"And thou, as one that once declined,
When he was little more than boy,
On some unworthy heart with joy,
But lives to wed an equal mind."
_In Memoriam_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Monsieur le Cure had his own little mortifications to endure before he
got back to his study in the presbytere at Ardron. On his way to the
Eveche he encountered the Prefet, who loved a little gossip, and stopped
him at once.
"Is it true? Has Monsieur Moreau's heir actually arrived?"
"Yes, Monsieur le Prefet," said the cure, grimly. "I came to Charville
with him for the purpose of ascertaining the meaning of certain
suspicious circumstances connected with the will and the trusteeship."
"What, those ridiculous reports about M. Deshoulieres?"
"Ridiculous! I have your own letter confirming them."
"Mine! My dear Monsieur le Cure, I must have been a great fool, if I
wrote any thing so absurd. Ah, bah! I remember. I was irritated with
him at one time, I believe--he had a mania, and worried me. But--M.
Deshoulieres! He is a hero, nothing less. There is to be a meeting
to-morrow, to discuss some means of making known to him the gratitude of
the town."
At the Eveche it was the same. The Abbe laughed in his face. "He
nettled me once, I acknowledge, but that was a trifle. I cannot tell
you my feelings towards him now. Ask any of the clergy who worked with
him in this last terrible three months. A mistake?--of course it was a
mistake. All France has cause to be proud of M. Deshoulieres. My dear
friend, imagine your coming on such an errand!"
"Monsieur l'Abbe," said the cure, sharply, "I only wish you people of
Charville would appreciate your heroes a little beforehand."
Poor Therese! That day was, probably, the most desolate in her life.
Whichever way she looked every thing seemed blank and homeless.
Something had gone away out of her heart; at first a great swelling
indignation took its place; but this could not last. There are sudden
deaths as well as lingering: her love had met with such an end; but all
deaths must have their suffering. Almost his first words had done it.
What was it in them? how was he different from the Fabien of old days?
She sat by her window looking out over the gabled roofs at the plain and
the far horizon, where sad-coloured clouds were creeping quietly up--
with eager eyes that seemed to be searching an answer for the questions
that were perplexing her. She was very miserable and sick at heart, but
it was not so much with the loss of Fabien, as with the loss of love.
It seemed to her as if, in spite of the slighting and the coldness, she
ought to love him still--and she did not. It was the identical Fabien
after all, though she tried to think otherwise. In the old contests
with his uncle, the old impatience of control, weak resistance, attempts
at self-assertion, there had been the same character, but she had set
round it a little glow of her own, and covered up its imperfections
until she had forgotten them. She had counted for love what was no more
than a mixture of vanity and self-will. Old Moreau might have left
Fabien alone in this matter, and he would have ended by marrying a
_dot_. Or, again, a little hardship and real work would have quickly
brought him back from South America. But the old man yearned after his
prodigal. He smoothed his way for him, all the time writing fierce
unforgiving letters demanding submission and return. Fabien, who soon
found out where his good things came from, used to enjoy them
comfortably, and mock at the threats which they contradicted. When at
last they stopped he was a little uneasy, and wrote two letters; but he
was receiving a good salary in an office, and there was no great
difficulty in being supplied with money. M. Moreau's feelings were
pretty well-known in Rio. It seems sometimes in this world as if those
unloving natures that shut their hearts against the sunshine around them
are suffered to pour out all that they can give where they meet with no
return. Perhaps that loving without response is at once their
punishment and their blessing. Where all to us looks hard and barren
rock, there is at least one little stream of water trickling down into
the desert with unselfish bounty.
