Chapter Ten.
“Have I not nursed, for two long wretched years,
That miserable hope, that every day
Grew weaker, like a baby sick to death,
Yet dearer for its weakness, day by day?”
Madoc.
After that evening walk from the river Thérèse told Nannon she thought that M. Deshoulières was kinder than she had fancied. Nannon, whose prejudices were invincible, shook her head.
“He may be kind when he pleases, I do not deny it, but he is as hard as a stone.”
“Every one is hard, I think,” said Thérèse, sadly.
Her bright hopefulness was leaving her; there was so much irritation and fret in her daily life, so much contact with low, mean natures, that it had not power to hold its own. That future to which she looked forward was not one which strengthened her to bear the present; it rather added to the fever of impatience which consumed her. We want something stronger than props of our own rearing when the dark days come with their storms. Poor child, it appeared to herself as if she was for ever stretching out her hands and groping vainly in the darkness for something by which to hold. There was one figure among those which for ages had stood outside the great Cathedral and called to the passers-by, that she had grown almost to identify with herself—a woman who seemed half in supplication, half in fear. It is probable that no one else had seen that expression in the attitude. Those beautiful grave statues at Charville are able to adapt themselves, with something of the power of the Psalms, to the wants and wishes of those who love them. All around are the great flat corn plains; every thing is made to speak of crops and gains, getting and selling, buying of farms, proving of oxen. But in the midst there rises, like an eternal protest, this glorious Cathedral, with spires always pointing heavenwards, always typifying what man’s life may be amid all the world’s care and turmoil. Life in the world, not of it. Thérèse, who did not recognise this, who perhaps had not lived long enough to search for types and shadows in the things about her, was yet conscious of an increasing delight in wandering round the old Cathedral. She fancied she was losing her props when, after all, she was being trained to hold by those that would never fail her.
Madame Roulleau, in spite of her cleverness, almost endangered her prospects by her treatment of Thérèse just now. Even her covetousness was not so strong as her love of oppression, and her pleasure in humiliating the girl by all possible means. Thérèse was made almost a drudge in the household. Pride prevented her from complaining, but she felt fierce and bitter against her oppressors. She might have appealed to M. Deshoulières, of whom she stood less in awe than before their last conversation, had she seen him, but for a month or two they did not meet. He came two or three times to Rue St. Servan, but Mme. Roulleau held there might be dangers in interviews, and contrived that he should never see Thérèse. As it happened, also, they never encountered one another elsewhere. Every one knows how in a large place you may be months without once crossing the track of your nearest neighbour, and so it was with Thérèse and M. Deshoulières. Had he been resolute, of course he could have effected it without difficulty, but, in truth, he was not decided what to do. Deep in his heart that little vision of Thérèse in his home, loved and cared for, had never stirred from its place. If during the day, with its ceaseless toil and battling, there was a veil drawn across the sweet, homely picture, he suffered his thoughts to dwell upon it with an ever-deepening tenderness when the quiet hours came. What held him back was the dread lest he might take an unfair advantage of the girl’s present loneliness. He knew nothing of all that made it most bitter, of the weariness of her waiting, of the physical hardship of her lot, but he knew from her own words that a sense of her desolation was strong upon her, and he feared lest it might lead her to accept another lot, afterwards to prove more unendurable. He thought hardly of himself, he was so much older, so grave, so occupied, that he dreaded hurrying her into a mistake. He longed to see her, but with the determination which he exercised over longings, he accepted the separation, believing that each day she might become more reconciled to her position, or better acquainted with the depths of her own feelings.
It was a noble, unselfish heart in which the unconscious Thérèse was set as in a little shrine.
Does it make life sadder or brighter to think how much of this unknown treasuring there is in the world around us? People who fancy themselves least cared for sometimes have a wealth of affection poured out upon them, of which they may never dream until the day when every thing is made plain. One does not know whether it is comforting or saddening to recollect this,—comforting, one hopes, because it is very sure that such love cannot be wasted, whether it seems so in our eyes or not.
