The cottage stood, not in the village but on the outskirts of it, a
gunshot distant or thereabouts. It was close to a little wood, into
which the back-door opened.
The goodman Tinguy--that was the term usually applied to Rosine's
father--was a Chouan of the old type. While still a lad, he fought
through the first war in La Vendée under Jolly, Couëtu, Charette, La
Rochejaquelein, and others. He was afterwards married and had two
children. The eldest, a boy, had been drafted, and was now in the
army; the youngest was Rosine.
At the birth of each child the mother, like other
poor peasant-women, had taken a nursling. The
foster-brother of the boy was the last scion of a noble family of
Maine, Henri de Bonneville, who will presently appear in this history.
The foster-brother of Rosine was, as we have already said, Michel de
la Logerie, one of the chief actors in our drama.
Henri de Bonneville was two years older than Michel; the two boys had
often played together on the threshold of the door that Michel was
about to cross, following Bertha and Rosine. Later on they met in
Paris; and Madame de la Logerie had encouraged the intimacy of her son
with a young man of large fortune and high rank in the Western
provinces.
These foster-children had greatly eased the circumstances of the
Tinguy family; but the Vendéan peasant is so constituted that he never
admits that he is comfortably off. Tinguy was now making himself out
poor at the expense of his life. Ill as he was, nothing would have
induced him to send to Palluau for a doctor, whose visit would have
cost him five francs. Besides, no peasant, and the Vendéan peasant
least of all, believes in a doctor or in medicine. This was why
Rosine, when they wanted help, applied first at the château de la
Logerie, as foster-sister of the young baron, and then, being driven
thence, to the Demoiselles de Souday.
At the noise the young people made on entering the sick man rose on
his elbow, with difficulty, but immediately fell back on the bed with
a piteous moan. A candle was burning, which lighted the bed only; the
rest of the room was in darkness. The light showed, on a species of
cot or pallet, a man over fifty years of age, struggling in the grasp
of the demon of fever. He was pale to lividness; his eyes were glassy
and sunken, and from time to time his body shook from head to foot, as
if it had come in contact with a galvanic battery.
Michel shuddered at the sight. He understood at once why his mother,
fearing contagion, and knowing that Rosine must come from that bedside
impregnated with the miasmas of the disease, which were floating
almost visibly in the circle of light around that dying bed, was
unwilling to let Rosine enter the château. He wished for camphor, or
chloride of lime, or some disinfectant to isolate the sick man from
the well man, but having nothing of the kind he stood as near the door
as he could to breathe the fresh air.
As for Bertha, she seemed to pay no attention to all that; she went
straight to the patient and took his hand. Michel made a motion as if
to stop her, and opened his lips to utter a cry; but he was, in a
measure, petrified by the boldness of her charity, and he kept his
place silently, in admiring terror.
Bertha questioned the sick man. He replied that in the morning, when
he rose he had felt so weary that his legs gave way under him when he
attempted to walk. This was a warning given by Nature; but the
peasantry seldom pay heed to such advice. Instead of getting back into
bed and sending for a doctor, Tinguy dressed himself, went down into
the cellar for a pot of cider, and cut himself a slice of bread,--to
"strengthen him up," as he said. His pot of cider tasted good, but he
could not eat the bread. Then he went to his work in the fields.
As he went along, he had terrible pains in his head and a bleeding at
the nose; his weariness was excessive, and he was forced to sit down
once or twice. When he came to a brook he drank of it; but this did
not slake his thirst, which was so great that he even drank the water
out of a puddle. When at last he reached his field he had not the
strength to put a spade into the furrow he had begun the night before,
and he stood for some moments leaning on his tool. Then his head
turned, and he lay down, or rather fell down on the ground in a state
of utter prostration.
There he remained till seven in the evening, and might have stayed all
night if a peasant from the little town of Légé had not happened to
come along. Seeing a man lying in the field, he called to him. Tinguy
did not answer, but he made a movement. The peasant went nearer and
recognized him. With great difficulty he got the sick man home; Tinguy
was so feeble that it took him over an hour to go half a mile.
Rosine was watching for him anxiously. When she saw him she was
frightened, and wished to go to Palluau and fetch the doctor; but her
father positively forbade it, and went to bed, declaring it would be
nothing and the next day he should be well. But as his thirst, instead
of lessening, continued to increase, he told Rosine to put a pitcher
of water by his bedside for the night. He spent the night thus,
devoured by thirst, and drinking incessantly without allaying the
fever that burned within him. The next morning he tried to rise; but
he no sooner sat up in bed than his head, in which he complained of
violent shooting pains, became dizzy, and he was seized with a violent
pain in the right side.
