"Unawares" (continued 3)

Yes, there was a sweetness—all the sweetness of true love. Love, which was generous, and could give without a hope of return; love, which in its friendship, in its self-sacrifice, in its faithfulness, should be like an angel in this man’s heart.

Thérèse looked at him with awe. Something in his words stirred her nature to its depths, showed her a height of which she had never dreamed. She had claimed happiness as a right, he accepted sorrow as a blessing. She had found only bitterness where he already spoke of sweetness. She cried out against her lot, he had faith that all should be for good. She had read of these things, she had in some degree thought of them in her devotions; but never before had she seen a life thus influenced, and it came upon her like a revelation.

“And therefore,” continued Max, still standing before her, and speaking in the same slow sentences, “you will understand that, though I may not often see you, it must be my greatest happiness to serve you, to be your friend and his. Do not deny me this. Do not fear me.”

“I do not fear you,” Thérèse answered, quickly. She wanted to say more, to thank him, but the words would not come. Involuntarily she put out her hand, he caught it, pressed it to his lips, held it there a moment, and was gone. She heard him clattering down the staircase, the little timepiece striking four, Nannon singing country songs to herself in a cracked wiry voice, doors opening and shutting, old familiar sounds with that touch of unreality which sometimes seizes them. The very patch of grey sky opposite to her, against which leafless trees waved solemnly backwards and forwards, looked like a strange, unnatural picture. She was too bewildered to collect her thoughts. Something seemed to have come to her, it may have been fresh hope, a new spring, which made her eye sparkle, and her colour rise. Had that echo found a stronger voice which whispered that there was something to be striven for higher than mere happiness? Perhaps. Such voices gather strength if we do not stifle them with our wilfulness.

Chapter Twelve.

“A temple, like a cloud Slowly surmounting some invidious hill, Rose out of darkness: the bright work stood still, And might of its own beauty have been proud. But it was fashioned, and to God was vow’d By virtues that diffused, in every part, Spirit divine through forms of human art ... ...Hope had her spire Star-high, and pointing still to something higher.” Wordsworth.

People who are compassionate and give themselves heartaches over suffering which seems undeserved, would be wiser and happier if they at least acknowledged other points of view than their own. If they could look at them from all, they would see gain where now they only see cost. No one ever knew what this interview, which had wrung the heart of one, did for Thérèse; not even Thérèse herself, certainly not Max. But it happened at a time when things were very bad with her, when she was losing ground, growing bitter, hard, angry with her lot. She had a feeling as if no one would help her, and that is a very unwholesome conviction to take root in any one’s heart, especially one so young as Thérèse. In the midst of it all there came this revelation. While she believed herself uncared for, this, great tender, unselfish love had been growing round her. The love she pictured was exacting, jealous, almost fierce; that which had been opened to her seemed something nobler, more divine. She acknowledged that, while her heart still clung to Fabien. Nay, Fabien had never been so well loved as after Max Deshoulières had shown her his own nobility. She felt her heart-burnings and want of faith so petty! She felt as if she could be more patient, more trustful, more content, now that this man had put before her a living picture of what love might be.

There was, moreover, a little change for the better in her position. Monsieur Deshoulières had noticed that she looked ill and worn, and was not long in pointing out the fact to Mme. Roulleau.

“You are sure that Mademoiselle Veuillot has all that she requires?” he asked, gravely.

Madame Roulleau had not much difficulty in satisfying him; men are slow to suspect cruelty on the part of one woman to another, and he was not suspicious. He thought that she had been fretting, very likely staying too much in the house during the cold weather, wanting occupation. Was there no one to whom she might go for relaxation and society? Madame assured him that it was mademoiselle’s own choice that she confined herself to their own family. “She assists me in the ménage, and I am rejoiced that she should teach the children when she is disposed. Poor mademoiselle! her teaching is not much, as monsieur may suppose. But, after all, it gives her occupation, and no one can be happy when they are idle. And they are such excellent children! They have such good hearts! As for my little Adolphe, he adores her!”

This was a very rose-coloured account, but it contained nothing to make M. Deshoulières doubt. He felt himself, poor fellow, something of the value of occupation just then. It was a little hard to go through the daily round of sadnesses, complaints, pain; but, after all, they lightened the load on his heart. He gave Madame Roulleau two or three injunctions which made her very uneasy lest he should ask questions from Thérèse, and lose the formidable character with which, she had invested him. She went home on the day on which she met him, in a great hurry, and embraced Thérèse. “You want distraction, mademoiselle; you are looking quite pale, you undertake too much. I shall be obliged to forbid your assisting me in these little things,”—the girl began to think that her toil must really be voluntary, madame’s words were so decided.

Madame Roulleau was alarmed. She and her husband had not laid any deep plot at the beginning of this affair, they had only wanted, as they told themselves, to be on the watch for such good things as might turn up, and help them out of certain difficulties in which they found themselves plunged so as to threaten faillite. When little Roulleau was called to the bedside of the dying man, his keen wits saw at once the possibility of entanglements, difficulties; all so much money in his pocket while M. Deshoulières continued to employ him as notary. This would be at an end directly M. Deshoulières, as dépositaire, had fulfilled his trust. The idea of getting hold of Thérèse, and the sum set aside for her maintenance, occurred to him at the very moment that he was taking down M. Moreau’s words. At first he thought of no more than this. By little and little other possibilities presented themselves—pieces of good luck he called them. M. Saint-Martin’s return was the event which would put a stop to the pleasant little income of which he was already beginning to taste the sweets, and he was able to arrange two or three hindrances in the way of that return. Two South American letters, for instance, found among the papers at Château Ardron, would have given a clew to the young man’s residence, which might have brought him back with inconvenient promptitude. These letters, having been examined by madame, were now no longer in existence. It was not difficult to procure from Paris an answer or two containing just as much as he desired and no more, and purporting to come from an old friend of M. Moreau’s, a lawyer, a master at Fabien’s lycée. It was not difficult, but it was a decided step. M. Roulleau used to awake in the night and think of that step in a cold perspiration. Certain great letters used to dance before his eyes, and shape themselves into something that resembled “Forgery,”—an ugly word to haunt people in the middle of the night. Afterwards came that summons to the Lion d’Or. Most likely this is the usual fashion in which crime grows into crime. Nothing very definite at first, a sort of haze over what may happen, a determined shutting of the eyes.

