I felt as if I had passed through an immeasurable spell, both of memory and anguish, before Monsieur Laurentie came to me, though he had responded to my summons immediately. I told him, in hurried, broken sentences, what Pierre had confessed to me. His face grew overcast and troubled; yet he did not utter a word of his apprehensions to me.

"Madame," he said, "permit me to take my breakfast first; then I will seek Monsieur Foster without delay. I will carry with me some food for him. We will arrange this affair before I return; Jean shall bring the _char a bancs_ to the factory, and take him back to Noireau."

"But the fever, monsieur? Can he pass a night there without taking it?"

"He is in the hands of his Creator," he answered; "we can know nothing till I have seen him. We cannot call back the past."

"Ought I not to go with you?" I asked.

"Wherefore, my child?"

"He is my husband," I said, falteringly; "if he is ill, I will nurse him."

"Good! my poor child," he replied, "leave all this affair to me; leave even thy duty to me. I will take care there shall be no failure in it, on thy part."

We were not many minutes over our frugal breakfast of bread-and-milk, and then we set out together, for he gave me permission to go with him, until we came within sight of the factory and the cottage. We walked quickly and in foreboding silence. He told me, as soon as he saw the place, that I might stay on the spot where he left me, till the church-clock struck eight; and then, if he had not returned to me, I must go back to the village, and send Jean with the _char a bancs_. I sat down on the felled trunk of a tree, and watched him, in his old threadbare cassock, and sunburnt hat, crossing the baked, cracked soil of the court, till he reached the door, and turned round to lift his hat to me with a kindly gesture of farewell. He fitted the key into the lock, passed out of my sight; but I could not withdraw my eyes from the deep, thatched eaves, and glossy _fleur-de-lis_ growing along the roof.

How interminable seemed his absence! I sat so still that the crickets and grasshoppers in the tufted grass about me kept up their ceaseless chirruping, and leaped about my feet, unaware that I could crush their merry life out of them by a single movement. The birds in the dusky branches overhead whistled their wild wood-notes, as gayly as if no one were near their haunts. Now and then there came a pause, when the silence deepened until I could hear the cones, in the fir-trees close at hand, snapping open their polished scales, and setting free the winged seeds, which fluttered softly down to the ground. The rustle of a swiftly--gliding snake through the fallen leaves caught my ear, and I saw the blunted head and glittering eyes lifted up to look at me for a moment; but I did not stir. All my fear and feeling, my whole life, were centred upon the fever-cottage yonder.

There was not the faintest line of smoke from the chimney, when we first came in sight of it. Was it not quite possible that Pierre might have been mistaken? And if he had made a mistake in thinking he saw smoke this morning, why not last night also? Yet the cure was lingering there too long for it to be merely an empty place. Something detained him, or why did he not come back to me? Presently a thin blue smoke curled upward into the still air. Monsieur Laurentie was kindling a fire on the hearth. _He_ was there then.

What would be the end of it all? My heart contracted, and my spirit shrank from the answer that was ready to flash upon my mind. I refused to think of the end. If Richard were ill, why, I would nurse him, as I should have nursed him if he had always been tender and true to me. That at least was a clear duty. What lay beyond that need not be decided upon now. Monsieur Laurentie would tell me what I ought to do.

He came, after a long, long suspense, and opened the door, looking out as if to make sure that I was still at my post. I sprang to my feet, and was running forward, when he beckoned me to remain where I was. He came across to the middle of the court, but no nearer; and he spoke to me at that distance, in his clear, deliberate, penetrating voice.

"My child," he said, "monsieur is ill! attacked, I am afraid, by the fever. He is not delirious at present, and we have been talking together of many things. But the fever has taken hold upon him, I think. I shall remain with him all the day. You must bring us what we have need of, and leave it on the stone there, as it used to be."

"But cannot he be removed at once?" I asked.

"My dear," he answered, "what can I do? The village is free from sickness now; how can I run the risk of carrying the fever there again?

It is too far to send monsieur to Noireau. If he is ill of it, it is best for us all that he should remain here. I will not abandon him; no, no. Obey me, my child, and leave him to me and to God. Cannot you confide in me yet?"

"Yes," I said, weeping, "I trust you with all my heart."

"Go, then, and do what I bid you," he replied. "Tell my sister and Jean, tell all my people, that no one must intrude upon me, no one must come nearer this house than the appointed place. Monsieur le Vicaire must remain in Ville-en-bois, and officiate for me, as though I were pursuing my journey to England. You must think of me as one absent, yet close at hand: that is the difference. I am here, in the path of my duty. Go, and fulfil yours."

"Ought you not to let me share your work and your danger?" I ventured to ask.

"If there be any need, you shall share both," he answered, in a tranquil tone, "though your life should be the penalty. Life is nothing in comparison with duty. When it is thy duty, my daughter, to be beside thy husband, I will call thee without fail."

Slowly I retraced my steps to the village. The news had already spread, from Pierre--for no one else knew it--that the Englishman, who had been turned away from their doors the day before, had spent the night in the infected dwelling. A group of weavers, of farmers, of women from their household work, stopped me as I entered the street. I delivered to them their cure's message, and they received it with sobs and cries, as though it bore in it the prediction of a great calamity. They followed me up the street to the presbytery, and crowded the little court in front of it.

When mademoiselle had collected the things Monsieur Laurentie had sent me for--a mattress, a chair, food, and medicine--every person in the crowd wished to carry some small portion of them. We returned in a troop to the factory, and stood beyond the stone, a group of sorrowful, almost despairing people. In a few minutes we saw the cure open the door, close it behind him, and stand before the proscribed dwelling. His voice came across the space between us and him in distinct and cheerful tones.

