The rest of that day passed by like a dream. Jean had come down with the
daily supply of food, and I heard Monsieur Laurentie call to him to
accompany me back to the presbytery, and to warn every one to keep away
from me, until I could take every precaution against spreading
infection. He gave me minute directions what to do, and I obeyed them
automatically and mechanically. I spent the whole day in my room alone.
At night, after all the village was silent, with the moon shining
brilliantly down upon the deserted streets, the sound of stealthy
footsteps came to me through my window. I pulled the casement open and
looked out. There marched four men, with measured steps, bearing a
coffin on their shoulders, while Monsieur Laurentie followed them
bareheaded. It was my husband's funeral; and I sank upon my knees, and
remained kneeling till I heard them return from the little cemetery up
the valley, where so many of the curé's flock had been buried. I prayed
with all my heart that no other life would be forfeited to this
pestilence, which had seemed to have passed away from us.
But I was worn out myself with anxiety and watching. For three or four
days I was ill with a low, nervous fever--altogether unlike the terrible
typhoid, yet such as to keep me to my room. Minima and Mademoiselle
Thérèse were my only companions. Mademoiselle, after talking that one
night as much as she generally talked in twelve months, had relapsed
into deeper taciturnity than before. But her muteness tranquillized me.
Minima's simple talk brought me back to the level of common life. My own
nervous weeping, which I could not control, served to soothe me. My
casement, almost covered by broad, clustering vine-leaves, preserved a
cool, dim obscurity in my room. The village children seemed all at once
to have forgotten how to scream and shout, and no sound from the street
disturbed me. Even the morning and evening bell rang with a deep,
muffled tone, which scarcely stirred the silence. I heard afterward that
Jean had swathed the bell in a piece of sackcloth, and that the children
had been sent off early every morning into the woods.
But I could not remain long in that idle seclusion. I felt all my
strength returning, both of body and mind. I began to smile at Minima,
and to answer her childish prattle, with none of the feeling of utter
weariness which had at first prostrated me.
"Are we going to stay here forever and ever?" she asked me, one day,
when I felt that the solitary peace of my own chamber was growing too
monotonous for me.
"Should you like to stay, Minima?" I inquired in reply. It was a
question I must face, that of what I was going to do in the future.
"I don't know altogether," she said, reflectively. "The boys here are
not so nice as they used to be at home. Pierre says I'm a little pagan,
and that's not nice, Aunt Nelly. He says I must be baptized by Monsieur
Laurentie, and be prepared for my first communion, before I can be as
good as he is. The boys at home used to think me quite as good as them,
and better. I asked Monsieur Laurentie if I ought to be baptized over
again, and he only smiled, and said I must be as good a little girl as I
could be, and it did not much matter. But Pierre, and all the rest,
think I'm not as good as them, and I don't like it."
I could not help laughing, like Monsieur Laurentie, at Minima's
distress. Yet it was not without foundation. Here we were heretics amid
the orthodox, and I felt it myself. Though Monsieur le Curé never
alluded to it in the most distant manner, there was a difference between
us and the simple village-folk in Ville-en-bois which would always mark
us as strangers in blood and creed.
"I think," continued Minima, with a shrewd expression on her face,
which was beginning to fill up and grow round in its outlines, "I think,
when you are quite well again, we'd better be going on somewhere to try
our fortunes. It never does, you know, to stop too long in the same
place. I'm quite sure we shall never meet the prince here, and I don't
think we shall find any treasure. Besides, if we began to dig they'd all
know, and want to go shares. I shouldn't mind going shares with Monsieur
Laurentie, but I would not go shares with Pierre. Of course when we've
made our fortunes we'll come back, and we'll build Monsieur Laurentie a
palace of marble, and put Turkey carpets on all the floors, and have
fountains and statues, and all sorts of things, and give him a cook to
cook splendid dinners. But we wouldn't stay here always if we were very,
very rich; would you, Aunt Nelly?"
"Has anybody told you that I am rich?" I asked, with a passing feeling
of vexation.
"Oh, no," she said, laughing heartily, "I should know better than that.
You're very poor, my darling auntie, but I love you all the same. We
shall be rich some day, of course. It's all coming right, by-and-by."
Her hand was stroking my face, and I drew it to my lips and kissed it
tenderly. I had scarcely realized before what a change had come over my
circumstances.
"But I am not poor any longer, my little girl," I said; "I am rich
now.".
"Very rich?" she asked, eagerly.
"Very rich," I repeated.
"And we shall never have to go walking, walking, till our feet are sore
and tired? And we shall not be hungry, and be afraid of spending our
money? And we shall buy new clothes as soon as the old ones are worn
out? O Aunt Nelly, is it true? is it quite true?"
"It is quite true, my poor Minima," I answered.
She looked at me wistfully, with the color coming and going on her face.
Then she climbed up, and lay down beside me, with her arm over me and
her face close to mine.
"O Aunt Nelly!" she cried, "if this had only come while my father was
alive!"
"Minima," I said, after her sobs and tears were ended, "you will always
be my little girl. You shall come and live with me wherever I live."
"Of course," she answered, with the simple trustfulness of a child, "we
are going to live together till we die. You won't send me to school,
will you? You know what school is like now, and you wouldn't like me to
send you to school, would you? If I were a rich, grown-up lady, and you
were a little girl like me, I know what I should do."
"What would you do?" I inquired, laughing.
"I should give you lots of dolls and things," she said, quite seriously,
her brows puckered with anxiety, "and I should let you have
strawberry-jam every day, and I should make every thing as nice as
possible. Of course I should make you learn lessons, whether you liked
it or not, but I should teach you myself, and then I should know nobody
was unkind to you. That's what I should do, Aunt Nelly."
"And that's what I shall do, Minima," I repeated.
We had many things to settle that morning, making our preliminary
arrangements for the spending of my fortune upon many dolls and much
jam. But the conviction was forced upon me that I must be setting about
more important plans. Tardif was still staying in Ville-en-bois,
delaying his departure till I was well enough to see him. I resolved to
get up that evening, as soon as the heat of the day was past, and have a
conversation with him and Monsieur Laurentie.