FullReads

The reception room of the convent did not open before day-break. A delay, quite certainly, would annoy madame; and, in spite of her desire to embrace the other child, she returned. The servant girls at the inn were waking as she entered Pont-l’Évêque.

The poor lad was going to roll about on the waves for months. His former voyages had not frightened her. From England and Brittany people came back; but America, the Colonies, the West Indies, that was to be lost in an uncertain land, at the other end of the world.

From that time on Felicity thought exclusively of her nephew. On sunny days she tormented herself with thirst; when a storm came on she feared the thunder for him. Listening to the wind which howled in the chimney and blew off the tiles, she saw him beaten by the same tempest, at the top of a shattered mast, all his body thrown back under a sheet of foam; or else—souvenirs of the geography engravings—he was devoured by savages, captured in a wood by monkeys, was dying along a deserted seashore. And never did she speak of her anxieties.

Madame Aubain had others for her daughter. The good sisters found that she was affectionate but delicate. The slightest emotion unnerved her. The piano had to be given up.

Her mother required a regular correspondence from the convent. One morning that the postman did not come she was impatient: and she walked about the living-room from her chair to the window. It was really extraordinary! For four days no news.

So that she might find comfort in her example Felicity said to her:

‘Look at me, madame: it’s six months since I’ve had any!’

‘From whom?’

The servant replied gently:

‘But—from my nephew!’

‘Oh—your nephew!’ and, shrugging her shoulders, Madame Aubain went on with her walking as if to say: ‘I did not think about him! Mor
eover, I don’t care! a cabin boy, a beggar, a fine business—while my daughter—Think of it!’

Felicity, although brought up on rudeness, was indignant against madame, then forgot.

It seemed to her quite easy to lose one’s head about the little girl’s concerns.

The two children had an equal importance; one of her heart-strings united them, and their destinies should be the same.

The chemist told her that Victor’s boat had arrived at Havana. He had read the information in a gazette.

Because of the cigars she imagined Havana a country where nothing else was done but smoke, and Victor moving among the niggers in a cloud of tobacco. Could he ‘in case of need’ come back by land? What distance was it from Pont-l’Évêque? To learn that she asked Monsieur Bourais.

He got his atlas, then began explanations about the longitudes, and he had a fine pedant’s smile in face of Felicity’s bewilderment. At length with his pocket pencil he showed her the indentations on an oval mark, a black imperceptible point, adding: ‘That’s it’. She leaned over the map; this network of coloured lines tired her eyes, without teaching her anything; and, Bourais inviting her to say what was worrying her, she begged him to show her the house where Victor was living. Bourais raised his arms, sneezed, laughed enormously; such ingenuousness excited his joy: and Felicity did not understand the cause of it—she who was expecting, perhaps, even to see a photograph of her nephew, so limited was her intelligence.

It was a fortnight afterwards that Liébard, at the hour when the market was on, as was his custom, came into the kitchen and gave her a letter which her brother-in-law had sent. Since neither of the two know how to read, she had recourse to her mistress.