"There are always a number of people who have the nature of stones;
they fall on other persons and crush them. Some again have the nature
of weeds, and twist about other people's feet, and entangle them.
More have the nature of logs, and lie in the way, so that every one
falls over them. And most of all have the nature of thorns."
_Modern Painters_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Months passed. Charville had its own events to talk about. Madame, the
wife of the Prefet, died, there was a change of regiments, a fresh
company took the theatre. These were the topics about which people
spoke, keeping their own little subjects of interest under the surface,
as people do.
Therese, who had no one with whom to converse after this fashion, became
in time grateful for the hard work which took her thoughts out of the
groove along which they travelled incessantly. It seemed as if the key
had been put into her hands which opens the treasure-house of life.
Before this she had been groping with the wrong instrument. The key
lies before us all, only we are so dull and so blind that unless
something forces it upon us we often take no notice, or merely play with
it. Not our own, but another's. When we have learned that lesson, the
treasure doors fly open.
There had been no news of Fabien, and she was often very sad, very
desponding, but never with such a sense of dreariness as before. There
seemed something to live for besides that bright hope of happiness which
used almost to mock her by its very brilliancy. Her buoyancy came back;
she could sing over her work, laugh sometimes at madame's tyranny.
Above all, the teaching lost some of its horrors. Octavie was as
disagreeable as ever, but Adolphe was more teachable, more affectionate;
Therese began to feel a little fond of him at the bottom of her heart.
She used to tell him stories about her life in Rouen, or legends of the
Brittany which was her mother's province. Adolphe was an insatiable
listener. "Encore, encore," he would cry peremptorily, and then Therese
had to begin all over again. Occasionally he would reward her with a
story of his own. "Ecoute toi," was always the beginning, and then
perhaps, "il y avait un geant." But the giant never accomplished much
beyond the mere fact of existence.
The spring this year was unusually early at Charville--unusually early
and unusually mild. When the young green leaves began to show
themselves it seemed impossible not to believe but that Fabien would
come with them. While people are young--and, thank Heaven, with a good
many youth is not to be measured by years--the spring has a brightness
which is irresistible. M. Deshoulieres, too, with more uneasiness than
he liked to confess, felt that tidings should have come by this time.
He and Therese did not meet very often that winter. Whenever it
happened she knew that he was on the watch to prevent her from feeling
uneasy or pained by his presence, with a simple straightforward kindness
which touched her unutterably. He saw that she was more content, and
rejoiced at it. Once or twice he questioned Nannon about her, but the
prejudiced old woman would not give him much information. If M.
Deshoulieres set himself against M. Fabien's return, she thought, what
would become of them? Any thing, even Madame Roulleau's conduct, was
preferable to such a misfortune. All this while he had another anxiety
in his mind. His own sweet dreams of happiness were at an end, the
balcony must remain unfilled, no loving eyes watch through the darkness
for his return. Utterly and for ever he had put these visions aside.
Therese loved another. He looked it in the face, and accepted his fate
bravely. He understood that she was young, solitary, weak perhaps, from
these circumstances. He had read her heart so well as to know,
moreover, that were he to press his own suit, she, out of this youth and
solitariness and weakness, might in time give herself to him. I do not
say that he scorned the temptation, but that, with a man of Max
Deshoulieres' nature, it could not so much as exist for one moment in
his heart. To him such an advantage would have been an impossibility.
To love her was to be bound in all noble fashion to guard her and to
help her. Guard her and help her he would; yes, help her, although his
own heart lay in the path over which she desired to walk. All this Max,
who was little given to self-pity, recognised and accepted; what
troubled him with anxious thoughts was the doubt whether Fabien was
worthy. It seemed to him as if there was something selfish and petty
about the manner in which he had broken away from the difficulties
surrounding him; something heartless in his allowing so long a period to
pass without communication. Those boyish letters tied up and labelled
with a trembling hand were proof of the old man's love. Was Fabien more
unforgiving than his uncle? Had he ceased to remember his little
playmate? Or--was he dead?
The young horse-chestnut trees budded and blossomed, the great
cornfields lay round Charville like an emerald sea, everywhere there was
the pleasant stir of spring, the smell of fresh-turned earth, the women
hoeing and weeding in the fields, above them the larks singing
jubilantly. The time of M. Moreau's death came and passed away. There
was no news of Fabien. Madame Roulleau began to feel as if all
prospered.
Every one talked about the early season, the warmth of the spring, but
the doctors, it was noticed, made no answer to these congratulations.
Monseigneur at the Eveche, the Prefet, and a few of the leading men were
aware of the cause of this silence. Certain of the number had it dinned
persistently into their ears by M. Deshoulieres whenever he had the
chance, or could make it. What healthiness Charville possessed it owed
to its situation, to the broad plains around, and the winds that rushed
up and carried away the foul, bad exhalations. The town itself was
shamefully mismanaged. The narrow streets, the old tumble-down,
crowded, picturesque houses went on from year to year untouched, and the
population increased and were crammed into the same space as their
forefathers occupied with a quarter of their number. The old walls no
longer existed, it is true, except in name, and the people had broken
through, crossed the river, and spread out a straggling suburb. But all
the houses in that part were miserably squalid, and lay low with water
standing about them, so that they were, to say the least, no less
unhealthy than the habitations in Charville proper.
