Chapter Nineteen.

Chapter Nineteen.“And thou, as one that once declined,When he was little more than boy,On some unworthy heart with joy,But lives to wed an equal mind.”In Memoriam.Monsieur le Curé had his own little mortifications to endure before he got back to his study in the presbytère at Ardron. On his way to the Evêché he encountered the Préfet, who loved a little gossip, and stopped him at once.“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 adot. 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.M. Deshoulières did not come near her all that day. He, too, was suffering. A hundred hopes and fears and doubts gave him no peace. He cared not asoufor this retractation, which to the curé seemed such a mighty matter; but his wrath blazed out against Fabien when he thought of Thérèse. He dared not go to her. If he had known of what her heart was full, he would have acted otherwise, but he felt as if, poor child, it would be an intrusion upon her humiliation. Her love had died; he thought of it as still struggling, hoping, clinging. They were not his own wrongs, but hers, which made him so stern and abrupt in his interview with Fabien and his lawyer on the following day.No news came of the little notary. After Madame Roulleau’s confession, however, there could be no difficulty about the will. But there was a clause which the lawyer read slowly, and to which M. Deshoulières, who knew what was coming, listened with knitted brows. A clause which bequeathed a small sum for the maintenance of Mademoiselle Thérèse Veuillot while she remained in Charville, “or until she be otherwise provided for by Monsieur Fabien Saint-Martin.”M. Laurent paused. Fabien said, with a little laugh,—“Ah! I remember. I used to have atendressefor thebelle Thérèse. I suppose my uncle thought it might come to something. The sum is not much; it may as well be continued.Allons, M. Laurent, pass on.”To tell the truth, he had begun to be afraid of M. Deshoulières; but he had never so much cause to be afraid as at that moment. Nevertheless Max, still thinking of her, put a strong restraint upon himself, since that secret of hers must be sacred from all the world. He went slowly away from the Cygne when all his disagreeable work there was at an end. A train was nearly due, and the country people were flocking down to the station with empty baskets, and a merry confusion of shrill voices. It was pretty generally known what the meeting was arranging that day: he was not thinking about it when he found himself in the midst of a little hubbub of congratulations and smiling faces. It was so spontaneous that he was greatly touched; he broke away as soon as he could, but the warm homely blessings pursued him. Just as he reached the Cathedral, he saw Thérèse and Nannon going in. He followed her; she did not see him, but they were kneeling near one another, the vast length of the Cathedral stretched before them, with rich deep shadows. All the light came through gorgeous panes of sapphire, ruby, orange: it was indescribably beautiful and solemn. As she carried back her chair she saw him, and they went out together. The old women sitting in the porch and sellingbriochecakes, all knew of what was going on at the Préfecture, and stopped their knitting to nod and smile. Max, who only thought of Thérèse, looked at her sad face with an infinite pity in his heart.“Where are you going?” he asked.“I do not know,” she said, wearily. “The funeral has been to-day, and poor madame cannot bear to see me. I came out because I thought she wished me away.”“If mademoiselle stays in that miserable house she will die,” said Nannon, bluntly.“Come this way,” he said.He led her down through the little narrow street to the Place where his own house was. Except a fewbonnetwith their charges, the little space under the trees was deserted. They sat down together on one of the green seats, and Nannon chatted with a little fat girl and her nurse, who were solemnly throwing a ball backward and forward with profound interest in their faces. Max was not quite clear how to begin, when Thérèse forestalled him.“I cannot bear to think of what you have endured for us,” she said gently. “You have been so kind a friend, and this must seem like such terrible ingratitude! I could not understand it all—so much has come at the same time,”—she said, with a little trembling hesitation in her voice which made him long to break out into passionate pleading. But he answered her very quietly.“You need not think about it any more. Such a mistake could only be troublesome for a day or two. And when M. Moreau made his will, his choice of me as a trustee was sufficiently unaccountable to set tongues wagging. The very fact of my being his medical attendant then prevented any possibility of my benefiting under his will, as we all knew; but I suppose there are always people who think that money sticks in the fingering.”She shook her head. “Fabien should not have believed it.”“But remember,” he said, more eagerly than he might have done if it had not been his rival whom he was defending—“there were quite enough odd circumstances to make him suspicious. I ought not to have left matters as I did in Roulleau’s hands. You should recollect this. M. Saint-Martin had actual ground for his suspicions.” Thérèse paused for a moment before she answered.“It was afterwards—when he knew they were false.”“It is hard to shake off impressions.”What could he say? His heart was torn in a hundred ways. He longed to help her—he feared to hurt her. When he looked at her sad face, all the anger in his nature leaped up against Fabien, and yet the very strength of his feelings made him fear to be ungenerous. Was it, indeed, all over between them? “About yourself?” he went on at last.“Ah, yes, about myself. Your troubles are not at an end, you see,” she said, with a little quivering attempt at playfulness. “Am I to go on living with Madame Roulleau?”“I am afraid it will not do for you at all. I do not like your being there even now.”“But I am not so sure. I have been thinking about it a great deal. At first I remembered that she used to say I was an expense; but yesterday, do you recollect, she said that the money they had from me was what they wanted? If I went away, do you think she would be poorer? or is it too little to help them?”“I am sure it helps them,” said M. Deshoulières, hesitating slightly.