Madame was clever, but she was a dangerous coadjutor, little Roulleau acknowledged it with groans. There was always the risk that her temper might flame out, and ruin their most carefully concocted schemes. She knew it herself: every now and then she put tremendous restraint upon it, but the restraint did not last. The love of tyranny was overpowering. To indulge it upon Thérèse she used to jeopardise every thing. If Ignace tried to counteract it, he only added fuel to the flame. He lived in continual fear.

Husband and wife would have shared the panic could they have known what had taken place in the little talon on that December day, and how nearly it brought M. Deshoulières and Thérèse together. Perhaps Nannon guessed. She was a shrewd old woman. Thérèse was young and scarcely able to conceal her feelings; so there was a soft bright expression in her face which Nannon had never before noticed. She came slowly up the stairs and into the room where the holes were being mended for her without saying any thing, and looked out of the window with eyes which saw a great deal more than the crowded roofs, or even the broad flat plain beyond.

“Mademoiselle might give an opinion,” Nannon said at last, affronted.

Thérèse started, turned round, went quickly to her, and gratefully kissed the old brown wrinkled cheek.

“Do you know what you are like?” she said. “You are like one of the fairies who used to come to the help of the poor princesses who were shut up in terrible towers, and forced to do all kinds of hateful work. I don’t believe one of them had a worse hole than that to mend.”

“I don’t know about fairies,” answered Nannon, shaking her head doubtfully; “but, if they are evil spirits, it is not very polite of you, mademoiselle, to call me one.”

The girl laughed.

“If you lived in the north you would know more about fairies; but here, in this ugly flat country, there is not so much as a bush for them to hide behind. Allons, don’t be cross, Nannon; not even Rouen has a cathedral like yours. I am going there now; will you come?”

“What has happened?” thought the old woman to herself. Thérèse had not laughed so gayly for many a week past.

They went out, along the narrow street, under the archway at the end, into the Place Notre Dame. A strong wind was blowing from the south-west, all the earth was grey, but the sky was full of glorious lights. A delicate greenish blue made the groundwork; over that lay motionless masses of high clouds, rosy red, here and there broken with purple shadows, serene, majestic; out of one uncovered depth shone a tiny trembling star. Nearer the earth grey rain-clouds were hurrying up; they had blotted out the west and the sinking sun, and now hurled themselves across the plain, with edges torn and rent and twisted by the violence of the driving wind. Broken bits of vapour scudded before them, veiling for a moment the rosy lights above. It was a strange contrast of peace and unrest. For though the earth was saddened by the driving rain-cloud which was powerless to rob the heavens of their glory, but could blot it out and hide it from the dwellers below, there was peace even with her. In the midst of the rush and tumults—solemn, steadfast, and unmoved—rose up the spires of Charville’s great cathedral. Into the drift of the cloud itself, untouched by any ruddy glow from the glowing sky, grey with the shadow of the storm, it pierced the darkness like an eternal prayer. Never more glorious in its beauty, never more faithful in its teaching, than now when it pointed upwards through sadness and gloom. Round about it stood the sentinel statues, just men made perfect, an innumerable company of angels; overhead, flying buttresses lightly clasped the stone, interlacing pinnacles crowned the clustering shafts. 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. 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.

The two women went together into the great church. When they came out again it was dark; the clouds were still flying wildly; between the rents stars were shining out. Nannon was a little puzzled over M. Deshoulières’ visit and Thérèse’s silence; she said, at last,—

“Mademoiselle, has any thing been heard of M. Fabien?”

“Nothing yet. But M. Deshoulières is sure that he will soon come home.”

“M. Deshoulières? Hum. Do you know what people are beginning to say?”

“What?”

“They say that even to be dépositaire to such a property is a very fine thing, and that M. Deshoulières is perhaps in no hurry to smooth M. Saint-Martin’s return.”

“They say that! And you can repeat it!” cried Thérèse flashing round upon her. “Nannon, I shall hate you if you believe what wicked people talk. Do you not know how good he is? Have you not told me yourself how much he does?”

“That may be. But he is a hard man for all that,” said Nannon, obstinately.

“So you repeat. I do not believe it. 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.”

“Yet you have told me yourself about his kindness to your neighbours.”

“Oh, for a doctor, yes. That is quite another affair. A doctor, you see, mademoiselle, makes it a part of his trade to be good to the sick. Otherwise, nobody would take his nasty medicines. There would be a revolution, and, who knows, we might find that we could live without doctors. M. Deshoulières is very well when you have need of him. But I have heard it said, ‘Never trust a lawyer when you are in peace, a doctor when you are well.’ There is another word about curés, only mademoiselle might not like to hear it. Ouf, what a tempest!”

“Nannon, you are not good to-day at all.”

“Pardon, mademoiselle. It is rather that I think of Jean-Marie.”

“Jean-Marie is not at the farm now?”

“No, no; he has tried three masters since M. Gohon. He is too good for them, little angel, that is the truth. He is not like one of those great hulking country boys who have no wits beyond their hands and feet. M. Gohon might have suited him, though.”

