“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?