Chapter Seventeen.
“One friend in that path shall be
To secure my steps from wrong;
One to count night day for me,
Patient through the watches long,
Serving most with none to see.”
R. Browning.
M. Deshoulières, who had not a moment to spare, paced up and down the bureau in a fever of impatience. M. Roulleau had slipped out directly his wife left the room: the doctor was too preoccupied to notice him at all, or he must have been struck with the terror in his face.
“Does monsieur say that M. Saint-Martin is actually in Charville?” he asked in a trembling voice, with his hand on the door.
“No. He is at Maury. There is barely time to meet the train. Will you hasten mademoiselle?”
And then he began to pace up and down with his watch in his hand. Nobody came. He opened the door, it was all silent. With a sigh—was it relief or disappointment?—he ran down the steps and hastened to the station. People who passed him said that M. Deshoulières was—giving up at last; there was a worn dragged look on his face, like that of a man under the first touch of illness. Poor man! There were two or three conflicting currents in his heart, such as wear lines before they have been running very long. An hour of their work will do more than a few years of age, who is but a slow labourer after all. Fabien was come—this man of whose love he had never known until he had given that away which now he could never more take back. Fabien had come, and there would be a marriage; and Thérèse would be carried away, and he—? Well, he should remain in Charville, go through that daily round so like, and yet so unlike, itself; worry the Préfet, be victimised by Veuve Angelin—it was not very interesting when he looked at it in this downright, colourless fashion, but still it was there; so far as a future could be foretold, this was the future to which he had to look forward. Most people have once or twice in their lives gone through that desolate time when before them stretches out a grey, cheerless, sunless prospect, a long dusty road, as it were, along which there must be a solitary plodding. Until we have tried it ourselves we cannot believe that, after all, the first view is the saddest part of it; that as we go along we come to hidden banks, in which starry flowers are blossoming—walls, painted with delicate bright lichen—tiny wayside streams—crystals in the dust—all manner of sweet surprises, and evermore above them all the eternal blue of heaven. Afterwards, when we are in the midst of them, we wonder how the dreary road has become so beautiful; but beforehand it appals us. Perhaps life never looked so sad to Max Deshoulières as in that little journey from Charville to Maury.
When he reached the station the sun was setting. From out of a yellow western sky, a great dusky red grey vapour stretched upwards half across the heavens, and on this again lay purple horizontal bands of cloud. The little town was within a stone’s throw of the station; a cluster of cold-looking ugly houses, and on an eminence a church, with a quaint tower running up between its low apse and the nave. M. Deshoulières made straight for the church, skirted it, and found himself in front of a bran-new hotel, having a narrow façade, a little court, and stiff evergreens ranged round in bright green tubs. “M. Saint-Martin? Certainly. Would monsieur have the goodness to pass this way?”
After all, it was rather ludicrous to come in this prosaic fashion upon the man whose absence had given rise to so many speculations. Max smiled to himself—a little sad smile with an aching heart—as he followed the polite waiter upstairs through a passage, into a room where two gentlemen rose to receive him. One he knew at once—the curé of Ardron. The other—Monsieur Fabien Saint-Martin.
For the first moment I doubt whether he understood much of what was passing; he was looking at Fabien. A young man—for that he was prepared, but somehow it forced itself upon him strangely—tall, slight, with quick, dark eyes, and an expression that did not please him about the mouth and jaw. This was his first, swift impression; his next was that there was a marked restraint and stiffness about the greeting he received. The young man made no attempt to speak, after a ceremonious bow; the curé, who had been writing, resumed his seat at the table. Max said, with a slight flush on his cheek, and with another bow,—