Chapter Ten.

Chapter Ten.“Have I not nursed, for two long wretched years,That miserable hope, that every dayGrew weaker, like a baby sick to death,Yet dearer for its weakness, day by day?”Madoc.After that evening walk from the river Thérèse told Nannon she thought that M. Deshoulières was kinder than she had fancied. Nannon, whose prejudices were invincible, shook her head.“He may be kind when he pleases, I do not deny it, but he is as hard as a stone.”“Every one is hard, I think,” said Thérèse, sadly.Her bright hopefulness was leaving her; there was so much irritation and fret in her daily life, so much contact with low, mean natures, that it had not power to hold its own. That future to which she looked forward was not one which strengthened her to bear the present; it rather added to the fever of impatience which consumed her. We want something stronger than props of our own rearing when the dark days come with their storms. Poor child, it appeared to herself as if she was for ever stretching out her hands and groping vainly in the darkness for something by which to hold. There was one figure among those which for ages had stood outside the great Cathedral and called to the passers-by, that she had grown almost to identify with herself—a woman who seemed half in supplication, half in fear. It is probable that no one else had seen that expression in the attitude. Those beautiful grave statues at Charville are able to adapt themselves, with something of the power of the Psalms, to the wants and wishes of those who love them. All around are the great flat corn plains; every thing is made to speak of crops and gains, getting and selling, buying of farms, proving of oxen. But in the midst there rises, like an eternal protest, this glorious Cathedral, with spires always pointing heavenwards, always typifying what man’s life may be amid all the world’s care and turmoil. Life in the world, not of it. Thérèse, who did not recognise this, who perhaps had not lived long enough to search for types and shadows in the things about her, was yet conscious of an increasing delight in wandering round the old Cathedral. She fancied she was losing her props when, after all, she was being trained to hold by those that would never fail her.Madame Roulleau, in spite of her cleverness, almost endangered her prospects by her treatment of Thérèse just now. Even her covetousness was not so strong as her love of oppression, and her pleasure in humiliating the girl by all possible means. Thérèse was made almost a drudge in the household. Pride prevented her from complaining, but she felt fierce and bitter against her oppressors. She might have appealed to M. Deshoulières, of whom she stood less in awe than before their last conversation, had she seen him, but for a month or two they did not meet. He came two or three times to Rue St. Servan, but Mme. Roulleau held there might be dangers in interviews, and contrived that he should never see Thérèse. As it happened, also, they never encountered one another elsewhere. Every one knows how in a large place you may be months without once crossing the track of your nearest neighbour, and so it was with Thérèse and M. Deshoulières. Had he been resolute, of course he could have effected it without difficulty, but, in truth, he was not decided what to do. Deep in his heart that little vision of Thérèse in his home, loved and cared for, had never stirred from its place. If during the day, with its ceaseless toil and battling, there was a veil drawn across the sweet, homely picture, he suffered his thoughts to dwell upon it with an ever-deepening tenderness when the quiet hours came. What held him back was the dread lest he might take an unfair advantage of the girl’s present loneliness. He knew nothing of all that made it most bitter, of the weariness of her waiting, of the physical hardship of her lot, but he knew from her own words that a sense of her desolation was strong upon her, and he feared lest it might lead her to accept another lot, afterwards to prove more unendurable. He thought hardly of himself, he was so much older, so grave, so occupied, that he dreaded hurrying her into a mistake. He longed to see her, but with the determination which he exercised over longings, he accepted the separation, believing that each day she might become more reconciled to her position, or better acquainted with the depths of her own feelings.It was a noble, unselfish heart in which the unconscious Thérèse was set as in a little shrine.Does it make life sadder or brighter to think how much of this unknown treasuring there is in the world around us? People who fancy themselves least cared for sometimes have a wealth of affection poured out upon them, of which they may never dream until the day when every thing is made plain. One does not know whether it is comforting or saddening to recollect this,—comforting, one hopes, because it is very sure that such love cannot be wasted, whether it seems so in our eyes or not.November came. It was not foggy, but there was a good deal of rain, and the air was damp and chilly. The vines that had been so fresh and blithe through the summer now disconsolately waved their straggling helpless branches to and fro from the little balconies. The great plains, in which lay hid the promise of next year’s abundance, looked brown and dreary without their wealth of golden corn. Thérèse used to escape to her own room when the teaching was over, and shiver there rather than sit with Madame Roulleau in the little ugly room with its great stove filling up one corner. Her walks with Nannon were necessarily fewer and interrupted, owing to the shortening days and the rain, and she suffered for want of them. She grew pale and thin, her step lost its elasticity, her mouth its smile. Was she never to escape from this life, this weary, hateful treadmill? When depression seizes on one point it assails us on all; those cruel words of Fabien’s became much more terrible to her than ever they had seemed before. She was among those he had renounced; what was her love that it should hold him through those years, across unknown distances? And then she would determine that he was dead.One day—while it was quite early, and Thérèse was working away at the children, with a dreary sense of drudgery, which did them and herself no good—Mme. Roulleau, who had gone to her bedroom to hunt for something in a great press, was startled by her husband coming in upon her with a white scared face.“Zénobie—Zénobie,mon amie!” he said piteously.“Well? What now?”“That which we dreaded is arriving—Monsieur Saint-Martin! What will become of us?”“Is Monsieur Saint-Martin here?” inquired madame with perfect coolness, although she turned a shade paler.“Here! The saints forbid!”“The saints are not likely to be on your side, so that I would not place much confidence in their protection, if I were you,” said his wife, sarcastically. “Have the goodness, Ignace, to inform me what this great event may be that you find so disturbing.”“Mon amie, do not be angry. I have come to you at once. But it is ruin. Monsieur Deshoulières has just been here; he has received a letter—”“Well?”“A letter about our affair.”“Give it to me.”“How did she know I had it?” murmured the little man, half in admiration, half in fear, as he took it from his pocket. Madame received it in silence. The note consisted only of a few lines:—“If Monsieur Deshoulières desires tidings of Monsieur Fabien Saint-Martin, nephew of Monsieur Moreau, recently deceased, let him find himself at the Lion d’Or, at Pont-huine, on the afternoon of the 20th of November, at three o’clock.” No more. The post-mark was Paris.“The twentieth! That is to-day,” remarked madame meditatively. The paleness had increased a little; her lips were set more tightly.“One hundred and eighty francs a month,” groaned Roulleau.“And M. Deshoulières is gone?”“Gone? No. He has just received a message from the Préfet. Madame is taken in sharp illness. He came here fretting and fuming on his way to the Préfecture, as if this horrible Monsieur Saint-Martin were the one person he most desired to see upon the earth. Did you not understand, Zénobie? It is I who must go.”“You! I understand! How can I understand?” screamed madame, facing round upon him in a flame of indignation—“when you come crying out that you are ruined, all the time having the game placed in your very hands! You have grown so crooked, you cannot even speak straight to your own wife. Can you not think even so much as this for yourself! Are you blind—a dolt—a baby—an imbecile!”“Zénobie!” implored the little man in an agony.“Yes!” she said, with a world of scorn in her tone; “that is yourmétier, and all you are fit for—to take care lest any one should overhear us. I cannot keep patience always. All the world may know that Monsieur Saint-Martin is coming, if they will.”“Zénobie!”“I repeat it. At what time do you go?”“The train leaves in half an hour.”“Then do not interrupt me.”She turned away from him, and sat down. M. Roulleau, too glad to gain peace, waited patiently. For five minutes there was silence, broken by no sound but the heavy drip of rain; a distant rumble of carts; one or two church clocks striking the hour. Then madame lifted her head, and spoke in a measured, set voice, very different from her late vehement outbreak,—“You will go to the station, and take a ticket for Pont-huine,” she said; “but you will get out at Maury, the village on this side of it. Make what inquiries you can about strangers at the Lion d’Or, and return by the last train. It is probable that M. Deshoulières will meet you at the station.”“What then?” said the little man breathlessly. “You have seen nothing, heard nothing, done nothing. No one has appeared at the Lion d’Or. If you may venture an opinion, the whole affair is a silly hoax. Are you capable of this?”“Every day implicates us more,” Roulleau said, wiping his face.“There is no gain without speculation,” replied madame, with one of her scornful glances. “Would you prefer opening your arms to Monsieur Saint-Martin?”“He will ask so many questions.”“It is the more easy in such a case to shape your answers.”Little Roulleau was helpless under her inexorable will. His own sordid nature prompted him one way, while his cowardice held him back. He would have been a villain without his wife, but he would have dug underground, putting out all his little crafty resources, to fence himself round from discovery. She worked more boldly and for larger ventures. The imprudences she committed kept him in continual alarm. At the same time there was a fertility of resource, a vigour in her undertakings, of which he acknowledged the value, and which were strong enough to carry him along against his judgment. He remonstrated, but he had never sufficient power to resist. She swept away all his little terrified suggestions like a whirlwind. Ignace put on his yellow straw hat, took his thread gloves and his umbrella, and went obediently to the station. Madame was more polite that day to Thérèse than she had been for months.In the evening, Thérèse was sitting with the children, who were supposed to be preparing their lessons for the next day. Octavie, always upright and suggestive, was at the table, with a book open before her, on the alert, as usual, to snub Mademoiselle Veuillot or her brother, as the case might require. He was a very ugly little boy, with his baggy knickerbockers and cut-away jacket, and a closely cropped little head; but he was not so utterly detestable in Thérèse’s eyes as Octavie. With all his obstinacy and provoking ways he was not a worldly, unnatural little being like her. He had not her patronising, superior ways; he was not always watching and spying. I am telling you what Thérèse thought, and it must be remembered that she was not in a patient mood at this time: she was eating the bread of poverty, and it was made very bitter. This evening Adolphe would not attend. He jumped up and down, upset his chair, danced about the room. “Mamma thinks that Adolphe already knows less of history than when he began it with you, mademoiselle,” remarked Octavie, pleasantly.“I know more than you!” shouted Adolphe, indignant at this report, and still careering round the table. “I know more than you, and more than mademoiselle, and more than a great many people.”Octavie lifted her arched eyebrows.“But yes, I do, and I could tell you about it, only I don’t choose.”“Adolphe!” said Thérèse, sharply, “I am waiting.”“She always thinks that mamma tells her every thing,” said Adolphe triumphantly, “but she does not. She is only a little girl, is she, mademoiselle? I know a great deal more.”“Madame Barry never permitted Adolphe to misbehave himself, mademoiselle. It is only since you have been our governess,” said Octavie, furiously.“She will not be our governess long,” cried Adolphe, before Thérèse could speak, “if M. Saint-Martin is come.”“Monsieur Saint-Martin!”All the room turned round before Thérèse; she caught at the table to steady herself. When she opened her eyes, the children were staring at her, Octavie’s sharp black eyes looking curiously, Adolphe a little frightened. Thérèse cried out in a glad tone they had never heard before from her,—“Is Monsieur Saint-Martin come, Adolphe?”Nobody answered. Octavie had nudged her brother, and he began to be afraid that he might be punished for repeating words he had caught in his mother’s high-pitched voice as he passed the bedroom door. “All the world may know that Monsieur Saint-Martin is coming,” she had said; but Adolphe remembered one or two sharp calamities which had befallen him for repeating his mother’s sayings when she was “in a tempest.” He would not speak.“Adolphe, dear Adolphe, is he really come?” said Thérèse. Her eyes looked like stars; she put out her hands imploringly; she wanted to hear it again, but she believed it at once; she was so young that happiness seemed the most natural thing in the world. Of course he was come; her troubles were at an end; her heart felt as if it was dancing for joy. He was come; every thing was changed, forgotten; her youthfulness leaped up again; she looked kindly even on Octavie. “Where is he, dear children, is he here?”Adolphe shook his head emphatically; he did not know what to say. Octavie, who believed that a great blunder had been committed, said, patronisingly,—“You should not listen to him, mademoiselle: he does not understand.”“Mamma said it,” cried Adolphe stoutly, determined to assert himself. But Thérèse was already flying down the stairs into the littlesalon. “Perhaps he is there,” she thought. Monsieur and madame, who were standing together in the middle of the room, turned hastily round as Thérèse came quickly in. It might have been the light, which was not burning very brightly or clearly, that made their faces look yellow and haggard, the notary’s especially. Perhaps they, too, believed they might have seen M. Saint-Martin, when the door opened so abruptly, and Thérèse, flushed, smiling, radiant, stood before them.“Is he here?” she asked joyfully, though a momentary glance showed her that no one was in the room but monsieur and madame, who were speechless at a question which seemed to echo back their fears. Madame recovered herself instantly.“To whom do you allude, mademoiselle?” she inquired with a politeness, to which Thérèse was a stranger.The girl patted the ground impatiently. “To my cousin—to M. Saint-Martin. Adolphe tells me that he is come.”“That boy romances—he is a droll,” said madame, holding up her hands and turning to her husband, with a little show of parental interest. “He means no harm; but he must not be allowed to make announcements so unfounded without correction. I shall—”“What do you mean?” exclaimed Thérèse, with a sharp cry of disappointment.“My poor mademoiselle,” said madame, taking hold of her hand, “you must not be angry with him, he is but a child; he has the heart of an angel, but he talks like a boy without knowing what he is about. Do you not suppose that I should have flown to tell you, had only Monsieur Saint-Martin—whom we so desire—arrived?”“And it is not so? Oh, madame, are you sure?”All the radiancy had gone; her eyes filled with tears. Madame, who was not yet sure what a day might bring forth, made her sit down, even kept her hand. Thérèse let her hold it, she was too stunned to be altogether conscious; a dull weight of disappointment had fallen upon her, from which she could not at once rally.“I will tell you, my child. Ignace, some one is waiting to see you,” said madame, significantly; for the little man was still standing under the yellow light, looking from Thérèse to the door, as if another person might yet enter. “Now he is gone, and I will tell you all about it. There has been a letter from some foolish person—my husband would assure you that such idle jesters are never wanting—to hint that there was news to be heard of M. Saint-Martin. Poor Ignace! He has a good heart; he started off at once. ‘One should neglect nothing,’ he said to me, and he went away, deserting his business, and spending the day in leaving not a stone unturned. He has come back so weary! I must go and give him his soup.”“And he heard nothing?” asked Thérèse, faintly.“Absolutely nothing. I guessed how it would be, but I would not discourage him. You should not have had this disappointment,chèremademoiselle, but who could have expected that little droll to have put two and two together so cleverly?” said madame, smiling. “You find him almost too quick, do you not? and he has not Octavie’s admirable discretion. He is impetuous, like me.” Thérèse started up from her seat. “I will go to my room, since it is all a delusion,” she said, in a harsh, changed voice.“You must not think too much of this Monsieur Saint-Martin,” said madame, with a little assumption of motherliness. “Men come and go, like the clouds; one can put no dependence upon them. And you shall not lose your home, let Monsieur Deshoulières say what he will.Allons, I have a heart!”The girl made no answer. She stood motionless until madame had finished, then turned away, walked heavily out of the apartment, up the stairs, and into her own little room. There, with a low, bitter cry, which would no longer be repressed, she flung herself down by her bed. The cry, which at first was inarticulate, shaped itself into words: “Fabien, Fabien, I can bear this life no longer! Oh, why, why do you not come? It is so hard. Why have I all this to endure?”

