"Lo, as some innocent and eager maiden
Leans o'er the wistful limit of the world,
Dreams of the glow and glory of the distance,
Wonderful wooing and the grace of tears,
Dreams with what eyes and what a sweet insistance
Lovers are waiting in the hidden years."
P.W.H. Myers.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Therese was really grateful to the Roulleaus for their concession,
grateful and a little touched by what seemed honest delicacy of feeling.
Madame Roulleau, who could dig like a mole when she wanted to find out
a character, had been digging and burrowing while her husband was at
Ardron, and knew pretty well by this time what strings to pull. People
who have this sort of shrewdness can see a good deal without going far
down; she did not reach the depths, but she was quite satisfied. It was
not worth her while to study all the complexities of the girl's nature,
if she had tried doing so she would have had a baffling task, for there
were plenty of contradictions about it. Probably Therese's education
had something to do with all the contrarieties and incongruities which
met you at every turn--she was tender and hard, resolute and timid,
generous and distrustful; it was impossible to know which of the
opposing qualities would come uppermost: a great hopefulness, perhaps,
impressed you the most. It was not insensibility to, but an inborn
dread of the sadnesses of life which made her cling to the bright side.
In spite of what they may say, there are people who find a certain sort
of enjoyment in trouble, they like to be made to _weep_ over fictitious
distresses, there is a chord in them which responds at once to any call
for sympathy. Therese was not one of these people to whom we turn in
our sorrows, sure at least of being understood, if we are not helped.
As yet she was impatient of sorrow, eager for happiness. She hated
tragedies, sad books, minor music. As I have said, it was not that such
things did not touch her--perhaps if she had been indifferent she would
not have minded them so much--but her nature rose up in rebellion
against them: they were part of Adam's curse. She had not learned that,
after all, through the Infinite Love that uses sorrow and suffering for
instruments, they have caught a Divine beauty, a sweet solemn loveliness
which by degrees reveals itself and wins our hearts. Therese believed
only in one kind of happiness--our wills gratified, our dreams realised,
all the little idols we have set up smiling down upon us from their
pedestals: as we go on in life we find out sometimes that it was well
our idols were shattered for us, or we might have been crushed under
their weight; but Therese had no fear of this. She thought of herself
as if some day all her longings must be satisfied, her troubles ended
and laid aside, every thing completed, rounded off, and perfect. After
that, I think there came a golden haze. There is something
half-pathetic, half-comforting, in this unlimited faith in coming
happiness. We see where it fails, but every now and then it acts upon
our wearier spirits like a breath of immortality.
Therese had already met with enough to daunt her in her little life,
although it had not had that effect; she looked upon all the roughnesses
of the road, so far, as things extraneous, and not altogether belonging
to her existence. Whatever part of her they affected it was not her
belief in the rose-coloured days that were coming. That stood unshaken.
Nor while it lasted could she be said to have lost her courage; yet it
had grown to have a strange admixture of timidity since she went--a bold
brave child--to live at Rouen. Her heart used to swell, and her cheeks
flush, when M. Moreau was harsh to her aunt, to Fabien; but her woman's
nature, though it resented his treatment, quailed before it. Once or
twice she had resisted him, but all the time she was terribly
frightened. Poor Therese! she was only a girl, and he had every thing
on his side except right, as she used to say to herself indignantly,
half angry at her own weakness.
Madame Moreau was a large feeble woman, who scarcely ventured to think
without her husband's permission. She was so passive under his
provocations that you were inclined to wonder whether she had been so
from the first, or whether, after he had frightened the spirit out of
her, nature had avenged herself by giving her this impervious armour.
Therese's little fiery outbreaks on her behalf were always wasted. They
were much more appreciated by Fabien; he incited her to them, and she
was too generous to notice that she was left to bear the consequences
alone. He was her hero, over whom she rang her little changes of
admiration: when he told her that he loved her, instead of formally
beforehand requesting her hand from her uncle, she promised, with her
grey eyes shining straight into his, and all her heart in her words,
never to give him up. Fabien promised the same. "Every thing," says an
old writer, "has a double handle, or at least we have two hands by which
to apprehend it." I suppose it was so with this promise.
Then came the crash, and her hero went away, more of a hero than ever.