“And yet it seems to be very little. How much did my uncle leave me exactly?”“A thousand francs a year,” he said, still reluctantly.“And that is all they have had? Ah, no, I perceive. Oh, what have you been doing!” she cried, her eyes filling with tears.He turned away from them almost abruptly. “Bah!” he said. “Of course adépositairehas to see to such little things. That is nothing. You should rather blame me for the bad choice I made. I will tell you what strikes me. There is a Madame Aubert here, an excellent woman, whose husband has but lately died, and whose daughter is delicate and wants a companion of her own age. I think you might be very happy there, provided,”—his voice trembled—“provided you desire to remain in Charville?”“Where could I go?” she said, with heavy tears dropping from her eyes. “I wonder whether in all France there is any one so friendless as I am.” It was spoken under her breath, but he caught the forlorn words.“Thérèse!” he said passionately. “Thérèse!—”She half rose from the seat, turning on him a frightened face. He stopped her.“Hear me at least,” he said. “I ask nothing—nothing: I would not pain you, no, not for all the joy which a word of yours might bring. I have not forgotten what you told me,—if you repeat it now, my Thérèse, I swear your love shall be to me as sacred a thing as it has been since I heard it from your lips. If it is so, I will say only, forgive me, and trust me once more. But, if things are not as they were—if—if—” His great frame shook with emotion, he put out his hands, his voice was choked. Then he recovered himself with a strong effort. “Thérèse, is there any hope?”She was silent. What was this rush of tenderness which swept across her heart? What was this great contentment which seemed suddenly to calm all the sadness and the wounds and the self reproach of the past days? Could it be new, this feeling which seemed to fill her whole being with a sense of unutterable happiness? Ah, no, more likely all this time it had been growing in her unawares. More likely, as has been said before, she had taken his goodness, and his nobility, and his tenderness, and had set them up in her heart, and called the image Fabien. She had done it in good faith, all unconsciously, only she had been treasuring a shadow; and, lo! there came a waft, and the shadow was gone. It may have been strange that the awakening had not come before; nevertheless it had not. She had been faithful to Fabien, but it was to Fabien dressed in M. Deshoulières’ virtues. Sometimes those deceptions are very terrible. With the real knowledge there comes every now and then a blank, or, what is worse, the terrible word, “too late.” One is thankful that for this poor little Thérèse there were better things, and that circumstances occurred to show her Fabien’s character at once without the veil which might have carried on the deception and made her burden infinitely harder. She was silent. But over her face there came a soft, tender flush, her sweet eyes looked shyly up into his.“Is there any hope?” he said again, bending over her, and speaking in a low, quick, eager tone.And then into his outstretched hands she put her own...Before they went home she told him all that had troubled her. And he, in his turn, told her something. He showed her the little dull balcony between the trees, where once he had pictured her sitting waiting, in the warm glow of light. They went a little nearer, these two, and looked at it. Nannon, who was getting rather tired of her play with the sturdy little woman who went solemnly through her pranks, came across, and asked what they were talking about.“We are settling a new dress for mademoiselle,” said M. Deshoulières, his honest blue eyes brimming over with fun. “It must be white and something shiny.”“White and shiny! That will be a bride’s dress,” cried Nannon, all her teeth showing. “So that is it, mademoiselle? I am as happy as a little cat. There is a little good news come at last; for, what with fevers and wickednesses, and that angel of a Jean-Marie wanting to go for a drummer ever since he saw the last review, I can scarcely sleep at night. And monsieur is going to have a deputation and the thanks of the town—has he heard?”They went back slowly through the narrow tangled streets, and past the Evêché into the Place Notre Dame. There rose the Cathedral, golden with the glow of the autumnal sun; there stood the serene statues encompassing it solemnly. Little dappled ranks of clouds rested quietly on the blue heavens, the jackdaws flew in and out of their carved homes; two great hawks that lived up there with them swooped lazily along, or hung poised in midair. After the stifling oppression of the summer, this cool, sweet autumn came with a sense of delicious relief. These two had their hearts almost too full for speech, but I do not know that silence was not as sweet to both. I do not know that we can leave them better than here, under the shadow of the great Cathedral, in the glow of the golden sunshine.The little notary had disappeared, and, except the fact that he had not been seen at Tours, nothing could be ascertained about him. Whether he fled from the fever, his wife, or Monsieur Saint-Martin, remained also an open question for Charville to decide. He never came back again, that was the only sure point. Thérèse went to Madame Aubert for a little while, for Madame Roulleau, when no tidings arrived from her husband, left Charville—a broken-down woman. M. Deshoulières best knows where she is gone. And Fabien is reported to have married a widow, rich and noble, and to live in superb apartments in Paris.Charville has not changed very much, after all. Something has been done, but it remains still almost the same picturesque, shadowy, dirty old town. Down by the stone fountain the women chatter and gossip as shrilly as ever, and drown the undertone of the river; the sun shines softly upon the yellow cornfields, and the tall gabled roofs, and the Cathedral that crowns them all. One fancies it is a little like a life. Above broken imperfections, above din and jar and fret, there rises evermore the something higher towards which our eyes may turn, our weary feet may press. If it were not so, we should be lingering in the cornfields and in the streets for ever. But when we once have felt that other beauty, its desire can never again go out of our souls. And there are many ways by which we are led upwards.