“But, Nannon, it was not because of that affair at the Halle that M. Gohon dismissed him.”

“That is your innocence, mademoiselle; when any one has enemies like that Madame Mathurine and M. Deshoulières, a very little serves. No, no; M. Deshoulières is not good to have to do with, unless one has the fever. Then, certainly—”

“If ever you have the fever, and he cures you, you will not talk of him like this,” Thérèse answered, indignantly.

“If I have it I shall send for him, and not for that poor little Pinot, whom I recollect when he was a little creature in leading-strings, tumbling about like a helpless bundle. As if he could tell what was good for anybody! But, mademoiselle, I do not understand. If M. Deshoulières is so excellent as you suppose him, why do you not complain to him of these creatures—these Roulleaus—who insult you with making you slave for them? Perhaps he does not know.”

“No, he does not know,” answered Thérèse, dreamily. The same thought had come into her own mind. She knew now that she had but to speak, and her life would be lightened of those heavy burdens which had grown so hateful to her. And yet—could she speak? She believed that the sum left by her uncle for her support was, in truth, very inadequate, and she knew nothing of its being even now doubled. Few people might care to receive her; she disliked the idea of being thrown upon M. Deshoulières’ charity. And, after all, it might be so short a time before it ended! With his words ringing in her ears, she fancied Fabien might be at the doors. She would rather bear all until he came. Deliverance by him would be very sweet. With it all there spoke a nobler reason. To take up something of what she had let fall—to redeem months past in idle repining—to live a life that was not ever self-seeking, ever crying out for good things withheld: this was the purpose growing out of that day’s events. It was all feeble, imperfect, even in the act of resolution; but it was there.

“No; he does not know,” she repeated, as they stood at the door of the Roulleaus’ house. “I would rather he did not know. I would rather affairs remained as they are. Good-night, Nannon. It was very good of you to mend those holes.”

“Good-night, mademoiselle.” The old woman stood and watched the dark figure run lightly up the stairs; then she turned away, shaking her head. “Something has done all this, something has changed her, and yet her heart has not moved from M. Fabien, for I said it to see. The saints forbid that M. Deshoulières should want her to marry him, since he will always have his own way, and the poor child would have to yield. Mend holes, did she say? She has a worse hole in the temper of that madame than any thing I can mend for her. Ah, my cap!—my boy, my boy, there, in the gutter! that white thing! What a torment of a wind! Stop it! Ah, my child, you are a treasure; come and let me embrace you.”

Chapter Thirteen.

“There are always a number of people who have the nature of stones; they fall on other persons and crush them. Some again have the nature of weeds, and twist about other people’s feet, and entangle them. More have the nature of logs, and lie in the way, so that every one falls over them. And most of all have the nature of thorns.” Modern Painters.

Months passed. Charville had its own events to talk about. Madame, the wife of the Préfet, died, there was a change of regiments, a fresh company took the theatre. These were the topics about which people spoke, keeping their own little subjects of interest under the surface, as people do.

Thérèse, who had no one with whom to converse after this fashion, became in time grateful for the hard work which took her thoughts out of the groove along which they travelled incessantly. It seemed as if the key had been put into her hands which opens the treasure-house of life. Before this she had been groping with the wrong instrument. The key lies before us all, only we are so dull and so blind that unless something forces it upon us we often take no notice, or merely play with it. Not our own, but another’s. When we have learned that lesson, the treasure doors fly open.

There had been no news of Fabien, and she was often very sad, very desponding, but never with such a sense of dreariness as before. There seemed something to live for besides that bright hope of happiness which used almost to mock her by its very brilliancy. Her buoyancy came back; she could sing over her work, laugh sometimes at madame’s tyranny. Above all, the teaching lost some of its horrors. Octavie was as disagreeable as ever, but Adolphe was more teachable, more affectionate; Thérèse began to feel a little fond of him at the bottom of her heart. She used to tell him stories about her life in Rouen, or legends of the Brittany which was her mother’s province. Adolphe was an insatiable listener. “Encore, encore,” he would cry peremptorily, and then Thérèse had to begin all over again. Occasionally he would reward her with a story of his own. “Écoute toi,” was always the beginning, and then perhaps, “il y avait un géant.” But the giant never accomplished much beyond the mere fact of existence.

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. Whenever it happened she knew that he was on the watch to prevent her from feeling uneasy or pained by his presence, with a simple straightforward kindness which touched her unutterably. He saw that she was more content, and rejoiced at it. Once or twice he questioned Nannon about her, but the prejudiced old woman would not give him much information. If M. Deshoulières set himself against M. Fabien’s return, she thought, what would become of them? Any thing, even Madame Roulleau’s conduct, was preferable to such a misfortune. All this while he had another anxiety in his mind. His own sweet dreams of happiness were at an end, the balcony must remain unfilled, no loving eyes watch through the darkness for his return. Utterly and for ever he had put these visions aside. Thérèse loved another. He looked it in the face, and accepted his fate bravely. He understood that she was young, solitary, weak perhaps, from these circumstances. He had read her heart so well as to know, moreover, that were he to press his own suit, she, out of this youth and solitariness and weakness, might in time give herself to him. I do not say that he scorned the temptation, but that, with a man of Max Deshoulières’ nature, it could not so much as exist for one moment in his heart. To him such an advantage would have been an impossibility. To love her was to be bound in all noble fashion to guard her and to help her. Guard her and help her he would; yes, help her, although his own heart lay in the path over which she desired to walk. All this Max, who was little given to self-pity, recognised and accepted; what troubled him with anxious thoughts was the doubt whether Fabien was worthy. It seemed to him as if there was something selfish and petty about the manner in which he had broken away from the difficulties surrounding him; something heartless in his allowing so long a period to pass without communication. Those boyish letters tied up and labelled with a trembling hand were proof of the old man’s love. Was Fabien more unforgiving than his uncle? Had he ceased to remember his little playmate? Or—was he dead?

