"One friend in that path shall be
To secure my steps from wrong;
One to count night day for me,
Patient through the watches long,
Serving most with none to see."
R. Browning.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
M. Deshoulieres, who had not a moment to spare, paced up and down the
bureau in a fever of impatience. M. Roulleau had slipped out directly
his wife left the room: the doctor was too preoccupied to notice him at
all, or he must have been struck with the terror in his face.
"Does monsieur say that M. Saint-Martin is actually in Charville?" he
asked in a trembling voice, with his hand on the door.
"No. He is at Maury. There is barely time to meet the train. Will you
hasten mademoiselle?"
And then he began to pace up and down with his watch in his hand.
Nobody came. He opened the door, it was all silent. With a sigh--was
it relief or disappointment?--he ran down the steps and hastened to the
station. People who passed him said that M. Deshoulieres was--giving
up at last; there was a worn dragged look on his face, like that of a
man under the first touch of illness. Poor man! There were two or
three conflicting currents in his heart, such as wear lines before they
have been running very long. An hour of their work will do more than a
few years of age, who is but a slow labourer after all. Fabien was
come--this man of whose love he had never known until he had given that
away which now he could never more take back. Fabien had come, and
there would be a marriage; and Therese would be carried away, and he--?
Well, he should remain in Charville, go through that daily round so
like, and yet so unlike, itself; worry the Prefet, be victimised by
Veuve Angelin--it was not very interesting when he looked at it in this
downright, colourless fashion, but still it was there; so far as a
future could be foretold, this was the future to which he had to look
forward. Most people have once or twice in their lives gone through
that desolate time when before them stretches out a grey, cheerless,
sunless prospect, a long dusty road, as it were, along which there must
be a solitary plodding. Until we have tried it ourselves we cannot
believe that, after all, the first view is the saddest part of it; that
as we go along we come to hidden banks, in which starry flowers are
blossoming--walls, painted with delicate bright lichen--tiny wayside
streams--crystals in the dust--all manner of sweet surprises, and
evermore above them all the eternal blue of heaven. Afterwards, when we
are in the midst of them, we wonder how the dreary road has become so
beautiful; but beforehand it appals us. Perhaps life never looked so
sad to Max Deshoulieres as in that little journey from Charville to
Maury.
When he reached the station the sun was setting. From out of a yellow
western sky, a great dusky red grey vapour stretched upwards half across
the heavens, and on this again lay purple horizontal bands of cloud.
The little town was within a stone's throw of the station; a cluster of
cold-looking ugly houses, and on an eminence a church, with a quaint
tower running up between its low apse and the nave. M. Deshoulieres
made straight for the church, skirted it, and found himself in front of
a bran-new hotel, having a narrow facade, a little court, and stiff
evergreens ranged round in bright green tubs. "M. Saint-Martin?
Certainly. Would monsieur have the goodness to pass this way?"
After all, it was rather ludicrous to come in this prosaic fashion upon
the man whose absence had given rise to so many speculations. Max
smiled to himself--a little sad smile with an aching heart--as he
followed the polite waiter upstairs through a passage, into a room where
two gentlemen rose to receive him. One he knew at once--the cure of
Ardron. The other--Monsieur Fabien Saint-Martin.
For the first moment I doubt whether he understood much of what was
passing; he was looking at Fabien. A young man--for that he was
prepared, but somehow it forced itself upon him strangely--tall, slight,
with quick, dark eyes, and an expression that did not please him about
the mouth and jaw. This was his first, swift impression; his next was
that there was a marked restraint and stiffness about the greeting he
received. The young man made no attempt to speak, after a ceremonious
bow; the cure, who had been writing, resumed his seat at the table. Max
said, with a slight flush on his cheek, and with another bow,--
"Permit me to offer you my very sincere congratulations on your return,
Monsieur Saint-Martin. It is an event, the delay of which has
discomposed us considerably."
Alas, poor Max! How much, only he knew.
"I should have been glad myself to have returned before," said M.
Fabien, speaking in an abrupt tone. "_Parbleu_, M. Deshoulieres,
inheritances do not fall from the skies in such a shower that this one
should be a matter of indifference to me."
"That I can suppose."
"Nevertheless, it appears that I am not greatly indebted to you for your
endeavours to make it known," continued the young man, with a
disagreeable laugh. "It is well, perhaps, monsieur, that other friends
have taken a deeper interest in the matter."
"No one, monsieur, can have had so deep an interest in the matter as
myself," said Max, restraining himself; but with a swift flash from his
eyes.
M. le Cure, with his very determined opinions on the subject, looking up
from his writing at that moment, could not help feeling a disagreeable
sense of contrast in the two--M. Deshoulieres standing there, erect and
massive, with his beautiful head, and his calm, indignant eyes--Fabien
pale, angry, restless.
"That I can believe--in one sense," said the young man, sharply.
M. le Cure thought it was time to interfere. "Permit me to offer you a
chair," he said, rising and putting forward his own.
"I thank you," answered Max, quietly, "but it appears to me that I shall
prefer standing until I can gather the drift of M. Saint-Martin's
strange remarks. We will come to the point at once if you please. Am I
to understand that you accuse me of having taken no steps towards
informing you of M. Moreau's death and bequest? You are silent,
monsieur. I conclude, then, that such is your accusation. Permit me to
remark, in reply, that the two only direct means of communication in my
power--advertisements and the assistance of the police--were so rigidly
forbidden by M. Moreau, that their employment would have deprived you
of any benefit whatever under the will, beyond a legacy of 40,000
francs. It was an apparently unaccountable condition--that is to say,
it appeared unaccountable to me at the time--but I am under the
impression that I mentioned it to M. le Cure at my first interview? At
all events it matters little. The will itself can be placed in M.
Saint-Martin's hands to-morrow."
He paused. There was an uncomfortable silence. Then the cure said
coldly,--
"Certainly; I am aware that you mentioned an extraordinary provision to
that effect."
"But," broke in Fabien with a sneer, "I presume the provisions were
scarcely extended to the point of obliging M. Deshoulieres to ignore
any indirect information that might be supplied to him on the subject,
or of declining to be enlightened by letters from myself? Possibly I am
mistaken. A will that could do so much may have had the power of
enforcing blindness and deafness upon its executor."