"As is the woodbine's, so the woman's life."
_The Lost Tales of Miletus_.
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M. Deshoulieres had lived nearly forty years in the world. He still
wanted three or four years of that age, it is true, but he looked more,
and perhaps this was the reason that he was in the habit of thinking of
himself in round numbers as a man of forty. All his life had been
comparatively solitary. He was an only child; his mother died while he
was at a _lycee_; his father married again; the son had gone out into
the world, worked, risen, now he stood high in his profession, and had
been pressed by his colleagues to give up the provinces and betake
himself to Paris. Why he had not followed their advice he scarcely
knew. No tie specially bound him to Charville, but, somehow, he had
struck root in the strange old town,--there was always some case in
which he was interested, something that kept him from moving. The man
was too simple-minded, perhaps, to care for the city life which just
stayed within the horizon of his thoughts, and never grew any nearer.
He did not think enough about himself to be ambitious. And with his
noble, kindly nature, always giving out of its abundance to others, he
had lived all these years without any peculiar interest of his own; had
lived until certain little habits, and fancies, and opinions had grown
upon him,--a dread of women, a love of solitude, somewhat of a dislike
to any thing that took him out of his ordinary work. All that had
happened in the past week was peculiarly distasteful to him. Here was a
girl thrown upon his care, and perhaps an endless sea of troubles rising
out of the unwelcome charge; here was a mystery, and he hated, mysteries
with all his heart; here were already looks, hints, surmises. "By and
by they will say that I poisoned the old man," reflected the doctor,
with a grim laugh. He was not accustomed to have his word doubted; this
suspicious cure's little drop of bitterness vexed him more than he
confessed even to himself: it was a sort of forerunner of the world's
opinion; and the world's opinion affects us all in some degree, say what
we will to the contrary.
Therefore when little Roulleau made his cautious proposal about
Mademoiselle Therese, M. Deshoulieres jumped at it as an escape from
one difficulty. He had been thinking where he could place her, without
much satisfaction having grown out of his thoughts, but, oddly enough,
the Roulleau household had not presented itself. It was respectable,
inoffensive; there was that wife, certainly, but M. Deshoulieres had a
kind of half-shaped theory that women could not be so objectionable
towards women as towards men,--there was no reason that Madame Roulleau
should drive Therese as she drove Ignace; nay, more than once in that
little expedition to Ardron he had felt inclined to sympathise with
Madame. Every now and then his wishes, wandered longingly away towards
that still safer refuge, a convent; if Therese could only feel a
vocation in that direction she might be placed at once with the good
Sisters in the town. Then his responsibility would be at an end. M.
Deshoulieres devoutly wished it might be brought to so happy a
conclusion.
A little soft patter of rain was falling as the two men walked from the
station to M. Roulleau's abode; the young leaves looked a brighter
green, the sky had blue patches here and there between the grey; it was
one of those spring showers which are full of life and fragrance.
Sleepy, picturesque Charville lay and drank it in contentedly; little
shallow pools twinkled in the hollows of the excavated house, out of
which the workmen were dragging old memories. At the corner, watching
them, stood old Nannon: the doctor nodded to her and hurried on,--he
wanted to get over this business, to return to his patients. After all,
he reflected, the predicament was too absurd to last long. Monsieur
Fabien would speedily appear, receive his property, remove himself and
his perplexities from the doctor's mind. Charville would resume its
usual peacefulness, its inhabitants come into the world, marry, go out
of it again; the Cathedral chimes ring their varying notes; M.
Deshoulieres take his coffee under the stiff trees before the _cafe_;
the women gossip volubly round the stone fountain on their way from
market. All should be as it had been before M. Moreau came to trouble
Charville with his strange bequest.
But Therese?
When M. Deshoulieres entered the little, bare, unadorned room in the
Roulleau's house--its master having left him at the door to confer with
his wife upon the question of the girl's remaining with them--Therese
was standing by the table, eagerly watching the door, and the doctor's
heart was touched by the wistful grey eyes, which read his failure in a
moment, and sank. She looked so helpless, so young to be left in this
strange friendless condition. He went up to her kindly and took her
hand.
"We are as we were," he said, answering the look, "but what then? He
will come in good time; do not despond. I was not made for police work;
and as for Ignace Roulleau, he can creep along on the beaten track, but
take him out of it, bah! he is of no more use than a child. We must
have patience; something will arise; news will come."
"Do you think so?" Therese said, wearily.
"I am confident," he answered.
When she looked up at him he was smiling kindly upon her. Her youth,
her forlornness, those pathetic eyes, all touched him more than he
imagined. His big chivalrous man's heart answered at once their mute
appeal.
"News will come," he repeated, positively. "Monsieur Saint-Martin will
appear himself some day."
"Some day!" cried Therese, with a harsh ring of anguish in her voice.
"Yes, yes, he will come some day, perhaps--but when? Oh, and the days
are so long!"
She flung herself down by the table and hid her face on her arms; her
figure shook, her rapid breathing was broken by sobs. M. Deshoulieres
looked at her in amazement. Hitherto she had been so quiet that this
passionate outbreak startled him. He began to wonder vaguely whether M.