"My good children," he said, "I, your priest, forbid any one of you to come a single step nearer to this house. It may be but for a day or two, but let no one venture to disobey me. Think of me as though I had gone to England, and should be back again among you in a few days. God is here, as near to me under this roof, as when I stand before him and you at his altar."

He lifted up his hands to give them his benediction, and we all knelt to receive it. Then, with unquestioning obedience, but with many lamentations, the people returned to their daily work.

CHAPTER THE TWENTIETH.

A MALIGNANT CASE.

For three days, morning after morning, while the dew lay still upon the grass, I went down, with a heavy and foreboding heart, to the place where I could watch the cottage, through the long, sultry hours of the summer-day. The first thing I saw always was Monsieur Laurentie, who came to the door to satisfy me that he was himself in good health, and to tell me how Richard Foster had passed the night. After that I caught from time to time a momentary glimpse of his white head, as he passed the dusky window. He would not listen to my entreaties to be allowed to join him in his task. It was a malignant case, he said, and as my husband was unconscious, I could do him no good by running the risk of being near him.

An invisible line encircled the pestilential place, which none of us dare break through without the permission of the cure, though any one of the villagers would have rejoiced if he had summoned them to his aid. A perpetual intercession was offered up day and night, before the high altar, by the people, and there was no lack of eager candidates ready to take up the prayer when the one who had been praying grew weary. On the third morning I felt that they were beginning to look at me with altered faces, and speak to me in colder accents. If I were the means of bringing upon them the loss of their cure, they would curse the day he found me and brought me to his home. I left the village street half broken-hearted, and wandered hopelessly down to my chosen post.

I thought I was alone, but as I sat with my head bowed down upon my hands, I felt a child's hand laid upon my neck, and Minima's voice spoke plaintively in my ear.

"What is the matter, Aunt Nelly?" she asked. "Everybody is in trouble, and mademoiselle says it is because your husband is come, and Monsieur Laurentie is going to die for his sake. She began to cry when she said that, and she said, 'What shall we all do if my brother dies? My God!

what will become of all the people in Ville-en-bois?' Is it true? Is your husband really come, and is he going to die?"

"He is come," I said, in a low voice; "I do not know whether he is going to die."

"Is he so poor that he will die?" she asked again. "Why does God let people be so poor that they must die?".

"It is not because he is so poor that he is ill," I answered.

"But my father died because he was so poor," she said; "the doctors told him he could get well if he had only enough money. Perhaps your husband would not have died if he had not been very poor."

"No, no," I cried, vehemently, "he is not dying through poverty."

Yet the child's words had a sting in them, for I knew he had been poor, in consequence of my act. I thought of the close, unwholesome house in London, where he had been living. I could not help thinking of it, and wondering whether any loss of vital strength, born of poverty, had caused him to fall more easily a prey to this fever. My brain was burdened with sorrowful questions and doubts.

I sent Minima back to the village before the morning-heat grew strong, and then I was alone, watching the cottage through the fine haze of heat which hung tremulously about it. The song of every bird was hushed; the shouts of the harvest-men to their oxen ceased; and the only sound that stirred the still air was the monotonous striking of the clock in the church-tower. I had not seen Monsieur Laurentie since his first greeting of me in the early morning. A panic fear seized upon me. Suppose he should have been stricken suddenly by this deadly malady! I called softly at first, then loudly, but no answer came to comfort me. If this old man, worn out and exhausted, had actually given his life for Richard's, what would become of me? what would become of all of us?

Step by step, pausing often, yet urged on by my growing fears, I stole down the parched and beaten track toward the house, then called once more to the oppressive silence.

Here in the open sunshine, with the hot walls of the mill casting its rays back again, the heat was intense, though the white cap I wore protected my head from it. My eyes were dazzled, and I felt ready to faint. No wonder if Monsieur Laurentie should have sunk under it, and the long strain upon his energies, which would have overtaxed a younger and stronger man. I had passed the invisible line which his will had drawn about the place, and had half crossed the court, when I heard footsteps close behind me, and a large, brown, rough hand suddenly caught mine.

"Mam'zelle'" cried a voice I knew well, "is this you!"

"O Tardif! Tardif!" I exclaimed. I rested my beating head against him, and sobbed violently, while he surrounded me with his strong arm, and laid his hand upon my head, as if to assure me of his help and protection.

"Hush; hush! mam'zelle," he said; "it is Tardif, your friend, my little mam'zelle; your servant, you know. I am here. What shall I do for you?

Is there any person in yonder house who frightens you, my poor little mam'zelle? Tell me what I can do?"

He had drawn me back into the green shade of the trees, and set me down upon the felled tree where I had been sitting before. I told him all quickly, briefly--all that had happened since I had written to him. I saw the tears start to his eyes.

"Thank God I am here!" he said; "I lost no time, mam'zelle, after your letter reached me. I will save Monsieur le Cure; I will save them both, if I can. _Ma foi!_ he is a good man, this cure, and we must not let him perish. He has no authority over me, and I will go this moment and force my way in, if the door is fastened. Adieu, my dear little mam'zelle."

He was gone before I could speak a word, striding with quick, energetic tread across the court. The closed door under the eaves opened readily.

In an instant the white head of Monsieur Laurentie passed the casement, and I could hear the hum of an earnest altercation, though I could not catch a syllable of it. But presently Tardif appeared again in the doorway, waving his cap in token of having gained his point.