CHAPTER XIV

INTO THE DEEP SILENCE

There came an evening in April when Madame Chapdelaine would not take her place at the supper table with the others.

“There are pains through my body and I have no appetite,” she said, “I must have strained myself to-day lifting a bag of flour when I was making bread.  Now something catches me in the back, and I am not hungry.”

No one answered her.  Those living sheltered lives take quick alarm when the mechanism of one of their number goes wrong, but people who wrestle with the earth for a living feel little surprise if their labours are too much for them now and then, and the body gives way in some fibre.

While father and children supped, Madame Chapdelaine sat very still in her chair beside the stove.  She drew her breath hard, and her broad face was working.

“I am going to bed,” she said presently.  “A good night’s sleep, and to-morrow morning I shall be all right again; have no doubt of that.  You will see to the baking, Maria.”

And indeed in the morning she was up at her usual hour, but when she had made the batter for the pancakes pain overcame her, and she had to lie down again.  She stood for a minute beside the bed, with both hands pressed against her back, and made certain that the daily tasks would be attended to.

“You will give the men their food, Maria, and your father will lend you a hand at milking the cows if you wish it.  I am not good for anything this morning.”

“It will be all right, mother; it will be all right.  Take it quietly; we shall have no trouble.”

For two days she kept her bed, with a watchful eye over everything, directing all the household affairs.

“Don’t be in the least anxious,” her husband urged again and again.  “There is hardly anything to be done in the house beyond the cooking, and Maria is quite fit to look after that—­everything else too, by thunder!  She is not a little child any longer, and is as capable as yourself.  Lie there quietly, without stirring; and be easy in your mind, instead of tossing about all the time under the blankets and making yourself worse....”

On the third day she gave up thinking about the cares of the house and began to bemoan herself.

“Oh my God!” she wailed.  “I have pains all over my body, and my bead is burning.  I think that I am going to die.”

Her husband tried to cheer her with his Clumsy pleasantries.  “You are going to die when the good God wills it, and according to my way of thinking that will not be for a while yet.  What would He be doing with you?  Heaven is all cluttered with old women, and down here we have only the one, and she is able to make herself a bit useful, every now and then ...”  But he was beginning to feel anxious, and took counsel with his daughter.

“I could put the horse in and go as far as La Pipe,” he suggested.  “It may be that they have some medicine for this sickness at the store; or I might talk things over with the cure, and he would tell me what to do.”