Unawares: A Story of an Old French Town

Frances Peard

"Unawares"

Chapter One.

“Quaint old town of toil and traffic.”
Longfellow.

“You might tell us something, Madame Angelin, since you know so much!”

“Yes, indeed. What is the good of knowing if you keep it to yourself?” cried a younger woman, impatiently, placing, as she spoke, her basket of herbs and vegetables upon the broad stone edge of the fountain around which a little group had gathered.

“Was it a fit?”

“Has Monsieur Deshoulières gone to him?”

“Is he dead?”

“What becomes of her?”

“Holy Virgin! will the town have to bury him?”

The individual upon whom this volley of shrill questions was directed was a small, thin, pungent-faced Frenchwoman, who had just filled her pitcher at the fountain, and stood with hands clasped over her waist, and with ineffable satisfaction in her twinkling black eyes, looking upon the excited questioners who crowded round her. It is not given to everybody to know more than their neighbours, nor, as Veuve Angelin shrewdly reflected, is it a privilege to be lightly parted with. There was something very enchanting in the eager attention with which her information was awaited, and she looked round upon them all with a patronising benignity, which was, to say the least, irritating. The May sun was shining brightly over old pointed roofs; the tiny streams running out of three grim carved heads in the stone fountain danced and sparkled in its light; the horse-chestnuts stiffly standing round the little “Place” threw deep shadows on the glaring stones; from one side sounded the soft wash of an unseen river; old, dilapidated houses were jumbled together, irrespective of height and size; behind the women, the town with its clustering houses rose abruptly on the side of a steep hill, crowned by the lovely spires of the Cathedral; and before them, only hidden from sight by the buildings of a straggling suburb, stretched the monotonous plains and sunny cornfields of the granary of France.

Veuve Angelin smiled indulgently and shook her head. “You young people think too much of gossip,” she said.

“So they do, Marie, so they do,” responded an old woman, pushing her yellow, wizened face through the shoulders of those in front of her. “In our day things arranged themselves differently: the world was not the magpie’s nest it is now. The young minded their elders, and conducted themselves sagely, instead of chattering and idling and going—the saints know whither!”

Veuve Angelin drew herself up. She was by no means pleased with this ally. “All that may have been in your day, Nannon,” she said spitefully, “but my time was very much the same as this time. Grandfather Owl always thinks the days grow darker.”

“Hear her!” cried the old woman, shrilly. “Has she forgotten the cherry-trees we used to shake together, the—”

One of the younger of the group interrupted her unceremoniously, “Ta, ta, Nannon, never mind that now! Tell us, Madame Angelin, whether it is all true which they say about the poor old gentleman and the beautiful young demoiselle. Ciel! there is the clock striking noon, and I should have been back from market an hour ago. Quick! we all die of curiosity;” and she caught some water in the palm of her hand and sprinkled it over the drooping herbs in her basket, while the others pressed round more eagerly than ever.

But Veuve Angelin’s temper had been roused by Nannon’s reminiscences.

“I am going,” she said crossly. “No one shall ever accuse me of gossiping. Monsieur’s breakfast has to be prepared by the time he returns from the Cygne, and with this monster of a pitcher to carry up the hill, just because the fille who fetches the water is ill—”

“Let me carry your pitcher, Madame Angelin!”

“I will take it to the very door. Peste, it is hard if one can’t do so much for one’s friends.”

“Yes, yes, Fanchon will carry it like a bird. And so Monsieur is absolutely at the hotel?”

“Bon jour, mesdames,” said old Nannon, laughing shrilly. “No one cares to help me with my basket, I suppose? It is heavy, too: it contains the clean clothes of my sister’s girl, Toinette, a good, hard-working girl she is, and fille at the Cygne, as you know.—What, Fanchon, my child, you would carry it! How admirable you are with your attentions to a poor old woman like me! I was wrong, Madame Angelin, I acknowledge it, in my estimate of your generation.”

There was a hesitating movement among the women: they had forgotten Toinette, and with such a link it was possible that Nannon might be the best newsmonger after all. Veuve Angelin noticed the movement, and it filled her with dismay.

“I saw it myself, I tell you,” she cried loudly, plunging at once into the heart of her subject. “I saw them come out of the Cygne, the old monsieur and the young lady, and walk up and down, up and down, under the trees before the door, and then just, just as they came towards me—”

She stopped. The women pressed closer. Fanchon was drawn back, and listened enthralled; old Nannon, whose temper was not so sharp as her words, chuckled under her breath, and said, “She has started at last.” Veuve Angelin looked round and went on in triumph, nodding her little head, and throwing out her hands.

“It is as I have told you. They were close by me, those two, and turning round to enter the hotel again, when, in one second—his foot slipped, and he came down on the pavement with his head against the steps. Imagine my feelings!”

A buzz of sympathy responded to this appeal. In the character of an eye-witness, madame almost became a heroine. Fanchon timidly inquired,—

“He is old?”

“He looked half dead before.”

“And he is hurt?”

“Hurt! Of what then do you conceive our skulls to be composed? of granite—iron—india-rubber? Tenez, I heard it crack, I tell you; and after that there is not much to be said.”

“No, assuredly.”

“Madame has reason.”

Veuve Angelin looked proudly at Nannon: Nannon laughed.

“Since the monsieur is dead, it is strange that Monsieur Deshoulières should trouble himself to pass the morning with him,” she said.

“And why?” demanded Mère Angelin, reddening with anger. “Is it likely,—I put the question to you all, mesdames,—is it likely that she—she!—should be a better judge of what is strange in the proceedings of Monsieur Deshoulières than I who have lived in his service for nearly fifteen months?”

There was a murmur in the negative, but it was not very decided. These doubts had the effect of weakening the general confidence.

“Certainly, madame should know,” said her stanchest adherent.

“Nevertheless,” persisted Nannon, “you may rest assured that an hour ago he was not dead, and that Monsieur Deshoulières was doing his utmost that he should not die.”

“Not dead! But I tell you I heard his skull crack!”

“How can you answer that, Nannon?”

“His skull? Bah! I was in the house at the time, and helped to carry him upstairs. M. Deshoulières came while I was there.”

There was a general exclamation, old Nannon was surrounded. Here was one who had been more than an eye-witness, an actual actor in the event which was agitating Charville. Fanchon caught up her basket again, another seized her umbrella, she was the centre of the group which moved away, questioning as they went, towards the upper town. Veuve Angelin would have been left behind, bitter and friendless, to drag her heavy pitcher as best she might up the steep hill, and to moralise upon the fleeting charms of popularity, if old Nannon, generous in the moment of victory, had not desired one of her followers to assist her.

The hot sun streamed down upon the narrow, ill-paved streets; little gutters trickled crookedly through their middle; the women toiled slowly up, keeping under the shade of gaunt, picturesque houses, all irregularly built, high and low, gabled and carved, delightfully artistic in their very defiance of proportion. Rough steps led up to the houses, great projecting blocks of stone ran along their front, with pots of bright flowers resting upon them: everywhere there were windows, up in the roofs, down in quaint unexpected corners,—clothes hung out of them, here and there long strings of peascods. Strange little stone workshops were built up by themselves in the street, so small that the workmen looked too big for them: every thing was shelving, dirty, picturesque. The people sat outside their houses, tight-capped children played about, the sun fell on them, on the gay flowers, the green peascods,—somehow or other from everywhere bright bits of colour flashed out gorgeously. Nannon, with her poor, weather-beaten face, and her shoulders broadened with labour, walked sturdily on in her blue stuff gown, a little shawl crossed under an enormously wide black waistband, a plain white cap pulled forward on her forehead, and slanting upwards behind,—gesticulating and talking in her high, shrill, unmodulated voice. Fanchon, by right of her basket, kept close beside her; last of all marched Veuve Angelin, half-curious and half-contemptuous.

There is no news like one’s own news.

Chapter Two.

“A square-set man and honest.”
The Holy Grail.

Knots of people stood about the streets, all talking of the strange event. Charville is rich in beauty, in picturesqueness, in its magnificent Cathedral, but its events are few and orderly. People do get killed every now and then, it is true: only a few months before, young Jean Gouÿe had fallen from a scaffolding, and never spoken again. But then everybody knew Jean Gouÿe, and all about him: there was no mystery or room for speculation in his fate, poor fellow! This last was a very different matter. Who were the strangers? Where did they come from? Where were they going? What brought them to Charville? What made him fall? Was he dead? Was mademoiselle in much grief? Each person asked the other without much hope of finding out: it was something to get hold of Nannon, and hear the little she had to tell. There was no hurry of business to interfere with their curiosity. Charville took life leisurely: if a house had to be built the masons talked, laughed, joked with each other between laying on their stones; the shoemakers gossiped with their neighbours; women brought their work to the door, played with the children, scolded or chattered. It was an easy, quiet, lounging sort of existence, without much distraction from the outer world,—a magnified village life. Such an event as had occurred that morning came upon them like a new sensation. Nannon had never been made so much of. Veuve Angelin followed sulkily.