“Have I not nursed, for two long wretched years,That miserable hope, that every dayGrew weaker, like a baby sick to death,Yet dearer for its weakness, day by day?”Madoc.

“Have I not nursed, for two long wretched years,That miserable hope, that every dayGrew weaker, like a baby sick to death,Yet dearer for its weakness, day by day?”Madoc.

After that evening walk from the river Thérèse told Nannon she thought that M. Deshoulières was kinder than she had fancied. Nannon, whose prejudices were invincible, shook her head.

“He may be kind when he pleases, I do not deny it, but he is as hard as a stone.”

“Every one is hard, I think,” said Thérèse, sadly.

Her bright hopefulness was leaving her; there was so much irritation and fret in her daily life, so much contact with low, mean natures, that it had not power to hold its own. That future to which she looked forward was not one which strengthened her to bear the present; it rather added to the fever of impatience which consumed her. We want something stronger than props of our own rearing when the dark days come with their storms. Poor child, it appeared to herself as if she was for ever stretching out her hands and groping vainly in the darkness for something by which to hold. There was one figure among those which for ages had stood outside the great Cathedral and called to the passers-by, that she had grown almost to identify with herself—a woman who seemed half in supplication, half in fear. It is probable that no one else had seen that expression in the attitude. Those beautiful grave statues at Charville are able to adapt themselves, with something of the power of the Psalms, to the wants and wishes of those who love them. All around are the great flat corn plains; every thing is made to speak of crops and gains, getting and selling, buying of farms, proving of oxen. But in the midst there rises, like an eternal protest, this glorious Cathedral, with spires always pointing heavenwards, always typifying what man’s life may be amid all the world’s care and turmoil. Life in the world, not of it. Thérèse, who did not recognise this, who perhaps had not lived long enough to search for types and shadows in the things about her, was yet conscious of an increasing delight in wandering round the old Cathedral. She fancied she was losing her props when, after all, she was being trained to hold by those that would never fail her.

Madame Roulleau, in spite of her cleverness, almost endangered her prospects by her treatment of Thérèse just now. Even her covetousness was not so strong as her love of oppression, and her pleasure in humiliating the girl by all possible means. Thérèse was made almost a drudge in the household. Pride prevented her from complaining, but she felt fierce and bitter against her oppressors. She might have appealed to M. Deshoulières, of whom she stood less in awe than before their last conversation, had she seen him, but for a month or two they did not meet. He came two or three times to Rue St. Servan, but Mme. Roulleau held there might be dangers in interviews, and contrived that he should never see Thérèse. As it happened, also, they never encountered one another elsewhere. Every one knows how in a large place you may be months without once crossing the track of your nearest neighbour, and so it was with Thérèse and M. Deshoulières. Had he been resolute, of course he could have effected it without difficulty, but, in truth, he was not decided what to do. Deep in his heart that little vision of Thérèse in his home, loved and cared for, had never stirred from its place. If during the day, with its ceaseless toil and battling, there was a veil drawn across the sweet, homely picture, he suffered his thoughts to dwell upon it with an ever-deepening tenderness when the quiet hours came. What held him back was the dread lest he might take an unfair advantage of the girl’s present loneliness. He knew nothing of all that made it most bitter, of the weariness of her waiting, of the physical hardship of her lot, but he knew from her own words that a sense of her desolation was strong upon her, and he feared lest it might lead her to accept another lot, afterwards to prove more unendurable. He thought hardly of himself, he was so much older, so grave, so occupied, that he dreaded hurrying her into a mistake. He longed to see her, but with the determination which he exercised over longings, he accepted the separation, believing that each day she might become more reconciled to her position, or better acquainted with the depths of her own feelings.

It was a noble, unselfish heart in which the unconscious Thérèse was set as in a little shrine.

Does it make life sadder or brighter to think how much of this unknown treasuring there is in the world around us? People who fancy themselves least cared for sometimes have a wealth of affection poured out upon them, of which they may never dream until the day when every thing is made plain. One does not know whether it is comforting or saddening to recollect this,—comforting, one hopes, because it is very sure that such love cannot be wasted, whether it seems so in our eyes or not.

November came. It was not foggy, but there was a good deal of rain, and the air was damp and chilly. The vines that had been so fresh and blithe through the summer now disconsolately waved their straggling helpless branches to and fro from the little balconies. The great plains, in which lay hid the promise of next year’s abundance, looked brown and dreary without their wealth of golden corn. Thérèse used to escape to her own room when the teaching was over, and shiver there rather than sit with Madame Roulleau in the little ugly room with its great stove filling up one corner. Her walks with Nannon were necessarily fewer and interrupted, owing to the shortening days and the rain, and she suffered for want of them. She grew pale and thin, her step lost its elasticity, her mouth its smile. Was she never to escape from this life, this weary, hateful treadmill? When depression seizes on one point it assails us on all; those cruel words of Fabien’s became much more terrible to her than ever they had seemed before. She was among those he had renounced; what was her love that it should hold him through those years, across unknown distances? And then she would determine that he was dead.

One day—while it was quite early, and Thérèse was working away at the children, with a dreary sense of drudgery, which did them and herself no good—Mme. Roulleau, who had gone to her bedroom to hunt for something in a great press, was startled by her husband coming in upon her with a white scared face.

“Zénobie—Zénobie,mon amie!” he said piteously.

“Well? What now?”

“That which we dreaded is arriving—Monsieur Saint-Martin! What will become of us?”