Rosine insisted on going for M. Roger (that was the name of the doctor
at Palluau); but again her father forbade her. The girl then stayed
quietly by his bed, ready to obey his wishes and serve his needs. His
greatest need was for drink; every ten minutes he asked for water.
Matters went on thus till four in the afternoon. Then the sick man
shook his head and said, "I see I have got a bad fever; you must go
and get me some help from the good ladies at the castle." We know the
results of Rosine's expedition.
After feeling the sick man's pulse and listening to this account of
his illness, given with great difficulty, Bertha, who counted above a
hundred pulsations, was sure that Tinguy was in a dangerous state.
What the exact nature of the fever was she was too ignorant of the
science of medicine to decide. But as the sick man was constantly
crying for "Drink! drink!" she cut a lemon in slices, boiled it in a
potful of water, sweetened it slightly, and let the sick man drink it
in place of pure water.
It is to be remarked that when she wanted to sweeten the infusion
Rosine told her there was no sugar in the house; sugar, to a Vendéan
peasant, is the supreme of luxury. Fortunately, the provident Bertha
had put a few lumps into the little box which contained her medicines.
She cast her eyes about her in search of the box, and saw it under the
arm of the young man, who was still standing near the door.
She made him a sign to come to her; but before he could obey she made
him another sign to stay where he was. Then she went up to him
herself, laying a finger on her lips, and said in a low voice, so that
the patient might not hear her:--
"The man's condition is very serious. I dare not take much upon
myself. It is absolutely necessary to have a doctor, and even so, I
fear it will be too late. Will you go to Palluau, dear Monsieur
Michel, and fetch Doctor Roger? Meantime I will give Tinguy something
to quiet him."
"But you--you?" said the young baron, anxiously.
"I shall stay here; you will find me when you get back. I have some
important things to say to the patient."
"Important things?" said Michel, astonished.
"Yes."
"But--" insisted the young man.
"I assure you," interrupted the young girl, "that every minute's delay
is of consequence. Taken in time these fevers are often fatal;
neglected, as this has been, there is little hope. Go at once,--at
once, and bring back the doctor."
"But," persisted the young man, "suppose the fever is contagious?"
"What then?"
"Won't you run great risk of taking it?"
"My dear monsieur," said Bertha, "if we stopped to think about such
things half the sick peasants would die. Come, go; and trust to God to
take care of me."
She held out her hand to him; the young man took it. Carried away by
the admiration he felt at seeing in a woman a grand and simple courage
of which he, a man, was incapable, he pressed his lips with a sort of
passion upon it.
The movement was so rapid and unexpected that Bertha quivered, turned
very pale, and sighed as she said:--
"Go, friend; go!"
She did not need, this time, to reiterate her order. Michel sprang
from the cottage. A mysterious fire seemed to run through his veins
and doubled his vital power; he felt a strange, new force within him.
He fancied he was capable of accomplishing miracles; it seemed to him
that like the antique Mercury, wings had grown upon his head and
heels. If a wall had barred the way he would have scaled it; if a
river were flowing across his path, without bridge or ford, he would
have swum it, not stopping to fling off his clothes. He only regretted
that Bertha had asked him to do so easy a thing; he would fain have
had obstacles, some difficult--nay, impossible--quest! How could
Bertha be grateful to him for only going a few miles to fetch a
doctor? A few miles! when he longed to go to the end of the world for
her! Why couldn't he give some proof of heroism which might match his
courage with Bertha's own?
Of course, in such a state of exaltation the young baron never dreamed
of fatigue. The three and a half miles to Palluau were done in less
than half an hour. Doctor Roger was a familiar visitor at the château
of La Logerie, which is hardly an hour's distance from Palluau. Michel
had only to send up his name before the doctor, who had gone to bed
called out that he would be ready in five minutes.
At the end of that time he appeared in the salon, and asked the young
man what could possibly bring him there at that unusual time of night.
In two words Michel told the doctor the state of the case; and as M.
Roger seemed a good deal surprised at his taking so lively an interest
in a peasant as to come on foot, at night, with an agitated manner and
bathed in perspiration, the young baron hastened to explain his
interest by the ties of affection which naturally bound him to his
foster-father.
Questioned by the doctor as to the symptoms of the illness, Michel
repeated faithfully all he had heard, and begged M. Roger to take with
him the necessary remedies,--the village of Légé not yet having
attained to the civilization of possessing an apothecary. Noticing
that the young baron was reeking with perspiration, and finding that
he had come on foot, the doctor, who had already ordered his horse to
be saddled, changed the order and had him harnessed to his carriole.