The young horse-chestnut trees budded and blossomed, the great cornfields lay round Charville like an emerald sea, everywhere there was the pleasant stir of spring, the smell of fresh-turned earth, the women hoeing and weeding in the fields, above them the larks singing jubilantly. The time of M. Moreau’s death came and passed away. There was no news of Fabien. Madame Roulleau began to feel as if all prospered.

Every one talked about the early season, the warmth of the spring, but the doctors, it was noticed, made no answer to these congratulations. Monseigneur at the Evêché, the Préfet, and a few of the leading men were aware of the cause of this silence. Certain of the number had it dinned persistently into their ears by M. Deshoulières whenever he had the chance, or could make it. What healthiness Charville possessed it owed to its situation, to the broad plains around, and the winds that rushed up and carried away the foul, bad exhalations. The town itself was shamefully mismanaged. The narrow streets, the old tumble-down, crowded, picturesque houses went on from year to year untouched, and the population increased and were crammed into the same space as their forefathers occupied with a quarter of their number. The old walls no longer existed, it is true, except in name, and the people had broken through, crossed the river, and spread out a straggling suburb. But all the houses in that part were miserably squalid, and lay low with water standing about them, so that they were, to say the least, no less unhealthy than the habitations in Charville proper.

There was always illness. But this year there was something about the illness which caused considerable anxiety to the doctors. Something, in the way in which a fever clung and lingered, and sprang up, and held its ground, even when it was winter, with snow and frost on the ground, and it was not, as Nannon said with indignation, fever weather. It was this impossibility of beating it out which made M. Deshoulières speak of it with gravity. People laughed at him for it. “Fever? But, monsieur, there is always fever at Charville. It is almost an institution.”

“Monsieur le Préfet, it is an institution with which we could well dispense.”

“Eh bien, we shall see. It seems to me you are disturbing yourself unnecessarily. Next winter, perhaps, there may be a possibility of accomplishing some of these improvements that you so much desire. My dear monsieur, you do not know how many important matters call for my devotion to them at this moment.”

M. Deshoulières had some idea. There was an old underground cave at Charville, where the Préfet proposed establishing his mushroom-beds. It was a scheme with which the wants of the town could not possibly be expected to interfere. He went home terribly disheartened.

The Bishop did his best for him, but, as he had said, he was an old man, and in his comfortable room, in the Evêché, he could not, perhaps, estimate the extent of the danger. After all, too, this danger depended in great measure upon certain conditions. There had been a warm, damp spring. If the summer were unusually hot the chances were very much in favour of the fever. Otherwise it might tide over again, carry off one here, one there, and not at all interfere with the Préfet’s mushroom-beds. M. Deshoulières was looked upon as an uncomfortable prophet. Why should he talk of evils before they arrived? He would not consent to hold his peace as they desired, but he was thrown very much upon his own resources. A little beyond the suburbs I have described, a hospital had been built, the Hospital St. Jean. M. Deshoulières busied himself with improving its working capabilities. He had a certain authority there of which he made good use. And it seemed to him as if there was little else he could do. The men in whose hands power rested met him with the never-failing “nous verrons,” which did not abate his indignation, and the poor clung to their poverty and their filth.

And meanwhile the fever gained a little ground. It was of a low typhoid character, and it kept entirely in the lower town. As yet not a single case had occurred elsewhere to frighten the mothers when they looked at their little ones sleeping, with, perhaps, a little flush upon the soft sweet cheek. The lower town was privileged, as it were, to possess a certain amount of unhealthiness, and no one troubled their heads much about the matter except the doctors, whose business it was supposed to be. It was a lovely summer. There was the promise of an abundant harvest, always an important question in Charville. The plains, flat and ugly as they were, could boast a certain beauty in their aspect of fertility. Little stone-coloured villages, with a church in the centre of each, were dotted here and there. Canals or small streams trickled slowly along, the course of the river was broken by water-mills, every thing seemed full of fat promise. The sun glowed down upon it all,—a peaceful, contented scene. What more was wanted? The Préfet looked at it one day from his window with a smile of satisfaction, and went away to his mushroom-beds. He saw Monsieur Deshoulières in the distance, and crossed over to avoid him. “That man has become a perfect pest,” he said severely. “I incline to think that after all there may be something in these stories that one hears now and then about him and the old man who died. It appears to me that he never knows when to be content, and discontent is the mother of all the vices, one with which, I am thankful to say, I have no sympathy.”

“It is the bane of our century,” said Monsieur de Blainville, with whom he was walking.

“Precisely. And in my opinion the Government should put it down with more determination than they do.”

“Hydra-headed, remember.”

“Raison de plus, mon cher. In this century we should be able to cope with monsters. Allons! I long for your opinion about the depth of the beds. You say eighteen inches, and my man maintains twenty to be the minimum depth. I shall hear the reason on both sides before deciding. It is an important question, on which one should not pronounce hastily.”

About a week after, Thérèse, who had resumed her favourite walks by the river, asked Nannon:

“What is this about the fever? I heard Monsieur Roulleau talking of it yesterday.”

“There is no use in talking, particularly when it is a little creature like that who talks. All they may say will not stop the fever.”

“It increases then?”

“Increases? But yes. This morning we hear that it is in our street. Louise Gouÿe’s child, of whom I have sometimes told mademoiselle, has it.”

“What, that pretty little blue-eyed thing?”

“Yes, yes. The poor mother is in despair.”

“But, Nannon, it seems to spread terribly. Can nothing be done? What does Monsieur Deshoulières say?”