“And thou, as one that once declined,When he was little more than boy,On some unworthy heart with joy,But lives to wed an equal mind.”In Memoriam.

Monsieur le Curé had his own little mortifications to endure before he got back to his study in the presbytère at Ardron. On his way to the Evêché he encountered the Préfet, who loved a little gossip, and stopped him at once.

“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 adot. 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.

M. Deshoulières did not come near her all that day. He, too, was suffering. A hundred hopes and fears and doubts gave him no peace. He cared not asoufor this retractation, which to the curé seemed such a mighty matter; but his wrath blazed out against Fabien when he thought of Thérèse. He dared not go to her. If he had known of what her heart was full, he would have acted otherwise, but he felt as if, poor child, it would be an intrusion upon her humiliation. Her love had died; he thought of it as still struggling, hoping, clinging. They were not his own wrongs, but hers, which made him so stern and abrupt in his interview with Fabien and his lawyer on the following day.

No news came of the little notary. After Madame Roulleau’s confession, however, there could be no difficulty about the will. But there was a clause which the lawyer read slowly, and to which M. Deshoulières, who knew what was coming, listened with knitted brows. A clause which bequeathed a small sum for the maintenance of Mademoiselle Thérèse Veuillot while she remained in Charville, “or until she be otherwise provided for by Monsieur Fabien Saint-Martin.”

M. Laurent paused. Fabien said, with a little laugh,—

“Ah! I remember. I used to have atendressefor thebelle Thérèse. I suppose my uncle thought it might come to something. The sum is not much; it may as well be continued.Allons, M. Laurent, pass on.”

