Frances Mary Peard

“ Charville has not changed very much, after all. Something has been done, but it remains still almost the same picturesque, shadowy, dirty old town. Down by the stone fountain the women chatter and gossip as shrilly as ever, and drown the undertone of the river; the sun shines softly upon the yellow cornfields, and the tall gabled roofs, and the Cathedral that crowns them all. One fancies it is a little like a life. Above broken imperfections, above din and jar and fret, there rises evermore the something higher towards which our eyes may turn, our weary feet may press. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thérèse answered, gravely.
“But mademoiselle might catch the fever.”
“One would suppose you were talking to Monsieur Roulleau,” said the girl, with impatience. “What makes my life of greater value than the lives of those good women who risk theirs now? Bah, Nannon! I did not expect you to take the fever-fright.”
“It is not for myself. I am no longer in my youth; the fever, or whatever it may please the good God to send, will be all one to me soon,” answered the old woman, unconsciously pathetic. “But with mademoiselle it is different. ”

“ She called herself cruel, inhuman; she thought of little Adolphe, the weariness, the fever, the pain; but even while her tears fell, those glad visions would intrude themselves. When we are quite young we are so rigorous over our sorrows that we are impatient of comfort; it is in after life that we learn to refuse no consolations. She scolded herself, and then when Sister Gabrielle came, fell into her arms, and laughed and cried together. Sister Gabrielle, who had a way of soothing people, listened quietly, and seemed to lift that little burden of self-reproach from her heart. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There was a fresh vigorous heart beating in the old woman’s bosom, an unconquerable fidelity, keen humour, clear wit; she liked any thing young and pretty, and felt a great compassion for this girl, who was not only young and pretty, but so friendless. Before a month was over she would have gone through fire and water to serve her. She served her better by the homely words she let drop. Every life has its pathos and its poetry, whether we acknowledge it or not; Nannon, with her hard fare and her weather-beaten face, was like the rest. ”

“ Always the same deserted look, the bright cruel sunshine, the hot sickening smells, the horror of a nameless something in the air. Thérèse could bear it no longer: the moans she had heard were in her ears, her heart beat almost to suffocation, and she turned and ran back with all her might.
Afterwards in her room she reproached herself and cried bitterly over what she called her cowardice. It was not cowardice, although she would have it so. If she had been brought face to face with the fever she would not have feared it. ”

“ Just as he reached the Cathedral, he saw Thérèse and Nannon going in. He followed her; she did not see him, but they were kneeling near one another, the vast length of the Cathedral stretched before them, with rich deep shadows. All the light came through gorgeous panes of sapphire, ruby, orange: it was indescribably beautiful and solemn. As she carried back her chair she saw him, and they went out together. The old women sitting in the porch and selling brioche cakes, all knew of what was going on at the Préfecture, and stopped their knitting to nod and smile. ”

“ She liked sunshine, flowers, love,—liked them, and wanted them for herself with an impatience that would not so much as endure the thought of life without them. One feels a compassion for such natures, knowing how hard the lessons of time must prove to them, and yet it may be that their very buoyancy helps them to float over the stormy waves. It was so with Thérèse at present. She felt more confident of Fabien’s love now than she had done when he was near her and talking about it ”

“ 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. ”

“ Roulleau. “I know you, Ignace; you are as weak as an infant over your ideas of friendship; but I am a mother. I think of my Adolphe, of my Octavie, defenceless little ones! I cannot consent to burden our family with another load. Mademoiselle must seek a home elsewhere.”
Thérèse started like a guilty thing. Up before her rose the grim walls of the convent, Fabien seeking her outside, she shut in, separated, unconscious of his neighbourhood. Peace might be there—repose; her untrained heart cried out passionately for other things. “There is the convent,” said madame, watching her. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The spring this year was unusually early at Charville—unusually early and unusually mild. When the young green leaves began to show themselves it seemed impossible not to believe but that Fabien would come with them. While people are young—and, thank Heaven, with a good many youth is not to be measured by years—the spring has a brightness which is irresistible. M. Deshoulières, too, with more uneasiness than he liked to confess, felt that tidings should have come by this time. He and Thérèse did not meet very often that winter. ”

“ Nannon, with her poor, weather-beaten face, and her shoulders broadened with labour, walked sturdily on in her blue stuff gown, a little shawl crossed under an enormously wide black waistband, a plain white cap pulled forward on her forehead, and slanting upwards behind,—gesticulating and talking in her high, shrill, unmodulated voice. Fanchon, by right of her basket, kept close beside her; last of all marched Veuve Angelin, half-curious and half-contemptuous.
There is no news like one’s own news. ”

“ Creeping on by little and little, holding the ground it had conquered, fastening every day on fresh territory, the fever was no longer the shadow with which M. Deshoulières did his best to frighten obstinate men, but a grim reality. In the narrow, picturesque, ill-ventilated streets it struck down whole families with deadly effect. Day after day the fierce sun glowed relentlessly overhead, the air throbbed like that at the mouth of a furnace, foul smells rose out of the earth. ”

“ 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 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 Thérèse missed the key to her puzzle, herself. ”

“ Saturdays are the days when you may see the carts coming in from the farms laden with little golden grain: the Charville sleepiness seems to rouse itself into action; there is activity, energy, sometimes even a little spice of hurry. Those that enter the town at the lower suburb find it no easy matter to get up the narrow steep streets; the carts jolt and creak, the horses labour, while all the time there is an unceasing chorus of the sharp “Heep, heep!”
Inside the market, as I have said, matters move with all imaginable rapidity and gravity. ”

“ It may have been strange that the awakening had not come before; nevertheless it had not. She had been faithful to Fabien, but it was to Fabien dressed in M. Deshoulières’ virtues. Sometimes those deceptions are very terrible. With the real knowledge there comes every now and then a blank, or, what is worse, the terrible word, “too late.” One is thankful that for this poor little Thérèse there were better things, and that circumstances occurred to show her Fabien’s character at once without the veil which might have carried on the deception and made her burden infinitely harder. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Madame Lemaire nodded wisely. “Perhaps it was her pretty face, perhaps it was chance. Who knows? After all it is of monsieur we are talking.”
M. Deshoulières shook his head, and went away smiling, yet with a half-hidden sadness in his tone. “You must look for romances elsewhere, madame,” he said. “I have no heart to spare except for my patients.”
No one ever entirely realises how much his life is moulded by what we call trifles. We do not want a lion in our path to turn us, a straw will do it as effectually. ”

“ To them there were no dismals at Château Ardron, only a warm kitchen, plenty of firewood, a roof over their heads, a little monthly instalment of francs. Monsieur Moreau had dismissed all the servants soon after his wife’s death, had shut up his grand château, and gone away with Thérèse. It seemed as if a fit of restlessness had seized him. The poor old people, who had no restlessness, wanted to be assured that they would not lose their home, and when they understood this, they cheered up again at once. M. Deshoulières wondered whether M. Moreau had one mourner in the world. ”

“ 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 Thérèse knew Max Deshoulières—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. ”