The old woman made a gesture of impatience. “Monsieur Deshoulières is always poking and meddling—for what good? All the doctors in the world will not stop the fever if it pleases the good God to send it to us. If He means it to come it will come. I have heard my mother talk of it years ago in Charville, just the same. She lost her father and two brothers—fine strong young men they were—and the dead lay there in the houses, for they could not get any one to bury them. Mademoiselle sees that it was intended. What the doctors have to do is to try and cure the people who catch it.”

Indifference in the rich, fatalism in the poor, helped the fever along mightily. A dry, hot summer succeeded to the green promise of the spring. When July came the plains lay scorching under the fiery sunshine, and fever raged in Charville like a pestilence.

Chapter Fourteen.

“And looking down I saw the old town lie Black in the shade of the o’erhanging hill, Stricken with death, and dreary.” The Earthly Paradise.

It had come in earnest indeed. 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. The churches were crowded, the terrified people put up passionate prayers for rain, for something to lessen the intolerable heat. The Préfet sent for M. Deshoulières.

“This is terrible,” he said. “What are we to do?”

“You must ask others that question, Monsieur le Préfet. I have now no time for the work of prevention.”

“We must draw cordons, endeavour to separate the infected streets.”

“Whatever is done, permit me to offer you my last piece of advice. Lose no more time.”

There was a bright indignant flash in the doctor’s eye, of which the Préfet was not unconscious: M. Deshoulières could not restrain it when he thought of the wasted warnings.

The Préfet was no coward. He went down into the fever-stricken districts, and did his utmost at last to stir the people into exertion. But a kind of despairing apathy hung over them. They resented the attempt to move them into fresh houses. “Better die where one has lived,” was the unfailing answer.

Among the higher classes a panic prevailed, whole families fled; but after a time, when the fever raged more fiercely, the neighbouring towns refused to receive them, and Charville was shunned as a plague-stricken place. The hospital of Saint Jean was full to overflowing; other buildings were hastily fitted up, still more room was needed, and more nurses required. Sisters were sent from the convent, and then the fever attacked the convent itself, and more could not be spared. Others came from Paris, and yet hands were wanted. The doctors were overworked and were in despair. Those who are able to thank God that they have never seen the horrors of a pestilence have no conception of the blight which hangs over the doomed town. There are a certain number who laugh and jest through it all; strange to say, perhaps the number increases as the evil days close in. There are balls, dances, theatres; it is the policy of the authorities to keep up the hideous mask of gaiety, lest people should realise too truly what is beneath. But every thing seems to lie under the ban of fear. A truth, a rumour, becomes a terror, a hundred exaggerated reports add to the actual horrors. Thank God, again, you who have never known it.

In all Charville, perhaps, the most miserable and the most frightened of those who had what Nannon called the fever-fright, was little Monsieur Roulleau. He wanted to go away when first it broke out in any severity, but madame was inexorable. Between his fear of her and his fear of the fever he did not know what to do.

“Zénobie,” he would say imploringly, “it is so long since we have had any change!”

“It will be longer yet,” answered madame, with decision. “You are foolish to attempt to blind me, Ignace. Do you not suppose I know why you want to go?”

For a time she held him in check, but at last the other fear became the strongest. He came in one day with his face white and his hand shaking.

“There is a case in Place Notre Dame.”

“What of that?”

“It is my nerves. They are not like yours, my angel. If we stay here longer I shall have it by to-morrow. I feel it. And the children—”

“Bah! What folly! Do you not know that if this fever carries off some, there will be others wanting to make their testaments? Do you not know that your work will be doubled? Hé! Answer me that!”

Her voice had risen to its stormy pitch, but Ignace was beyond caring.

“I must go,” he said, feebly.

Madame looked at him steadily. She saw that he was speaking truth. He must go, or if he stayed he would soon become a victim to his terror. “Attend then,” she said, changing her tone and speaking with a touch of scorn. “You shall go.”

“Zénobie, my treasure—”

“Hush. You shall go, I say. My mother at Tours will take you in, and you may, if you choose, depart at once.—Charles has been clerk long enough to understand the business with my superintendence.”

“Perfectly, perfectly. You need have no apprehension on that score. To tell the truth, my health is become so indifferent that even without this unhappy state of things I must have sought a little rest.”

Madame looked at him with a peculiar expression in her face.

“That is settled then, monsieur. And I and the children, we remain here?”

“If you think it best, my dear Zénobie. I have the most supreme confidence in your discretion,” said the little man, eagerly. “You will, without doubt, be in perfect security. It is I only who am called out by the peculiar nature of my avocations, who really run any risk. You will remain here with Mademoiselle Veuillot.”

“With Mademoiselle Veuillot. Exactly.” There was something not unlike a thunder-cloud in the extreme quietness of madame’s manner, but the little notary went on unheeding:

“The last letter that was forwarded from Château Ardron we did not answer, you will remember. It was your idea that it might have been supposed to have miscarried. Another would, do you not think so, require a different treatment?”

“Allez,” said madame, more sharply. “Will you then not stay and conduct the affair yourself?”

The threat had the effect of stopping all Monsieur Roulleau’s injunctions. He was restless and anxious to be gone. Thérèse, when she heard of it at their dinner, had no difficulty in discovering the motive, although husband and wife put it upon business at Tours, which required his presence. Nannon confirmed her idea.

“I shall not soon forget his face when I told him it was so near.” It meant the fever at this time in Charville.

“Will it come to us I wonder, Nannon?”

“Dame, who knows? It has its road and it will keep to it. One or two have died of fright, that I do know, for I heard M. Deshoulières say so.”

Nannon’s cheery old face had grown sad and haggard. She knew too well what was going on.

