Chapter 13

Fever.

For more than two uneventful years Madelon remained in the convent; but early in the third spring after her arrival, a low fever broke out, which for the time completely disturbed the peaceful, even current of existence there, and, by its results, altered, as it happened, the whole course of her own life.

She was between twelve and thirteen then, and had grown into a slim little maiden, rather tall for her age, with a little pale face as in old days, but with her wavy brown hair all braided now, and fastened in long plaits round her head. In these two years she has become somewhat reconciled to her convent life; not, indeed, as a permanent arrangement--it never occurred to her to regard it in that light--but as something that must be endured till a new future should open out before her. She learns her lessons, sings in the chapel, knows something of compote-making, and can embroider with skilful little fingers almost after Soeur Lucie's own heart. She still holds aloof from her companions, turning to Soeur Lucie for society, though rather with the feeling of the simple-hearted little nun being _bon camarade_, than with any deeper sentiment of friendship or respect. She is rarely _en pénitence_ now; the vehement little spirit seems laid; and if something of her old spring and energy have gone with it, if she is sometimes sad, and almost always quiet, there is no one to note it much, or to heed the change that has apparently come over her. And yet Madelon was in truth little altered, and was scarcely less of a child than when Graham had brought her to the convent. She had learned a variety of things, it is true; she could have named all the principal cities in Europe now; and though she still stumbled over the kings of France, her multiplication- table was unexceptionable; but her education had been one of acquisition rather than of development. Her mind had not yet had time to assimilate itself with those around her, nor to become reconciled to the life that was so at variance with all her old traditions; and she maintained a nucleus, as it were, of independent thought, which no mere extraneous influences or knowledge could affect. In the total silence imposed upon herself, and those around her, concerning her past life, there had been no possibility of modifying her ideas on that subject, and they were still at the same point as when she entered the convent. She still clung to her father's memory, with all the passionate love of which her ardent little soul was capable; she still believed in his perfection, and held to her recollections of the old days with a strength and tenacity only enhanced by the contrast which her present life daily forced upon her. The past lived in her memory as a bright, changeful dream, varying from one pleasure to another, with an ever-shifting background of fair, foreign towns and cities, Kursaals, palaces, salons, gardens, mountains, and lakes, and quiet green nooks of country--all, as it seemed to her, with the power of generalization that seizes on the most salient points, and takes them as types of the whole, shining in sunlight that never clouded, under clear blue skies that never darkened. Madelon knew that that time had gone by for ever; and yet, in all her dreams for the future, her imagination never went beyond a repetition of it all--only for her father she, perhaps, substituted Monsieur Horace: for Monsieur Horace, we may be sure, was not forgotten, any more than her promise to him; though, indeed, this last had been so long in abeyance that she had ceased to think of it as likely to be speedily fulfilled. She had almost come to regard it as one of the many things referred to that somewhat vague period when she should be grown up, and when, in some way--how she did not know--she would be released from the convent and from Aunt Thérèse, and be at liberty to come and go as she pleased. In the meantime she had almost given up hoping for Monsieur Horace's return. The time when she had last seen him and heard from him already seemed so remote to her childish memory. No one ever spoke to her about him, and he never wrote to her. She did not for a moment think he had forgotten her; she had too much confidence in him for that; but by degrees a notion, vague at first, but gradually becoming a fixed idea destined to have results, established itself in foolish little Madelon's head, that he was waiting till he should hear from her that his fortune was made before he would come back to her. Madelon would get quite unhappy when she thought of this-- he must think her so faithless and forgetful, yet how could she help it? That the promise had made as deep an impression upon him as upon her she never doubted for a moment; and was it not most possible, and even probable, that he was expecting to hear of the result, perhaps even in want of this wonderful fortune, on which he must be counting? It was a sad thought, this, to our Madelon, but gradually it became a confirmed one in her mind.

How long this state of things would have lasted--whether, with the fading of childish impressions, present abiding influences might have taken possession of her, whether, some few years hence, some sudden development of her devotional tendencies might have roused her latent powers of enthusiasm, and turned them in a new direction just at the moment when youthful ardour is most readily kindled, and tender, fervent hearts most easily touched--whether, in such a case, our little Madelon, inspired with new beliefs, would have renounced her old life in the fervour of her acceptance of the new, and, after all, have taken the nun's vows, and been content to allow her native energy and earnestness to find scope in the loftiest aspirations of a convent life--all this can never now be known. Something there was in her character which, under certain conditions, might have developed in such a direction. The time might, indeed, surely would have come, had she remained in the convent, when a sudden need and hunger for sympathy, and perhaps excitement, would have risen in her soul, too keen and imperative to be satisfied with past memories; and when, in the absence of all support and friendship in the outer world, she might have seized on whatever she could find in the narrow circle in which she moved, to still that imperious craving. Not in vain, then, might have appeared those old dreams and visions in Florence long ago. Madelon might have learnt to find in them a new and deep significance, an interpretation in accordance with her latest teaching, and through the dim years they might have come back to her--prophetic warnings, as she might have been taught to consider them--linking themselves with present influences, to urge her on to one course. Her father's last command, her own promises, sacred as she held them now, might have availed nothing then, against what she might have been taught to consider a voice from on high, a call of more than earthly authority.