To tell the truth, he had begun to be afraid of M. Deshoulières; but he had never so much cause to be afraid as at that moment. Nevertheless Max, still thinking of her, put a strong restraint upon himself, since that secret of hers must be sacred from all the world. He went slowly away from the Cygne when all his disagreeable work there was at an end. A train was nearly due, and the country people were flocking down to the station with empty baskets, and a merry confusion of shrill voices. It was pretty generally known what the meeting was arranging that day: he was not thinking about it when he found himself in the midst of a little hubbub of congratulations and smiling faces. It was so spontaneous that he was greatly touched; he broke away as soon as he could, but the warm homely blessings pursued him. Just as he reached the Cathedral, he saw Thérèse and Nannon going in. He followed her; she did not see him, but they were kneeling near one another, the vast length of the Cathedral stretched before them, with rich deep shadows. All the light came through gorgeous panes of sapphire, ruby, orange: it was indescribably beautiful and solemn. As she carried back her chair she saw him, and they went out together. The old women sitting in the porch and sellingbriochecakes, all knew of what was going on at the Préfecture, and stopped their knitting to nod and smile. Max, who only thought of Thérèse, looked at her sad face with an infinite pity in his heart.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“I do not know,” she said, wearily. “The funeral has been to-day, and poor madame cannot bear to see me. I came out because I thought she wished me away.”

“If mademoiselle stays in that miserable house she will die,” said Nannon, bluntly.

“Come this way,” he said.

He led her down through the little narrow street to the Place where his own house was. Except a fewbonnetwith their charges, the little space under the trees was deserted. They sat down together on one of the green seats, and Nannon chatted with a little fat girl and her nurse, who were solemnly throwing a ball backward and forward with profound interest in their faces. Max was not quite clear how to begin, when Thérèse forestalled him.

“I cannot bear to think of what you have endured for us,” she said gently. “You have been so kind a friend, and this must seem like such terrible ingratitude! I could not understand it all—so much has come at the same time,”—she said, with a little trembling hesitation in her voice which made him long to break out into passionate pleading. But he answered her very quietly.

“You need not think about it any more. Such a mistake could only be troublesome for a day or two. And when M. Moreau made his will, his choice of me as a trustee was sufficiently unaccountable to set tongues wagging. The very fact of my being his medical attendant then prevented any possibility of my benefiting under his will, as we all knew; but I suppose there are always people who think that money sticks in the fingering.”

She shook her head. “Fabien should not have believed it.”

“But remember,” he said, more eagerly than he might have done if it had not been his rival whom he was defending—“there were quite enough odd circumstances to make him suspicious. I ought not to have left matters as I did in Roulleau’s hands. You should recollect this. M. Saint-Martin had actual ground for his suspicions.” Thérèse paused for a moment before she answered.

“It was afterwards—when he knew they were false.”

“It is hard to shake off impressions.”

What could he say? His heart was torn in a hundred ways. He longed to help her—he feared to hurt her. When he looked at her sad face, all the anger in his nature leaped up against Fabien, and yet the very strength of his feelings made him fear to be ungenerous. Was it, indeed, all over between them? “About yourself?” he went on at last.

“Ah, yes, about myself. Your troubles are not at an end, you see,” she said, with a little quivering attempt at playfulness. “Am I to go on living with Madame Roulleau?”

“I am afraid it will not do for you at all. I do not like your being there even now.”

“But I am not so sure. I have been thinking about it a great deal. At first I remembered that she used to say I was an expense; but yesterday, do you recollect, she said that the money they had from me was what they wanted? If I went away, do you think she would be poorer? or is it too little to help them?”

“I am sure it helps them,” said M. Deshoulières, hesitating slightly.

“And yet it seems to be very little. How much did my uncle leave me exactly?”

“A thousand francs a year,” he said, still reluctantly.

“And that is all they have had? Ah, no, I perceive. Oh, what have you been doing!” she cried, her eyes filling with tears.

He turned away from them almost abruptly. “Bah!” he said. “Of course adépositairehas to see to such little things. That is nothing. You should rather blame me for the bad choice I made. I will tell you what strikes me. There is a Madame Aubert here, an excellent woman, whose husband has but lately died, and whose daughter is delicate and wants a companion of her own age. I think you might be very happy there, provided,”—his voice trembled—“provided you desire to remain in Charville?”

“Where could I go?” she said, with heavy tears dropping from her eyes. “I wonder whether in all France there is any one so friendless as I am.” It was spoken under her breath, but he caught the forlorn words.

“Thérèse!” he said passionately. “Thérèse!—”

She half rose from the seat, turning on him a frightened face. He stopped her.