“This heat will kill us all, I believe,” said Thérèse, sighing. “I feel as if I would give any thing to get down by the river. Do let me go, Nannon!”

“Mademoiselle must not dream of it,” answered the old woman with decision. “As it is, I believe Monsieur Deshoulières would say I was doing wrong in coming up here. But he positively forbade me to let mademoiselle pass through those streets.”

Amid all his labours he had thought of her.

“Do you love Monsieur Deshoulières better by this time?” asked the girl, suddenly.

There was a minute’s silence.

“Monsieur is admirable at present,” said Nannon at last, stubbornly. “Admirable. But then it is his métier, mademoiselle must understand. It has absolutely nothing to do with those other matters we have talked about. For the sick he devotes himself like a saint. I do not know how he can do all he does. If it were not for mademoiselle I believe I should go to him and ask to be allowed to nurse. One can do that though one is old and stupid. And they want nurses so terribly, the poor things.”

“How I wish I might be one.”

“Mademoiselle! You!”

“Yes, I. Do you think nobody can have any good idea but you?”

“Mademoiselle jests.”

“On such a subject!” 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 is young and inexperienced, and does not know what she is asking. It is all too sad for her.”

“Is it very dreadful at the hospital?”

“Not so bad as in the houses where the poor things are all together, one lying dead on the floor and another unconscious by the side; and then there is the weeping and the wailing which they manage to shut out of the hospital.”

Thérèse shuddered.

“Oh, Nannon, if it would but rain!”

She said no more on the subject, but one day when she was alone she ventured a little way along one of the least affected of the lower streets, one which was not closed like certain of the others to the public. Yet this struck the girl as being, deserted: the old sleepy cheerfulness that she remembered was gone, no knots of chatterers stood about, one or two people might be seen on their stone house-steps, but they looked sad and spiritless. The workshops were shut up, a heavy languid, stagnant air was about the place. It seemed the sadder for that brilliant sunshine streaming down upon it all. The poor pet flowery drooped thirsty and uncared for. Thérèse felt a sense of frightened guilt in being there. It was as if she had no right to intrude, as if—as, indeed, was the case—she had come into the valley of the shadow of death. From the door of one house some little children looked at her wonderingly; she stopped, wishing to speak to the poor little things; and then she heard inside low feeble moans, which scared her away. Her heart was beating fast, a strange sort of oppression had seized hold of her; Nannon was right, she thought, she had not known for what she was wishing. The street was full of angles and twists and crookednesses; she went on a little further, stumbling over the rough paving and gasping for breath, it was so stifling between the tall overhanging houses. 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. It was imagination which had conquered her,—imagination acting upon Nannon’s keenly drawn pictures, and quickened by the most vivid impression she had yet received of the heavy, death-laden atmosphere. But she did not make this excuse for herself. She felt humiliated, almost desperate with shame. The next day she went to the curé at a neighbouring church, and spoke more freely than was her wont, although she told him nothing of a half-formed resolution. Perhaps he did not quite understand her, but he helped her as much as he could; Thérèse had never before looked upon him as so nearly a friend.

Then she went back to Rue St. Servan, and sought Madame Roulleau. Madame was sitting in the office, with a pen behind her ear, and her thin hair drawn up tighter, doing her husband’s work with considerable acerbity. She would not in the least have minded bearing its whole weight upon her shoulders had it not been that certain foolish legal impediments in the way of women cut her off from the most lucrative part of his profession. It was a folly, but it was undeniable. And Ignace’s cowardice just now stood in the way of golden gains. No wonder that madame was sharp in the midst of her astonishment at seeing Thérèse before her.

“You were speaking yesterday of the children having their vacation, madame,” said Thérèse quietly. “I am thinking of taking advantage of it to leave you for the present.”

Madame laid down her papers, stood up behind the bureau, and resting her hands on it said, in a low furious voice, “You are going?”

“For a time only, I repeat, madame.”

“Oh, I comprehend. It is the fever-fright that has hold of you,” she said, contemptuously. “Understand, however, mademoiselle, that by leaving Charville you lose even the pitiful sum provided for your support.”

Thérèse winced under the scorn as the young do wince. She grew very red, and said quickly, “You are mistaken, madame. What I propose doing is to offer myself as a nurse at the hospital. I have no intention of leaving Charville.”

“You! A nurse!”

“Exactly so, madame.”

“See then,” cried madame, volubly, sinking back among her papers,—“see then how the ingratitude I knew would come to pass, has come! We take her in when no one else would do so, nourish her as a daughter, disarrange ourselves, slave,—when I think of it, there is nothing we have not done. Ah, my poor Ignace, what will it not cost you to learn that I was right!”

“What have I said?” asked Thérèse, appalled at the storm.

“Oh, do not consider it, do not consider us, mademoiselle. If others may think it base that at the time when my husband’s health has failed, and I must struggle for bread for my children, you should take the opportunity of depriving them of even that little which might assist them, I say nothing. I make no reproaches, I leave them to your own heart.”

Thérèse drew herself up proudly. “You talk strangely, Madame Roulleau,” she said. “At one moment I am a burden, at another an assistance. Do not fear for the little you receive from me. So long as I am provided with a bare support, the rest may remain in your hands until my return. Only these scenes are not agreeable.”

Madame recognised her false step, and did her best to retrieve it. She calmed, not suddenly, but by degrees, and tried to draw out the girl’s sympathy for her position, with so many business matters on her hands. There was the risk that Thérèse might catch the fever and die, but she did not dread the fever herself sufficiently to fear that inconvenience greatly. At all events Thérèse meant to go, and therefore it only remained for her to put matters in the best train for herself. The girl, who was sweet-tempered, came round before long. Madame threw herself into her idea at last with enthusiasm. But Thérèse shook her head when she asked her plans.

