THE GIRL WHO BELIEVED IN THE SAINTS
Marie Verine was a good girl, but she was not beautiful or clever. She lived with her mother in one flat of an ordinary-looking house in a small Swiss town. Had they been poorer or richer there might have been something picturesque about their way of life, but, as it was, there was nothing. Their pleasures were few and simple; yet they were happier than most people are—but this they did not know.
'It is a pity we are not richer and have not more friends,' Madame Verine would remark, 'for then we could perhaps get Marie a husband; as it is, there is no chance.'
Madame Verine usually made this remark to the Russian lady who lived upstairs. The Russian lady had a name that could not be pronounced; she spoke many languages, and took an interest in everything. She would reply—
'No husband! It is small loss. I have seen much of the world.'
Marie had seen little of the world, and she did not believe the Russian lady. She never said anything about it, except at her prayers, and then she used to ask the saints to pray for her that she might have a husband.
Now, in a village about half a day's journey from the town where Marie dwelt, there lived a young girl whose name was Céleste. Her mother had named her thus because her eyes were blue as the sky above, and her face was round as the round moon, and her hair and eyelashes were like sunbeams, or like moonlight when it shines in yellow halo through the curly edges of summer clouds. The good people of this village were a hard-working, hard-headed set of men and women. While Céleste's father lived they had waxed proud about her beauty, for undoubtedly she was a credit to the place; but when her parents died, and left her needy, they said she must go to the town and earn her living.
Céleste laughed in her sleeve when they told her this, because young Fernand, the son of the inn-keeper, had been wooing and winning her heart, in a quiet way, for many a day; and now she believed in him, and felt sure that he would speak his love aloud and take her home to his parents. To be sure, it was unknown in that country for a man who had money to marry a girl who had none; but Fernand was strong to work and to plan; Céleste knew that he could do what he liked.
It was the time when the April sun smiles upon the meadow grass till it is very green and long enough to wave in the wind, and all amongst it the blue scilla flowers are like dewdrops reflecting the blue that hangs above the gnarled arms of the still leafless walnut trees. The cottage where Céleste lived was out from the village, among the meadows, and to the most hidden side of it young Fernand came on the eve of the day on which she must leave it for ever. Very far off the snow mountains had taken on their second flush of evening red before he came, and Céleste had grown weary waiting.
'Good-bye,' said Fernand. He was always a somewhat stiff and formal young man, and to-night he was ill at ease.
'But,' cried Céleste—and here she wept—'you have made me love you. I love no one in the world but you.'
'You are foolish,' said he. 'It is, of course, a pity that we must part, but it cannot be helped. You have no dowry, not even a small one. It would be unthrifty for the son of an innkeeper to marry a girl without a sou. My parents would not allow me to act so madly!' and his manner added—'nor would I be so foolish myself.'
Next day Céleste went up to the town, and went into the market-place to be hired as a servant.
This was the day of the spring hiring. Many servants were wanting work, and they stood in the market-place. All around were the old houses of the square; there was the church and the pastor's house, and the house and office of the notary, and many other houses standing very close together, with high-peaked roofs and gable windows. The sun shone down, lighting the roofs, throwing eaves and niches into strong shadow, gleaming upon yellow bowls and dishes, upon gay calicoes, upon cheese and sausages, on all bright things displayed on the open market-stalls, and upon the faces of the maid-servants who stood to be hired. Many ladies of the town went about seeking servants: among them was Madame Verine, and the Russian lady and Marie were with her. When they came in front of Céleste they all stopped.
'Ah, what eyes!' said the Russian lady—'what simple, innocent, trustful eyes! In these days how rare!'
'She is like a flower,' said Marie.
Now, they quickly found out that Céleste knew very little about the work she would have to do; it was because of this she had not yet found a mistress.
'I myself would delight to teach her,' cried the Russian lady.
'And I,' cried Marie. So Madame Verine took her home.
They taught Céleste many things. Marie taught her to cook and to sew; the Russian lady taught her to write and to cipher, and was surprised at the progress she made, especially in writing. Céleste was the more interesting to them because there was just a shade of sadness in her eye. One day she told Marie why she was sad; it was the story of Fernand, how he had used her ill.
'What a shame!' cried Marie, when the brief facts were repeated.
'It is the way of the country,' said the Russian lady. 'These Swiss peasants, who have so fair a reputation for sobriety, are mercenary above all: they have no heart.'
Céleste lived with Madame Verine for one year. At the end of that time Madame Verine arose one morning to find the breakfast was not cooked, nor the fire lit. In the midst of disorder stood Céleste, with flushed cheeks and startled eyes, and a letter in her hand.
'Ah, madam,' she faltered, 'what a surprise! The letter, it is from monsieur the notary, who lives in the market-place, and to me, madam—to me!'