“Is Monsieur Saint-Martin here?” inquired madame with perfect coolness, although she turned a shade paler.

“Here! The saints forbid!”

“The saints are not likely to be on your side, so that I would not place much confidence in their protection, if I were you,” said his wife, sarcastically. “Have the goodness, Ignace, to inform me what this great event may be that you find so disturbing.”

“Mon amie, do not be angry. I have come to you at once. But it is ruin. Monsieur Deshoulières has just been here; he has received a letter—”

“Well?”

“A letter about our affair.”

“Give it to me.”

“How did she know I had it?” murmured the little man, half in admiration, half in fear, as he took it from his pocket. Madame received it in silence. The note consisted only of a few lines:—“If Monsieur Deshoulières desires tidings of Monsieur Fabien Saint-Martin, nephew of Monsieur Moreau, recently deceased, let him find himself at the Lion d’Or, at Pont-huine, on the afternoon of the 20th of November, at three o’clock.” No more. The post-mark was Paris.

“The twentieth! That is to-day,” remarked madame meditatively. The paleness had increased a little; her lips were set more tightly.

“One hundred and eighty francs a month,” groaned Roulleau.

“And M. Deshoulières is gone?”

“Gone? No. He has just received a message from the Préfet. Madame is taken in sharp illness. He came here fretting and fuming on his way to the Préfecture, as if this horrible Monsieur Saint-Martin were the one person he most desired to see upon the earth. Did you not understand, Zénobie? It is I who must go.”

“You! I understand! How can I understand?” screamed madame, facing round upon him in a flame of indignation—“when you come crying out that you are ruined, all the time having the game placed in your very hands! You have grown so crooked, you cannot even speak straight to your own wife. Can you not think even so much as this for yourself! Are you blind—a dolt—a baby—an imbecile!”

“Zénobie!” implored the little man in an agony.

“Yes!” she said, with a world of scorn in her tone; “that is yourmétier, and all you are fit for—to take care lest any one should overhear us. I cannot keep patience always. All the world may know that Monsieur Saint-Martin is coming, if they will.”

“Zénobie!”

“I repeat it. At what time do you go?”

“The train leaves in half an hour.”

“Then do not interrupt me.”

She turned away from him, and sat down. M. Roulleau, too glad to gain peace, waited patiently. For five minutes there was silence, broken by no sound but the heavy drip of rain; a distant rumble of carts; one or two church clocks striking the hour. Then madame lifted her head, and spoke in a measured, set voice, very different from her late vehement outbreak,—

“You will go to the station, and take a ticket for Pont-huine,” she said; “but you will get out at Maury, the village on this side of it. Make what inquiries you can about strangers at the Lion d’Or, and return by the last train. It is probable that M. Deshoulières will meet you at the station.”

“What then?” said the little man breathlessly. “You have seen nothing, heard nothing, done nothing. No one has appeared at the Lion d’Or. If you may venture an opinion, the whole affair is a silly hoax. Are you capable of this?”

“Every day implicates us more,” Roulleau said, wiping his face.

“There is no gain without speculation,” replied madame, with one of her scornful glances. “Would you prefer opening your arms to Monsieur Saint-Martin?”

“He will ask so many questions.”

“It is the more easy in such a case to shape your answers.”

Little Roulleau was helpless under her inexorable will. His own sordid nature prompted him one way, while his cowardice held him back. He would have been a villain without his wife, but he would have dug underground, putting out all his little crafty resources, to fence himself round from discovery. She worked more boldly and for larger ventures. The imprudences she committed kept him in continual alarm. At the same time there was a fertility of resource, a vigour in her undertakings, of which he acknowledged the value, and which were strong enough to carry him along against his judgment. He remonstrated, but he had never sufficient power to resist. She swept away all his little terrified suggestions like a whirlwind. Ignace put on his yellow straw hat, took his thread gloves and his umbrella, and went obediently to the station. Madame was more polite that day to Thérèse than she had been for months.

In the evening, Thérèse was sitting with the children, who were supposed to be preparing their lessons for the next day. Octavie, always upright and suggestive, was at the table, with a book open before her, on the alert, as usual, to snub Mademoiselle Veuillot or her brother, as the case might require. He was a very ugly little boy, with his baggy knickerbockers and cut-away jacket, and a closely cropped little head; but he was not so utterly detestable in Thérèse’s eyes as Octavie. With all his obstinacy and provoking ways he was not a worldly, unnatural little being like her. He had not her patronising, superior ways; he was not always watching and spying. I am telling you what Thérèse thought, and it must be remembered that she was not in a patient mood at this time: she was eating the bread of poverty, and it was made very bitter. This evening Adolphe would not attend. He jumped up and down, upset his chair, danced about the room. “Mamma thinks that Adolphe already knows less of history than when he began it with you, mademoiselle,” remarked Octavie, pleasantly.

“I know more than you!” shouted Adolphe, indignant at this report, and still careering round the table. “I know more than you, and more than mademoiselle, and more than a great many people.”

Octavie lifted her arched eyebrows.

“But yes, I do, and I could tell you about it, only I don’t choose.”

“Adolphe!” said Thérèse, sharply, “I am waiting.”

“She always thinks that mamma tells her every thing,” said Adolphe triumphantly, “but she does not. She is only a little girl, is she, mademoiselle? I know a great deal more.”

“Madame Barry never permitted Adolphe to misbehave himself, mademoiselle. It is only since you have been our governess,” said Octavie, furiously.

“She will not be our governess long,” cried Adolphe, before Thérèse could speak, “if M. Saint-Martin is come.”

“Monsieur Saint-Martin!”

All the room turned round before Thérèse; she caught at the table to steady herself. When she opened her eyes, the children were staring at her, Octavie’s sharp black eyes looking curiously, Adolphe a little frightened. Thérèse cried out in a glad tone they had never heard before from her,—

“Is Monsieur Saint-Martin come, Adolphe?”

Nobody answered. Octavie had nudged her brother, and he began to be afraid that he might be punished for repeating words he had caught in his mother’s high-pitched voice as he passed the bedroom door. “All the world may know that Monsieur Saint-Martin is coming,” she had said; but Adolphe remembered one or two sharp calamities which had befallen him for repeating his mother’s sayings when she was “in a tempest.” He would not speak.

“Adolphe, dear Adolphe, is he really come?” said Thérèse. Her eyes looked like stars; she put out her hands imploringly; she wanted to hear it again, but she believed it at once; she was so young that happiness seemed the most natural thing in the world. Of course he was come; her troubles were at an end; her heart felt as if it was dancing for joy. He was come; every thing was changed, forgotten; her youthfulness leaped up again; she looked kindly even on Octavie. “Where is he, dear children, is he here?”

Adolphe shook his head emphatically; he did not know what to say. Octavie, who believed that a great blunder had been committed, said, patronisingly,—

“You should not listen to him, mademoiselle: he does not understand.”

“Mamma said it,” cried Adolphe stoutly, determined to assert himself. But Thérèse was already flying down the stairs into the littlesalon. “Perhaps he is there,” she thought. Monsieur and madame, who were standing together in the middle of the room, turned hastily round as Thérèse came quickly in. It might have been the light, which was not burning very brightly or clearly, that made their faces look yellow and haggard, the notary’s especially. Perhaps they, too, believed they might have seen M. Saint-Martin, when the door opened so abruptly, and Thérèse, flushed, smiling, radiant, stood before them.

“Is he here?” she asked joyfully, though a momentary glance showed her that no one was in the room but monsieur and madame, who were speechless at a question which seemed to echo back their fears. Madame recovered herself instantly.

“To whom do you allude, mademoiselle?” she inquired with a politeness, to which Thérèse was a stranger.

The girl patted the ground impatiently. “To my cousin—to M. Saint-Martin. Adolphe tells me that he is come.”

“That boy romances—he is a droll,” said madame, holding up her hands and turning to her husband, with a little show of parental interest. “He means no harm; but he must not be allowed to make announcements so unfounded without correction. I shall—”

“What do you mean?” exclaimed Thérèse, with a sharp cry of disappointment.

“My poor mademoiselle,” said madame, taking hold of her hand, “you must not be angry with him, he is but a child; he has the heart of an angel, but he talks like a boy without knowing what he is about. Do you not suppose that I should have flown to tell you, had only Monsieur Saint-Martin—whom we so desire—arrived?”

“And it is not so? Oh, madame, are you sure?”

All the radiancy had gone; her eyes filled with tears. Madame, who was not yet sure what a day might bring forth, made her sit down, even kept her hand. Thérèse let her hold it, she was too stunned to be altogether conscious; a dull weight of disappointment had fallen upon her, from which she could not at once rally.

“I will tell you, my child. Ignace, some one is waiting to see you,” said madame, significantly; for the little man was still standing under the yellow light, looking from Thérèse to the door, as if another person might yet enter. “Now he is gone, and I will tell you all about it. There has been a letter from some foolish person—my husband would assure you that such idle jesters are never wanting—to hint that there was news to be heard of M. Saint-Martin. Poor Ignace! He has a good heart; he started off at once. ‘One should neglect nothing,’ he said to me, and he went away, deserting his business, and spending the day in leaving not a stone unturned. He has come back so weary! I must go and give him his soup.”

“And he heard nothing?” asked Thérèse, faintly.

“Absolutely nothing. I guessed how it would be, but I would not discourage him. You should not have had this disappointment,chèremademoiselle, but who could have expected that little droll to have put two and two together so cleverly?” said madame, smiling. “You find him almost too quick, do you not? and he has not Octavie’s admirable discretion. He is impetuous, like me.” Thérèse started up from her seat. “I will go to my room, since it is all a delusion,” she said, in a harsh, changed voice.

“You must not think too much of this Monsieur Saint-Martin,” said madame, with a little assumption of motherliness. “Men come and go, like the clouds; one can put no dependence upon them. And you shall not lose your home, let Monsieur Deshoulières say what he will.Allons, I have a heart!”

The girl made no answer. She stood motionless until madame had finished, then turned away, walked heavily out of the apartment, up the stairs, and into her own little room. There, with a low, bitter cry, which would no longer be repressed, she flung herself down by her bed. The cry, which at first was inarticulate, shaped itself into words: “Fabien, Fabien, I can bear this life no longer! Oh, why, why do you not come? It is so hard. Why have I all this to endure?”