She would not accompany the triumphal progress to the door of the Cygne, but turned down a narrow, ill-paved street, which branched off by the Evêché, and ended in a small, modern square. M. Deshoulières’ house stood in the midst of it, and she entered hastily, with some fears lest he should be there, and angry at the delay of his breakfast. He was an easy-going master, just the one that Veuve Angelin liked, too much absorbed with his own thoughts and interests to interfere much with her sovereignty; but every now and then he awoke sufficiently to make her aware that she could not presume absolutely upon his absent ways. Even when she ruled most despotically she was just a little afraid of him. There was always a possibility that he might assert the prerogative of having his own way. Now she was conscious that he would have a reason for indignation, if he returned, hungry and weary, from his morning’s work, to find the house empty, no food prepared. “It is all the fault of that gossiping old Nannon!” she said crossly, as she stopped, hot and out of breath, to listen at the foot of the stairs for her master’s steps overhead. She heard nothing; but it was with the air of a martyr that she mounted, prepared, if there was need, to expatiate upon her own sufferings, and the inconveniences caused by the absence of Lisette, the fille who generally fetched the water. She need not have been afraid. It was quite two hours afterwards—the things were set out in the little salon, with its polished floor, its red curtains, its mirror, its timepiece; in the kitchen, where Veuve Angelin also slept, little pots and pans were simmering and bubbling over tiny hollows filled with charcoal, scooped out of the brick arched stove—before the doctor and little Roulleau, the notary, came round the corner with excited faces, eagerly talking as they walked.

“Man’s folly is never so apparent as in his last moments,” the doctor was saying cynically, as they turned in from the square, and began to mount the bare, uncarpeted staircase.

Veuve Angelin, standing at the top, caught the words with a certain grim satisfaction.

“So he is dead, after all, in spite of that old woman’s obstinacy,” she said volubly. “I knew it from the first: what one sees one sees, and what one hears one hears, and nobody can make it different. But as for those creatures, bah! They are imbécilles, know-nothings: one might as well waste one’s breath upon a stone wall. Monsieur has no doubt just come from the Cygne?”

“Hold your tongue, Marie,” answered the doctor, shortly; “get us something to eat, and do not kill my patients beforehand.”

“Something has vexed him,” reflected Marie, vanishing promptly. “Do what one will for their comfort, those men are always ungrateful.”

She would have made up for his want of communicativeness by listening to the conversation as the two drank vin ordinaire, and munched radishes, but M. Deshoulières was exasperatingly silent. Two or three times the notary glanced at him as if about to speak, but checked himself. He looked troubled, gloomy, abstracted. The companions were very different in appearance; M. Deshoulières, unlike the conventional type of his countrymen, largely built, with a massive head, a quantity of short light hair, and thick moustaches, warmer in tint than his hair. He had blue eyes, very blue, well-opened and quick; a finely shaped mouth; over all a grave expression which somewhat alarmed people. I ought perhaps to say, alarmed people who were well, the sick could never understand their previous fears. He made enemies for himself by his want of sympathy for imaginary complaints, he was too straightforward and truth-telling ever to be entirely popular; but he had a little kingdom of his own where he reigned triumphantly,—a sad little kingdom, perhaps, one in which he was always fighting, helping, cheering,—out of which had grown the grave expression, the abruptness of which others complained, but one which had also its tributes and its victories and its satisfactions, and which was dear to the man’s good heart. In his ears there sounded, it is true, a never-ending din of murmurs, suffering, feeble moans: to balance these, there were glad, grateful looks, patient thanks, a lighting up of faces at his step. Such a life needs compensations, and he found them. He might come away, as I have said, grave and absorbed; but he rarely looked as he looked when he sat in his little salon on this particular morning,—gloomy, worried, and out of sorts.

Monsieur Roulleau noticed the change. Monsieur Roulleau noticed many things for which no one credited his little half-hidden eyes. Somebody once said of him that his face had not the resolution to show its owner’s character, you might look at it for so long a time without finding any thing to read. It was answered that he was indeed a blank, his wife ruled and treated him as a cipher. On the whole, he was supposed to be a little, timid, good-natured creature, no one’s enemy but his own, and urged on to exertion by his wife. Charville half pitied, half laughed at him. M. Deshoulières had known the little man for many years, and did him good turns when they lay in his power. He looked upon him as something of a victim with this wife in the background, and her terribly strong will. The doctor pushed away his tumbler of wine, lit a cigar, and leaned back in his chair, thinking and frowning with all his might. He was quite unconscious that M. Roulleau, with his back to the window and the red curtains, was not letting a look or a sign escape him; but he grew a little worried with Veuve Angelin’s ostentatious service.

“That will do, Marie,” he said sharply. “You can leave us and close the door.”

Veuve Angelin went away in a fume. After enduring the dulness of these men over their food, it was intolerable that she should be excluded from the more sociable condition which cigars were likely to produce. She slammed the door in token of wrath, and stayed close by it, picking up stray words and disconnected sentences which had the effect of adding rather to her bewilderment than her knowledge.

“Bear witness,” said the doctor at length, abruptly, “bear witness always, Roulleau, that I did my utmost to point out to Monsieur Moreau the absurdities, the inconveniences, of such an arrangement.”

The notary bowed and spread open his hands.

“There can be no occasion for M. Deshoulières to speak of witnesses when the world will have his own word.”

“True,” replied M. Deshoulières, simply. “Nevertheless, we both know enough of the world to be aware that it holds no prerogative so dear as that of doubt. You and I understand the matter clearly: there may be a dozen others in Charville who will trust me loyally, some will comprehend the broad fact that, by the law, my quality as the doctor attending M. Moreau in his last illness precludes my receiving any benefit whatever under his will. But for the rest—”

“No one would be capable of cherishing thoughts so base, so detestable,” exclaimed the notary, with a burst of enthusiasm.

“Bah! Nothing more is required for their fabrication than a little ignorance and a little love of gossip. Are these so rare, my good M. Roulleau?” The doctor made two or three vigorous puffs. Presently he held his cigar in his hand, and broke out again: “What possessed the man to dream of such a thing? He knows nothing of me, absolutely nothing. I may forge, burn, steal, poison the young man, let the girl starve. Do you mean to tell me that every thing is placed in my hands?”

“The will I have had the pleasure to frame under Monsieur Moreau’s instructions authorises Monsieur Max Deshoulières as dépositaire to receive all rents and moneys due to Monsieur Moreau or his heirs, and to hold them in trust until the arrival of Monsieur Fabien Saint-Martin, sister’s son to Monsieur Moreau; always deducting a certain sum, named, sufficient to maintain his wife’s niece, Mademoiselle Thérèse Veuillot, upon the condition only that she continues to reside in this town of Charville—”

“Pardon,” said the doctor, interrupting: “the sum assigned for this purpose can hardly be called a maintenance.”

Roulleau shrugged his thin shoulders.

“It is bare without doubt,” he replied; “and I ventured to point out this fact to Monsieur Moreau. But he was peremptory. He was peremptory also in his provisions that you should deliver up the papers to no one but Monsieur Saint-Martin in person. He is peremptory, it appears to me, in all his expressions.”

“Peremptory!” broke in M. Deshoulières once more: “he is immovable—made of adamant. Not one man in a thousand could have forced himself to perpetrate all these absurdities in a condition like his. To have opposed him further would have been to kill him. What creatures we are! Here is a man, shrewd, keen-witted, prompt; an old man, whose hold on life was palpably failing, who had but recently buried his wife, who could not close his eyes to the fact that he was himself rapidly approaching death. And yet this man makes no provision for the inevitable. It finds him without so much as his earthly affairs settled, clinging to a stranger for unwilling help.”

The notary did not answer. Perhaps some shadow of the inevitable swept also over him as the doctor spoke. His hand shook as he poured more wine into his tumbler, and drank it thirstily. M. Deshoulières sat thinking. Outside sounded a measured tramp, tramp: a company of soldiers were marching through the little Place. The children ran and marched too, in imitation. The sun gleamed sharply on the bayonets the men carried over their shoulders; the steps died away along a narrow street. Presently M. Deshoulières said in a musing tone,—

“There will surely be no difficulty in discovering this nephew?”

“One cannot tell. There are strange stories of disappearances. At all events, if ten years elapse without his arrival, the property is dispersed among charities. And his injunctions against advertising were very strict.”

“Strict? say fierce, mon ami. There is some motive we do not comprehend underlying it all. From the bottom of my heart I believe he is acquainted with his nephew’s whereabouts, and would force him to return voluntarily. But what have I done that I should be made a cat’s-paw?”