November came. It was not foggy, but there was a good deal of rain, and the air was damp and chilly. The vines that had been so fresh and blithe through the summer now disconsolately waved their straggling helpless branches to and fro from the little balconies. The great plains, in which lay hid the promise of next year’s abundance, looked brown and dreary without their wealth of golden corn. Thérèse used to escape to her own room when the teaching was over, and shiver there rather than sit with Madame Roulleau in the little ugly room with its great stove filling up one corner. Her walks with Nannon were necessarily fewer and interrupted, owing to the shortening days and the rain, and she suffered for want of them. She grew pale and thin, her step lost its elasticity, her mouth its smile. Was she never to escape from this life, this weary, hateful treadmill? When depression seizes on one point it assails us on all; those cruel words of Fabien’s became much more terrible to her than ever they had seemed before. She was among those he had renounced; what was her love that it should hold him through those years, across unknown distances? And then she would determine that he was dead.
One day—while it was quite early, and Thérèse was working away at the children, with a dreary sense of drudgery, which did them and herself no good—Mme. Roulleau, who had gone to her bedroom to hunt for something in a great press, was startled by her husband coming in upon her with a white scared face.
“Zénobie—Zénobie, mon amie!” he said piteously.
“Well? What now?”
“That which we dreaded is arriving—Monsieur Saint-Martin! What will become of us?”
“Is Monsieur Saint-Martin here?” inquired madame with perfect coolness, although she turned a shade paler.
“Here! The saints forbid!”
“The saints are not likely to be on your side, so that I would not place much confidence in their protection, if I were you,” said his wife, sarcastically. “Have the goodness, Ignace, to inform me what this great event may be that you find so disturbing.”
“Mon amie, do not be angry. I have come to you at once. But it is ruin. Monsieur Deshoulières has just been here; he has received a letter—”
“Well?”
“A letter about our affair.”
“Give it to me.”
“How did she know I had it?” murmured the little man, half in admiration, half in fear, as he took it from his pocket. Madame received it in silence. The note consisted only of a few lines:—“If Monsieur Deshoulières desires tidings of Monsieur Fabien Saint-Martin, nephew of Monsieur Moreau, recently deceased, let him find himself at the Lion d’Or, at Pont-huine, on the afternoon of the 20th of November, at three o’clock.” No more. The post-mark was Paris.
“The twentieth! That is to-day,” remarked madame meditatively. The paleness had increased a little; her lips were set more tightly.
“One hundred and eighty francs a month,” groaned Roulleau.
“And M. Deshoulières is gone?”
“Gone? No. He has just received a message from the Préfet. Madame is taken in sharp illness. He came here fretting and fuming on his way to the Préfecture, as if this horrible Monsieur Saint-Martin were the one person he most desired to see upon the earth. Did you not understand, Zénobie? It is I who must go.”
“You! I understand! How can I understand?” screamed madame, facing round upon him in a flame of indignation—“when you come crying out that you are ruined, all the time having the game placed in your very hands! You have grown so crooked, you cannot even speak straight to your own wife. Can you not think even so much as this for yourself! Are you blind—a dolt—a baby—an imbecile!”
“Zénobie!” implored the little man in an agony.
“Yes!” she said, with a world of scorn in her tone; “that is your métier, and all you are fit for—to take care lest any one should overhear us. I cannot keep patience always. All the world may know that Monsieur Saint-Martin is coming, if they will.”
“Zénobie!”
“I repeat it. At what time do you go?”
“The train leaves in half an hour.”
“Then do not interrupt me.”
She turned away from him, and sat down. M. Roulleau, too glad to gain peace, waited patiently. For five minutes there was silence, broken by no sound but the heavy drip of rain; a distant rumble of carts; one or two church clocks striking the hour. Then madame lifted her head, and spoke in a measured, set voice, very different from her late vehement outbreak,—
“You will go to the station, and take a ticket for Pont-huine,” she said; “but you will get out at Maury, the village on this side of it. Make what inquiries you can about strangers at the Lion d’Or, and return by the last train. It is probable that M. Deshoulières will meet you at the station.”