Chapter Eleven.“Like sun above, a woman’s loveMust 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 ownThat 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 ajolie 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 thesalon.”“What eyes he has!” muttered Nannon to herself, going unwillingly up the stairs on her errand. “And yet they are as blue as the very cornflowers. What does he come here frightening that poor child for, I should be glad to know! A man so hard as he has no right to have eyes like that.—If mademoiselle pleases I will say I cannot find her.”“Monsieur Deshoulières!” said Thérèse, crumpling together the work on her lap with a quick, agitated movement, when Nannon made her announcement.“Shall you see him? Beware, then, mademoiselle. I know these men. Do not yield a thing, or the convent will be thrust down your throat.”“I do not think I care,” the girl said, rising wearily, “nothing can be worse than this life.”“Am I to come with you, then, or shall I go on with the work?Dame! do they give you such holes to mend!”“I had better go alone,” answered Thérèse, pausing to think over what in a French household is always a breach of etiquette. “There is no one to care,” she said to herself bitterly, as she went down.When M. Deshoulières saw her enter, he started. Her face was pale, thin; there was a heaviness in her movements which his experienced eye noted at once.“You have been ill, mademoiselle?” he said anxiously. He had come without any very definite purpose; it was, he told himself, to see how she looked, whether she was well and happy. The sight of her sent the blood rushing to his heart, he hardly knew what he was saying. Strong man as he was, he stood there trembling. “You have been ill?” he repeated.Thérèse shook her head.“Then something has happened?”“What should it be, monsieur?” she said, with a half sob which would not be repressed. “I live on from day to day.”“My poor child, is life so hard?”She looked at him in wonder. What did he mean—he, who was one of her persecutors—by standing there, saying kind words, and looking down upon her with compassionate eyes? She thought the words would be like Madame Roulleau’s, lasting only for a day, and resented them in her heart. He, meanwhile, was thinking of what she had said once, that pathetic little sentence which had sounded in his ears ever since,—“Every place must be a little sad, since I belong to no one.” Poor desolate Thérèse! She was shutting up her heart, misjudging even at this moment the man who was yearning to pour out upon her the best gift this world has to offer—a great, unselfish love. She answered his question coldly.“It will all come to an end one day. Do you want to speak to Monsieur or Madame Roulleau, monsieur?”He was a little chilled and disappointed. He did not stay to remember that the feelings which had been growing stronger with him week by week, day by day, must be unknown to her. It was unreasonable, perhaps, to expect another answer, and yet he fancied it should have been different.“I do not want them,” he said gently. “I came to speak to you, to know whether you were still contented with these people. You do not look so. Is there any thing I can do?”“You have heard nothing more from the Lion d’Or?” she asked, evading an answer.“No,” said the doctor, more abruptly. He disliked the subject of this trust, which brought him letters, papers to sign, difficulties, and endless arrangements. Only a week before he had paid another flying visit to Ardron, about a matter which required his personal superintendence, and he made a second attempt upon the imperturbable curé. “Still no news?” inquired the curé, with that slight lifting of the eyebrows which M. Deshoulières found so irritating. “Absolutely no promise of news?” And then he was told of that impotent visit to the Lion d’Or. “And you found no one? Decidedly, monsieur, as you say, there must be imposition somewhere.” That was all the doctor could extract, and it was not at all pleasant. “No,” he replied to Thérèse, “I wish I could have gone myself; but, after all, it would only have been one fool more. Roulleau says there will be a dozen such absurdities. It is always the case in these affaire. You should have known nothing about it. How came they to be so indiscreet as to cause you the disappointment?”“It was the children’s doing,” she said; and then, with a sudden impulse, which astonished herself, she stretched out her hands imploringly. “Promise me, promise me,” she said, “always to tell me when there is a little hope like that.”Her eyes were filled with tears, even those few kindly words were breaking down the barriers of pride. He took her hands; he was greatly moved by the child-like appeal. “I promise,” he said quietly.“It is horrible to think that things are being concealed from one.”“You may trust me. But, my child, why are you hungering so terribly after a change? Cannot we make you happy here?”Something in his voice made her heart stand still with fright. She tried to draw away her hands, but he held them fast, so fast that he almost hurt her. In fact, he did not know what he was doing. He kept his voice under control, but the room swam round. He was only conscious that she was close to him.“Let me go, monsieur,” she said, in a low, hurried voice; and then he recovered himself with an effort.“Hear me first,” he said, releasing her hands; but standing between her and the door, and holding her still more, as she felt, by a certain determination in his voice. “I did not come here meaning to say this; but when I see you looking so changed, so sad, I cannot keep it back. I think I could make you happy. It should be my life’s joy. I am old—much older than you, a plain, rough man; but—child, child, do you know how I love you—!”The last words broke from him with a passionate ring. She put her hands before her eyes. “No, no, no!” she cried.There was a moment’s silence. Then he began to speak again, patting a great force upon himself as he did so. “Forgive me. I know you cannot understand—cannot feel as I do. I do not ask for it. I only ask you to let me give you the home you want. You say you belong to no one. It is at least something to have a home,” he said in abrupt sentences, with his voice unconsciously tremulous.Still silence, yet her heart beat so quickly that she fancied its great throbs filled the room. What was this that had come to her? What sudden awakening had changed their positions? And what was it that was offered?—a home—rest—deliverance from bondage, it seemed. She had no love to give; but if he did not demand it? He was not hard, she knew that now, and did him justice. Would it not be easy to put her hand into his, and go away where at least she would find kind shelter? One must be in a position like hers before judging poor, desolate Thérèse for the strength of the temptation. Fabien, who had been gone so long—Fabien, who had renounced her with the rest—Fabien and weary waiting—unkind words, hard toil, solitude, dreariness, on the one side; on the other, love, tenderness, protection. She hesitated, her heart cried out for these good things, she half put out her hand, and glanced at him with shy, frightened eyes. His own grew more hopeful, more eager, as he noticed the little action.“Will you trust me? Will you come?” he said in a deep, tender voice. He fancied he could read her maidenly reluctance, her fears; he knew nothing of that other who formed the real barrier between them; he did not even understand what motives half impelled her towards him. He had her hands in his again before she quite knew what he was about. It all seemed to her like a dream. “Can you give me a little love?” he said, smiling. The word awoke her.“No, no,” she cried, wrenching her hands away suddenly. “Oh, what are you saying! Never, never!”He drew back, terribly hurt. His love deserved a better answer than this, and he knew it. He had spoken from the depth of his heart, and thus he had a right to expect a less indignant rejection. But the next moment pity overcame his anger. She had flung herself into a chair and buried her face on the table, in an attitude so despairing that he forgot himself. He walked quickly to the window and back, then Thérèse heard his voice, changed, but with a tone in it which thrilled through her.“At least let me be your friend. Tell me how I have troubled you.”She was hardly conscious of speaking. Perhaps some quickened perception awoke in him in the pain of that moment, and her lips must have framed the name, for he repeated the word “Fabien,” under his breath; and then there came a silence, which seemed to her endless.She looked up at last. He had dropped into a chair opposite to her; his face was very pale and stern. He breathed quickly. Almost involuntarily she said, “Do not be angry with me!”“Why did I not know this before?” he asked abruptly.“I thought you might have understood—I could not explain—the others knew,” she said, in a broken voice.“Then your marriage is arranged?”“Nothing is arranged,” she cried out quickly. “My uncle would not hear of it. He wanted Fabien to marry a lady who was noble, and had a largedot, and—there were other reasons—but this was one cause why they quarrelled. And it was after he had gone that he wrote those cruel words,” she said, her voice faltering.Max rose up again, and came close to her. “My poor child,” he said, “how you must have suffered!” Then, as she was going to speak, he stopped her. “Listen. I do not pretend to tell you that this has not been a heavy shock. If I had but known—but I did not know, I have been ignorant, blundering, blind. You are the first woman I ever loved, and—but I do not blame you. Thérèse, remember that always, there is no one to blame but myself. We will forget all this, and have no more such mistakes, only I must always be your friend. I claim it as a right.”There was a world of simple manliness, of tenderness, in his voice. Thérèse, who had expected reproaches and bitter words, was deeply moved by it. How had she misjudged this man! She had been prejudiced, blind, to the true nobility, which lay hid behind a somewhat blunt exterior; until this moment she had recognised nothing of it. She thought how strong he was, how able to protect, to teach her; her poor little weary heart longed for such a helper, even in the midst of its clinging to Fabien. Fabien himself seemed to lose something when she compared the two. For very weariness the conflict might perhaps have ended in Max Deshoulières’ favour, if he had chosen that it should do so.“It is such a long waiting, and those were such hard words,” she said, falteringly.“Foolish words,” he said, with a little sad smile. “People cannot renounce so readily, even if they wish it. If you love him, do not doubt him, my child. There are plenty of reasons which may have caused his silence; he has been impetuous and foolish, no doubt, but with such an uncle there are excuses for a young man. Before long we shall hear of him, believe me.”He tried to speak cheerfully. Every word cost him a stab; but for her sake the brave chivalrous heart took this added burden upon itself. Perhaps he guessed something of what she was feeling, and pitied the weakness and inexperience which found it hard to endure. With a pang he put on one side the bright visions which he had been cherishing; all that he could do now was to be her friend and helper, and that he would do faithfully. He saw her brighten under his words; she looked up gladly.“Fabien will not long stay away, when he knows I am alone,” she said, with a renewal of hope. “You are sure no more can be done?”“I will tell Roulleau to redouble his exertions. You may be sure M. Saint-Martin will not expatriate himself without from time to time making inquiries. Unless, indeed, he is a second Diogenes.”“He was not like Diogenes, at all,” said Thérèse, simply. “Oh, monsieur, you have made me so much happier!”When she had spoken, the cruelty of her words struck her. He was thinking of her, caring for her, and she was taken up only by her own trouble. The contrast was something new to her: as it made itself felt, she reddened painfully, and the tears rushed into her eyes. “Forgive me,” she said, tremblingly, “I—I—”“Are we not to be friends?” he said, with a kind, steadfast look. “And for what are friends good, unless it be to help one another?”“But—” she stopped.“But what? Do you think what I have said should prevent me from helping you? Child, child, we learn many things as life goes on. What I told you is true—I have never loved before, I hoped I never should love; I believed I should go through the world, and do the work God put before me alone; I desired nothing more. It came upon me unawares. I do not think that there can have been a time when I did not love you, but I did not know it. And now it has become a part of myself, something which can never be any more separated from me. Hush! do not be frightened. I promise you that you may hear all I have to say without disloyalty to—him. It can never leave me: it has brought me a sorrow, a great sorrow; but even at this moment—Thérèse, Thérèse, do you think I could part with it? Do you think that I do not even now thank God for this gift? There is a sweetness in it which no suffering can overpower.”Yes, there was a sweetness—all the sweetness of true love. Love, which was generous, and could give without a hope of return; love, which in its friendship, in its self-sacrifice, in its faithfulness, should be like an angel in this man’s heart.Thérèse looked at him with awe. Something in his words stirred her nature to its depths, showed her a height of which she had never dreamed. She had claimed happiness as a right, he accepted sorrow as a blessing. She had found only bitterness where he already spoke of sweetness. She cried out against her lot, he had faith that all should be for good. She had read of these things, she had in some degree thought of them in her devotions; but never before had she seen a life thus influenced, and it came upon her like a revelation.“And therefore,” continued Max, still standing before her, and speaking in the same slow sentences, “you will understand that, though I may not often see you, it must be my greatest happiness to serve you, to be your friend and his. Do not deny me this. Do not fear me.”“I do not fear you,” Thérèse answered, quickly. She wanted to say more, to thank him, but the words would not come. Involuntarily she put out her hand, he caught it, pressed it to his lips, held it there a moment, and was gone. She heard him clattering down the staircase, the little timepiece striking four, Nannon singing country songs to herself in a cracked wiry voice, doors opening and shutting, old familiar sounds with that touch of unreality which sometimes seizes them. The very patch of grey sky opposite to her, against which leafless trees waved solemnly backwards and forwards, looked like a strange, unnatural picture. She was too bewildered to collect her thoughts. Something seemed to have come to her, it may have been fresh hope, a new spring, which made her eye sparkle, and her colour rise. Had that echo found a stronger voice which whispered that there was something to be striven for higher than mere happiness? Perhaps. Such voices gather strength if we do not stifle them with our wilfulness.