“Without doubt it is Monsieur’s well-known honourable character which influenced his choice.” M. Deshoulières made a gesture of impatience.

“Honourable character? Bah! The man knows nothing of my character or my honour either. I wish I could honestly say he was not in his proper senses. When I think of what has been done, it seems to me that he is a madman and I am a fool; but I suppose the world will pronounce him a fool and me—a knave. Stop, I know what you are going to say; nevertheless, you will discover that I am right. If there was any good to be gained by this ridiculous trust, one might endure it with philosophy. As it is, I foresee nothing but annoyance, trouble, and gossip.”

“Monsieur alarmed with the prospect of gossip? I have always understood that he despised it,” said the notary, with a scarcely perceptible sneer.

“That depends. The thing may sting although it is contemptible.”

“Mademoiselle Veuillot will require a home,” said M. Roulleau, after another pause.

“There is no time to spend over new perplexities,” answered M. Deshoulières, impatiently, jumping up and pushing back his chair. “I must return. Come with me, Roulleau: there is just the possibility of his having arrived at a more Christian state of mind, and agreeing to an alteration.”

“He must die, I presume?” remarked the notary.

“Die? Yes. No one but he could live through the night, but he will no doubt do so—out of contrariety,” added the doctor, under his breath.

The two men rose. Veuve Angelin had only just time to scurry into her kitchen before they appeared, ran down the stairs, and into the little square. There was a statue in the centre, of course, and trees planted round it, with benches here and there for the idle. Nurses and their charges strolled about, under the little patches of shade, a band played lively airs from the last comic opera, two or three men sat outside a café and smoked. M. Deshoulières turned abruptly down the narrow lane along which Veuve Angelin had carried her pitcher. Such contrasts—outside, the sun shining, people laughing and amusing themselves; inside, sorrow, and hush, and death—were too thoroughly matters of course with him to be much noticed. Perhaps he had seen deeply enough into life to know that, after all, the contrast is often superficial. Not unfrequently the laughter would be tears, if it dared: the sharpest grief is sometimes denied the luxury of a sign. Heaven help such poor souls! Moreover, the contrast, such as it is, came before him every day. It shocks us when we are suddenly brought out of the noise and turmoil about us, face to face with that dread Angel whose step each hour brings nearer to ourselves. But this man lived, as it were, in his presence, and was not jarred by any discord between that consciousness and the life of every day. Nevertheless, on this day there was a strangeness about the event which impressed, him and made him impatient of interruption to his thoughts. He was glad to leave the music and the dancing children and the sunlight behind him, and to feel himself under the shade of the great cathedral, though he did not put his fancy into words, or acknowledge more than a pleasant friendliness as he looked up at the beautiful spires, the firm up-springing lines, the lovely rose windows, the noble portals, the thin solemn statues with folded hands and serene attitudes,—the whole aspect of the building ever varying, severe or tender, as the case might be, but always inconceivably peaceful.

The little notary had hard work to keep pace with his companion’s long strides. They went round two sides of the Cathedral, then out of the Place Notre Dame into another street, as narrow as the others, but somewhat unlike them. The houses were not crowded together in so odd a fashion. They had outside shutters, which were closed against the sun; and high up were long rambling wooden balconies, over which green vines clambered and tossed themselves. Further on, a house was being dug out,—the house of some famous man: the workmen were a little excited over a fresh discovery. M. Deshoulières passed without a look, and presently came upon the Cygne, standing in a triangular Place, set round with sycamore-trees. At the door M. Roulleau ventured upon a remark.

“Do you intend to suggest any course of action to the young lady?” he asked.

He received no answer. Just then the doctor was not thinking about the young lady. He strode hastily up the stairs, through an atmosphere yet heavy and sweet with its lingering cloud of incense, and into the room where M. Moreau was doing battle with the last enemy he would have to contend with. A girl stood by the side of the bed, looking down on the dread struggle with pitiful eyes. Except now and then moistening the poor parched lips or smoothing the tumbled pillow, there was nothing for her to do but watch: all apparent consciousness was at an end; no sign of recognition greeted the doctor. He also stood watching for a few minutes before he turned to the girl.

“How long is it since this change came on, mademoiselle?”

“About a quarter of an hour. I think he hardly heard Monsieur le Curé’s last words,” she added, under her breath. Her voice trembled: that quarter of an hour had seemed very terrible to poor Thérèse. The sunlight streamed in at the window, but, in spite of it, the room looked dark and funereal: there was a heavy paper on the walls; stiff, solid furniture; in one corner a huge black stove reared itself grimly towards the ceiling. The women of the house would have stayed with her, but the old man was impatient of their presence: almost his last word had been a peremptory “Go!” still fierce enough to frighten them. It was not likely that the consciousness of any person’s presence would return, as M. Deshoulières quickly perceived. He took the little notary to the door, and told him so.

“There is no possible use in your waiting, M. Ignace,” he said. “I was a fool, and must abide by the consequences. Nothing will ever be changed now. What is the matter?—are you ill?” he went on, noticing his pale face.

“For the moment,—only for the moment, M. Deshoulières,” answered the little man, with a quavering voice. “It is so horrible, you know, to see him like that. Will—will it be soon?”

“I do not know. It is what we must all come to,” said the doctor, sternly. He shut the door, and went back to the bedside. “That man is a veritable coward,” he said, half aloud, so that Thérèse might have heard if she had not been busied with a vain attempt to soothe the increasing restlessness of the dying man. Those two, and old Nannon, who came in after a while of her own accord, watched together. It was at an end before morning, as the doctor had foretold. When the grey dawn broke over the old weird-looking houses, with the young sycamore-trees standing sentinel-wise before them; when it touched the beautiful stern lines of the Cathedral, and delicate carving blossomed into distinctness, and light stole into the shadowy depths, and the little lamp before the altar burned yellow, and the jackdaws woke up screaming and busy, Monsieur Moreau lay with a quiet look upon his features to which they had long been strangers, until it seemed as if the day, which was bringing youth to all the earth, had brought it back to him, and fixed it on his face for ever.

Chapter Three.

“Les vertus se perdent dans l’intérêt comme les fleuves se perdent dans la mer.”

Mademoiselle Veuillot and M. Deshoulières stood by the bedside silent. Noticing her a little curiously, he fancied there was more awe than grief in her countenance: it was white and troubled; but there had been enough in the night’s vigil to account for that. She stood looking sadly down, her hands knitted together, the morning light full on her face. Grey eyes with long lashes, a mouth delicately lined, a round forehead, neither straight nor classical, but full of a certain sweet nobility, with waved brown hair lying softly and lightly upon it. He looked at her with a half-pitying, half-uneasy sense of guardianship. She was so girlish, so fragile, so dependent. “What am I to do with her!” thought M. Deshoulières, despairingly.

Aloud he said, so abruptly that she started,—

“You have been much tried, mademoiselle. Let me urge you to go and lie down.”

Old Nannon came round from the foot of the bed. Thérèse hesitated, half turned to the door, then back again towards the motionless figure. At such a time the first departure seems almost a cruelty to the dead. M. Deshoulières laid his hand on her arm. “Come,” he said, decidedly.

He led her into the adjoining talon, and closed the door of communication, but instead of leaving him, as he anticipated, she walked to the window and looked out at the fresh sweet morning, at the lights that were flooding the yellow stone of the Cathedral. It was all very solemn and tranquil as yet, although the town was just wakening to life. There was nothing harsh, nothing that seemed to jar upon the quiet repose of the figure that indeed should never more be vexed by earth’s discordant din. Thérèse stayed there, and looked out for some minutes. It may be that she was gaining courage to speak, for when she turned round her voice was a little tremulous.

“Before I go, will you, who have been so good a friend to us, tell me whether my poor uncle spoke of—of Fabien, his nephew?”

“M. Fabien Saint-Martin? But certainly. He spoke much of him.”

“Ah!”

“Permit me in my turn, mademoiselle, to ask from you whether you will be able to give us any information as to where Monsieur Saint-Martin is to be found?”

“You do not know? Surely he said!”

“On the contrary, he refused to answer, when we questioned him. I had fears, I confess, but yet I hoped you would have been able to enlighten us.”

“But I cannot, I cannot! That was the secret he kept from me. Oh, monsieur, he has not carried it to the grave!”

She was more moved than she had been yet. She turned impatiently from the light, not crying, but with eyes full of trouble. M. Deshoulières, who did not understand her suppressed emotion, thought it was the result of the scene she had gone through. She looked at him as if he must know why these words of his were so terrible to her, but he did not know. He put her down as tired and sad, and therefore fanciful.

“Go and rest yourself,” he said decidedly. “You may be sure we shall soon learn all we want.”