In her thoughts Therese set a crown on his head, and turned him into one
of the old champions. Fabien, who was thoroughly nineteenth-century,
would have been utterly puzzled what to do with himself if her ideas had
come true. And then, with her boundless store of hopefulness, of
expectation, she did not find the waiting so weary as it looked. Every
now and then, to be sure, there would surge up in her heart a wild
longing, a yearning such as had broken out when M. Deshoulieres spoke,
the days would seem interminable, the distance from Fabien infinite.
Such pangs came more acutely after M. Moreau had one day called her
into his room.
"So you are still thinking of that ungrateful?" said the old man
mockingly. "In that case you shall receive his latest news."
And then he showed her Fabien's lines of renunciation.
All the girl's fear of her uncle vanished: she lifted her head proudly.
"When Fabien writes those words to me, I will believe them," she said,
and went away, leaving old Moreau speechless at her presumption. It was
her greatest victory among their encounters, but it was one of those
victories which cost more than defeats. Not all her buoyancy could rise
against the weight which the words left in her heart. How could he
write them? How could he? She used to put the question passionately,
and then answer it with a hundred fond excuses. All must be right some
day,--that was the creed to which she clung; could she only keep free
from the convent walls, all must be right. When her aunt died, and she
lost the one slender link to her uncle's affection, her dread of them
increased; afterwards, through all the terrible time at the Cygne, she
could not altogether repress the sense of liberty which came with the
lifting from her the weight of that indomitable will. Whatever
happened, she thought she must breathe more freely. She was not at all
prepared to find M. Moreau's intentions echoed back by her new
guardian. Madame Roulleau had taken care to impress her with an idea of
his inflexible nature, and she began, in her ignorance, to dread that he
might have the power to compel her to submit. Any fate seemed
preferable, and Madame Roulleau was well aware that in taking her into
her house, she might impose what terms she pleased.
At first there was not much laid upon her. She had a miserable little
room, it is true, bare and dreary, but what then? "If mademoiselle
expects another Chateau Ardron, she must not come to Rue St Servan,"
said Madame, with her disagreeable smile. Therese hastened to explain
that no such discontented comparison had entered her head. She was in
fact too young to care much for the want of comfort round her; she
pulled the things about and spread out her little possessions, and
wasted no repinings for the blue silk curtains, and the gilding, and the
_ormolu_ at Chateau Ardron. Out of her window, beyond the roofs, she
could see one of the Cathedral spires, with its delicate stone fretwork;
a great expanse of sky over the flat country round; the very roofs were
too crooked, too full, of quaint character, to be commonplace. She
could make histories out of them, weave romances about the people who
lived beneath them--romances into which her own story and Fabien's stole
in some irrepressible way. It seemed like a little time of rest after
all the harshness and unkind words of the last years. Surely some
intuitive instinct would tell Fabien that she was alone in the world,
and that no one need come between them now.
But in a little while she found she had no time for dreaming. Things
seemed to fell upon her as a matter of course. Mme. Roulleau would
come in with a great heap of clothes in her arms, her own, Adolphe's,
Octavie's, for mademoiselle to exercise her powers of _reparation_ upon.
It was often very difficult to make out of them what madame expected;
only Aladdin's magician with his new lamps for old could have satisfied
her, and poor Therese darned and turned and patched, and patched and
turned and darned, in despair: more than once before she had learned her
lesson of economy, she cut up her own things in a vain attempt to
perform the impossible. If she could only have pleased by her efforts
she would not have disliked the work; she was active-minded, glad to be
of use, there would have been a certain enjoyment in her own ingenuity.
And if Mme. Roulleau was capable of being touched she must have been
conscious of the sweetness with which Therese took her rebuffs, the
patience with which she tried to follow out her directions. They were
the only weapons the girl brought forward at this time. But to certain
natures there is nothing so dear as the power of petty tyranny, and
neither the money paid by M. Deshoulieres, nor the work she extracted
from her, were so delightful to Madame Roulleau as the infliction of
daily snubs upon Therese. Skilfully drawing out her desire to remain
free and lead a secular life, skilfully playing upon her fears of a
convent, imperceptibly strengthening her dread of M. Deshoulieres'
decisions, far more swift than he to fathom the secret of the girl's
heart and to turn it to their purpose, she did her best to make
Therese's life a burden.