“Like sun above, a woman’s loveMust 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 ownThat it is true, and nothing new,She loves for love alone.”

“Like sun above, a woman’s loveMust 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 ownThat 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 ajolie 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 thesalon.”

“What eyes he has!” muttered Nannon to herself, going unwillingly up the stairs on her errand. “And yet they are as blue as the very cornflowers. What does he come here frightening that poor child for, I should be glad to know! A man so hard as he has no right to have eyes like that.—If mademoiselle pleases I will say I cannot find her.”

“Monsieur Deshoulières!” said Thérèse, crumpling together the work on her lap with a quick, agitated movement, when Nannon made her announcement.

“Shall you see him? Beware, then, mademoiselle. I know these men. Do not yield a thing, or the convent will be thrust down your throat.”

“I do not think I care,” the girl said, rising wearily, “nothing can be worse than this life.”

“Am I to come with you, then, or shall I go on with the work?Dame! do they give you such holes to mend!”

“I had better go alone,” answered Thérèse, pausing to think over what in a French household is always a breach of etiquette. “There is no one to care,” she said to herself bitterly, as she went down.

When M. Deshoulières saw her enter, he started. Her face was pale, thin; there was a heaviness in her movements which his experienced eye noted at once.

“You have been ill, mademoiselle?” he said anxiously. He had come without any very definite purpose; it was, he told himself, to see how she looked, whether she was well and happy. The sight of her sent the blood rushing to his heart, he hardly knew what he was saying. Strong man as he was, he stood there trembling. “You have been ill?” he repeated.

Thérèse shook her head.

“Then something has happened?”

“What should it be, monsieur?” she said, with a half sob which would not be repressed. “I live on from day to day.”

“My poor child, is life so hard?”

She looked at him in wonder. What did he mean—he, who was one of her persecutors—by standing there, saying kind words, and looking down upon her with compassionate eyes? She thought the words would be like Madame Roulleau’s, lasting only for a day, and resented them in her heart. He, meanwhile, was thinking of what she had said once, that pathetic little sentence which had sounded in his ears ever since,—“Every place must be a little sad, since I belong to no one.” Poor desolate Thérèse! She was shutting up her heart, misjudging even at this moment the man who was yearning to pour out upon her the best gift this world has to offer—a great, unselfish love. She answered his question coldly.

“It will all come to an end one day. Do you want to speak to Monsieur or Madame Roulleau, monsieur?”

He was a little chilled and disappointed. He did not stay to remember that the feelings which had been growing stronger with him week by week, day by day, must be unknown to her. It was unreasonable, perhaps, to expect another answer, and yet he fancied it should have been different.

“I do not want them,” he said gently. “I came to speak to you, to know whether you were still contented with these people. You do not look so. Is there any thing I can do?”

“You have heard nothing more from the Lion d’Or?” she asked, evading an answer.

“No,” said the doctor, more abruptly. He disliked the subject of this trust, which brought him letters, papers to sign, difficulties, and endless arrangements. Only a week before he had paid another flying visit to Ardron, about a matter which required his personal superintendence, and he made a second attempt upon the imperturbable curé. “Still no news?” inquired the curé, with that slight lifting of the eyebrows which M. Deshoulières found so irritating. “Absolutely no promise of news?” And then he was told of that impotent visit to the Lion d’Or. “And you found no one? Decidedly, monsieur, as you say, there must be imposition somewhere.” That was all the doctor could extract, and it was not at all pleasant. “No,” he replied to Thérèse, “I wish I could have gone myself; but, after all, it would only have been one fool more. Roulleau says there will be a dozen such absurdities. It is always the case in these affaire. You should have known nothing about it. How came they to be so indiscreet as to cause you the disappointment?”

“It was the children’s doing,” she said; and then, with a sudden impulse, which astonished herself, she stretched out her hands imploringly. “Promise me, promise me,” she said, “always to tell me when there is a little hope like that.”

Her eyes were filled with tears, even those few kindly words were breaking down the barriers of pride. He took her hands; he was greatly moved by the child-like appeal. “I promise,” he said quietly.

“It is horrible to think that things are being concealed from one.”

“You may trust me. But, my child, why are you hungering so terribly after a change? Cannot we make you happy here?”

Something in his voice made her heart stand still with fright. She tried to draw away her hands, but he held them fast, so fast that he almost hurt her. In fact, he did not know what he was doing. He kept his voice under control, but the room swam round. He was only conscious that she was close to him.

“Let me go, monsieur,” she said, in a low, hurried voice; and then he recovered himself with an effort.

“Hear me first,” he said, releasing her hands; but standing between her and the door, and holding her still more, as she felt, by a certain determination in his voice. “I did not come here meaning to say this; but when I see you looking so changed, so sad, I cannot keep it back. I think I could make you happy. It should be my life’s joy. I am old—much older than you, a plain, rough man; but—child, child, do you know how I love you—!”

The last words broke from him with a passionate ring. She put her hands before her eyes. “No, no, no!” she cried.

There was a moment’s silence. Then he began to speak again, patting a great force upon himself as he did so. “Forgive me. I know you cannot understand—cannot feel as I do. I do not ask for it. I only ask you to let me give you the home you want. You say you belong to no one. It is at least something to have a home,” he said in abrupt sentences, with his voice unconsciously tremulous.

Still silence, yet her heart beat so quickly that she fancied its great throbs filled the room. What was this that had come to her? What sudden awakening had changed their positions? And what was it that was offered?—a home—rest—deliverance from bondage, it seemed. She had no love to give; but if he did not demand it? He was not hard, she knew that now, and did him justice. Would it not be easy to put her hand into his, and go away where at least she would find kind shelter? One must be in a position like hers before judging poor, desolate Thérèse for the strength of the temptation. Fabien, who had been gone so long—Fabien, who had renounced her with the rest—Fabien and weary waiting—unkind words, hard toil, solitude, dreariness, on the one side; on the other, love, tenderness, protection. She hesitated, her heart cried out for these good things, she half put out her hand, and glanced at him with shy, frightened eyes. His own grew more hopeful, more eager, as he noticed the little action.

“Will you trust me? Will you come?” he said in a deep, tender voice. He fancied he could read her maidenly reluctance, her fears; he knew nothing of that other who formed the real barrier between them; he did not even understand what motives half impelled her towards him. He had her hands in his again before she quite knew what he was about. It all seemed to her like a dream. “Can you give me a little love?” he said, smiling. The word awoke her.

“No, no,” she cried, wrenching her hands away suddenly. “Oh, what are you saying! Never, never!”

He drew back, terribly hurt. His love deserved a better answer than this, and he knew it. He had spoken from the depth of his heart, and thus he had a right to expect a less indignant rejection. But the next moment pity overcame his anger. She had flung herself into a chair and buried her face on the table, in an attitude so despairing that he forgot himself. He walked quickly to the window and back, then Thérèse heard his voice, changed, but with a tone in it which thrilled through her.

“At least let me be your friend. Tell me how I have troubled you.”

She was hardly conscious of speaking. Perhaps some quickened perception awoke in him in the pain of that moment, and her lips must have framed the name, for he repeated the word “Fabien,” under his breath; and then there came a silence, which seemed to her endless.

She looked up at last. He had dropped into a chair opposite to her; his face was very pale and stern. He breathed quickly. Almost involuntarily she said, “Do not be angry with me!”

“Why did I not know this before?” he asked abruptly.

“I thought you might have understood—I could not explain—the others knew,” she said, in a broken voice.

“Then your marriage is arranged?”

“Nothing is arranged,” she cried out quickly. “My uncle would not hear of it. He wanted Fabien to marry a lady who was noble, and had a largedot, and—there were other reasons—but this was one cause why they quarrelled. And it was after he had gone that he wrote those cruel words,” she said, her voice faltering.

Max rose up again, and came close to her. “My poor child,” he said, “how you must have suffered!” Then, as she was going to speak, he stopped her. “Listen. I do not pretend to tell you that this has not been a heavy shock. If I had but known—but I did not know, I have been ignorant, blundering, blind. You are the first woman I ever loved, and—but I do not blame you. Thérèse, remember that always, there is no one to blame but myself. We will forget all this, and have no more such mistakes, only I must always be your friend. I claim it as a right.”

