"No tear relieved the burden of her heart;
Stunn'd with the heavy woe."
_Thalaba_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The days went on for Therese very much as they had done at the hospital.
She had but one patient instead of many, it is true, but that one
absorbed all her care. Octavie had been sent from the house; the
_file_, who was in the habit of coming for a certain number of hours
daily, took fright and kept away. Nannon took her place, but she was
not permitted to enter the sick-room, and madame was utterly incapable
of those little feminine cares which nursing demands. So it all rested
upon Therese, and even when the child was unconscious there seemed to be
an increase of disquietude if she was not close at hand. She thought it
a bad case, and longed for M. Deshoulieres' swift perception to be
brought to bear upon it, and she could not help remembering Nannon's
irreverent simile when little Pinot came into the room, with his little
attempt at imitation of the other's manner. But madame broke out
violently when she suggested that M. Deshoulieres should be sent for.
And so there was nothing for it but to remember his injunctions, and
patiently to do what was needed for the poor little man, whose
naughtinesses and obstinacies were forgotten now, or recalled only with
shame at her own want of forbearance.
She wondered sometimes at madame's strange ways. It was impossible to
say in what mood the next hour would find her, fierce or remorseful,
snappish or affectionate. Therese would have understood better had she
known what coals of fire her unconscious hands were heaping and
shovelling upon madame's head just then. Nothing could have been so
terrible to her as to see this girl whom she had injured sitting with
the little hot hand in hers which the mother loved above all others in
the world, and longed to tear away out of her clasp. Nothing. It
almost maddened her.
At last one morning M. Pinot also told her that he would suggest her
sending for M. Deshoulieres. "It would be a satisfaction to himself,"
he said. Therese, who knew what those words meant, turned a little
pale, and looked tenderly down upon the little ugly brown face, now so
pinched and wizened and changed, which kept slipping down from the
pillow.
"M. Deshoulieres shall not come," answered madame, in her strange
defiant tone. "The child is no worse."
"_Pardon_, madame. It grieves me to say--"
"He is not worse, I tell you. The fever must run its course, and I have
heard you say it is now only weakness."
"Madame, at this stage--"
"He is not worse, I repeat again. I do not choose that M. Deshoulieres
should come."
"In that case--Is Monsieur Roulleau aware of the extent of this illness,
may I inquire of madame?"
"My husband comes to-day."
"How has she brought him?" thought Therese, who knew something of the
force of the little notary's fears. She had brought him by not telling
him of the illness at all. There was business waiting for him, and she
had told him that after it had rained she should demand his return. In
her next letter she said that it had rained, that the fever was
diminishing, and that on such a day he was to be at Rue St Servan.
That was all. Nannon, who admitted him, wondered as much as any one.
Madame come slowly down the stairs and signed to him to enter the little
bureau.
"Zenobie, my angel," he said, turning to meet her as she followed him.
Something, it might have been a grey look on her face, arrested him,
"What is the matter?" he said, faltering.
She was a woman, after all,--wicked, cruel, but a woman. Her sin was
smiting her sorely; there were those terrible coals of fire scorching,
consuming her. And he was her husband, the father of her children.
"Oh, Ignace, Ignace, _mon ami_," she cried, piteously, stretching out
her arms for support, "our little Adolphe!"
"What then?"
"Ah, he suffers so!"
"Suffers! Is he ill?"
"The fever--"
"The fever!" he cried, springing back with one bound against the wall.
"The fever is in this house and you let me come?"
She would be patient yet. It was the first shock. He had not realised
her words. "He will not know you, Ignace; he is changed and so weak; it
is terrible to see him."
"Keep back!" he cried out, for she was drawing closer; "keep back! You
have been nursing him, and now you speak to me! Let me go out into the
air. Zenobie, how could you be so imprudent?"
"You will not see him--your son?"
"What is the good, what is the good? I can do nothing. See here, what
a palpitation you have given me. Let me pass! I will go back to Tours
at once. Let me pass! I shall be a dead man if I stay in the house
with a fever."
Her wrath blazed out. "Coward!" she said, standing between him and the
door, and holding him immovable with a look of supreme scorn. "Coward!
And while you stand there trembling, shaking, do you know who it is who
is there by his side, nursing and tending him until I am driven mad?
That girl. Do you know that while I hate her, it is all I can do
sometimes not to fall on my knees before her and tell her all? Do you
know that he cares for her more than for me,--me, his mother?"
"Zenobie, Zenobie, have patience! You will ruin us with your
impetuosity."
"Listen, then. You who have not so much as the bravery of a woman in
your miserable little heart--it is your child whom that girl is nursing
night and day. You have no courage--have you no pity? Do you,
remembering who she is, and what she is doing,--do you refuse to let her
know that this man, her lover, is alive,--that you could lay your hand
upon him, and bring him back to her? Do you refuse that? She may die,
remember, die of nursing your child!"
"Not so loud, not so loud," said the little man uneasily. "If she were
to die, we should lose the money, it is true, but it might be the
safest. There would be fewer complications."
She turned from him with a look of unutterable horror. In his
cowardice, and in his cruelty, he had fallen far below even her measure
of wrongdoing. With a pale scared face, he was watching the door with
the hope of escape, but she, like an avenging fury, stood between it and
him.
"Let us go into the street," he said feebly. "I have always heard there
is less danger in the open air. You will not? _N'importe_. Do not let
me keep you, my Zenobie. Can I convey any message to your mother?"