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.