There was a world of simple manliness, of tenderness, in his voice. Thérèse, who had expected reproaches and bitter words, was deeply moved by it. How had she misjudged this man! She had been prejudiced, blind, to the true nobility, which lay hid behind a somewhat blunt exterior; until this moment she had recognised nothing of it. She thought how strong he was, how able to protect, to teach her; her poor little weary heart longed for such a helper, even in the midst of its clinging to Fabien. Fabien himself seemed to lose something when she compared the two. For very weariness the conflict might perhaps have ended in Max Deshoulières’ favour, if he had chosen that it should do so.

“It is such a long waiting, and those were such hard words,” she said, falteringly.

“Foolish words,” he said, with a little sad smile. “People cannot renounce so readily, even if they wish it. If you love him, do not doubt him, my child. There are plenty of reasons which may have caused his silence; he has been impetuous and foolish, no doubt, but with such an uncle there are excuses for a young man. Before long we shall hear of him, believe me.”

He tried to speak cheerfully. Every word cost him a stab; but for her sake the brave chivalrous heart took this added burden upon itself. Perhaps he guessed something of what she was feeling, and pitied the weakness and inexperience which found it hard to endure. With a pang he put on one side the bright visions which he had been cherishing; all that he could do now was to be her friend and helper, and that he would do faithfully. He saw her brighten under his words; she looked up gladly.

“Fabien will not long stay away, when he knows I am alone,” she said, with a renewal of hope. “You are sure no more can be done?”

“I will tell Roulleau to redouble his exertions. You may be sure M. Saint-Martin will not expatriate himself without from time to time making inquiries. Unless, indeed, he is a second Diogenes.”

“He was not like Diogenes, at all,” said Thérèse, simply. “Oh, monsieur, you have made me so much happier!”

When she had spoken, the cruelty of her words struck her. He was thinking of her, caring for her, and she was taken up only by her own trouble. The contrast was something new to her: as it made itself felt, she reddened painfully, and the tears rushed into her eyes. “Forgive me,” she said, tremblingly, “I—I—”

“Are we not to be friends?” he said, with a kind, steadfast look. “And for what are friends good, unless it be to help one another?”

“But—” she stopped.

“But what? Do you think what I have said should prevent me from helping you? Child, child, we learn many things as life goes on. What I told you is true—I have never loved before, I hoped I never should love; I believed I should go through the world, and do the work God put before me alone; I desired nothing more. It came upon me unawares. I do not think that there can have been a time when I did not love you, but I did not know it. And now it has become a part of myself, something which can never be any more separated from me. Hush! do not be frightened. I promise you that you may hear all I have to say without disloyalty to—him. It can never leave me: it has brought me a sorrow, a great sorrow; but even at this moment—Thérèse, Thérèse, do you think I could part with it? Do you think that I do not even now thank God for this gift? There is a sweetness in it which no suffering can overpower.”

Yes, there was a sweetness—all the sweetness of true love. Love, which was generous, and could give without a hope of return; love, which in its friendship, in its self-sacrifice, in its faithfulness, should be like an angel in this man’s heart.

Thérèse looked at him with awe. Something in his words stirred her nature to its depths, showed her a height of which she had never dreamed. She had claimed happiness as a right, he accepted sorrow as a blessing. She had found only bitterness where he already spoke of sweetness. She cried out against her lot, he had faith that all should be for good. She had read of these things, she had in some degree thought of them in her devotions; but never before had she seen a life thus influenced, and it came upon her like a revelation.

“And therefore,” continued Max, still standing before her, and speaking in the same slow sentences, “you will understand that, though I may not often see you, it must be my greatest happiness to serve you, to be your friend and his. Do not deny me this. Do not fear me.”

“I do not fear you,” Thérèse answered, quickly. She wanted to say more, to thank him, but the words would not come. Involuntarily she put out her hand, he caught it, pressed it to his lips, held it there a moment, and was gone. She heard him clattering down the staircase, the little timepiece striking four, Nannon singing country songs to herself in a cracked wiry voice, doors opening and shutting, old familiar sounds with that touch of unreality which sometimes seizes them. The very patch of grey sky opposite to her, against which leafless trees waved solemnly backwards and forwards, looked like a strange, unnatural picture. She was too bewildered to collect her thoughts. Something seemed to have come to her, it may have been fresh hope, a new spring, which made her eye sparkle, and her colour rise. Had that echo found a stronger voice which whispered that there was something to be striven for higher than mere happiness? Perhaps. Such voices gather strength if we do not stifle them with our wilfulness.

