Chapter Eleven.
“Like sun above, a woman’s love
Must have its destined way;
To some great gain, to others pain,
And wherefore who can say?
But be it bliss or wretchedness,
In reason man must own
That it is true, and nothing new,
She loves for love alone.”
Poor Thérèse’s hope seemed to desert her terribly after that disappointment. Madame, who, for a few days, was polite and kind in a spasmodic sort of fashion, fell back into her old ways, when nothing more was heard of the appointment at the Lion d’Or. Thérèse used to feel strange alternations of listlessness and indignation creeping over her. At times it was as if a life was closing round her against which it was hopeless to rebel,—a life which was relentless and overpowering; at times her heart cried out passionately against her oppressors. She accepted whatever was put upon her with a dull kind of aching, but without a protest. She was young and healthy, so that although her cheek lost its roundness, her strength did not absolutely give way; but the grief she suffered was too much mixed with bitterness, and too repressed from outward signs, not to be hurtful even physically. It seemed to her as if all the world were against her—M. Deshoulières, Monsieur and Madame Roulleau; even Fabien, in his far-away home, had renounced her. Yet she never ceased to love him. Only hope was shaken, because faith had never been strong in poor Thérèse. Her childhood had been loveless; the child had little teaching,—teaching, that is, which should make her strive after high things, or shape her little life after a holier pattern than those she saw around her. She believed her aunt Ferdinande to have been a good woman, but it was a goodness so weak and despairing that the girl despised it. It seemed to her as if this world she lived in was one where might, however unjust, carried the day. Where trust should have been there was a void in her heart, from which sprang no comfort, only bitterness and rebellion.
This year the winter at Charville set in with strange fits and starts. The owners of thermometers took a proud delight in electrifying their neighbours by reports of sudden rises and falls in their favourite study. There came sharp frosts, even snow. The river flowed like an inky stream between white banks; icicles froze round the stone fountain; there was what old Nannon called a jolie gelée—a certain keen, bitter beauty in the harmonies of white and grey, in the snow-laden boughs, in the great sweep of plain and sky. The women clattered home from market, instead of staying to gossip by the way. Little Dutch-like children, with shrieks of ecstasy, made slides down the steep streets, to the peril of the limbs of passers-by; old people crouched round the stoves, to get what warmth they could in their miserable houses. Instead of this weather lasting, however, there followed abrupt thaws, soft damp days, quite unlike the time of year. The Charville people hardly knew what to make of it. “The cold is unpleasant, but when one has made up one’s mind, it may as well come,” grumbled old André, the wood-cutter. That is the way with some of us. We are half angry when the evil we have prognosticated is mercifully averted.
On one of these mild afternoons Madame Roulleau took her two children to pay a visit of ceremony; Octavie arrayed in a silk frock, which had been sent to Thérèse with her other possessions—not many—from Ardron, and which she had cut up for Octavie in those first days when she hoped to please. Little Roulleau was in his office; Nannon came to the door to find out whether mademoiselle wanted her, and at the same moment arrived Monsieur Deshoulières.
“Bonjour, Nannon,” he said, cheerfully. “So mademoiselle is in the house?”
“She may have gone out with Madame Roulleau,” replied Nannon with unblushing promptitude. “As monsieur sees, I have just come.”
“No, I saw madame and her children in the distance. Have the goodness to ask mademoiselle to give me the pleasure of five minutes’ conversation in the salon.”