“I am going at once, and I do not think I shall come back again,” was all she would say.

Then she went upstairs, put what things she wanted quietly and expeditiously into a bundle, and left the house. “M. Deshoulières may not allow it,” madame had objected, and Thérèse, who thought the same, was bringing some feminine tact to bear upon that probability. She was passing the Cathedral, but suddenly turned and went in. There was a little dark corner in a side aisle, which only caught a few rays of light through the nearest window, gorgeous with painted glass in glowing prodigality of colour. She drew her chair there and knelt down. Presently, far away in the choir, half-a-dozen priests began reciting their office with deep, rich voices. Thérèse fancied it was like the distant roll of the sea. There was not much music in it, but it was full and solemn-sounding; she stopped her prayer and listened. And then her heart went up in a cry, “O my God, make this work I desire a psalm of Thine.”

She went out of the Cathedral, crossed the Place, and turned down the street from which she had fled only the day before. There was the same strange oppressive stillness about it, but her steps only faltered for a moment. Then she went on bravely, except that she drew her breath a little quicker. She reached the house from which the children had looked out at her, her heart sank a little when she saw they were not there; she had somehow trusted to them as friends. A woman came to a narrow quaint window opposite and stared indifferently at her. Thérèse went slowly up the steps, hot from the burning sun, and softly opened a door.

If it was hot outside, what was this room like? It was all she could do in her first horror to keep her ground, and not to run away as once before. She stood still, however, and a woman, who was sitting by a low miserable bed, glanced languidly at this strange young figure who was standing there with the old street behind her, and the glow of the sunshine round her head. In another minute or two Thérèse recovered herself and came forward timidly.

“Can I do any thing for you?” she asked in a low voice full of awe.

“No.”

It was not repulse, but simply despair.

“I think I could help you a little,” Thérèse said gently. “Once my aunt had a fever, and I used to nurse her. And you seem so ill yourself.”

This time there was no answer. The woman, who had her arm on the pillow of the bed, on which lay a girl, a little younger than Thérèse, neither moved nor objected, but watched mechanically while Thérèse drew off the quilt from the bed, fastened open the window, and moistened the lips of the sufferer, who was unconscious of her presence. Afterwards the woman said she had believed it was the Blessed Virgin, or one of the saints, who came in so strangely; but even this conviction did not astonish her. She sat there, and watched dully until the sick girl started up, and poured out a wild torrent of delirious words. They were obliged to hold and soothe her while it lasted; but when it was over she sank down in utter exhaustion.

“Is there medicine to give her?” asked Thérèse. The woman nodded, and pointed to a bottle, on which the directions were clearly written. Thérèse poured out the quantity and gave it to her.

“See there,” she said cheerfully; “she is tranquil now. Is she your daughter?”

“My daughter,” answered the woman in a low hoarse voice. “As you know, her father is dead, and they have just carried him away. I have had it, too, and she nursed me.”

Thérèse, wondering over the phrase “as you know,” asked where were the children.

“M. Pinot has taken them.”

“Is M. Pinot coming again?”

“He or the other. I do not know,” said the woman wearily. She would not speak again, but she did not interfere with any of Thérèse’s movements. The girl found wine in a bottle, and made her drink a little, after she had poured some between poor Fanchon’s lips; the same girl who had chattered so merrily at the fountain the year before. Then she heated some soup for the poor mother, and made the room look a little less deplorable than it had done when she entered it. Her fear had left her utterly—a great pity had swallowed it. But her heart beat fast, when as evening was coming on she heard a step at the door.

It was M. Deshoulières. Thérèse saw that with a glad throb, but she was standing a little behind the door in the shadow, and he came in quickly, and passed to the bed without noticing that a third person was in the room. Neither did he speak for a few moments, but at last turned to the poor mother and said,—

“This is good. She is a little better. Have you given her the medicine?”

The woman pointed behind him and said,—

“She has,” and M. Deshoulières turned round and saw Thérèse.

She trembled violently, fearing lest after all she had done wrong, and then she looked in his face and saw a sudden agony in it, and recovered herself at once.

He crossed the room and stood before her in the dim corner, at first speechless. When he did at last speak, his voice was so changed, so rough and broken, that she hardly recognised it.

“Child, child!” he said, “what madness have you done?”

“Do not send me away,” she said, gently. “I could not help it, I could not sleep at night for thinking of all this misery. And what was there to keep me? I am free if any one in the world is free. You must let me remain. I am not afraid.” He answered her sharply, like a person in keen pain.

“What you ask is impossible, ridiculous! I insist upon your returning at once.”

Thérèse shook her head.

“I cannot go back to the Roulleaus from this house. You see that, do you not, monsieur? It would be simply wicked.”

“Then I must find you a lodging. Heavens, mademoiselle, what has possessed you?”

She did not answer. He looked at her there in the grey dusk, the little window open behind her, the old blackened discoloured walls, the poor meagre fittings, the wretchedness around, and she standing, so womanly, so brave, so patient, as she was under his upbraidings. He longed to take her hand and draw her away out of that hot foul atmosphere. He could give himself without a murmur, but his heart cried out against her making a choice like this. Is it not always easier to give ourselves than to give our dearest?

“Come,” he said, almost passionately.

But she made no movement. She only said,—“If you order it, I must go, of course. But what would be the good? If any mischief is done it must be done by this time. Pray, pray let me stay!”

She had the advantage of being perfectly self-possessed, while he was deeply moved and very pale.

“I will find some one to come here. Indeed, you must not remain.”

She saw he was wavering.

“Then let me go to the hospital. You know you want nurses.”

“Yes, but they are trained, experienced nurses that we want.”