Fabien was more to her than her uncle's nephew--whether the banishment
had any thing to do with the grey eyes of Mademoiselle Therese? but the
moment after he smiled at his own fancy. Had it been so she would have
known at once where to find him. M. Deshoulieres was little acquainted
with women, it is true, and with the acknowledgment there came a little
devout ejaculation of gratitude; but he knew enough to have a profound
conviction that were this suspicion correct, not all the uncles in the
world would have prevented M. Fabien at the Antipodea and Mademoiselle
Therese in France from communicating with each other. Perhaps what he
did know was owing more to romances read in his boyhood than to actual
experience. He had lived too busy a life, he would have said, to have
had time for watching or making out for himself dreams of that kind.
And yet at the bottom of his heart he had a vast, almost childish belief
in the power of love. He put away that idea almost angrily, and went
and stood by the window until poor Therese recovered herself. Naturally
she was overdone, upset; that explained it all. He waited patiently,
considering all the sick people with whose interests Ardron had
interfered; and he looked out of the dull little window at the little
that could be seen--the wet blank wall opposite, over the top of which a
few garden trees waved feebly backwards and forwards; a cart drawn by
stout horses with blue thick woollen fringes on their huge collars,
which jerked and rumbled over the uneven stones. Presently, through the
rattle, he became aware that Therese, sitting upright and keeping her
tearful eyes turned away, was speaking.
"I beg your pardon," she said once or twice over again, as if she could
not get any further.
M. Deshoulieres came and sat down by her. There was the same kindness
in his eyes, if only Therese had looked at them, but his voice was a
little quick and peremptory. He had no time to waste in unnecessary
words.
"Is there really nothing more that you can tell me about Monsieur
Saint-Martin?" he asked.
"Nothing of the present," said Therese, slowly.
"Well, of the past, then?"
"What did you hear at Ardron?"
"Nothing."
"Ah, that is no wonder," said Therese, speaking with a little more
animation. "The people at Ardron scarcely know Fabien; we have been
there such a little time, you see. We used to live at Rouen--my uncle,
my aunt, Fabien, and I. Fabien has always lived with them; my uncle
loved him better than any one else in the world. I went to Rouen when
my father and mother died, that was eleven years ago," said Therese,
considering; "I was nine years old and Fabien was fourteen."
"And your aunt took you?"
"Yes. Poor aunt Ferdinande! she tried to be kind; and my uncle was
generous--very generous. He despised women, though, monsieur, and he
never professed to like me. Is it not strange that, after all, I should
have been the only one left to him now?"
She spoke in a questioning dreamy sort of way, clasping her hands over
her knee, and looking out of the window at the dropping rain. There was
a certain easy grace in her attitude, in the curves of her figure, in
the poise of her head. Monsieur Deshoulieres was not noticing it, he
glanced at the timepiece instead and fidgeted.
"Then, as I understand, M. Moreau intended his nephew to enter his
house at Rouen?" he asked.
"Oh, he had entered it," Therese cried quickly; "he had entered and was
doing admirably when--"
"Well, when--?"
"--They had a disagreement."
"Ah, a disagreement. On matters connected with money?"
M. Deshoulieres thought he was pursuing the examination with great
skill; he did not notice the troubled appealing glance which poor
Therese threw at him before answering slowly,--
"Not altogether."
"On business, then? It is much the same thing. Five-eighths of the
world permit such matters to wreck their lives. And so the old man was
angry, and M. Saint-Martin went off in a headstrong fit?"
Poor Therese wanted very much to tell her little story--the old, old
story--more commonplace even than M. Deshoulieres', yet so new, so
beautiful, in her eyes. But how could she? He was so terribly prompt
and abrupt, he would not see what she meant, would not help her, his
quick manner frightened her, her education had taught her reserve, she
needed sympathy to draw out little by little what it was so hard to say
in words; after all, it was not necessary that she should relate her
share in the matter. She said, sighing,--"The two disagreed, monsieur,
as you say."
"And so the young man acted in this wise fashion?"
"It was not Fabien's fault. It was his uncle who was angry. Fabien had
done nothing wrong." Her whole attitude changed; her throat curved, her
eyes kindled; evidently she was prepared to do battle for the absent if
the opportunity came. M. Deshoulieres, however, had relapsed into
silence, his elbows on his knees, his hands thrust into his hair.
Looking up at last, he suddenly said,--
"And you mean to say that you do not know where he went?"
"No," she answered, steadily.
"Your aunt, Madame Moreau, has not been dead many months; do you suppose
that she was as strangely ignorant?"
"I do not know--I cannot tell," said Therese, with agitation.
"But you have an idea," said M. Deshoulieres, fixing his keen eyes upon
her, and frowning unconsciously.
"From something she once let drop I fancied he was in America, but when
I begged and prayed her to tell me she became so terrified at her own
imprudence that I could not find out any thing more. She was in great
awe of my uncle. He never mentioned poor Fabien, except once, when--"
She stopped short, tears gathered in her eyes.
"Well?" said Deshoulieres, impatiently.
"--When he showed me a scrap of writing, evidently torn off a letter,
and containing only two lines."