“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.
Chapter Five.
“Lo, as some innocent and eager maiden
Leans o’er the wistful limit of the world,
Dreams of the glow and glory of the distance,
Wonderful wooing and the grace of tears,
Dreams with what eyes and what a sweet insistance
Lovers are waiting in the hidden years.”
P.W.H. Myers.
Thérèse was really grateful to the Roulleaus for their concession, grateful and a little touched by what seemed honest delicacy of feeling. Madame Roulleau, who could dig like a mole when she wanted to find out a character, had been digging and burrowing while her husband was at Ardron, and knew pretty well by this time what strings to pull. People who have this sort of shrewdness can see a good deal without going far down; she did not reach the depths, but she was quite satisfied. It was not worth her while to study all the complexities of the girl’s nature, if she had tried doing so she would have had a baffling task, for there were plenty of contradictions about it. Probably Thérèse’s education had something to do with all the contrarieties and incongruities which met you at every turn—she was tender and hard, resolute and timid, generous and distrustful; it was impossible to know which of the opposing qualities would come uppermost: a great hopefulness, perhaps, impressed you the most. It was not insensibility to, but an inborn dread of the sadnesses of life which made her cling to the bright side. In spite of what they may say, there are people who find a certain sort of enjoyment in trouble, they like to be made to weep over fictitious distresses, there is a chord in them which responds at once to any call for sympathy. Thérèse was not one of these people to whom we turn in our sorrows, sure at least of being understood, if we are not helped. As yet she was impatient of sorrow, eager for happiness. She hated tragedies, sad books, minor music. As I have said, it was not that such things did not touch her—perhaps if she had been indifferent she would not have minded them so much—but her nature rose up in rebellion against them: they were part of Adam’s curse. She had not learned that, after all, through the Infinite Love that uses sorrow and suffering for instruments, they have caught a Divine beauty, a sweet solemn loveliness which by degrees reveals itself and wins our hearts. Thérèse believed only in one kind of happiness—our wills gratified, our dreams realised, all the little idols we have set up smiling down upon us from their pedestals: as we go on in life we find out sometimes that it was well our idols were shattered for us, or we might have been crushed under their weight; but Thérèse had no fear of this. She thought of herself as if some day all her longings must be satisfied, her troubles ended and laid aside, every thing completed, rounded off, and perfect. After that, I think there came a golden haze. There is something half-pathetic, half-comforting, in this unlimited faith in coming happiness. We see where it fails, but every now and then it acts upon our wearier spirits like a breath of immortality.
Thérèse had already met with enough to daunt her in her little life, although it had not had that effect; she looked upon all the roughnesses of the road, so far, as things extraneous, and not altogether belonging to her existence. Whatever part of her they affected it was not her belief in the rose-coloured days that were coming. That stood unshaken. Nor while it lasted could she be said to have lost her courage; yet it had grown to have a strange admixture of timidity since she went—a bold brave child—to live at Rouen. Her heart used to swell, and her cheeks flush, when M. Moreau was harsh to her aunt, to Fabien; but her woman’s nature, though it resented his treatment, quailed before it. Once or twice she had resisted him, but all the time she was terribly frightened. Poor Thérèse! she was only a girl, and he had every thing on his side except right, as she used to say to herself indignantly, half angry at her own weakness.
Madame Moreau was a large feeble woman, who scarcely ventured to think without her husband’s permission. She was so passive under his provocations that you were inclined to wonder whether she had been so from the first, or whether, after he had frightened the spirit out of her, nature had avenged herself by giving her this impervious armour. Thérèse’s little fiery outbreaks on her behalf were always wasted. They were much more appreciated by Fabien; he incited her to them, and she was too generous to notice that she was left to bear the consequences alone. He was her hero, over whom she rang her little changes of admiration: when he told her that he loved her, instead of formally beforehand requesting her hand from her uncle, she promised, with her grey eyes shining straight into his, and all her heart in her words, never to give him up. Fabien promised the same. “Every thing,” says an old writer, “has a double handle, or at least we have two hands by which to apprehend it.” I suppose it was so with this promise.