“You do not know him,” she said. “He was so—inflexible,” the word was spoken after a pause, as though a remembrance of the still face on the pillow prevented her from using a harsher one. “Poor Fabien! He went away partly in a rage, partly in disgrace. I think it was to America, but even that I scarcely know. My uncle would tell no one—me least of all,” she added under her breath, so that the doctor did not hear.

“How long ago?”

“Two years.”

Seeing that she did not move, M. Deshoulières, in the flush of annoyance at his own position, could not avoid alluding to it. “By a strange and a most undesirable arrangement, I am to act as trustee for the property, until it can be made over to M. Saint-Martin. It will be necessary that Monsieur Roulleau and I go without delay to Château Ardron. There you may be sure we shall hear some tidings.”

Thérèse shook her head despairingly.

“If he told you nothing himself, you will not hear of my cousin at Ardron.”

M. Deshoulières thought her perverse. He would not permit such a possibility to take root in his mind. He went home through the quaint crooked streets, all bathed in the delicious freshness of a spring morning,—streets with old arched doorways, bits of bold carving, clambering vines, and overhead a sky broken into tender pearly tints, beneath which the blue was deepening every hour. People were already about, standing on the top of doorsteps, plodding off to their work: they stared curiously at the doctor, guessing that he was on his way home from the Cygne, and wondering whether the tragedy was over. No one ventured to address him, he looked too grave and preoccupied. He was inwardly wroth with himself for having yielded, and yet he knew very well that if the whole thing were to be repeated he should yield again. What was to become of Thérèse? where was she to live? He caught sight of a dull grey wall, and remembered with some satisfaction that there was a convent in the town to which it was possible she might choose to retire. He could not help thinking that such a course would be the best she could take. “However,” reflected M. Deshoulières, dismissing the subject with a sigh of perplexity, “we shall know better after I have been to Ardron.”

Ardron still seemed the goal where things were to be made clear, when he and little Roulleau started for it on the day after the funeral. Thérèse was at the notary’s house,—a temporary arrangement which relieved the doctor of some anxiety. To reach their end required a journey of some hours, at first through the great sunny corn plains, then by a cross line into a more diversified country, where was pasture-land and great trees, under which the cattle stood lazily content, and where, at last, they stopped at a little station bright with flowers, and embowered in acacias.

A bloused porter answered their inquiries. “Château Ardron, messieurs? That road—provided you keep continually to the right—will lead you there in less than a quarter of an hour.” M. Deshoulières walked quickly; he was anxious to put an end to his uncertainties; the notary had some difficulty in keeping up with him. Monsieur Roulleau, who was always haunted by a fear of accidents, wore a yellow straw hat, and carried a huge umbrella to ward off sunstroke.

The sun was certainly hot, but a soft breeze rustled through the copse: by and by they came to a little hill, and then to a turn in the road. “We shall find the house there,” said the doctor, quickening his pace. He was right. On the top of a mound, stiffly planted on either side with trees, stood an unmistakable château of the ugliest modern type. It was built of red brick which time had not yet touched or mellowed, and faced with broad belts of white stone; the windows were numerous, and set thickly together, like those of a manufactory; at either end of the front was a small edifice, to represent a tower, and in the centre a little pretentious lantern.

“As I expected,” said M. Deshoulières, with a grimace which the notary did not see. “Now for the inside, all gilt and satin.”

All gilt and satin it was: the notary was rapturous in his admiration. “It might have been in the upholsterer’s shop yesterday,” he said, in a fervour of enthusiasm. The finery struck the doctor as looking more desolate and melancholy in this uninhabited house than the most threadbare furniture could have done. The rooms stared unmeaningly at the daylight, as the old woman who lived there with her husband threw back the shutters, and caught off the covers. Every thing seemed new, gay, and heartless. One room upstairs was different from the others. It was richly but more simply furnished: little things about it appeared to resist the general cold formality of the house. It had a delicate paper, pictures, a pretty little alcove hung with muslin.

“The room of mademoiselle,” said the old woman, pushing back the persiennes, and letting in a flood of warm sunlight. M. Deshoulières held back his companion at the door, and would not go in.

Thérèse was right, he began to fear. There were desks, papers, letters, at the château, but no information about M. Saint-Martin. Every thing was carefully and methodically arranged: only this one item was wanting, which in M. Deshoulières’ eyes outweighed all the rest. Old Mathieu and his wife, who knew nothing of their master’s death, were full of wonder, compassion, and, above all, anxiety about their own future. To them there were no dismals at Château Ardron, only a warm kitchen, plenty of firewood, a roof over their heads, a little monthly instalment of francs. Monsieur Moreau had dismissed all the servants soon after his wife’s death, had shut up his grand château, and gone away with Thérèse. It seemed as if a fit of restlessness had seized him. The poor old people, who had no restlessness, wanted to be assured that they would not lose their home, and when they understood this, they cheered up again at once. M. Deshoulières wondered whether M. Moreau had one mourner in the world. It seemed as if he had built his own prison-house, a wall of hard unloving words and deeds, in the midst of which he had died.

The little notary was hard at work among the papers, tying up bundles, and sealing them, when M. Deshoulières rang the bell for the old couple to answer his questions about Fabien. They knew even less than he expected. They had heard of him, without doubt, but he had never been at Ardron since M. Moreau hired them, and no one found it agreeable to mention his name when it enraged his uncle to such a degree. The notary, who had been glancing over letters, placed a couple in the doctor’s hands.

“They give no information, I fear; but I conceive it my duty to ask you to read every thing in which M. Fabien’s name appears,” he said with an air of profound caution.

Two boyish letters, written from school, and containing but few words. They were tied up carefully, and had evidently been much read. Was this the one human love that could have reached the hard cold man in his prison-house? There were more letters in another packet of slight importance, but all preserved; the last was dated two years and a half ago, during an apparently temporary absence from Rouen, and alluding to the purchase of Ardron.

“And there are no more?” inquired the doctor.

“No more,” answered M. Roulleau, after a momentary pause. “That is to say, I should prefer your assuring yourself on the matter. Here are the papers in order.”

M. Deshoulières applied himself to the task. The two men sat there reading, arranging, making notes, now and then saying a few words, until the afternoon was far advanced. “There is nothing,” exclaimed the doctor, pushing back his chair impatiently. “Was there ever such a predicament!”

“There is nothing, as you say,” assented the notary, slowly. “After all, the property is in good hands.”

“Do not talk about it,” M. Deshoulières said testily. “One would suppose you thought it a fine thing. There is the village still, and the curé. We may hope for something from him.”

In the village—which lay about a league behind the château, and to which the doctor and the little notary walked, under a sweet, grave, evening sky, through trees in which the nightingales were singing with all their might—in the village there were enough surmises offered to them to account for the disappearance of half a hundred nephews; but no facts. Monsieur Fabien desired to see life—Monsieur Fabien could not have his own will—he was, doubtless, an emigrant in America—in the Mauritius—he was with the army in Algeria—he was amassing a fortune among the English—he was a missionary in China. M. Deshoulières was too impatient to sift the trifles which were poured into his ear; M. Roulleau professed himself at his wit’s end. It made quite a little sensation at Ardron to know that these strangers had brought news of Monsieur Moreau’s death, and were seeking tidings of Monsieur Saint-Martin. The rumour travelled up to the presbytère, and Monsieur le Curé was prepared when old Jeanneton came hobbling in, to say that two gentlemen were asking to speak with him. He had an instinctive aversion to strangers, and the welcome he accorded was not particularly gracious. As they sat in the little humbly furnished room, with the curé listening to his story with a grim, unsympathising face, M. Deshoulières thought he had never before entirely realised the disagreeables of his position. Whenever a question was put to him, the curé slightly raised his shoulders or shook his head. There was an air of doubt about the manner in which he received every detail, which irritated the doctor almost beyond bearing. He had never seen M. Fabien. It was possible that he had been at Ardron. The extraordinary terms of the will struck him as incomprehensible in a person of M. Moreau’s solidity. Did he understand them to say that they had already searched the papers at the château without success? Had the two gentlemen before him undertaken the task unaided?

“Monsieur le Curé is not perhaps aware that I have the honour of belonging to the legal profession,” put in the little notary, smoothly.

A dry cough was the curé’s only answer. When the doctor said hotly, that they were departing from the subject on hand, he got up, clasped his hands behind his back, looked M. Deshoulières full in the face, and said—

“Unquestionably this difficulty must have greatly disarranged monsieur. I regret exceedingly to have no information to offer on the matter.”

“Not even a suggestion?” inquired the doctor, after a blank pause.

“Pardon. You may call the police to your aid, or you may insert an appeal in the journals.”

“Both means were expressly forbidden by the will, on such serious conditions for M. Saint-Martin that I do not feel justified in adopting them. To do so would be to reduce his fortune to 40,000 francs.”

“In that case—” the curé concluded with a shrug.

