The sick woman had relapsed into stupor, and was moaning feebly with her eyes closed.
“I will go and get him if you like,” suggested Eutrope.
“But what will you do for a horse?” asked Maria. “The doctor has Charles Eugene at Honfleur.”
Chapdelaine clenched his fist in wrath and swore through his teeth:—“The old rascal!”
Eutrope thought a moment before speaking. “It makes no difference. I will go just the same. If I walk to Honfleur, I shall easily find someone there who will lend me a horse and sleigh—Racicot, or perhaps old Neron.”
“It is thirty-five miles from here to St. Felicien and the roads are heavy.”
“I will go just the same.”
He, departed forthwith, thinking as he went at a jog-trot over the snow of the grateful look that Maria had given him. The family made ready for the night, computing meanwhile these new distances … Seventy miles there and back … Roads deep in snow. The lamp was left burning, and till morning the voice from the bed was never hushed. Sometimes it was sharp with pain; sometimes it weakly strove for breath. Two hours after daylight the doctor and the curé of St. Henri appeared together.
“It was impossible for me to come sooner,” the curé explained, “but I am here at last, and I picked up the doctor in the village.” They sat at the bedside and talked in low tones. The doctor made a fresh examination, but it was the cure who told the result of it. “There is little one can say. She does not seem any worse, but this is not an ordinary sickness. It is best that I should confess her and give her absolution; then we shall both go away and be back again the day after tomorrow.”
He returned to the bed, and the others went over and sat by the window. For some, minutes the two voices were heard in question and response; the one feeble and broken by suffering; the other confident, grave, scarcely lowered for the solemn interrogation. After some inaudible words a hand was raised in a gesture which instantly bowed the heads of all those in the house. The priest rose.
Before departing the doctor gave Maria a little bottle with instructions. “Only if she should suffer greatly, so that she cries out, and never more than fifteen drops at a time. And do not let her have any cold water to drink.”
She saw them to the door, the bottle in her hand. Before getting into the sleigh the curé took Maria aside and spoke a few words to her. “Doctors do what they can,” said he in a simple unaffected way, “but only God Himself has knowledge of disease. Pray with all your heart, and I shall say a mass for her tomorrow—a high mass with music, you understand.”
All day long Maria strove to stay the hidden advances of the disorder with her prayers, and every time that she returned to the bedside it was with a half hope that a miracle had been wrought, that the sick woman would cease from her groaning, sleep for a few hours and awake restored to health. It was not so to be; the moaning ceased not, but toward evening it died away to sighing, continual and profound—nature’s protest against a burden too heavy to be borne, or the slow inroad of death-dealing poison.
About midnight came Eutrope Gagnon, bringing Tit’Sèbe the bonesetter. He was a little, thin, sad-faced man with very kind eyes. As always when called to a sickbed, he wore his clothes of ceremony, of dark wellworn cloth, which he bore with the awkwardness of the peasant in Sunday attire. But the strong brown hands beyond the threadbare sleeves moved in a way to inspire confidence. They passed over the limbs and body of Madame Chapdelaine with the most delicate care, nor did they draw from her a single cry of pain; thereafter he sat for a long time motionless beside the couch, looking at her as though awaiting guidance from a source beyond himself. But when at last he broke the silence it was to say: “Have you sent for the cure? … He has been here. And will he return? Tomorrow; that is well.”
After another pause he made his frank avowal.—“There is nothing I can do for her. Something has gone wrong within, about which I know nothing; were there broken bones I could have healed them. I should only have had to feel them with my hands, and then the good God would have told me what to do and I should have cured her. But in this sickness of hers I have no skill. I might indeed put a blister on her back, and perhaps that would draw away the blood and relieve her for a time. Or I could give her a draught made from beaver kidneys; it is useful when the kidneys are affected, as is well known. But I think that neither the blister nor the draught would work a cure.”
His speech was so honest and straightforward that he made them one and all feel what manner of thing was a disorder of the human frame—the strangeness and the terror of what is passing behind the closed door, which those without can only fight clumsily as they grope in dark uncertainty.
“She will die if that be God’s pleasure.”
Maria broke into quiet tears; her father, not yet understanding, sat with his mouth half-open, and neither moved nor spoke. The bonesetter, this sentence given, bowed his head and held his pitiful eyes for long upon the sick woman. The browned hands that now availed him not lay upon his knees; leaning forward a little, his back bent, the gentle sad spirit seemed in silent communion with its