“What then?” said the little man breathlessly. “You have seen nothing, heard nothing, done nothing. No one has appeared at the Lion d’Or. If you may venture an opinion, the whole affair is a silly hoax. Are you capable of this?”
“Every day implicates us more,” Roulleau said, wiping his face.
“There is no gain without speculation,” replied madame, with one of her scornful glances. “Would you prefer opening your arms to Monsieur Saint-Martin?”
“He will ask so many questions.”
“It is the more easy in such a case to shape your answers.”
Little Roulleau was helpless under her inexorable will. His own sordid nature prompted him one way, while his cowardice held him back. He would have been a villain without his wife, but he would have dug underground, putting out all his little crafty resources, to fence himself round from discovery. She worked more boldly and for larger ventures. The imprudences she committed kept him in continual alarm. At the same time there was a fertility of resource, a vigour in her undertakings, of which he acknowledged the value, and which were strong enough to carry him along against his judgment. He remonstrated, but he had never sufficient power to resist. She swept away all his little terrified suggestions like a whirlwind. Ignace put on his yellow straw hat, took his thread gloves and his umbrella, and went obediently to the station. Madame was more polite that day to Thérèse than she had been for months.
In the evening, Thérèse was sitting with the children, who were supposed to be preparing their lessons for the next day. Octavie, always upright and suggestive, was at the table, with a book open before her, on the alert, as usual, to snub Mademoiselle Veuillot or her brother, as the case might require. He was a very ugly little boy, with his baggy knickerbockers and cut-away jacket, and a closely cropped little head; but he was not so utterly detestable in Thérèse’s eyes as Octavie. With all his obstinacy and provoking ways he was not a worldly, unnatural little being like her. He had not her patronising, superior ways; he was not always watching and spying. I am telling you what Thérèse thought, and it must be remembered that she was not in a patient mood at this time: she was eating the bread of poverty, and it was made very bitter. This evening Adolphe would not attend. He jumped up and down, upset his chair, danced about the room. “Mamma thinks that Adolphe already knows less of history than when he began it with you, mademoiselle,” remarked Octavie, pleasantly.
“I know more than you!” shouted Adolphe, indignant at this report, and still careering round the table. “I know more than you, and more than mademoiselle, and more than a great many people.”
Octavie lifted her arched eyebrows.
“But yes, I do, and I could tell you about it, only I don’t choose.”
“Adolphe!” said Thérèse, sharply, “I am waiting.”
“She always thinks that mamma tells her every thing,” said Adolphe triumphantly, “but she does not. She is only a little girl, is she, mademoiselle? I know a great deal more.”
“Madame Barry never permitted Adolphe to misbehave himself, mademoiselle. It is only since you have been our governess,” said Octavie, furiously.
“She will not be our governess long,” cried Adolphe, before Thérèse could speak, “if M. Saint-Martin is come.”
“Monsieur Saint-Martin!”
All the room turned round before Thérèse; she caught at the table to steady herself. When she opened her eyes, the children were staring at her, Octavie’s sharp black eyes looking curiously, Adolphe a little frightened. Thérèse cried out in a glad tone they had never heard before from her,—
“Is Monsieur Saint-Martin come, Adolphe?”
Nobody answered. Octavie had nudged her brother, and he began to be afraid that he might be punished for repeating words he had caught in his mother’s high-pitched voice as he passed the bedroom door. “All the world may know that Monsieur Saint-Martin is coming,” she had said; but Adolphe remembered one or two sharp calamities which had befallen him for repeating his mother’s sayings when she was “in a tempest.” He would not speak.