The doctor strode away from the presbytère in great wrath. “Dolts! idiots!” he muttered, swinging along with the great steps little Roulleau found it difficult to follow. “No one can so much as use their eyes and ears in this abominable place. To return to Charville as we came is an absurdity not to be thought of.”

Nevertheless, it was all that remained to be done. They did not reach the Château until the moon had risen, throwing cold lights upon the formal vases on the terrace, the empty basins of the jets-d’eau. The nightingales had ceased, it was all quiet and a little oppressive. The house stood up before them, ugly still when no more than its form could be seen; outside the door old Mathieu and his wife had placed two chairs, where they were sitting waiting for the return of the gentlemen. Monsieur Saint-Martin’s discovery was no desirable matter in their eyes. It was an affair which they thought should be left to arrange itself, and meanwhile Château Ardron was a very comfortable home for their old age. M. Roulleau, meditating upon it, fancied that the information M. Deshoulières requested them to seek for, would not be sought with overmuch eagerness.

“The country is well rid of such vauriens,” grumbled the old woman to him confidentially, as he pulled off the yellow bandana he had tied round his throat for fear of the night air, and made her stand by while he satisfied himself that his bed was dry. “Leave them alone. They will come back only too soon.”

“You forget, Mère Bourdon, you forget,” said the notary, shaking his head mildly, “if M. Saint-Martin were to return, he would take the château into his own hands. There would be gay doings. The whole neighbourhood would benefit.”

“The saints forbid!” said Mère Bourdon fervently, under her breath. Such a change of affairs would turn herself and old Mathieu out into the cold. She thought of their draughty little hut and shivered. Three out of the four who slept at Château Ardron that night were clearly of opinion that M. Fabien Saint-Martin would do well to remain a mystery.

Early in the morning M. Deshoulières was in the village again, but he added nothing to his meagre stock of information. He came back through the rain—for the weather had changed in the night—vexed and troubled, and inclined to blame the notary for not suggesting a better plan of operations. The country people going off to market, bumping along in carts, or under enormous umbrellas walking sociably with their pigs or their calves, all bade him good day; there was a sort of impression already abroad that here was the real master of the château. Old Mathieu and his wife scraped and bowed and wished “bon voyage” a dozen times when the two went away to the railway station. M. Deshoulières in his annoyance was disposed to consign the château, the village, and its inhabitants, including the curé, to the bottom of the sea. When they were in the train he took from a bag a bundle of the papers they had brought with them, and buried himself in them.

“It is inconceivable,” he said at last.

The notary, who had apparently been sleeping, opened his eyes with a wondering “comment?”

“It is inconceivable that in all those papers there should be nothing relating to this nephew of a later date than the letters we discovered.”

Roulleau shrugged his shoulders. “What will you?” he replied. “The man was, without doubt, an eccentric. They had quarrelled, and he showed his displeasure by obliterating whatever related to the time and cause of their quarrel.”

“His displeasure? Hum,” said the doctor, “it looks more like wounded affection. I wish, with all my heart, his eccentricities had not vented themselves upon me. Well, there is no more to be said. ‘Patience, and shuffle the cards.’ We must wait. But, pray, where is Mademoiselle Veuillot to wait?”

“You have to provide her with a home?”

“Precisely. And where?”

“Would it be possible for Mademoiselle to remain where she is?” suggested the notary, doubtfully.

“At your house? My excellent Monsieur Roulleau, is such an arrangement practicable?”

“There are drawbacks, certainly. But I would do any thing to assist you in such an emergency.”

“Let me hear the drawbacks.”

“There is my wife. She is admirable—she is devoted—a paragon!” exclaimed the little notary, enthusiastically, “nevertheless, monsieur, she is a woman, and women are but human.”

“Is that peculiarity confined to them?” asked M. Deshoulières, dryly. “Go on, M. Ignace, I fully comprehend that you must consult your wife.”

“Monsieur is too considerate. The other drawback I am averse to mentioning. Alas, it is not every one who can follow the dictates of his heart—the sum bequeathed by Monsieur Moreau is so trifling, so inadequate.”

“I will double it,” promptly replied the doctor. “So long as Mdlle. Veuillot remains in your house, and is supplied with all that is necessary and fitting, I will undertake to pay you twice the sum named by Monsieur Moreau. When the heir comes, of course he will take the arrangements in his own hands.”

“Without doubt, without doubt,” said Roulleau, quickly. “You are generous indeed, monsieur. When the young lady is aware of what you have done in her behalf—”

“She will be aware of nothing,” M. Deshoulières interrupted with decision. “The money matters do not go beyond us. You will find out from Madame Roulleau whether the arrangement is agreeable to herself, and if it meets with no opposition from Mademoiselle Veuillot, it may be considered an affair settled. I shall go to sleep with a mind relieved.”

When M. Deshoulières was asleep, the little notary took out a pocket-book, looked at the superscription of two letters, each addressed to M. Moreau, Château Ardron, and replaced them in his pocket with a grimace of satisfaction.

“Zénobie will acknowledge that I have arranged this little matter well,” he said to himself, triumphantly. “If only this damp does not injure my chest!”

Chapter Four.

“As is the woodbine’s, so the woman’s life.”
The Lost Tales of Miletus.

M. Deshoulières had lived nearly forty years in the world. He still wanted three or four years of that age, it is true, but he looked more, and perhaps this was the reason that he was in the habit of thinking of himself in round numbers as a man of forty. All his life had been comparatively solitary. He was an only child; his mother died while he was at a lycée; his father married again; the son had gone out into the world, worked, risen, now he stood high in his profession, and had been pressed by his colleagues to give up the provinces and betake himself to Paris. Why he had not followed their advice he scarcely knew. No tie specially bound him to Charville, but, somehow, he had struck root in the strange old town,—there was always some case in which he was interested, something that kept him from moving. The man was too simple-minded, perhaps, to care for the city life which just stayed within the horizon of his thoughts, and never grew any nearer. He did not think enough about himself to be ambitious. And with his noble, kindly nature, always giving out of its abundance to others, he had lived all these years without any peculiar interest of his own; had lived until certain little habits, and fancies, and opinions had grown upon him,—a dread of women, a love of solitude, somewhat of a dislike to any thing that took him out of his ordinary work. All that had happened in the past week was peculiarly distasteful to him. Here was a girl thrown upon his care, and perhaps an endless sea of troubles rising out of the unwelcome charge; here was a mystery, and he hated, mysteries with all his heart; here were already looks, hints, surmises. “By and by they will say that I poisoned the old man,” reflected the doctor, with a grim laugh. He was not accustomed to have his word doubted; this suspicious curé’s little drop of bitterness vexed him more than he confessed even to himself: it was a sort of forerunner of the world’s opinion; and the world’s opinion affects us all in some degree, say what we will to the contrary.

Therefore when little Roulleau made his cautious proposal about Mademoiselle Thérèse, M. Deshoulières jumped at it as an escape from one difficulty. He had been thinking where he could place her, without much satisfaction having grown out of his thoughts, but, oddly enough, the Roulleau household had not presented itself. It was respectable, inoffensive; there was that wife, certainly, but M. Deshoulières had a kind of half-shaped theory that women could not be so objectionable towards women as towards men,—there was no reason that Madame Roulleau should drive Thérèse as she drove Ignace; nay, more than once in that little expedition to Ardron he had felt inclined to sympathise with Madame. Every now and then his wishes, wandered longingly away towards that still safer refuge, a convent; if Thérèse could only feel a vocation in that direction she might be placed at once with the good Sisters in the town. Then his responsibility would be at an end. M. Deshoulières devoutly wished it might be brought to so happy a conclusion.

A little soft patter of rain was falling as the two men walked from the station to M. Roulleau’s abode; the young leaves looked a brighter green, the sky had blue patches here and there between the grey; it was one of those spring showers which are full of life and fragrance. Sleepy, picturesque Charville lay and drank it in contentedly; little shallow pools twinkled in the hollows of the excavated house, out of which the workmen were dragging old memories. At the corner, watching them, stood old Nannon: the doctor nodded to her and hurried on,—he wanted to get over this business, to return to his patients. After all, he reflected, the predicament was too absurd to last long. Monsieur Fabien would speedily appear, receive his property, remove himself and his perplexities from the doctor’s mind. Charville would resume its usual peacefulness, its inhabitants come into the world, marry, go out of it again; the Cathedral chimes ring their varying notes; M. Deshoulières take his coffee under the stiff trees before the café; the women gossip volubly round the stone fountain on their way from market. All should be as it had been before M. Moreau came to trouble Charville with his strange bequest.

But Thérèse?