And yet for a time, as I have said, Therese bore it all not only with
patience but with cheerfulness. She hoped bravely, and this was the
elixir which prevented her feeling madame's sting. It was not pleasant
to be found fault with, but she said to herself that it all came from
her own stupidity, her want of knowledge about useful things. After
all, they were useful, and it was very good for her to be forced into
them. She preached vigorous little lectures over her own reluctance and
want of gratitude. Monsieur and madame were not charming, certainly,
but they had been very generous and only demanded a return. In those
days her step was buoyant, her colour bright, her grey eyes sparkling.
Madame Roulleau used to look at her and say crossly to her husband,--
"She has had some news of that _vaurien_."
The little notary used to get into a fever of alarm. "Zenobie," he
would say, with his shrill voice quavering, "if he comes back we are
ruined."
"He must not come back," said madame, quietly.
"Must not!" repeated the little man, querulously. "That is very fine,
but who is to keep him away? It appears to me that there was never such
a world as this for gossip. Instead of minding their own affairs,
people talk, talk, like so many parrots, and who is to make sure that
their mischievous tongues will not one day carry the news to the wrong
person?"
His wife darted a contemptuous glance at him. "It is a lottery, as I
told you before," she said coldly. "One or other must lose."
"And you talk of it so calmly! Do you know what a frightful risk I run?
If M. Saint-Martin comes home, and the little hindrances I have put in
his way are discovered--or if that girl finds out the double payment, I
am ruined! I shudder when I think of it."
He was shuddering. It was a hot June day, and he shivered as if he had
the ague. Madame looked at him with still the same expression in her
face.
"You are a coward, Ignace," at last she said, letting her words drop
slowly, "and that makes you a fool. Do you suppose that I have not
weighed the risk? Do you suppose that I am not watching?"
Under her eyes he shivered more visibly. "I know," he said in a
submissive voice; "I only thought--"
"Do not think," she interrupted contemptuously; "leave thinking to me."
"He might write to her," M. Roulleau muttered under his breath.
"What are you saying?"
"Do not be angry, Zenobie; I only remarked that he might write to her."
"Here?"
"No; to Chateau Ardron. In that case, _mon amie_," continued the little
man, apologetically, "permit me to observe that the letter would be
forwarded to Monsieur Deshoulieres."
Madame sighed. "I do not think I shall ever be able to educate you,"
she said; "I must soon give it up. And you can actually assert that
such a danger has only just struck you, and that all this time you have
taken no precaution against it. _Hein_! look here!"
Her tone rose peremptory and shrill. M. Roulleau looked obediently at
the copy of the letter she flourished before his eyes, and then
admiringly at her.
"You are a marvel!" he said in his feeble, abject voice.
"I made her write it," she said, still shrilly. "Bah, she is only too
easy to manage, there is no satisfaction, one had but to work on her
fears. Her letters will be sent here, and I think, monsieur, you will
acknowledge that I can arrange who shall be the receiver?"
"I acknowledge every thing," he said, with a deprecating gesture.
"Perhaps you may be relieved to know," she continued, returning to her
cold measured tones, "that I took further steps at the same time. It
would be inconvenient if other letters reached M. Deshoulieres. I
requested, therefore, in his name, that all documents which might arrive
should be forwarded to you. By this means we control one channel of
communication."
"But, Zenobie, my angel--"
"Well? more scruples?"
"You said in his name?"
"Exactly."
"But--suppose he should find it out?"
"In that case, and supposing also that you had not the wit to persuade
him that such were his orders, our little enterprise is at an end. I
have told you that there must be risk. Bah!" she continued, suddenly
becoming fierce again, "you do not fear to be a villain, Ignace,
provided you may have the profit without the danger. You can creep, but
you cannot spring."
She did not look unlike a wild-cat herself, with her round black eyes
sparkling, her hands making energetic passes in the air. M. Roulleau
was in an agony lest any one should hear her imprudent words.
"Hush-h-h," he said tremulously, "I am not so clever as you, Zenobie, I
do not affirm it. Only tell me what you would have me do."
"Do!" she cried in her high-pitched voice. And then, with one of those
sudden strange checks by which she controlled her passion, she changed
back to her contemptuous manner. "You can never be any thing but what
you are, but you may be useful in your own way. Do? Go and creep,
Ignace."