Michel was most anxious to prevent this arrangement; he declared that
he could go on foot much faster than the doctor could go on horseback.
He was, in fact, so powerful, with that valiant vigor of youth and
heart, that he probably could have done so as fast, or even faster,
than the doctor on his horse. The doctor insisted, Michel refused; and
the discussion ended by his darting out of the house and calling back
to Monsieur Roger:--
"Come as fast as you can. I'll announce your coming!"
The doctor began to think that Madame de la Logerie's son was mad. He
said to himself that he should soon overtake him, and did not change
the order for the carriole.
It was the thought of appearing before the eyes of the young girl in a
carriole which so exasperated the lover. He fancied Bertha would feel
more grateful to him if she saw him arrive all out of breath and open
the cottage door, crying out, "Here I am! the doctor is following me!"
than if she saw him driving up in a carriole, accompanying the doctor.
On horseback, on a fine courser, mane and tail flying in the wind, his
arrival announced by snorts and neighs, it would have been another
thing; but in a carriole!--ten thousand times better go on foot! A
first love teems with poesy, and it feels a bitter hatred to the
prosaic. What would Mary think when her sister told her she had sent
the young baron to Palluau for Doctor Roger, and that the young baron
had returned in the doctor's carriole!
No, no; better a thousand times, as we have said, arrive on foot. The
young fellow understood very well that this first appearance on the
stage of love with heaving breast and ardent eyes, dust on his
clothes, hair streaming in the wind, was good, good, and well done. As
for the patient, heavens! he was well-nigh forgotten, we must admit,
in the midst of this excitement; at any rate, it was not of him that
Michel thought, but of the two sisters. His poor foster-father would
not have driven him across the country at the rate of seven miles an
hour; it was Bertha, it was Mary. The exciting cause in this grand
physiological cataclysm now taking place in our hero had become a mere
accessory. Michel, under the name of Hippomenes, struggling for the
prize with Atalanta, had no need to drop the golden apples on his way.
He laughed to scorn the idea that the doctor and his horse could
overtake him; and he felt a sensation of physical delight as the cold
night-wind chilled the moisture on his brow. Overtaken by the doctor!
Sooner death than that!
It had taken him half an hour to go; it took him twenty-five minutes
to return.
As though Bertha had expected or divined this impossible celerity, she
had gone to the threshold of the door to await her messenger. She knew
that in all probability he could not be back till half an hour later,
and yet she went out to listen for him. She thought she heard steps in
the far distance. Impossible! it could not be he already; and yet she
never doubted that it was he.
In fact, a moment later she saw him looming, appearing, then clearly
defined upon the darkness, while at the same time he, with his eyes
fixed on the door, all the while doubting them, saw her standing there
motionless, her hand on her heart, which, for the first time in her
life, was beating violently.
When he reached her the youth, like the Greek of Marathon, was
voiceless, breathless, and came near dropping, if not as dead as the
Greek, at least in a faint. He had only strength to say:--
"The doctor is following me."
Then, in order not to fall, he leaned with his hand against the wall.
If he could have said more he might have cried:--
"You will tell Mademoiselle Mary, won't you? that it was for love of
her and of you that I have done seven miles in fifty minutes."
But he could not speak; so that Bertha believed, and had ground for
believing, that it was for love of her, and her alone, that the young
messenger had performed his feat. She smiled with pleasure. Drawing
her handkerchief from her pocket, she said, softly wiping the young
man's forehead, and taking great care not to touch his wound:--
"Good heavens! how sorry I am that you took my request to hasten so
much to heart! What a state you are in!" Then scolding him like a
mother, she added in a tender tone, "What a child you are!"
That word "child" was said in a tone of such indescribable tenderness
that it made Michel quiver. He seized Bertha's hand; it was moist and
trembling. Just then the sound of wheels was heard on the
high-road.
"Ah! here is the doctor," she cried, pushing away the young man's
hand.
Michel looked at her in amazement. Why did she push away his hand? He
was, of course, unable to give a clear account to himself of what was
passing in a girl's mind; but he felt, instinctively, that although
she repulsed him it was not from dislike or anger.
Bertha went back into the cottage, no doubt to prepare for the
doctor's arrival. Michel stayed at the door to receive him. When he
saw him coming along in his wicker vehicle, which shook him
grotesquely, the young fellow congratulated himself more than ever for
having come on foot. It was true that if Bertha had gone in, as she
had just done, when she heard the wheels she would not have seen him
in that vulgar trap. But if he had not already returned would she, or
would she not, have waited till he came?
Michel told himself that it was more than probable she would have
waited, and he felt in his heart, if not the warm satisfactions of
love, at any rate the soft ticklings of vanity.