There was always illness. But this year there was something about the
illness which caused considerable anxiety to the doctors. Something, in
the way in which a fever clung and lingered, and sprang up, and held its
ground, even when it was winter, with snow and frost on the ground, and
it was not, as Nannon said with indignation, fever weather. It was this
impossibility of beating it out which made M. Deshoulieres speak of it
with gravity. People laughed at him for it. "Fever? But, monsieur,
there is always fever at Charville. It is almost an institution."
"Monsieur le Prefet, it is an institution with which we could well
dispense."
"_Eh bien_, we shall see. It seems to me you are disturbing yourself
unnecessarily. Next winter, perhaps, there may be a possibility of
accomplishing some of these improvements that you so much desire. My
dear monsieur, you do not know how many important matters call for my
devotion to them at this moment."
M. Deshoulieres had some idea. There was an old underground cave at
Charville, where the Prefet proposed establishing his mushroom-beds. It
was a scheme with which the wants of the town could not possibly be
expected to interfere. He went home terribly disheartened.
The Bishop did his best for him, but, as he had said, he was an old man,
and in his comfortable room, in the Eveche, he could not, perhaps,
estimate the extent of the danger. After all, too, this danger depended
in great measure upon certain conditions. There had been a warm, damp
spring. If the summer were unusually hot the chances were very much in
favour of the fever. Otherwise it might tide over again, carry off one
here, one there, and not at all interfere with the Prefet's
mushroom-beds. M. Deshoulieres was looked upon as an uncomfortable
prophet. Why should he talk of evils before they arrived? He would not
consent to hold his peace as they desired, but he was thrown very much
upon his own resources. A little beyond the suburbs I have described, a
hospital had been built, the Hospital St Jean. M. Deshoulieres busied
himself with improving its working capabilities. He had a certain
authority there of which he made good use. And it seemed to him as if
there was little else he could do. The men in whose hands power rested
met him with the never-failing "_nous verrons_," which did not abate his
indignation, and the poor clung to their poverty and their filth.
And meanwhile the fever gained a little ground. It was of a low typhoid
character, and it kept entirely in the lower town. As yet not a single
case had occurred elsewhere to frighten the mothers when they looked at
their little ones sleeping, with, perhaps, a little flush upon the soft
sweet cheek. The lower town was privileged, as it were, to possess a
certain amount of unhealthiness, and no one troubled their heads much
about the matter except the doctors, whose business it was supposed to
be. It was a lovely summer. There was the promise of an abundant
harvest, always an important question in Charville. The plains, flat
and ugly as they were, could boast a certain beauty in their aspect of
fertility. Little stone-coloured villages, with a church in the centre
of each, were dotted here and there. Canals or small streams trickled
slowly along, the course of the river was broken by water-mills, every
thing seemed full of fat promise. The sun glowed down upon it all,--a
peaceful, contented scene. What more was wanted? The Prefet looked at
it one day from his window with a smile of satisfaction, and went away
to his mushroom-beds. He saw Monsieur Deshoulieres in the distance, and
crossed over to avoid him. "That man has become a perfect pest," he
said severely. "I incline to think that after all there may be
something in these stories that one hears now and then about him and the
old man who died. It appears to me that he never knows when to be
content, and discontent is the mother of all the vices, one with which,
I am thankful to say, I have no sympathy."
"It is the bane of our century," said Monsieur de Blainville, with whom
he was walking.
"Precisely. And in my opinion the Government should put it down with
more determination than they do."
"Hydra-headed, remember."
"_Raison de plus, mon cher_. In this century we should be able to cope
with monsters. _Allons_! I long for your opinion about the depth of
the beds. You say eighteen inches, and my man maintains twenty to be
the minimum depth. I shall hear the reason on both sides before
deciding. It is an important question, on which one should not
pronounce hastily."
About a week after, Therese, who had resumed her favourite walks by the
river, asked Nannon:
"What is this about the fever? I heard Monsieur Roulleau talking of it
yesterday."
"There is no use in talking, particularly when it is a little creature
like that who talks. All they may say will not stop the fever."
"It increases then?"
"Increases? But yes. This morning we hear that it is in our street.
Louise Gouye's child, of whom I have sometimes told mademoiselle, has
it."
"What, that pretty little blue-eyed thing?"
"Yes, yes. The poor mother is in despair."
"But, Nannon, it seems to spread terribly. Can nothing be done? What
does Monsieur Deshoulieres say?"
The old woman made a gesture of impatience. "Monsieur Deshoulieres is
always poking and meddling--for what good? All the doctors in the world
will not stop the fever if it pleases the good God to send it to us. If
He means it to come it will come. I have heard my mother talk of it
years ago in Charville, just the same. She lost her father and two
brothers--fine strong young men they were--and the dead lay there in the
houses, for they could not get any one to bury them. Mademoiselle sees
that it was intended. What the doctors have to do is to try and cure
the people who catch it."
Indifference in the rich, fatalism in the poor, helped the fever along
mightily. A dry, hot summer succeeded to the green promise of the
spring. When July came the plains lay scorching under the fiery
sunshine, and fever raged in Charville like a pestilence.