Chapter Twelve.“A temple, like a cloudSlowly surmounting some invidious hill,Rose out of darkness: the bright work stood still,And might of its own beauty have been proud.But it was fashioned, and to God was vow’dBy virtues that diffused, in every part,Spirit divine through forms of human art......Hope had her spireStar-high, and pointing still to something higher.”Wordsworth.People who are compassionate and give themselves heartaches over suffering which seems undeserved, would be wiser and happier if they at least acknowledged other points of view than their own. If they could look at them from all, they would see gain where now they only see cost. No one ever knew what this interview, which had wrung the heart of one, did for Thérèse; not even Thérèse herself, certainly not Max. But it happened at a time when things were very bad with her, when she was losing ground, growing bitter, hard, angry with her lot. She had a feeling as if no one would help her, and that is a very unwholesome conviction to take root in any one’s heart, especially one so young as Thérèse. In the midst of it all there came this revelation. While she believed herself uncared for, this, great tender, unselfish love had been growing round her. The love she pictured was exacting, jealous, almost fierce; that which had been opened to her seemed something nobler, more divine. She acknowledged that, while her heart still clung to Fabien. Nay, Fabien had never been so well loved as after Max Deshoulières had shown her his own nobility. She felt her heart-burnings and want of faith so petty! She felt as if she could be more patient, more trustful, more content, now that this man had put before her a living picture of what love might be.There was, moreover, a little change for the better in her position. Monsieur Deshoulières had noticed that she looked ill and worn, and was not long in pointing out the fact to Mme. Roulleau.“You are sure that Mademoiselle Veuillot has all that she requires?” he asked, gravely.Madame Roulleau had not much difficulty in satisfying him; men are slow to suspect cruelty on the part of one woman to another, and he was not suspicious. He thought that she had been fretting, very likely staying too much in the house during the cold weather, wanting occupation. Was there no one to whom she might go for relaxation and society? Madame assured him that it was mademoiselle’s own choice that she confined herself to their own family. “She assists me in theménage, and I am rejoiced that she should teach the children when she is disposed. Poor mademoiselle! her teaching is not much, as monsieur may suppose. But, after all, it gives her occupation, and no one can be happy when they are idle. And they are such excellent children! They have such good hearts! As for my little Adolphe, he adores her!”This was a very rose-coloured account, but it contained nothing to make M. Deshoulières doubt. He felt himself, poor fellow, something of the value of occupation just then. It was a little hard to go through the daily round of sadnesses, complaints, pain; but, after all, they lightened the load on his heart. He gave Madame Roulleau two or three injunctions which made her very uneasy lest he should ask questions from Thérèse, and lose the formidable character with which, she had invested him. She went home on the day on which she met him, in a great hurry, and embraced Thérèse. “You want distraction, mademoiselle; you are looking quite pale, you undertake too much. I shall be obliged to forbid your assisting me in these little things,”—the girl began to think that her toil must really be voluntary, madame’s words were so decided.Madame Roulleau was alarmed. She and her husband had not laid any deep plot at the beginning of this affair, they had only wanted, as they told themselves, to be on the watch for such good things as might turn up, and help them out of certain difficulties in which they found themselves plunged so as to threatenfaillite. When little Roulleau was called to the bedside of the dying man, his keen wits saw at once the possibility of entanglements, difficulties; all so much money in his pocket while M. Deshoulières continued to employ him as notary. This would be at an end directly M. Deshoulières, asdépositaire, had fulfilled his trust. The idea of getting hold of Thérèse, and the sum set aside for her maintenance, occurred to him at the very moment that he was taking down M. Moreau’s words. At first he thought of no more than this. By little and little other possibilities presented themselves—pieces of good luck he called them. M. Saint-Martin’s return was the event which would put a stop to the pleasant little income of which he was already beginning to taste the sweets, and he was able to arrange two or three hindrances in the way of that return. Two South American letters, for instance, found among the papers at Château Ardron, would have given a clew to the young man’s residence, which might have brought him back with inconvenient promptitude. These letters, having been examined by madame, were now no longer in existence. It was not difficult to procure from Paris an answer or two containing just as much as he desired and no more, and purporting to come from an old friend of M. Moreau’s, a lawyer, a master at Fabien’slycée. It was not difficult, but it was a decided step. M. Roulleau used to awake in the night and think of that step in a cold perspiration. Certain great letters used to dance before his eyes, and shape themselves into something that resembled “Forgery,”—an ugly word to haunt people in the middle of the night. Afterwards came that summons to the Lion d’Or. Most likely this is the usual fashion in which crime grows into crime. Nothing very definite at first, a sort of haze over what may happen, a determined shutting of the eyes.Madame was clever, but she was a dangerous coadjutor, little Roulleau acknowledged it with groans. There was always the risk that her temper might flame out, and ruin their most carefully concocted schemes. She knew it herself: every now and then she put tremendous restraint upon it, but the restraint did not last. The love of tyranny was overpowering. To indulge it upon Thérèse she used to jeopardise every thing. If Ignace tried to counteract it, he only added fuel to the flame. He lived in continual fear.Husband and wife would have shared the panic could they have known what had taken place in the littletalonon that December day, and how nearly it brought M. Deshoulières and Thérèse together. Perhaps Nannon guessed. She was a shrewd old woman. Thérèse was young and scarcely able to conceal her feelings; so there was a soft bright expression in her face which Nannon had never before noticed. She came slowly up the stairs and into the room where the holes were being mended for her without saying any thing, and looked out of the window with eyes which saw a great deal more than the crowded roofs, or even the broad flat plain beyond.“Mademoiselle might give an opinion,” Nannon said at last, affronted.Thérèse started, turned round, went quickly to her, and gratefully kissed the old brown wrinkled cheek.“Do you know what you are like?” she said. “You are like one of the fairies who used to come to the help of the poor princesses who were shut up in terrible towers, and forced to do all kinds of hateful work. I don’t believe one of them had a worse hole than that to mend.”“I don’t know about fairies,” answered Nannon, shaking her head doubtfully; “but, if they are evil spirits, it is not very polite of you, mademoiselle, to call me one.”The girl laughed.“If you lived in the north you would know more about fairies; but here, in this ugly flat country, there is not so much as a bush for them to hide behind.Allons, don’t be cross, Nannon; not even Rouen has a cathedral like yours. I am going there now; will you come?”“What has happened?” thought the old woman to herself. Thérèse had not laughed so gayly for many a week past.They went out, along the narrow street, under the archway at the end, into the Place Notre Dame. A strong wind was blowing from the south-west, all the earth was grey, but the sky was full of glorious lights. A delicate greenish blue made the groundwork; over that lay motionless masses of high clouds, rosy red, here and there broken with purple shadows, serene, majestic; out of one uncovered depth shone a tiny trembling star. Nearer the earth grey rain-clouds were hurrying up; they had blotted out the west and the sinking sun, and now hurled themselves across the plain, with edges torn and rent and twisted by the violence of the driving wind. Broken bits of vapour scudded before them, veiling for a moment the rosy lights above. It was a strange contrast of peace and unrest. For though the earth was saddened by the driving rain-cloud which was powerless to rob the heavens of their glory, but could blot it out and hide it from the dwellers below, there was peace even with her. In the midst of the rush and tumults—solemn, steadfast, and unmoved—rose up the spires of Charville’s great cathedral. Into the drift of the cloud itself, untouched by any ruddy glow from the glowing sky, grey with the shadow of the storm, it pierced the darkness like an eternal prayer. Never more glorious in its beauty, never more faithful in its teaching, than now when it pointed upwards through sadness and gloom. Round about it stood the sentinel statues, just men made perfect, an innumerable company of angels; overhead, flying buttresses lightly clasped the stone, interlacing pinnacles crowned the clustering shafts. From arch to arch, from gargoyle to buttress, from pinnacle to spire, the eye followed its holy guidance, until, above cloud and greyness and the sweep of the whirlwind, it reached the deep light, the burning brightness of the heavens.One little heart, at least, felt something of all this. It seemed to come like a seal upon what the afternoon had opened to Thérèse; glimpses of a life in the midst of what was low and base, higher than she had taught herself to realise before. Out of the stones of the earth men had raised the church which pointed to heaven. Out of the little struggles of the day might grow the joys of eternity. The carved figures of the gateways looked at her with kind human eyes; until now they had seemed very far off—saints whose holiness was out of reach, martyrs who were martyrs, and not men. Thérèse used to gaze up at them with admiration, and get a little impatient. But to-day they had come down to her from out of their canopies. She had learned something of the divine lesson which glorifies life, and turns drudgery into an aureole.The two women went together into the great church. When they came out again it was dark; the clouds were still flying wildly; between the rents stars were shining out. Nannon was a little puzzled over M. Deshoulières’ visit and Thérèse’s silence; she said, at last,—“Mademoiselle, has any thing been heard of M. Fabien?”“Nothing yet. But M. Deshoulières is sure that he will soon come home.”“M. Deshoulières? Hum. Do you know what people are beginning to say?”“What?”“They say that even to bedépositaireto such a property is a very fine thing, and that M. Deshoulières is perhaps in no hurry to smooth M. Saint-Martin’s return.”“They say that! And you can repeat it!” cried Thérèse flashing round upon her. “Nannon, I shall hate you if you believe what wicked people talk. Do you not know how good he is? Have you not told me yourself how much he does?”“That may be. But he is a hard man for all that,” said Nannon, obstinately.“So you repeat. I do not believe it. I believe there is no man in all Charville so good, so noble, and so generous, as Monsieur Deshoulières,” cried the girl, with vehemence.“So, so! This is new doctrine. What has changed you, then, mademoiselle?”Thérèse was silent. In the darkness, Nannon could not see her blushes. “Perhaps, because I have only now begun to know him,” she said, softly.“This is not the first time you have met,” Nannon answered, with a certain dryness. “Peste! this wind is enough to blow one’s head off one’s shoulders. Well, well, old people can’t take these fancies like young ones.”“Yet you have told me yourself about his kindness to your neighbours.”“Oh, for a doctor, yes. That is quite another affair. A doctor, you see, mademoiselle, makes it a part of his trade to be good to the sick. Otherwise, nobody would take his nasty medicines. There would be a revolution, and, who knows, we might find that we could live without doctors. M. Deshoulières is very well when you have need of him. But I have heard it said, ‘Never trust a lawyer when you are in peace, a doctor when you are well.’ There is another word about curés, only mademoiselle might not like to hear it. Ouf, what a tempest!”“Nannon, you are not good to-day at all.”“Pardon, mademoiselle. It is rather that I think of Jean-Marie.”“Jean-Marie is not at the farm now?”“No, no; he has tried three masters since M. Gohon. He is too good for them, little angel, that is the truth. He is not like one of those great hulking country boys who have no wits beyond their hands and feet. M. Gohon might have suited him, though.”“But, Nannon, it was not because of that affair at the Halle that M. Gohon dismissed him.”“That is your innocence, mademoiselle; when any one has enemies like that Madame Mathurine and M. Deshoulières, a very little serves. No, no; M. Deshoulières is not good to have to do with, unless one has the fever. Then, certainly—”“If ever you have the fever, and he cures you, you will not talk of him like this,” Thérèse answered, indignantly.“If I have it I shall send for him, and not for that poor little Pinot, whom I recollect when he was a little creature in leading-strings, tumbling about like a helpless bundle. As if he could tell what was good for anybody! But, mademoiselle, I do not understand. If M. Deshoulières is so excellent as you suppose him, why do you not complain to him of these creatures—these Roulleaus—who insult you with making you slave for them? Perhaps he does not know.”“No, he does not know,” answered Thérèse, dreamily. The same thought had come into her own mind. She knew now that she had but to speak, and her life would be lightened of those heavy burdens which had grown so hateful to her. And yet—could she speak? She believed that the sum left by her uncle for her support was, in truth, very inadequate, and she knew nothing of its being even now doubled. Few people might care to receive her; she disliked the idea of being thrown upon M. Deshoulières’ charity. And, after all, it might be so short a time before it ended! With his words ringing in her ears, she fancied Fabien might be at the doors. She would rather bear all until he came. Deliverance by him would be very sweet. With it all there spoke a nobler reason. To take up something of what she had let fall—to redeem months past in idle repining—to live a life that was not ever self-seeking, ever crying out for good things withheld: this was the purpose growing out of that day’s events. It was all feeble, imperfect, even in the act of resolution; but it was there.“No; he does not know,” she repeated, as they stood at the door of the Roulleaus’ house. “I would rather he did not know. I would rather affairs remained as they are. Good-night, Nannon. It was very good of you to mend those holes.”“Good-night, mademoiselle.” The old woman stood and watched the dark figure run lightly up the stairs; then she turned away, shaking her head. “Something has done all this, something has changed her, and yet her heart has not moved from M. Fabien, for I said it to see. The saints forbid that M. Deshoulières should want her to marry him, since he will always have his own way, and the poor child would have to yield. Mend holes, did she say? She has a worse hole in the temper of that madame than any thing I can mend for her. Ah, my cap!—my boy, my boy, there, in the gutter! that white thing! What a torment of a wind! Stop it! Ah, my child, you are a treasure; come and let me embrace you.”

“A temple, like a cloudSlowly surmounting some invidious hill,Rose out of darkness: the bright work stood still,And might of its own beauty have been proud.But it was fashioned, and to God was vow’dBy virtues that diffused, in every part,Spirit divine through forms of human art......Hope had her spireStar-high, and pointing still to something higher.”Wordsworth.

“A temple, like a cloudSlowly surmounting some invidious hill,Rose out of darkness: the bright work stood still,And might of its own beauty have been proud.But it was fashioned, and to God was vow’dBy virtues that diffused, in every part,Spirit divine through forms of human art......Hope had her spireStar-high, and pointing still to something higher.”Wordsworth.

People who are compassionate and give themselves heartaches over suffering which seems undeserved, would be wiser and happier if they at least acknowledged other points of view than their own. If they could look at them from all, they would see gain where now they only see cost. No one ever knew what this interview, which had wrung the heart of one, did for Thérèse; not even Thérèse herself, certainly not Max. But it happened at a time when things were very bad with her, when she was losing ground, growing bitter, hard, angry with her lot. She had a feeling as if no one would help her, and that is a very unwholesome conviction to take root in any one’s heart, especially one so young as Thérèse. In the midst of it all there came this revelation. While she believed herself uncared for, this, great tender, unselfish love had been growing round her. The love she pictured was exacting, jealous, almost fierce; that which had been opened to her seemed something nobler, more divine. She acknowledged that, while her heart still clung to Fabien. Nay, Fabien had never been so well loved as after Max Deshoulières had shown her his own nobility. She felt her heart-burnings and want of faith so petty! She felt as if she could be more patient, more trustful, more content, now that this man had put before her a living picture of what love might be.

There was, moreover, a little change for the better in her position. Monsieur Deshoulières had noticed that she looked ill and worn, and was not long in pointing out the fact to Mme. Roulleau.

“You are sure that Mademoiselle Veuillot has all that she requires?” he asked, gravely.

Madame Roulleau had not much difficulty in satisfying him; men are slow to suspect cruelty on the part of one woman to another, and he was not suspicious. He thought that she had been fretting, very likely staying too much in the house during the cold weather, wanting occupation. Was there no one to whom she might go for relaxation and society? Madame assured him that it was mademoiselle’s own choice that she confined herself to their own family. “She assists me in theménage, and I am rejoiced that she should teach the children when she is disposed. Poor mademoiselle! her teaching is not much, as monsieur may suppose. But, after all, it gives her occupation, and no one can be happy when they are idle. And they are such excellent children! They have such good hearts! As for my little Adolphe, he adores her!”

This was a very rose-coloured account, but it contained nothing to make M. Deshoulières doubt. He felt himself, poor fellow, something of the value of occupation just then. It was a little hard to go through the daily round of sadnesses, complaints, pain; but, after all, they lightened the load on his heart. He gave Madame Roulleau two or three injunctions which made her very uneasy lest he should ask questions from Thérèse, and lose the formidable character with which, she had invested him. She went home on the day on which she met him, in a great hurry, and embraced Thérèse. “You want distraction, mademoiselle; you are looking quite pale, you undertake too much. I shall be obliged to forbid your assisting me in these little things,”—the girl began to think that her toil must really be voluntary, madame’s words were so decided.

