Unawares: A Story of an Old French Town

by Frances Mary Peard

“Is it true? Has Monsieur Moreau’s heir actually arrived?”

“Yes, Monsieur le Préfet,” said the curé, grimly. “I came to Charville with him for the purpose of ascertaining the meaning of certain suspicious circumstances connected with the will and the trusteeship.”

“What, those ridiculous reports about M. Deshoulières?”

“Ridiculous! I have your own letter confirming them.”

“Mine! My dear Monsieur le Curé, I must have been a great fool, if I wrote any thing so absurd. Ah, bah! I remember. I was irritated with him at one time, I believe—he had a mania, and worried me. But—M. Deshoulières! He is a hero, nothing less. There is to be a meeting to-morrow, to discuss some means of making known to him the gratitude of the town.”

At the Evêché it was the same. The Abbé laughed in his face. “He nettled me once, I acknowledge, but that was a trifle. I cannot tell you my feelings towards him now. Ask any of the clergy who worked with him in this last terrible three months. A mistake?—of course it was a mistake. All France has cause to be proud of M. Deshoulières. My dear friend, imagine your coming on such an errand!”

“Monsieur l’Abbé,” said the curé, sharply, “I only wish you people of Charville would appreciate your heroes a little beforehand.”

Poor Thérèse! That day was, probably, the most desolate in her life. Whichever way she looked every thing seemed blank and homeless. Something had gone away out of her heart; at first a great swelling indignation took its place; but this could not last. There are sudden deaths as well as lingering: her love had met with such an end; but all deaths must have their suffering. Almost his first words had done it. What was it in them? how was he different from the Fabien of old days? She sat by her window looking out over the gabled roofs at the plain and the far horizon, where sad-coloured clouds were creeping quietly up—with eager eyes that seemed to be searching an answer for the questions that were perplexing her. She was very miserable and sick at heart, but it was not so much with the loss of Fabien, as with the loss of love. It seemed to her as if, in spite of the slighting and the coldness, she ought to love him still—and she did not. It was the identical Fabien after all, though she tried to think otherwise. In the old contests with his uncle, the old impatience of control, weak resistance, attempts at self-assertion, there had been the same character, but she had set round it a little glow of her own, and covered up its imperfections until she had forgotten them. She had counted for love what was no more than a mixture of vanity and self-will. Old Moreau might have left Fabien alone in this matter, and he would have ended by marrying a dot. Or, again, a little hardship and real work would have quickly brought him back from South America. But the old man yearned after his prodigal. He smoothed his way for him, all the time writing fierce unforgiving letters demanding submission and return. Fabien, who soon found out where his good things came from, used to enjoy them comfortably, and mock at the threats which they contradicted. When at last they stopped he was a little uneasy, and wrote two letters; but he was receiving a good salary in an office, and there was no great difficulty in being supplied with money. M. Moreau’s feelings were pretty well-known in Rio. It seems sometimes in this world as if those unloving natures that shut their hearts against the sunshine around them are suffered to pour out all that they can give where they meet with no return. Perhaps that loving without response is at once their punishment and their blessing. Where all to us looks hard and barren rock, there is at least one little stream of water trickling down into the desert with unselfish bounty.

Fabien was the same—except that his faults and his weakness had in those three years become more prominent—but Thérèse missed the key to her puzzle, herself. It was she who had changed, while all the time she believed it to be Fabien. She had grown up with disadvantages of education like his own, but the nobler nature recognised a higher standard when it was given, and strained towards it. There was the difference. With all her faults and her visions of self-pleasing, she had not the vain satisfied contentment which sees nothing better nor more desirable than itself. She was always, almost unconsciously, wanting something beyond, and that desire is never ungratified. At a time when things seemed saddest, and all about her most mean and petty and discouraging, she was shown a glimpse of the most perfect thing this earth ever has to show—the heart of a good man. There was this in Thérèse—she recognised at once its goodness and its beauty, it showed her what somehow she had failed to see before. All work is not achieved by the same instruments, though we sometimes speak as if it were. Only it is God’s work always. And I think that after Thérèse knew Max Deshoulières—knew him as she did in a hundred more ways than there has been space to tell you about here—she unconsciously transferred his qualities to Fabien, his generosity, and patience, and manliness, and truth, and tenderness, so that she used to dream of Fabien with all these making him beautiful. As she rose herself, she could not but also raise that one who held so dear a portion of her heart. Absence softened down the little remembrances which might have interfered with her dreams. And then came the awakening—the awakening, and, alas! the contrast. It is not when we first see what is lovely that. We appreciate it most. It is when we come back to our former ideal. All the glory of mountains, and the vastness of their snow-fields, and the tender radiance of their sunsets, do not fill us with their beauty perfectly until we return and know for the first time how far they excel the things to which our eye had become accustomed—our common hills. It hurts our loyalty sometimes to acknowledge it, but we cannot help it—nay, we need not try to help it. The best is to be the best always.

But if you have ever felt this, you will know something of the feeling which was causing bitter pain to poor Thérèse, as she sat on the ground in her room, with her head on the window-sill, and her eyes filling with hot tears of shame. She had believed love to be eternal, and lo! it had died away out of her heart. She scarcely thought of his own coldness, of the studied way in which he had avoided any expression which should lead her to fancy they met on terms in any way resembling those in which they had parted. If his words had been like fire, she knew her feelings would not have been different—there, as I have said, was the sting. So ungenerous, so passionate, so weak! And yet she blamed herself for letting her love go. She was very young. She wanted some wise, tender heart on which to rest her head and so pour out her perplexities. But she had no one. Nannon, who had heard enough to make her furious, did not know what to say or what to think about it; she had sense enough to hold her tongue; at the same time it made a sort of restraint of which they were both conscious. Sister Gabrielle could not come to Thérèse; she was ministering to a more terrible grief in a sadder room. If she had come, I doubt whether the girl would not have been too shy to tell her pathetic little story. And so she sat there and let her eyes rest on the soft clouds and the Cathedral that carried upwards towards them its burden of earth voices, anguish, and joy; and wondered vaguely what was to come of it all, and whether she was to be left like a little waif and stray in this hard forgetful world. Pity her a little—my poor Thérèse! It was hard for her. She was solitary and young, with no one on whom to lavish innocent girlish caresses, no one to pet or to scold—or to cherish her. Even the sweet joy of helpfulness, which had taken the bitterness out of her solitude, could not quite heal the pang.