THE LADY'S HUSBAND.
It was impossible but that Caius should take a keen interest in his
medical work. It was the first time that he had stood alone to fight
disease, and the weight of the responsibility added zest to his care of
each particular case. It was, however, natural to him to be more
interested in the general weal than in the individual, more interested
in a theoretical problem than in its practical working. His mind was
concerned now as to where and how the contagion hid itself, reappearing
as it had done, again and again in unlikely places; for there could be
assuredly no home for it in air, or sea, or land. Nor could drains be at
fault, for there were none. Next to this, the subject most constantly in
his mind was the plan of the hospital.
Madame Le Maître had said to him: "I have tried to persuade the people
to bring their sick to beds in my house, where we would nurse them, but
they will not. It is because they are angry to think that the sick from
different families would be put together and treated alike. They have
great notions of the differences between themselves, and they cannot
realize the danger, or believe that this plan would avert it; but now
that you have come, no doubt you will be able to explain to them more
clearly. Perhaps they will listen to you, because you are a man and a
doctor. Also, what I have said will have had time to work. You may reap
where I have sown."
She had looked upon him encouragingly, and Caius had felt encouraged;
but when he began to talk to the people, both courage and patience
quickly ebbed. He could not countenance the plan of bringing the sick
into the house where Madame Le Maître and the young girls lived. He
wanted the men who were idle in the winter time to build a temporary
shed of pine-wood, which would have been easy enough, but the men
laughed at him. The only reason that Caius did not give them back scorn
for scorn and anger for their lazy indifference was the reason that
formed his third and greatest interest in his work; this was his desire
to please Madame Le Maître.
If he had never known and loved the lady of the sea, he thought that his
desire to please Madame Le Maître would have been almost the same. She
exercised over him an inexplicable influence, and he would have felt
almost superstitious at being under this spell if he had not observed
that everyone who came much in contact with her, and who was able to
appreciate her, was ruled also, and that, not by any claim of authority
she put forth, but just because it seemed to happen so. She was more
unconscious of this influence than anyone. Those under her rule
comprised one or two of the better men of the island, many of the poor
women, the girls in her house, and O'Shea. With regard to himself, Caius
knew that her influence, if not augmented, was supplemented, by his
belief that in pleasing her he was making his best appeal to the favour
of the woman he loved.
He never from the first day forgot his love in his work. His business
was to do all that he could to serve Madame Le Maître, whose heart was
in the healing of the people, but his business also was to find out the
answer to the riddle in which his own heart was bound up. The first step
in this, obviously, was to know more about Madame Le Maître and O'Shea.
The lady he dared not question; the man he questioned with persistency
and with what art he could command.
It was one night, not a week after his advent, that he had so far come
to terms with O'Shea that he sat by the stove in the latter's house, and
did what he could to keep up conversation with little aid from his host.
O'Shea sat on one wooden chair, with his stockinged feet crossed upon
another, and his legs forming a bridge between. He was smoking, and in
the lamplight his smooth, queer face looked like a brown apple that had
begun to shrivel--just begun, for O'Shea was not old, and only a little
wrinkled.
His wife came often into the room, and stood looking with interest at
Caius. She was a fair woman, with a broad tranquil face and much light
hair that was brushed smoothly.
Caius talked of the weather, for the snow was falling. Then, after
awhile:
"By the way, O'Shea, _who_ is Madame Le Maître?"
The other had not spoken for a long time; now he took his clay pipe out
of his mouth, and answered promptly:
"An angel from heaven."
"Ah, yes; that, of course."
Caius stroked his moustache with the action habitual to drawing-room
gallantry; then, instead of persisting, he formed his question a little
differently:
"Who is Mr. Le Maître?"
"Sea-captain," said O'Shea.
"Oh! then _where_ is he?"
"Don't know."
"Isn't that rather strange, that his wife should be here, and that you
should not know where the husband is?"
"I can't see the ships on the other side of the world."
"Where did he go to?"
"Well, when he last sailed"--deliberately--"he went to Newcastle. His
ship is what they call a tramp; it don't belong to any loine. So at
Newcastle she was hired to go to Africy. Like enough, there she got
cargo for some place else."
"Oh! a very long voyage."
"She carries steam; the longest voyage comes to an end quick enough in
these days."
"Has Madame Le Maître always lived on this island? Was she married
here?"
"She came here a year this October past. She came from a place near the
Pierced Rock, south of Gaspé Basin. I lived there myself. I came here
because the skipper had good land here that she said I could farm."
Caius meditated on this.
"Then, you have known her ever since she was a child?"
"Saw her married."
"What does her husband look like?"
"Well"--a long pause of consideration--"like a man."
"What sort of a man?"
"Neither like you nor me."
"I never noticed that we were alike."
"You trim your beard, I haven't any; the skipper, he's hairy."
Caius conceived a great disgust for the captain. He felt pretty well
convinced also that he was no favourite with O'Shea. He would have liked
much to ask if Madame Le Maître liked her husband, but if his own
refinement had not forbidden, he had a wholesome idea that O'Shea, if
roused, would be a dangerous enemy.
"I don't understand why, if she is married, she wears the dress of a
religious order."
"Never saw a nun dressed jist like her. Guess if you went about kissing
and embracing these women ye would find it an advantage to be pretty
well covered up; but"--here a long time of puffing at the pipe--"it's an
advantage for more than women not to see too much of an angel."
"Has she any relations, anyone of her own family? Where do they live?"
There was no answer.
"I suppose you knew her people?"
O'Shea sprang up and opened the house door, and the snow drove in as he
held it.
"I thought," he said, "I heard a body knocking."
"No one knocked," said Caius impatiently.
"I heard someone." He stood looking very suspiciously out, and so good
was his acting, if it was acting, that Caius, who came and looked over
his shoulder, had a superstitious feeling when he saw the blank,
untrodden snow stretching wide and white into the glimmering night. He
remembered that the one relative he believed the lady to have had
appeared to him in strange places and vanished strangely.
"You didn't hear a knock; you were dreaming." Caius began to button on
his coat.
"I wasn't even asleep." O'Shea gave a last suspicious look to the
outside.
"O'Shea," said Caius, "has--has Madame Le Maître a daughter?"
The farmer turned round to him in astonishment. "Bless my heart alive,
no!"
The snow was only two or three inches deep when Caius walked home; it
was light as plucked swan's-down about his feet. Everywhere it was
falling slowly in small dry flakes. There was little wind to make eddies
in it. The waning moon had not yet risen, but the landscape, by reason
of its whiteness, glimmered just visible to the sight.