When Madame Verine took the letter she found told therein that an aunt of Céleste, who had lived far off in the Jura, was dead, and had left to Céleste a little fortune of five thousand francs, which was to be paid to her when she was twenty-one, or on her marriage day.
'Ah,' cried Céleste, weeping, 'can it be true? Can it be true?'
'Of course, since monsieur the notary says so.'
'Ah, madam; let me run and see monsieur the notary. Let me just ask him, and hear from his lips that it is true!'
So she ran out into the town, with her apron over her head, and Marie made the breakfast.
The Russian lady came down to talk it over. 'The pretty child is distraught, and at so small a piece of good fortune!' said she.
But when Céleste came in she was more composed. 'It is true,' she said, with gentle joy, and she stood before them breathless and blushing.
'It will be three years before you are twenty-one,' said Madame Verine; 'you will remain with me.'
'If you please, madam, no,' said Céleste, modestly casting down her eyes; 'I must go to my native village.'
'How!' they cried. 'To whom will you go?'
Céleste blushed the more deeply, and twisted her apron. 'I have good clothes; I have saved my year's wages. I will put up at the inn. The wife of the innkeeper will be a mother to me now I can pay for my lodging.'
At which Madame Verine looked at the Russian lady, and that lady looked at her, and said behind her hand, 'Such a baby, and so clever! It is the mere instinct of wisdom; it cannot be called forethought.'
It is to be observed that, all the world over, however carefully a mistress may guard her maid-servant, no great responsibility is felt when the engagement is broken. Madame Verine shrugged her shoulders and got another servant. Céleste went down to her village.
After that, when Marie walked in the market-place, she used to like to look at the notary's house, and at him, if she could espy him in the street. The house was a fine one, and the notary, in spite of iron-grey hair and a keen eye, good-looking; but that was not why Marie was interested; it was because he and his office seemed connected with the romance of life—with Céleste's good fortune.
When summer days grew long, Madame Verine, her friend and daughter, took a day's holiday, and out of good nature they went to see Céleste.
'Céleste lives like a grand lady now,' cried the innkeeper's wife, on being questioned. 'She will have me take her coffee to her in bed each morning.'
'The wages she has saved will not hold out long,' said the visitors.
'When that is finished she gives us her note of hand for the money she will get when she is married. She has shown us the notary's letter. It is certainly a tidy sum she will have, and our son has some thoughts of marrying.'
They saw Céleste, who was radiant; they saw young Fernand, who was paying his court to her. They returned home satisfied.
It was not long after that when one morning Céleste came into Madame Verine's house; she was weeping on account of the loss of some of her money. She had come up to town, she said, to buy her wedding clothes, for which the notary had been so good as to advance her a hundred francs, but her pocket had been picked in the train. The money was gone—quite gone—alas!
So tearful was she that they lent her some money—not much, but a little. Then she dried her eyes, and said she would also get some things on credit, promising to pay in a month, for it was then she was to be married. At the end of the day she came back gaily to show her treasures.
'When the rejoicings of your wedding are over,' said Madame Verine, 'and your husband brings you to town to claim the money, you may stay here in the upper room of this house—it is an invitation.'
In a month came the wedding pair, joyful and blooming. The Russian lady made them a supper. They lodged in an attic room that Madame Verine rented. In the morning they went out, dressed in their best, to see the notary.
An hour later Madame Verine sat in her little salon. The floor was of polished wood; it shone in the morning light; so did all the polished curves of the chairs and cabinets. Marie was practising exercises on the piano.
They heard a heavy step on the stair. The bridegroom came into the room, agitated, unable to ask permission to enter. He strode across the floor and sat down weakly before the ladies.
They thought he had been drinking wine, but this was not so, although his eye was bloodshot and his voice unsteady.
'Can you believe it!' he cried, 'the notary never wrote letters to her; there was no aunt; there is no money!'
'It is incredible,' said Madame Verine, and then there was a pause of great astonishment.
'It is impossible!' cried the Russian lady, who had come in.
'It is true,' said the bridegroom hoarsely; and he wept.
And now Céleste herself came into the house. She came within the room, and looked at the ladies, who stood with hands upraised, and at her weeping husband. If you have ever enticed a rosy-faced child to bathe in the sea, and seen it stand half breathless, half terrified, yet trying hard to be brave, you know just the expression that was on the face of the child-like deceiver. With baby-like courage she smiled upon them all.
Now the next person who entered the room was the notary himself. He was a gentleman of manners; he bowed with great gallantry to the ladies, not excepting Céleste.
'She is a child, and has had no chance to learn the arts of cunning,' cried the Russian lady, who had thought that she knew the world.
The notary bowed to her in particular. 'Madam, the true artist is born, not made.'
Then he looked at Céleste again. There were two kinds of admiration in his glance—one for her face, the other for her cleverness. He looked at the weeping husband with no admiration at all, but the purpose in his mind was steady as his clear grey eye, unmoved by emotion.