Fabien was the same--except that his faults and his weakness had in
those three years become more prominent--but Therese missed the key to
her puzzle, herself. It was she who had changed, while all the time she
believed it to be Fabien. She had grown up with disadvantages of
education like his own, but the nobler nature recognised a higher
standard when it was given, and strained towards it. There was the
difference. With all her faults and her visions of self-pleasing, she
had not the vain satisfied contentment which sees nothing better nor
more desirable than itself. She was always, almost unconsciously,
wanting something beyond, and that desire is never ungratified. At a
time when things seemed saddest, and all about her most mean and petty
and discouraging, she was shown a glimpse of the most perfect thing this
earth ever has to show--the heart of a good man. There was this in
Therese--she recognised at once its goodness and its beauty, it showed
her what somehow she had failed to see before. All work is not achieved
by the same instruments, though we sometimes speak as if it were. Only
it is God's work always. And I think that after Therese knew Max
Deshoulieres--knew him as she did in a hundred more ways than there has
been space to tell you about here--she unconsciously transferred his
qualities to Fabien, his generosity, and patience, and manliness, and
truth, and tenderness, so that she used to dream of Fabien with all
these making him beautiful. As she rose herself, she could not but also
raise that one who held so dear a portion of her heart. Absence
softened down the little remembrances which might have interfered with
her dreams. And then came the awakening--the awakening, and, alas! the
contrast. It is not when we first see what is lovely that. We
appreciate it most. It is when we come back to our former ideal. All
the glory of mountains, and the vastness of their snow-fields, and the
tender radiance of their sunsets, do not fill us with their beauty
perfectly until we return and know for the first time how far they excel
the things to which our eye had become accustomed--our common hills. It
hurts our loyalty sometimes to acknowledge it, but we cannot help it--
nay, we need not try to help it. The best is to be the best always.
But if you have ever felt this, you will know something of the feeling
which was causing bitter pain to poor Therese, as she sat on the ground
in her room, with her head on the window-sill, and her eyes filling with
hot tears of shame. She had believed love to be eternal, and lo! it had
died away out of her heart. She scarcely thought of his own coldness,
of the studied way in which he had avoided any expression which should
lead her to fancy they met on terms in any way resembling those in which
they had parted. If his words had been like fire, she knew her feelings
would not have been different--there, as I have said, was the sting. So
ungenerous, so passionate, so weak! And yet she blamed herself for
letting her love go. She was very young. She wanted some wise, tender
heart on which to rest her head and so pour out her perplexities. But
she had no one. Nannon, who had heard enough to make her furious, did
not know what to say or what to think about it; she had sense enough to
hold her tongue; at the same time it made a sort of restraint of which
they were both conscious. Sister Gabrielle could not come to Therese;
she was ministering to a more terrible grief in a sadder room. If she
had come, I doubt whether the girl would not have been too shy to tell
her pathetic little story. And so she sat there and let her eyes rest
on the soft clouds and the Cathedral that carried upwards towards them
its burden of earth voices, anguish, and joy; and wondered vaguely what
was to come of it all, and whether she was to be left like a little waif
and stray in this hard forgetful world. Pity her a little--my poor
Therese! It was hard for her. She was solitary and young, with no one
on whom to lavish innocent girlish caresses, no one to pet or to scold--
or to cherish her. Even the sweet joy of helpfulness, which had taken
the bitterness out of her solitude, could not quite heal the pang.
M. Deshoulieres did not come near her all that day. He, too, was
suffering. A hundred hopes and fears and doubts gave him no peace. He
cared not a _sou_ for this retractation, which to the cure seemed such a
mighty matter; but his wrath blazed out against Fabien when he thought
of Therese. He dared not go to her. If he had known of what her heart
was full, he would have acted otherwise, but he felt as if, poor child,
it would be an intrusion upon her humiliation. Her love had died; he
thought of it as still struggling, hoping, clinging. They were not his
own wrongs, but hers, which made him so stern and abrupt in his
interview with Fabien and his lawyer on the following day.
No news came of the little notary. After Madame Roulleau's confession,
however, there could be no difficulty about the will. But there was a
clause which the lawyer read slowly, and to which M. Deshoulieres, who
knew what was coming, listened with knitted brows. A clause which
bequeathed a small sum for the maintenance of Mademoiselle Therese
Veuillot while she remained in Charville, "or until she be otherwise
provided for by Monsieur Fabien Saint-Martin."