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.
"I am very _triste_" I replied; "I am thinking that it is time for me to
go away from you all. I cannot stay in this tranquil place."
"But wherefore must you leave us?" he asked, sitting down on the bench
beside me; "I found two little stray lambs, wandering without fold or
shepherd, and I brought them to my own house. What compels them to go
into the wide world again?"
"Monsieur, we are poor," I answered, "and you are not rich. We should be
a burden to you, and we have no claim upon you."
"You have a great claim," he said; "there is not a heart in the parish
that does not love you already. Have not our children died in your arms?
Have you not watched over them? spent sleepless nights and watchful days
for them? How could we endure to see you go away? Remain with us,
madame; live with us, you and my _mignonne_, whose face is white yet."
Could I stay then? It was a very calm, very secure refuge. There was no
danger of discovery. Yet there was a restlessness in my spirit at war
with the half-mournful, half-joyous serenity of the place, where I had
seen so many people die, and where there were so many new graves in the
little cemetery up the hill. If I could go away for a while, I might
return, and learn to be content amid this tranquillity.
"Madame," said the pleasant tones of Monsieur Laurentie, "do you know
our language well enough to tell me your history now? You need not prove
to me that you are not wicked; tell me how you are unfortunate. Where
were you wandering to that night when I found you at the foot of the
Calvary?"
There, in the cool, deepening twilight, I told him my story, little by
little; sometimes at a loss for words, and always compelled to speak in
the simplest and most direct phrases. He listened, with no other
interruption than to supply me occasionally with an expression when I
hesitated. He appeared to understand me almost by intuition. It was
quite dark before I had finished, and the deep blue of the sky above us
was bright with stars. A glow-worm was moving among the tufts of grass
growing between the roots of the tree; and I watched it almost as
intently as if I had nothing else to think of.
"Speak to me as if I were your daughter," I said. "Have I done right or
wrong? Would you give me up to him, if he came to claim me?"
"I am thinking of thee as my daughter," he answered, leaning his hands
and his white head above them, upon the top of the stick he was holding,
and sitting so for some moments in silent thought. "Thy voice is not the
voice of passion," he continued; "it is the voice of conviction,
profound and confirmed. Thou mayst have fled from him in a paroxysm of
wrath, but thy judgment and conscience acquit thee of wrong. In my eyes
it is a sacrament which thou hast broken; yet he had profaned it first.
My daughter, if thy husband returned to thee, penitent, converted,
confessing his offences against thee, couldst thou forgive him?"
"Yes," I answered, "yes! I could forgive him."
"Thou wouldst return to him?" he said, in calm, penetrating accents, but
so low as to seem almost the voice of my own heart; "thou wouldst be
subject to him as the Church is subject to Christ? He would be thy head;
wouldst thou submit thyself unto him as unto the Lord?"
"I shivered with dread as the quiet, solemn tones fell upon my ear,
poignantly, as if they must penetrate to my heart. I could not keep
myself from sobbing. His face was turned toward me in the dusk, and I
covered mine with my hands.
"Not now," I cried; "I cannot, I cannot. I was so young, monsieur; I did
not know what I was promising. I could never return to him, never."
"My daughter," pursued the inexorable voice beside me, "is it because
there is any one whom thou lovest more?"
"Oh!" I cried, almost involuntarily, and speaking now in my own
language, "I do not know. I could have loved Martin dearly--dearly."
"I do not understand thy words," said Monsieur Laurentie, "but I
understand thy tears and sighs. Thou must stay here, my daughter, with
me, and these poor, simple people who love thee. I will not let thee go
into temptation. Courage; thou wilt be happy among us, when thou hast
conquered this evil. As for the rest, I must think about it. Let us go
in now. The lamp has been lit and supper served this half-hour. There is
my sister looking out at us. Come, madame. You are in my charge, and I
will take care of you."
A few days after this, the whole community was thrown into a tumult by
the news that their curé was about to undertake the perils of a voyage
to England, and would be absent a whole fortnight. He said it was to
obtain some information as to the English system of drainage in
agricultural districts, which might make their own valley more healthy
and less liable to fever. But it struck me that he was about to make
some inquiries concerning my husband, and perhaps about Minima, whose
desolate position had touched him deeply. I ventured to tell him what
danger might arise to me if any clew to my hiding-place fell into
Richard Foster's hands.
"My poor child," he said, "why art thou so fearful? There is not a man
here who would not protect thee. He would be obliged to prove his
identity, and thine, before he could establish his first right to claim
thee. Then we would enter a _procés_. Be content. I am going to consult
some lawyers of my own country and thine."
He bade us farewell, with as many directions and injunctions as a father
might leave to a large family of sons and daughters. Half the village
followed his _char-à-banc_ as far as the cross where he had found Minima
and me, six miles on his road to Noireau. His sister and I, who had
ridden with him so far, left him there, and walked home up the steep,
long road, in the midst of that enthusiastic crowd of his parishioners.