
be known. Something there was in her character which, under
certain conditions, might have developed in such a direction.
The time might, indeed, surely would have come, had she
remained in the convent, when a sudden need and hunger for
sympathy, and perhaps excitement, would have risen in her
soul, too keen and imperative to be satisfied with past
memories; and when, in the absence of all support and
friendship in the outer world, she might have seized on
whatever she could find in the narrow circle in which she
moved, to still that imperious craving. Not in vain, then,
might have appeared those old dreams and visions in Florence
long ago. Madelon might have learnt to find in them a new and
deep significance, an interpretation in accordance with her
latest teaching, and through the dim years they might have
come back to her--prophetic warnings, as she might have been
taught to consider them--linking themselves with present
influences, to urge her on to one course. Her father's last
command, her own promises, sacred as she held them now, might
have availed nothing then, against what she might have been
taught to consider a voice from on high, a call of more than
earthly authority.
Such, we say, might have been the turn things would have taken
with Madelon, had the uninterrupted, monotonous convent life
continued to be hers. But long before her mind was prepared
for any such influences, early in the third year after her
father's death, certain events occurred, which brought this
period of her history to an abrupt close.
How, or why the fever broke out--whether it was the result of a
damp, unhealthy winter, or through infection brought by one of
the school-children, or from any other obvious cause, we need
not inquire here. It first showed itself about the middle of
February, and within a fortnight half the nuns had taken it,
the school was broken up, and the whole convent turned into a
hospital for the sick and dying.
Two of the sisters died within the first week or two; one was
very old, so old, indeed, that the fever seemed to be only the
decisive touch needed to extinguish the feeble life, that had
been uncertainly wavering for months previously; the other was
younger, and much beloved. And then came a sense as of some
general great calamity, a sort of awe-struck mourning, with
which real grief had, perhaps, little to do. The Superior
herself had been struck with the fever, and in three days she
was dead. Her vigils, her fastings, the wearying abnegations
of her stern, hard life had left her little strength for
struggling against the disease when it laid hold of her at
last, and so she too died in her cell one cold, bleak March
morning, with a hushed sisterhood gathered round her death-
bed, and gazing on it, as on that of a departing saint. Little
beloved, but much revered, Thérèse Linders also had got that
she had laboured for, and was now gone to prove the worth of
it; that which she had valued most in her narrow world had
been awarded her to the full--much honour, but small affection;
much glorification to her memory as to one of surpassing
sanctity, few tears of tender or regretful recollection. She
had had a strange, loveless life, with a certain pathos in it
too, as in the life of every human being, if looked at aright.
Not always, one may imagine, had such cold, relentless
pietism, such harsh indifference possessed her. She lies there
now, still and silent for evermore on earth, a crucifix
between her hands, tapers burning at her head and feet, with
the hard lines fixed on her cold grey face; and yet she also
had been a little, soft, round child, with yearnings too, like
other children, for a mother's kisses and a mother's love. "Go
away, Adolphe, you are very naughty, and I do not love you;
mamma always kisses you, and she never, never kisses me!" This
little speech, uttered by our poor saintly Superior when she
was but eight years old, may perhaps give the key to much in
her after life; and if we cannot, with an admiring sisterhood,
henceforth count this unhappy, soured woman in our catalogue
of saints, we will at least grant her a place amongst the
great company of "might-have-beens," most inscrutable problems
in this puzzling life of ours, and so bid her a not unkindly
farewell.
Madelon, meanwhile, knew nothing of these things; she had
taken the fever also, and while death was busy in other parts
of the convent, she lay unconscious in her little cell,
tossing in delirium, or lying in feverish stupor, with Soeur
Lucie coming softly in and out. In this desolated overworked
household, the child had come to be considered as only another
item of trouble, hardly of anxiety; for her life or death just
then was felt to be of the very smallest consequence to any
one. The one tie that had bound her to the convent had been
snapped by her aunt's death; if she lives, think the nuns--if
indeed they find time to think of her at all--she is a burthen
on our hands; if she dies, well then, one more coffin and
another grave. This is perhaps the ebb-tide of Madelon's
importance in the world; never before has been, never again
will be, we may trust, her existence of so little moment to
any human being--that existence which, meanwhile, in spite of
all such indifference, in perfect unconsciousness of it
indeed, is beginning to assert itself again. For though the
Superior had died amidst lamentations, and the places of Soeurs
Eulalie and Marguerite will know them no more, our little
Madelon, over whom there are none to lament or rejoice, will
live.
One afternoon she awoke, as from a long sleep. The low sun was
shining into the cell, lighting up the wooden crucifix on the
white-washed wall; Soeur Lucie, in her strait coif and long
black veil, was sitting by the bedside reading her book of
hours; through the window could be seen a strip of blue sky
crossed by some budding tree in the convent garden, little
birds were beginning to chirp and twitter amongst the
branches. The spring had come in these last days whilst
Madelon had been lying there, and in the midst of the glad
resurrection of all nature, she too was stirring and awakening
to consciousness, and a new life.