“Adolphe, dear Adolphe, is he really come?” said Thérèse. Her eyes looked like stars; she put out her hands imploringly; she wanted to hear it again, but she believed it at once; she was so young that happiness seemed the most natural thing in the world. Of course he was come; her troubles were at an end; her heart felt as if it was dancing for joy. He was come; every thing was changed, forgotten; her youthfulness leaped up again; she looked kindly even on Octavie. “Where is he, dear children, is he here?”
Adolphe shook his head emphatically; he did not know what to say. Octavie, who believed that a great blunder had been committed, said, patronisingly,—
“You should not listen to him, mademoiselle: he does not understand.”
“Mamma said it,” cried Adolphe stoutly, determined to assert himself. But Thérèse was already flying down the stairs into the little salon. “Perhaps he is there,” she thought. Monsieur and madame, who were standing together in the middle of the room, turned hastily round as Thérèse came quickly in. It might have been the light, which was not burning very brightly or clearly, that made their faces look yellow and haggard, the notary’s especially. Perhaps they, too, believed they might have seen M. Saint-Martin, when the door opened so abruptly, and Thérèse, flushed, smiling, radiant, stood before them.
“Is he here?” she asked joyfully, though a momentary glance showed her that no one was in the room but monsieur and madame, who were speechless at a question which seemed to echo back their fears. Madame recovered herself instantly.
“To whom do you allude, mademoiselle?” she inquired with a politeness, to which Thérèse was a stranger.
The girl patted the ground impatiently. “To my cousin—to M. Saint-Martin. Adolphe tells me that he is come.”
“That boy romances—he is a droll,” said madame, holding up her hands and turning to her husband, with a little show of parental interest. “He means no harm; but he must not be allowed to make announcements so unfounded without correction. I shall—”
“What do you mean?” exclaimed Thérèse, with a sharp cry of disappointment.
“My poor mademoiselle,” said madame, taking hold of her hand, “you must not be angry with him, he is but a child; he has the heart of an angel, but he talks like a boy without knowing what he is about. Do you not suppose that I should have flown to tell you, had only Monsieur Saint-Martin—whom we so desire—arrived?”
“And it is not so? Oh, madame, are you sure?”
All the radiancy had gone; her eyes filled with tears. Madame, who was not yet sure what a day might bring forth, made her sit down, even kept her hand. Thérèse let her hold it, she was too stunned to be altogether conscious; a dull weight of disappointment had fallen upon her, from which she could not at once rally.
“I will tell you, my child. Ignace, some one is waiting to see you,” said madame, significantly; for the little man was still standing under the yellow light, looking from Thérèse to the door, as if another person might yet enter. “Now he is gone, and I will tell you all about it. There has been a letter from some foolish person—my husband would assure you that such idle jesters are never wanting—to hint that there was news to be heard of M. Saint-Martin. Poor Ignace! He has a good heart; he started off at once. ‘One should neglect nothing,’ he said to me, and he went away, deserting his business, and spending the day in leaving not a stone unturned. He has come back so weary! I must go and give him his soup.”
“And he heard nothing?” asked Thérèse, faintly.
“Absolutely nothing. I guessed how it would be, but I would not discourage him. You should not have had this disappointment, chère mademoiselle, but who could have expected that little droll to have put two and two together so cleverly?” said madame, smiling. “You find him almost too quick, do you not? and he has not Octavie’s admirable discretion. He is impetuous, like me.” Thérèse started up from her seat. “I will go to my room, since it is all a delusion,” she said, in a harsh, changed voice.
“You must not think too much of this Monsieur Saint-Martin,” said madame, with a little assumption of motherliness. “Men come and go, like the clouds; one can put no dependence upon them. And you shall not lose your home, let Monsieur Deshoulières say what he will. Allons, I have a heart!”
The girl made no answer. She stood motionless until madame had finished, then turned away, walked heavily out of the apartment, up the stairs, and into her own little room. There, with a low, bitter cry, which would no longer be repressed, she flung herself down by her bed. The cry, which at first was inarticulate, shaped itself into words: “Fabien, Fabien, I can bear this life no longer! Oh, why, why do you not come? It is so hard. Why have I all this to endure?”