This was her only resource in the serious perplexities of life; and, naturally, her question remained unanswered.
To add the finishing touch to the discomfort of the house, D’Argenton was now taken with one of “his attacks,” a form of bilious fever.
Charlotte petted and soothed him, and waited upon him by inches. The sister-of-charity spirit, that lies in the depths of every womanly nature, made her love her poet the more because he was suffering. How tenderly she protected his nerves! She laid a woollen cloth on the table under the white one to soften the noise of the plates and the silver. She piled the Henry II. chair with cushions, and had her rolls of hot flannels and her tisanes in readiness at all hours of the day and night.
Sometimes the poor little woman was fearfully rebuffed and mortified by a fretful exclamation from the poet. “Do be quiet, Charlotte; you talk too much!”
This illness brought the good-natured doctor to the house once more. Charlotte met him in the hall. “Come quick, doctor, our dear poet is suffering,” she said, anxiously.
“Nonsense, my dear; he only wants a little amusement.”
In fact, D’Argenton, who greeted the physician in the most languid tones, soon forgot to keep up the farce in the pleasure of seeing a new face, which made a pleasant break in his monotonous life, and a few moments later beheld him launched on some dazzling episode of his Parisian life. The doctor saw no reason to doubt the truth of these narrations told in such measured and careful phrases, and was always pleased with the appearance of the family,—the intellectual husband, the pretty gay wife, and the amusing child; and no intuition gave him a hint, as might have been the case with a more delicate organization, of the peculiarity and bitterness of the ties which bound the household together.
Often, therefore, on these bright midsummer days, the doctor’s horse was fastened to the palisades, while the old man drank the cool glass carefully mixed for him by Charlotte herself, and as he drank, he told of his wonderful adventures in India. Jack listened with eyes and ears wide open.
“Jack!” said D’Argenton, peremptorily, and pointed to the door.
“Let him stay, I beg of you; I like to have children around me. I am quite sure that your boy has discovered that I have a grandchild;” and the old man talked of his little Cécile, who was two years younger than Jack.