When M. Deshoulières entered the little, bare, unadorned room in the Roulleau’s house—its master having left him at the door to confer with his wife upon the question of the girl’s remaining with them—Thérèse was standing by the table, eagerly watching the door, and the doctor’s heart was touched by the wistful grey eyes, which read his failure in a moment, and sank. She looked so helpless, so young to be left in this strange friendless condition. He went up to her kindly and took her hand.

“We are as we were,” he said, answering the look, “but what then? He will come in good time; do not despond. I was not made for police work; and as for Ignace Roulleau, he can creep along on the beaten track, but take him out of it, bah! he is of no more use than a child. We must have patience; something will arise; news will come.”

“Do you think so?” Thérèse said, wearily.

“I am confident,” he answered.

When she looked up at him he was smiling kindly upon her. Her youth, her forlornness, those pathetic eyes, all touched him more than he imagined. His big chivalrous man’s heart answered at once their mute appeal.

“News will come,” he repeated, positively. “Monsieur Saint-Martin will appear himself some day.”

“Some day!” cried Thérèse, with a harsh ring of anguish in her voice. “Yes, yes, he will come some day, perhaps—but when? Oh, and the days are so long!”

She flung herself down by the table and hid her face on her arms; her figure shook, her rapid breathing was broken by sobs. M. Deshoulières looked at her in amazement. Hitherto she had been so quiet that this passionate outbreak startled him. He began to wonder vaguely whether M. Fabien was more to her than her uncle’s nephew—whether the banishment had any thing to do with the grey eyes of Mademoiselle Thérèse? but the moment after he smiled at his own fancy. Had it been so she would have known at once where to find him. M. Deshoulières was little acquainted with women, it is true, and with the acknowledgment there came a little devout ejaculation of gratitude; but he knew enough to have a profound conviction that were this suspicion correct, not all the uncles in the world would have prevented M. Fabien at the Antipodea and Mademoiselle Thérèse in France from communicating with each other. Perhaps what he did know was owing more to romances read in his boyhood than to actual experience. He had lived too busy a life, he would have said, to have had time for watching or making out for himself dreams of that kind. And yet at the bottom of his heart he had a vast, almost childish belief in the power of love. He put away that idea almost angrily, and went and stood by the window until poor Thérèse recovered herself. Naturally she was overdone, upset; that explained it all. He waited patiently, considering all the sick people with whose interests Ardron had interfered; and he looked out of the dull little window at the little that could be seen—the wet blank wall opposite, over the top of which a few garden trees waved feebly backwards and forwards; a cart drawn by stout horses with blue thick woollen fringes on their huge collars, which jerked and rumbled over the uneven stones. Presently, through the rattle, he became aware that Thérèse, sitting upright and keeping her tearful eyes turned away, was speaking.

“I beg your pardon,” she said once or twice over again, as if she could not get any further.

M. Deshoulières came and sat down by her. There was the same kindness in his eyes, if only Thérèse had looked at them, but his voice was a little quick and peremptory. He had no time to waste in unnecessary words.

“Is there really nothing more that you can tell me about Monsieur Saint-Martin?” he asked.

“Nothing of the present,” said Thérèse, slowly.

“Well, of the past, then?”

“What did you hear at Ardron?”

“Nothing.”

“Ah, that is no wonder,” said Thérèse, speaking with a little more animation. “The people at Ardron scarcely know Fabien; we have been there such a little time, you see. We used to live at Rouen—my uncle, my aunt, Fabien, and I. Fabien has always lived with them; my uncle loved him better than any one else in the world. I went to Rouen when my father and mother died, that was eleven years ago,” said Thérèse, considering; “I was nine years old and Fabien was fourteen.”

“And your aunt took you?”

“Yes. Poor aunt Ferdinande! she tried to be kind; and my uncle was generous—very generous. He despised women, though, monsieur, and he never professed to like me. Is it not strange that, after all, I should have been the only one left to him now?”

She spoke in a questioning dreamy sort of way, clasping her hands over her knee, and looking out of the window at the dropping rain. There was a certain easy grace in her attitude, in the curves of her figure, in the poise of her head. Monsieur Deshoulières was not noticing it, he glanced at the timepiece instead and fidgeted.

“Then, as I understand, M. Moreau intended his nephew to enter his house at Rouen?” he asked.

“Oh, he had entered it,” Thérèse cried quickly; “he had entered and was doing admirably when—”

“Well, when—?”

”—They had a disagreement.”

“Ah, a disagreement. On matters connected with money?”

M. Deshoulières thought he was pursuing the examination with great skill; he did not notice the troubled appealing glance which poor Thérèse threw at him before answering slowly,—

“Not altogether.”

“On business, then? It is much the same thing. Five-eighths of the world permit such matters to wreck their lives. And so the old man was angry, and M. Saint-Martin went off in a headstrong fit?”

Poor Thérèse wanted very much to tell her little story—the old, old story—more commonplace even than M. Deshoulières’, yet so new, so beautiful, in her eyes. But how could she? He was so terribly prompt and abrupt, he would not see what she meant, would not help her, his quick manner frightened her, her education had taught her reserve, she needed sympathy to draw out little by little what it was so hard to say in words; after all, it was not necessary that she should relate her share in the matter. She said, sighing,—“The two disagreed, monsieur, as you say.”

“And so the young man acted in this wise fashion?”

“It was not Fabien’s fault. It was his uncle who was angry. Fabien had done nothing wrong.” Her whole attitude changed; her throat curved, her eyes kindled; evidently she was prepared to do battle for the absent if the opportunity came. M. Deshoulières, however, had relapsed into silence, his elbows on his knees, his hands thrust into his hair. Looking up at last, he suddenly said,—

“And you mean to say that you do not know where he went?”

“No,” she answered, steadily.

“Your aunt, Madame Moreau, has not been dead many months; do you suppose that she was as strangely ignorant?”

“I do not know—I cannot tell,” said Thérèse, with agitation.

“But you have an idea,” said M. Deshoulières, fixing his keen eyes upon her, and frowning unconsciously.

“From something she once let drop I fancied he was in America, but when I begged and prayed her to tell me she became so terrified at her own imprudence that I could not find out any thing more. She was in great awe of my uncle. He never mentioned poor Fabien, except once, when—”

She stopped short, tears gathered in her eyes.

“Well?” said Deshoulières, impatiently.

”—When he showed me a scrap of writing, evidently torn off a letter, and containing only two lines.”

M. Deshoulières said, “Well?” once more.

Thérèse turned and looked at him reproachfully. She thought him cruel, hard. He was trying to befriend her after his own fashion, but she found it difficult to believe. There are sore places in our hearts which others touch all unconsciously, and when the pain darts through us we feel as if they must know something of what they are doing.

“They were bitter words,” she said, her voice faltering. ”‘I renounce for ever my country, and the friends I left there.’”

“Bah!” said M. Deshoulières, irreverently.

The girl flashed round upon him.

“You do not know Fabien!”

“Who were his friends?” he asked, without noticing her little outburst. And then Thérèse glanced shyly at him, and calmed down. Here was his best friend if this man would only understand. But he was terribly prosaic, he would not understand. His questions travelled relentlessly along the great dusty high road of facts, while her thoughts danced away from them into sweet little flowery meadows, river-banks, a sunny dream-land of what might, have been, what might be yet. In spite of her trouble, an irrepressible smile quivered on her lips, which would have puzzled the doctor, had he seen it. She answered demurely that the only two of whom she knew were a certain Léon Fauchet, whom she believed to have entered the army; and Claude Lamourette, who went out to China within a few weeks of Fabien’s departure.

It was all unsatisfactory, provoking. Even the doctor’s impatient spirit was forced to acknowledge that nothing could be done for the present. His hands were tied by the terms of the will, he could only wait and trust that such little strings as he had set going would some day tug M. Fabien Saint-Martin into Charville.

Without any particular reason for the feeling, he disliked him heartily, but, nevertheless, it was to be hoped he would come and deliver them from this tangle of perplexities. There was no more to be said about Fabien in this interview, but Thérèse’s future remained to be settled. M. Deshoulières fidgeted and fussed on his chair.

“Is this house agreeable to you? Would you like to stay?” he said at last, shooting out the words quite suddenly. Thérèse, who had been the one most troubled in the conversation, grew self-possessed when she found her own prospects under consideration.

“Do you mean, like to live here?” she asked. “It would do as well as any other place.”

“You would not prefer the convent?”

“Oh, Monsieur, not—not the convent!” she exclaimed, with all the trouble returning. Her grey eyes dilated, she put out her hands imploringly.