'I have taken the trouble to walk so far,' said he, 'to tell this young man what, perhaps, I ought to have mentioned when he was at my office. Happily, the evil can be remedied. It is the law of our land that if the fortune has been misrepresented, a divorce can be obtained.'
Céleste's courage vanished with her triumph. She covered her face. The husband had turned round; he was looking eagerly at the notary and at his cowering bride.
'Ah, Heaven!' cried the two matrons, 'must it be?'
'I have walked so far to advise,' said the notary.
All this time Marie was sitting upon the piano-stool; she had turned it half-way round so that she could look at the people. She was not pretty, but, as the morning light struck full upon her face, she had the comeliness that youth and health always must have; and more than that, there was the light of a beautiful soul shining through her eyes, for Marie was gentle and submissive, but her mind and spirit were also strong; the individual character that had grown in silence now began to assert itself with all the beauty of a new thing in the world. Marie had never acted for herself before.
She began to speak to the notary simply, eagerly, as one who could no longer keep silence.
'It would be wrong to separate them, monsieur.'
Madame Verine chid Marie; the notary, no doubt just because he was a man and polite, answered her.
'This brave young fellow does not deserve to be thus fooled. I shall be glad to lend him my aid to extricate himself.'
'He does deserve it,' cried Marie. 'Long ago he pretended to have love for her, just for the pleasure of it, when he had not—that is worse than pretending to have money! And in any case, it is a wicked law, monsieur, that would grant a divorce when they are married, and—look now—left to himself he will forgive her, but he is catching at what you say. You have come here to tempt him! You dare not go on, monsieur!'
'Dare not, mademoiselle?' said the notary, with a superior air.
'No, monsieur. Think of what the good God and the holy saints would say! This poor girl has brought much punishment on herself, but—ah, monsieur, think of the verdict of Heaven!'
'Mademoiselle,' said the notary haughtily, 'I was proposing nothing but justice; but it is no affair of mine.' And with that he went out brusquely—very brusquely for a gentleman of such polite manners.
'I am astonished at you, Marie,' said Madame Verine. This was true, but it was meant as a reproach.
'She is beside herself with compassion,' said the Russian lady; 'but that is just what men of the world despise most.'
Then Marie went to her room weeping, and the two ladies talked to Céleste till her soft face had hard lines about the mouth and her eyes were defiant. Young Fernand slipped out and went again to the market-place.
'I come to ask your aid, monsieur the notary.'
'I do not advise you.'
'But, monsieur, to whom else can I apply?'
'I am too busy,' said the notary.
Fernand and Céleste walked back to their village, hand in hand, both downcast, both peevish, but still together.
Now the notary was not what might be called a bad man himself, but he believed that the world was very bad. He had seen much to confirm this belief, and had not looked in the right place to find any facts that would contradict it. This belief had made him hard and sometimes even dishonest in his dealings with men; for what is the use of being good in a world that can neither comprehend goodness nor admire it? On the whole, the notary was much better satisfied with himself than with human nature around him, although, if he had only known it, he himself had grown to be the reflex—the image as in a mirror—of what he thought other men were; it is always so. There was just this much truth in him at the bottom of his scorn and grumbling—he flattered himself that if he could see undoubted virtue he could admire it; and there was in him that possibility of grace.
After he left Madame Verine's door he thought with irritation of the girl who had rebuked him. Then he began to remember that she was only a woman and very young, and she had appealed to his heart—ah, yes, he had a heart. After all, he was not sure but that her appeal was charming. Then he thought of her with admiration. This was not the result of Marie's words—words in themselves are nothing; it is the personality of the speaker that makes them live or die, and personality is strongest when nourished long in virtue and silence and prayer. When it came to pass that the notary actually did the thing Marie told him to do, he began to think of her even with tenderness in his heart.
Now a very strange thing happened. In about a week the notary called on Madame Verine a second time; he greeted her with all ceremony, and then he sat down on a little stiff chair and explained his business in his own brief, dry way.
Marie was not there. The little salon, all polished and shining, gave faint lights and shadows in answer to every movement of its inmates. Madame Verine, in a voluminous silk gown, sat all attention, looking at the notary; she thought he was a very fine man, quite a great personage, and undoubtedly handsome.
'Madam,' began he, 'I am, as you know, at middle age, yet a bachelor, and the reason, to be plain with you, is that I have not believed in women. Pardon me, I would not be rude, but I am a business man. I have no delusions left, yet it has occurred to me that a young woman who would make the lives of the saints her rule of life—I do not believe in such things myself, but—in short, madam, I ask for your daughter in marriage.'
He said it as if he was doing quite a kind thing, as, indeed, he thought he was. Madame Verine thought so too, and with great astonishment, and even some apologies, gave away her daughter with grateful smiles.
Marie was married to the notary, and he made her very happy. At first she was happy because he had good manners and she had such a loving heart that she loved him. After a few years he found out that she was too good for him, and then he became a better man.