Such, we say, might have been the turn things would have taken with Madelon, had the uninterrupted, monotonous convent life continued to be hers. But long before her mind was prepared for any such influences, early in the third year after her father's death, certain events occurred, which brought this period of her history to an abrupt close.

How, or why the fever broke out--whether it was the result of a damp, unhealthy winter, or through infection brought by one of the school-children, or from any other obvious cause, we need not inquire here. It first showed itself about the middle of February, and within a fortnight half the nuns had taken it, the school was broken up, and the whole convent turned into a hospital for the sick and dying.

Two of the sisters died within the first week or two; one was very old, so old, indeed, that the fever seemed to be only the decisive touch needed to extinguish the feeble life, that had been uncertainly wavering for months previously; the other was younger, and much beloved. And then came a sense as of some general great calamity, a sort of awe-struck mourning, with which real grief had, perhaps, little to do. The Superior herself had been struck with the fever, and in three days she was dead. Her vigils, her fastings, the wearying abnegations of her stern, hard life had left her little strength for struggling against the disease when it laid hold of her at last, and so she too died in her cell one cold, bleak March morning, with a hushed sisterhood gathered round her death- bed, and gazing on it, as on that of a departing saint. Little beloved, but much revered, Thérèse Linders also had got that she had laboured for, and was now gone to prove the worth of it; that which she had valued most in her narrow world had been awarded her to the full--much honour, but small affection; much glorification to her memory as to one of surpassing sanctity, few tears of tender or regretful recollection. She had had a strange, loveless life, with a certain pathos in it too, as in the life of every human being, if looked at aright. Not always, one may imagine, had such cold, relentless pietism, such harsh indifference possessed her. She lies there now, still and silent for evermore on earth, a crucifix between her hands, tapers burning at her head and feet, with the hard lines fixed on her cold grey face; and yet she also had been a little, soft, round child, with yearnings too, like other children, for a mother's kisses and a mother's love. "Go away, Adolphe, you are very naughty, and I do not love you; mamma always kisses you, and she never, never kisses me!" This little speech, uttered by our poor saintly Superior when she was but eight years old, may perhaps give the key to much in her after life; and if we cannot, with an admiring sisterhood, henceforth count this unhappy, soured woman in our catalogue of saints, we will at least grant her a place amongst the great company of "might-have-beens," most inscrutable problems in this puzzling life of ours, and so bid her a not unkindly farewell.

Madelon, meanwhile, knew nothing of these things; she had taken the fever also, and while death was busy in other parts of the convent, she lay unconscious in her little cell, tossing in delirium, or lying in feverish stupor, with Soeur Lucie coming softly in and out. In this desolated overworked household, the child had come to be considered as only another item of trouble, hardly of anxiety; for her life or death just then was felt to be of the very smallest consequence to any one. The one tie that had bound her to the convent had been snapped by her aunt's death; if she lives, think the nuns--if indeed they find time to think of her at all--she is a burthen on our hands; if she dies, well then, one more coffin and another grave. This is perhaps the ebb-tide of Madelon's importance in the world; never before has been, never again will be, we may trust, her existence of so little moment to any human being--that existence which, meanwhile, in spite of all such indifference, in perfect unconsciousness of it indeed, is beginning to assert itself again. For though the Superior had died amidst lamentations, and the places of Soeurs Eulalie and Marguerite will know them no more, our little Madelon, over whom there are none to lament or rejoice, will live.

One afternoon she awoke, as from a long sleep. The low sun was shining into the cell, lighting up the wooden crucifix on the white-washed wall; Soeur Lucie, in her strait coif and long black veil, was sitting by the bedside reading her book of hours; through the window could be seen a strip of blue sky crossed by some budding tree in the convent garden, little birds were beginning to chirp and twitter amongst the branches. The spring had come in these last days whilst Madelon had been lying there, and in the midst of the glad resurrection of all nature, she too was stirring and awakening to consciousness, and a new life.