“No one will force you,” said M. Deshoulières, in a kind, reassuring voice, but he did not understand this sudden terror. Looking upon it as a natural retreat for unmarried girls, he had thought it not unlikely she might herself suggest it. He was sorry that she shrank from it, and it surprised him a little. Nevertheless, had she but known it, she was quite safe from any attempt to thwart her inclinations; but she did not know it. Her early experience of her uncle’s unrelenting will led her to expect everywhere the same harshness, the same determination. What M. Deshoulières had once suggested he might at any time attempt to oblige her to follow out; and to be buried in a convent, to lose all hope of seeing Fabien, of hearing a word here, a word there, a rumour of his whereabouts—to lose this was to twenty-year old Thérèse like losing life itself. She would have preferred any hardship to this prospect, which had hung over her while her uncle lived, and was, probably, only prevented from taking shape by a certain half-contemptuous indulgence of his wife’s wishes, and after her death by a softening consciousness of his own failing health. Now it surged up before her again; M. Deshoulières’ words could not calm her fears.

“Only let me stay here,” she entreated.

He looked at her a little keenly. It was something new to have any one dependent upon him, half pleasant, half puzzling—then he thought of his patients and jumped up.

“That is soon settled, mademoiselle; I will speak to Madame Roulleau, and then you can arrange things as you please. Pardon me now, for my time is not my own.”

There were no difficulties with the Roulleaus; M. Deshoulières went away from the house rather pleased with his own management. Thérèse was provided for, for the present; he had satisfied himself upon one or two points, had learned also that she did not care for Fabien. Poor stupid, blind Max!

Monsieur and Mme. Roulleau lost no time in going to Thérèse when once the doctor had quitted the house; madame led the way of course, but she was a little changed to Thérèse, as the latter saw at once. Hitherto she had been almost cringing in her manner, now she had the air of one who permits herself to be persuaded against her better judgment. She was a woman of about fifty, with a sharp, puckered face, a nose pinched and slightly hooked, a long upper lip, black hair strained tightly backwards, and hands which were long, lean, covetous-looking. Some people’s hands take you into their owner’s secrets, before their faces have let out any thing. Mme. Roulleau’s were of this kind. You might notice a stretching, a little involuntary curve of the fingers’ ends, as if they longed to be grasping something. It struck Thérèse again as she stood before her in the middle of the room in a kind of linen jacket, drawn in round the waist, and the girl hardly understood at first that M. Roulleau was speaking, she could not help watching madame’s hands with a sort of fascination. M. Roulleau coughed and spoke a little louder.

“Our excellent friend, Monsieur Deshoulières, has made a proposal, mademoiselle, I had the pleasure to observe, which would relieve him, he says, from an embarrassment. Without doubt he has confided it to you. Now, madame and I could receive no pleasure so profound, so grateful to our hearts,” continued the little man, becoming suddenly enthusiastic, “as that we should experience by assisting our excellent doctor to the very extent of our means; but—”

“This is impossible,” said madame, sharply.

“Mon amie!” remonstrated the notary, with an appealing gesture.

“Impossible!” reiterated Mme. Roulleau. “I know you, Ignace; you are as weak as an infant over your ideas of friendship; but I am a mother. I think of my Adolphe, of my Octavie, defenceless little ones! I cannot consent to burden our family with another load. Mademoiselle must seek a home elsewhere.”

Thérèse started like a guilty thing. Up before her rose the grim walls of the convent, Fabien seeking her outside, she shut in, separated, unconscious of his neighbourhood. Peace might be there—repose; her untrained heart cried out passionately for other things. “There is the convent,” said madame, watching her. She had heard from M. Deshoulières how his suggestion had been received.

“Let me stay here. Do not send me away,” said poor Thérèse, with imploring eyes.

“It is not my heart,” answered madame, trying to be pathetic; “it is the cost, the extras we must provide.”

“I can live upon so little,” urged the girl, turning towards the little notary.

“Zénobie!” he exclaimed, as if with a sudden impulse, “it is useless—I must yield!”

“Imprudent man!” replied madame, keeping up the little farce with great vigour; “do you forget our miserable means?”

“I forget nothing. We must stint ourselves—I know it. Adolphe and Octavie must suffer—I know it. What then? When friendship and compassion call, I cannot shut my heart. Mademoiselle, you have conquered. Remain.”

He spoke with a grandly tragic air. Thérèse relieved, astonished, all at once, could not credit her ears. It seemed impossible that the little man should assert himself in this manner against his wife, who cast up her hands, and cried out again at his imprudence. She tried to murmur thanks, but M. Roulleau, in his unwonted energy, waved them aside.

“There is one point,” he went on, “in which I am sure mademoiselle’s delicacy of feeling will unite with our own. It would desolate Mme. Roulleau and myself, were our admirable M. Deshoulières to have any idea of the difficulties this little arrangement may entail upon us. Whatever the world may say, he has not the means to assist as his generous heart would desire, yet without a question he would insist upon doing so. What then? The contest would lacerate us, we should not consent; mademoiselle would again have to seek a home. No, no, our friends may blame us—bah! one must follow impulse sometimes!”

“How good you are to do this!” Thérèse cried out gratefully. She had a generous heart, and it smote her for not having sufficiently valued the little man. When the two had gone away, monsieur still heroic, and madame injured, she felt as if a great dread had gone with them. Her heart sang a little song without words—a song all about Fabien, and constancy, and meeting. Wonderful things grew up before her; sober people would have laughed or cried, as the case might be, could they have heard her music. Thérèse was in that enchanter’s castle, wherein most of us wander for a little while, at some time or other, listening to the songs which are never sung so sweetly elsewhere.

Chapter Five.

“Lo, as some innocent and eager maiden
Leans o’er the wistful limit of the world,
Dreams of the glow and glory of the distance,
Wonderful wooing and the grace of tears,
Dreams with what eyes and what a sweet insistance
Lovers are waiting in the hidden years.”
P.W.H. Myers.

Thérèse was really grateful to the Roulleaus for their concession, grateful and a little touched by what seemed honest delicacy of feeling. Madame Roulleau, who could dig like a mole when she wanted to find out a character, had been digging and burrowing while her husband was at Ardron, and knew pretty well by this time what strings to pull. People who have this sort of shrewdness can see a good deal without going far down; she did not reach the depths, but she was quite satisfied. It was not worth her while to study all the complexities of the girl’s nature, if she had tried doing so she would have had a baffling task, for there were plenty of contradictions about it. Probably Thérèse’s education had something to do with all the contrarieties and incongruities which met you at every turn—she was tender and hard, resolute and timid, generous and distrustful; it was impossible to know which of the opposing qualities would come uppermost: a great hopefulness, perhaps, impressed you the most. It was not insensibility to, but an inborn dread of the sadnesses of life which made her cling to the bright side. In spite of what they may say, there are people who find a certain sort of enjoyment in trouble, they like to be made to weep over fictitious distresses, there is a chord in them which responds at once to any call for sympathy. Thérèse was not one of these people to whom we turn in our sorrows, sure at least of being understood, if we are not helped. As yet she was impatient of sorrow, eager for happiness. She hated tragedies, sad books, minor music. As I have said, it was not that such things did not touch her—perhaps if she had been indifferent she would not have minded them so much—but her nature rose up in rebellion against them: they were part of Adam’s curse. She had not learned that, after all, through the Infinite Love that uses sorrow and suffering for instruments, they have caught a Divine beauty, a sweet solemn loveliness which by degrees reveals itself and wins our hearts. Thérèse believed only in one kind of happiness—our wills gratified, our dreams realised, all the little idols we have set up smiling down upon us from their pedestals: as we go on in life we find out sometimes that it was well our idols were shattered for us, or we might have been crushed under their weight; but Thérèse had no fear of this. She thought of herself as if some day all her longings must be satisfied, her troubles ended and laid aside, every thing completed, rounded off, and perfect. After that, I think there came a golden haze. There is something half-pathetic, half-comforting, in this unlimited faith in coming happiness. We see where it fails, but every now and then it acts upon our wearier spirits like a breath of immortality.

Thérèse had already met with enough to daunt her in her little life, although it had not had that effect; she looked upon all the roughnesses of the road, so far, as things extraneous, and not altogether belonging to her existence. Whatever part of her they affected it was not her belief in the rose-coloured days that were coming. That stood unshaken. Nor while it lasted could she be said to have lost her courage; yet it had grown to have a strange admixture of timidity since she went—a bold brave child—to live at Rouen. Her heart used to swell, and her cheeks flush, when M. Moreau was harsh to her aunt, to Fabien; but her woman’s nature, though it resented his treatment, quailed before it. Once or twice she had resisted him, but all the time she was terribly frightened. Poor Thérèse! she was only a girl, and he had every thing on his side except right, as she used to say to herself indignantly, half angry at her own weakness.