Madame Roulleau was alarmed. She and her husband had not laid any deep plot at the beginning of this affair, they had only wanted, as they told themselves, to be on the watch for such good things as might turn up, and help them out of certain difficulties in which they found themselves plunged so as to threatenfaillite. When little Roulleau was called to the bedside of the dying man, his keen wits saw at once the possibility of entanglements, difficulties; all so much money in his pocket while M. Deshoulières continued to employ him as notary. This would be at an end directly M. Deshoulières, asdépositaire, had fulfilled his trust. The idea of getting hold of Thérèse, and the sum set aside for her maintenance, occurred to him at the very moment that he was taking down M. Moreau’s words. At first he thought of no more than this. By little and little other possibilities presented themselves—pieces of good luck he called them. M. Saint-Martin’s return was the event which would put a stop to the pleasant little income of which he was already beginning to taste the sweets, and he was able to arrange two or three hindrances in the way of that return. Two South American letters, for instance, found among the papers at Château Ardron, would have given a clew to the young man’s residence, which might have brought him back with inconvenient promptitude. These letters, having been examined by madame, were now no longer in existence. It was not difficult to procure from Paris an answer or two containing just as much as he desired and no more, and purporting to come from an old friend of M. Moreau’s, a lawyer, a master at Fabien’slycée. It was not difficult, but it was a decided step. M. Roulleau used to awake in the night and think of that step in a cold perspiration. Certain great letters used to dance before his eyes, and shape themselves into something that resembled “Forgery,”—an ugly word to haunt people in the middle of the night. Afterwards came that summons to the Lion d’Or. Most likely this is the usual fashion in which crime grows into crime. Nothing very definite at first, a sort of haze over what may happen, a determined shutting of the eyes.

Madame was clever, but she was a dangerous coadjutor, little Roulleau acknowledged it with groans. There was always the risk that her temper might flame out, and ruin their most carefully concocted schemes. She knew it herself: every now and then she put tremendous restraint upon it, but the restraint did not last. The love of tyranny was overpowering. To indulge it upon Thérèse she used to jeopardise every thing. If Ignace tried to counteract it, he only added fuel to the flame. He lived in continual fear.

Husband and wife would have shared the panic could they have known what had taken place in the littletalonon that December day, and how nearly it brought M. Deshoulières and Thérèse together. Perhaps Nannon guessed. She was a shrewd old woman. Thérèse was young and scarcely able to conceal her feelings; so there was a soft bright expression in her face which Nannon had never before noticed. She came slowly up the stairs and into the room where the holes were being mended for her without saying any thing, and looked out of the window with eyes which saw a great deal more than the crowded roofs, or even the broad flat plain beyond.

“Mademoiselle might give an opinion,” Nannon said at last, affronted.

Thérèse started, turned round, went quickly to her, and gratefully kissed the old brown wrinkled cheek.

“Do you know what you are like?” she said. “You are like one of the fairies who used to come to the help of the poor princesses who were shut up in terrible towers, and forced to do all kinds of hateful work. I don’t believe one of them had a worse hole than that to mend.”

“I don’t know about fairies,” answered Nannon, shaking her head doubtfully; “but, if they are evil spirits, it is not very polite of you, mademoiselle, to call me one.”

The girl laughed.

“If you lived in the north you would know more about fairies; but here, in this ugly flat country, there is not so much as a bush for them to hide behind.Allons, don’t be cross, Nannon; not even Rouen has a cathedral like yours. I am going there now; will you come?”

“What has happened?” thought the old woman to herself. Thérèse had not laughed so gayly for many a week past.

They went out, along the narrow street, under the archway at the end, into the Place Notre Dame. A strong wind was blowing from the south-west, all the earth was grey, but the sky was full of glorious lights. A delicate greenish blue made the groundwork; over that lay motionless masses of high clouds, rosy red, here and there broken with purple shadows, serene, majestic; out of one uncovered depth shone a tiny trembling star. Nearer the earth grey rain-clouds were hurrying up; they had blotted out the west and the sinking sun, and now hurled themselves across the plain, with edges torn and rent and twisted by the violence of the driving wind. Broken bits of vapour scudded before them, veiling for a moment the rosy lights above. It was a strange contrast of peace and unrest. For though the earth was saddened by the driving rain-cloud which was powerless to rob the heavens of their glory, but could blot it out and hide it from the dwellers below, there was peace even with her. In the midst of the rush and tumults—solemn, steadfast, and unmoved—rose up the spires of Charville’s great cathedral. Into the drift of the cloud itself, untouched by any ruddy glow from the glowing sky, grey with the shadow of the storm, it pierced the darkness like an eternal prayer. Never more glorious in its beauty, never more faithful in its teaching, than now when it pointed upwards through sadness and gloom. Round about it stood the sentinel statues, just men made perfect, an innumerable company of angels; overhead, flying buttresses lightly clasped the stone, interlacing pinnacles crowned the clustering shafts. From arch to arch, from gargoyle to buttress, from pinnacle to spire, the eye followed its holy guidance, until, above cloud and greyness and the sweep of the whirlwind, it reached the deep light, the burning brightness of the heavens.

One little heart, at least, felt something of all this. It seemed to come like a seal upon what the afternoon had opened to Thérèse; glimpses of a life in the midst of what was low and base, higher than she had taught herself to realise before. Out of the stones of the earth men had raised the church which pointed to heaven. Out of the little struggles of the day might grow the joys of eternity. The carved figures of the gateways looked at her with kind human eyes; until now they had seemed very far off—saints whose holiness was out of reach, martyrs who were martyrs, and not men. Thérèse used to gaze up at them with admiration, and get a little impatient. But to-day they had come down to her from out of their canopies. She had learned something of the divine lesson which glorifies life, and turns drudgery into an aureole.

The two women went together into the great church. When they came out again it was dark; the clouds were still flying wildly; between the rents stars were shining out. Nannon was a little puzzled over M. Deshoulières’ visit and Thérèse’s silence; she said, at last,—

“Mademoiselle, has any thing been heard of M. Fabien?”

“Nothing yet. But M. Deshoulières is sure that he will soon come home.”

“M. Deshoulières? Hum. Do you know what people are beginning to say?”

“What?”

“They say that even to bedépositaireto such a property is a very fine thing, and that M. Deshoulières is perhaps in no hurry to smooth M. Saint-Martin’s return.”

“They say that! And you can repeat it!” cried Thérèse flashing round upon her. “Nannon, I shall hate you if you believe what wicked people talk. Do you not know how good he is? Have you not told me yourself how much he does?”

“That may be. But he is a hard man for all that,” said Nannon, obstinately.

“So you repeat. I do not believe it. I believe there is no man in all Charville so good, so noble, and so generous, as Monsieur Deshoulières,” cried the girl, with vehemence.

“So, so! This is new doctrine. What has changed you, then, mademoiselle?”

Thérèse was silent. In the darkness, Nannon could not see her blushes. “Perhaps, because I have only now begun to know him,” she said, softly.

“This is not the first time you have met,” Nannon answered, with a certain dryness. “Peste! this wind is enough to blow one’s head off one’s shoulders. Well, well, old people can’t take these fancies like young ones.”

“Yet you have told me yourself about his kindness to your neighbours.”

“Oh, for a doctor, yes. That is quite another affair. A doctor, you see, mademoiselle, makes it a part of his trade to be good to the sick. Otherwise, nobody would take his nasty medicines. There would be a revolution, and, who knows, we might find that we could live without doctors. M. Deshoulières is very well when you have need of him. But I have heard it said, ‘Never trust a lawyer when you are in peace, a doctor when you are well.’ There is another word about curés, only mademoiselle might not like to hear it. Ouf, what a tempest!”

“Nannon, you are not good to-day at all.”

“Pardon, mademoiselle. It is rather that I think of Jean-Marie.”

“Jean-Marie is not at the farm now?”

“No, no; he has tried three masters since M. Gohon. He is too good for them, little angel, that is the truth. He is not like one of those great hulking country boys who have no wits beyond their hands and feet. M. Gohon might have suited him, though.”

“But, Nannon, it was not because of that affair at the Halle that M. Gohon dismissed him.”

“That is your innocence, mademoiselle; when any one has enemies like that Madame Mathurine and M. Deshoulières, a very little serves. No, no; M. Deshoulières is not good to have to do with, unless one has the fever. Then, certainly—”

“If ever you have the fever, and he cures you, you will not talk of him like this,” Thérèse answered, indignantly.

“If I have it I shall send for him, and not for that poor little Pinot, whom I recollect when he was a little creature in leading-strings, tumbling about like a helpless bundle. As if he could tell what was good for anybody! But, mademoiselle, I do not understand. If M. Deshoulières is so excellent as you suppose him, why do you not complain to him of these creatures—these Roulleaus—who insult you with making you slave for them? Perhaps he does not know.”

“No, he does not know,” answered Thérèse, dreamily. The same thought had come into her own mind. She knew now that she had but to speak, and her life would be lightened of those heavy burdens which had grown so hateful to her. And yet—could she speak? She believed that the sum left by her uncle for her support was, in truth, very inadequate, and she knew nothing of its being even now doubled. Few people might care to receive her; she disliked the idea of being thrown upon M. Deshoulières’ charity. And, after all, it might be so short a time before it ended! With his words ringing in her ears, she fancied Fabien might be at the doors. She would rather bear all until he came. Deliverance by him would be very sweet. With it all there spoke a nobler reason. To take up something of what she had let fall—to redeem months past in idle repining—to live a life that was not ever self-seeking, ever crying out for good things withheld: this was the purpose growing out of that day’s events. It was all feeble, imperfect, even in the act of resolution; but it was there.

“No; he does not know,” she repeated, as they stood at the door of the Roulleaus’ house. “I would rather he did not know. I would rather affairs remained as they are. Good-night, Nannon. It was very good of you to mend those holes.”

“Good-night, mademoiselle.” The old woman stood and watched the dark figure run lightly up the stairs; then she turned away, shaking her head. “Something has done all this, something has changed her, and yet her heart has not moved from M. Fabien, for I said it to see. The saints forbid that M. Deshoulières should want her to marry him, since he will always have his own way, and the poor child would have to yield. Mend holes, did she say? She has a worse hole in the temper of that madame than any thing I can mend for her. Ah, my cap!—my boy, my boy, there, in the gutter! that white thing! What a torment of a wind! Stop it! Ah, my child, you are a treasure; come and let me embrace you.”

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