“Hear me at least,” he said. “I ask nothing—nothing: I would not pain you, no, not for all the joy which a word of yours might bring. I have not forgotten what you told me,—if you repeat it now, my Thérèse, I swear your love shall be to me as sacred a thing as it has been since I heard it from your lips. If it is so, I will say only, forgive me, and trust me once more. But, if things are not as they were—if—if—” His great frame shook with emotion, he put out his hands, his voice was choked. Then he recovered himself with a strong effort. “Thérèse, is there any hope?”

She was silent. What was this rush of tenderness which swept across her heart? What was this great contentment which seemed suddenly to calm all the sadness and the wounds and the self reproach of the past days? Could it be new, this feeling which seemed to fill her whole being with a sense of unutterable happiness? Ah, no, more likely all this time it had been growing in her unawares. More likely, as has been said before, she had taken his goodness, and his nobility, and his tenderness, and had set them up in her heart, and called the image Fabien. She had done it in good faith, all unconsciously, only she had been treasuring a shadow; and, lo! there came a waft, and the shadow was gone. It may have been strange that the awakening had not come before; nevertheless it had not. She had been faithful to Fabien, but it was to Fabien dressed in M. Deshoulières’ virtues. Sometimes those deceptions are very terrible. With the real knowledge there comes every now and then a blank, or, what is worse, the terrible word, “too late.” One is thankful that for this poor little Thérèse there were better things, and that circumstances occurred to show her Fabien’s character at once without the veil which might have carried on the deception and made her burden infinitely harder. She was silent. But over her face there came a soft, tender flush, her sweet eyes looked shyly up into his.

“Is there any hope?” he said again, bending over her, and speaking in a low, quick, eager tone.

And then into his outstretched hands she put her own...

Before they went home she told him all that had troubled her. And he, in his turn, told her something. He showed her the little dull balcony between the trees, where once he had pictured her sitting waiting, in the warm glow of light. They went a little nearer, these two, and looked at it. Nannon, who was getting rather tired of her play with the sturdy little woman who went solemnly through her pranks, came across, and asked what they were talking about.

“We are settling a new dress for mademoiselle,” said M. Deshoulières, his honest blue eyes brimming over with fun. “It must be white and something shiny.”

“White and shiny! That will be a bride’s dress,” cried Nannon, all her teeth showing. “So that is it, mademoiselle? I am as happy as a little cat. There is a little good news come at last; for, what with fevers and wickednesses, and that angel of a Jean-Marie wanting to go for a drummer ever since he saw the last review, I can scarcely sleep at night. And monsieur is going to have a deputation and the thanks of the town—has he heard?”

They went back slowly through the narrow tangled streets, and past the Evêché into the Place Notre Dame. There rose the Cathedral, golden with the glow of the autumnal sun; there stood the serene statues encompassing it solemnly. Little dappled ranks of clouds rested quietly on the blue heavens, the jackdaws flew in and out of their carved homes; two great hawks that lived up there with them swooped lazily along, or hung poised in midair. After the stifling oppression of the summer, this cool, sweet autumn came with a sense of delicious relief. These two had their hearts almost too full for speech, but I do not know that silence was not as sweet to both. I do not know that we can leave them better than here, under the shadow of the great Cathedral, in the glow of the golden sunshine.

The little notary had disappeared, and, except the fact that he had not been seen at Tours, nothing could be ascertained about him. Whether he fled from the fever, his wife, or Monsieur Saint-Martin, remained also an open question for Charville to decide. He never came back again, that was the only sure point. Thérèse went to Madame Aubert for a little while, for Madame Roulleau, when no tidings arrived from her husband, left Charville—a broken-down woman. M. Deshoulières best knows where she is gone. And Fabien is reported to have married a widow, rich and noble, and to live in superb apartments in Paris.

Charville has not changed very much, after all. Something has been done, but it remains still almost the same picturesque, shadowy, dirty old town. Down by the stone fountain the women chatter and gossip as shrilly as ever, and drown the undertone of the river; the sun shines softly upon the yellow cornfields, and the tall gabled roofs, and the Cathedral that crowns them all. One fancies it is a little like a life. Above broken imperfections, above din and jar and fret, there rises evermore the something higher towards which our eyes may turn, our weary feet may press. If it were not so, we should be lingering in the cornfields and in the streets for ever. But when we once have felt that other beauty, its desire can never again go out of our souls. And there are many ways by which we are led upwards.

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