Madame Moreau was a large feeble woman, who scarcely ventured to think without her husband’s permission. She was so passive under his provocations that you were inclined to wonder whether she had been so from the first, or whether, after he had frightened the spirit out of her, nature had avenged herself by giving her this impervious armour. Thérèse’s little fiery outbreaks on her behalf were always wasted. They were much more appreciated by Fabien; he incited her to them, and she was too generous to notice that she was left to bear the consequences alone. He was her hero, over whom she rang her little changes of admiration: when he told her that he loved her, instead of formally beforehand requesting her hand from her uncle, she promised, with her grey eyes shining straight into his, and all her heart in her words, never to give him up. Fabien promised the same. “Every thing,” says an old writer, “has a double handle, or at least we have two hands by which to apprehend it.” I suppose it was so with this promise.

Then came the crash, and her hero went away, more of a hero than ever. In her thoughts Thérèse set a crown on his head, and turned him into one of the old champions. Fabien, who was thoroughly nineteenth-century, would have been utterly puzzled what to do with himself if her ideas had come true. And then, with her boundless store of hopefulness, of expectation, she did not find the waiting so weary as it looked. Every now and then, to be sure, there would surge up in her heart a wild longing, a yearning such as had broken out when M. Deshoulières spoke, the days would seem interminable, the distance from Fabien infinite. Such pangs came more acutely after M. Moreau had one day called her into his room.

“So you are still thinking of that ungrateful?” said the old man mockingly. “In that case you shall receive his latest news.”

And then he showed her Fabien’s lines of renunciation.

All the girl’s fear of her uncle vanished: she lifted her head proudly. “When Fabien writes those words to me, I will believe them,” she said, and went away, leaving old Moreau speechless at her presumption. It was her greatest victory among their encounters, but it was one of those victories which cost more than defeats. Not all her buoyancy could rise against the weight which the words left in her heart. How could he write them? How could he? She used to put the question passionately, and then answer it with a hundred fond excuses. All must be right some day,—that was the creed to which she clung; could she only keep free from the convent walls, all must be right. When her aunt died, and she lost the one slender link to her uncle’s affection, her dread of them increased; afterwards, through all the terrible time at the Cygne, she could not altogether repress the sense of liberty which came with the lifting from her the weight of that indomitable will. Whatever happened, she thought she must breathe more freely. She was not at all prepared to find M. Moreau’s intentions echoed back by her new guardian. Madame Roulleau had taken care to impress her with an idea of his inflexible nature, and she began, in her ignorance, to dread that he might have the power to compel her to submit. Any fate seemed preferable, and Madame Roulleau was well aware that in taking her into her house, she might impose what terms she pleased.

At first there was not much laid upon her. She had a miserable little room, it is true, bare and dreary, but what then? “If mademoiselle expects another Château Ardron, she must not come to Rue St. Servan,” said Madame, with her disagreeable smile. Thérèse hastened to explain that no such discontented comparison had entered her head. She was in fact too young to care much for the want of comfort round her; she pulled the things about and spread out her little possessions, and wasted no repinings for the blue silk curtains, and the gilding, and the ormolu at Château Ardron. Out of her window, beyond the roofs, she could see one of the Cathedral spires, with its delicate stone fretwork; a great expanse of sky over the flat country round; the very roofs were too crooked, too full, of quaint character, to be commonplace. She could make histories out of them, weave romances about the people who lived beneath them—romances into which her own story and Fabien’s stole in some irrepressible way. It seemed like a little time of rest after all the harshness and unkind words of the last years. Surely some intuitive instinct would tell Fabien that she was alone in the world, and that no one need come between them now.

But in a little while she found she had no time for dreaming. Things seemed to fell upon her as a matter of course. Mme. Roulleau would come in with a great heap of clothes in her arms, her own, Adolphe’s, Octavie’s, for mademoiselle to exercise her powers of reparation upon. It was often very difficult to make out of them what madame expected; only Aladdin’s magician with his new lamps for old could have satisfied her, and poor Thérèse darned and turned and patched, and patched and turned and darned, in despair: more than once before she had learned her lesson of economy, she cut up her own things in a vain attempt to perform the impossible. If she could only have pleased by her efforts she would not have disliked the work; she was active-minded, glad to be of use, there would have been a certain enjoyment in her own ingenuity. And if Mme. Roulleau was capable of being touched she must have been conscious of the sweetness with which Thérèse took her rebuffs, the patience with which she tried to follow out her directions. They were the only weapons the girl brought forward at this time. But to certain natures there is nothing so dear as the power of petty tyranny, and neither the money paid by M. Deshoulières, nor the work she extracted from her, were so delightful to Madame Roulleau as the infliction of daily snubs upon Thérèse. Skilfully drawing out her desire to remain free and lead a secular life, skilfully playing upon her fears of a convent, imperceptibly strengthening her dread of M. Deshoulières’ decisions, far more swift than he to fathom the secret of the girl’s heart and to turn it to their purpose, she did her best to make Thérèse’s life a burden.

And yet for a time, as I have said, Thérèse bore it all not only with patience but with cheerfulness. She hoped bravely, and this was the elixir which prevented her feeling madame’s sting. It was not pleasant to be found fault with, but she said to herself that it all came from her own stupidity, her want of knowledge about useful things. After all, they were useful, and it was very good for her to be forced into them. She preached vigorous little lectures over her own reluctance and want of gratitude. Monsieur and madame were not charming, certainly, but they had been very generous and only demanded a return. In those days her step was buoyant, her colour bright, her grey eyes sparkling. Madame Roulleau used to look at her and say crossly to her husband,—

“She has had some news of that vaurien.”

The little notary used to get into a fever of alarm. “Zénobie,” he would say, with his shrill voice quavering, “if he comes back we are ruined.”

“He must not come back,” said madame, quietly.

“Must not!” repeated the little man, querulously. “That is very fine, but who is to keep him away? It appears to me that there was never such a world as this for gossip. Instead of minding their own affairs, people talk, talk, like so many parrots, and who is to make sure that their mischievous tongues will not one day carry the news to the wrong person?”

His wife darted a contemptuous glance at him. “It is a lottery, as I told you before,” she said coldly. “One or other must lose.”

“And you talk of it so calmly! Do you know what a frightful risk I run? If M. Saint-Martin comes home, and the little hindrances I have put in his way are discovered—or if that girl finds out the double payment, I am ruined! I shudder when I think of it.”

He was shuddering. It was a hot June day, and he shivered as if he had the ague. Madame looked at him with still the same expression in her face.

“You are a coward, Ignace,” at last she said, letting her words drop slowly, “and that makes you a fool. Do you suppose that I have not weighed the risk? Do you suppose that I am not watching?”

Under her eyes he shivered more visibly. “I know,” he said in a submissive voice; “I only thought—”

“Do not think,” she interrupted contemptuously; “leave thinking to me.”

“He might write to her,” M. Roulleau muttered under his breath.

“What are you saying?”

“Do not be angry, Zénobie; I only remarked that he might write to her.”

“Here?”

“No; to Château Ardron. In that case, mon amie,” continued the little man, apologetically, “permit me to observe that the letter would be forwarded to Monsieur Deshoulières.”

Madame sighed. “I do not think I shall ever be able to educate you,” she said; “I must soon give it up. And you can actually assert that such a danger has only just struck you, and that all this time you have taken no precaution against it. Hein! look here!”

Her tone rose peremptory and shrill. M. Roulleau looked obediently at the copy of the letter she flourished before his eyes, and then admiringly at her.

“You are a marvel!” he said in his feeble, abject voice.

“I made her write it,” she said, still shrilly. “Bah, she is only too easy to manage, there is no satisfaction, one had but to work on her fears. Her letters will be sent here, and I think, monsieur, you will acknowledge that I can arrange who shall be the receiver?”

“I acknowledge every thing,” he said, with a deprecating gesture.

“Perhaps you may be relieved to know,” she continued, returning to her cold measured tones, “that I took further steps at the same time. It would be inconvenient if other letters reached M. Deshoulières. I requested, therefore, in his name, that all documents which might arrive should be forwarded to you. By this means we control one channel of communication.”

“But, Zénobie, my angel—”

“Well? more scruples?”

“You said in his name?”

“Exactly.”

“But—suppose he should find it out?”

“In that case, and supposing also that you had not the wit to persuade him that such were his orders, our little enterprise is at an end. I have told you that there must be risk. Bah!” she continued, suddenly becoming fierce again, “you do not fear to be a villain, Ignace, provided you may have the profit without the danger. You can creep, but you cannot spring.”

She did not look unlike a wild-cat herself, with her round black eyes sparkling, her hands making energetic passes in the air. M. Roulleau was in an agony lest any one should hear her imprudent words.

“Hush-h-h,” he said tremulously, “I am not so clever as you, Zénobie, I do not affirm it. Only tell me what you would have me do.”

“Do!” she cried in her high-pitched voice. And then, with one of those sudden strange checks by which she controlled her passion, she changed back to her contemptuous manner. “You can never be any thing but what you are, but you may be useful in your own way. Do? Go and creep, Ignace.”

Chapter Six.