“I can learn quickly,” Thérèse said, eagerly. “Allons, M. Deshoulières, when those that you seek come, I can go away. Or leave me here.”

“No, no,” he answered again. “This is far worse than the hospital. How could you be so imprudent?”

“You are going to accept me,” she said, joyfully.

He took her hand and looked into her face.

“Do you know what you are asking? Do you know what you must bear? Have you courage enough, strength enough, devotion enough?” There was a little silence, and then Thérèse looked up and answered, humbly,—

“No. But, monsieur, I will ask for all these; and I think that, perhaps, He who has given me the will will send me what I want.”

After that he could say no more. He may have put up a different prayer for her in his own heart, but of it she knew nothing. He said no more to her; he promised the poor, half-stupefied mother that some one should be sent for the night, and then those two went away together. It was evening now, the sun had set, a golden glimmer just lingered on the plains. Far away, in other parts of bright France, the goats would be trooping home from breezy uplands in tinkling herds, soft sweet breezes tossing the hay, fresh mountain streams gurgling along their rocky beds, dewy grass waving, leaves rustling: here, the hot thirsty air still filled the narrow streets, the summer evening brought no relief from the invisible pestilential cloud that hung and penetrated, and stifled. Together those two went—under the quaint houses, so sadly stricken, along the rough pavement, over which many little feet were never now any more to patter—solemnly and silently, because their hearts were very full, and a great shadow hung over them. They passed under an ancient gateway, crossed a bridge; and, in another few minutes, the two—still silent—went together up a flight of steps, and into the hospital of St. Jean.

Chapter Fifteen.

“They serve God well, Who serve His creatures.” The Lady of La Garaye.

The first person who confronted them within the hospital doors was Nannon. She had learned Thérèse’s intentions from Madame Roulleau, and had come away at once with the hope of changing what she fancied was no more than a girl’s foolish excited whim. Thérèse’s delay had frightened her even more than the first hearing of her scheme; and now, when she saw her enter with M. Deshoulières, after a momentary sensation of relief, her heart sank with the conviction that if M. Deshoulières was in favour of her being so cruelly sacrificed, not all the talking in the world would take her away from the place. And, indeed, Thérèse stopped her first exclamation.

“Hush, Nannon. It is of no use. Every thing is decided.”

The old woman was so aghast that she fell back at once upon her strongest card, which she had intended reserving for the end of her argument.

“Mademoiselle—listen then—mademoiselle, what would M. Fabien say?”

“M. Fabien!” M. Deshoulières, who was a little in advance, turned round and said this. They all looked at one another for a moment, and then he went on slowly and quietly: “She is right. We have not thought enough. I implore you, mademoiselle, for the sake of Monsieur Saint-Martin, to return with her to the upper town.” The light from a lamp fell on his head. Nannon said to herself admiringly, “After all he has a noble face, that man.” Thérèse answered quickly, holding herself at her full height as she spoke, “Do you think I have not thought of him? Do you think any one I loved would keep me back?”

At another moment she could not have spoken out her heart’s affection in such a manner, shyness and custom would have prevented it; but now something seemed to demand it, her allegiance to Fabien, she thought. Max Deshoulières, looking at her reverently, said, within himself, “I pray, I pray to Heaven, she is not judging him from her own capacities only.” Nannon was silent, as people are when some strong feeling makes itself known in their presence; Thérèse was resolute and decided, her step light, she did not look like one who would consent to change; and M. Deshoulières, if he had been moved, was quiet again. All the old woman could do was to ask to share the nursing; and, finally, she gained permission to become a sort of medium of communication between the hospital and the outer world, to fetch what was needed, and carry messages to a house about a kilometre away, where convalescents were tended by one of the trained sisters. After which M. Deshoulières, who felt an uncomfortable conviction that he had been persuaded against his judgment and his wishes, fetched another sister, and delivered Thérèse into her keeping.

“No work to-night, remember,” was his last order as he hurried away.

“Then you will be on day duty,” said the Sister, kissing her at once, and looking at the pretty young face with a little brisk wonder. “That is best. You shall sleep with me and with Sister Gabrielle. We want more nurses sadly, only—my child, I look at you because you are so young, and I wonder. Did your mother let you come?—ah, ah, I guess what you would say. You are right. Yes, there were many of the blessed saints younger than you; let me see, there was S. Lucy, S. Faith, S. Prisca—”

She ran on with a long list of names, all the while leading the girl up the broad staircase, with its stone balustrade. It was impossible to put in a word; but her cheery voice and bright little apple-face looking out of its black drapery gave the best welcome that Thérèse could have received. Every thing was hopeful. The patients were better, a great many of them. It was only a fever, and what was that to the plague? Now, if they had lived in the East, it might have been the plague. It was certain there would be rain soon. And those who were ill were so patient and so good it was a delight to nurse them. All that she touched grew bright; it was Thérèse’s turn to look at her in wonder. But when Sister Gabrielle came in to the clean, tiny room to take her appointed hours of sleep, Thérèse gave a little jump of glad surprise. It was the same réligieuse as she had watched and heard on the day when she felt so sad and so desolate under the great Cathedral; the one whose sweet calm voice she remembered with its quieting, “Soyez tranquille, mon enfant.” She remembered also the beautiful face, paler and thinner now, but only more beautiful still. There was a rare fascination and power about this woman,—the clearest common-sense, and a spirituality which exalted it. Little Sister Annette became more silent directly, and treated her with affectionate reverence. She acted as head alike to the sisters and the lay nurses, and said a few words to Thérèse upon her duties which touched and strengthened the girl unspeakably. She was half-frightened, half-glad, to be there; but she would not have gone back for the world, and although she went to bed assured that sleep would never come, the “Soyez tranquille” returned in dreams.

After that night she had no more dreams. She slept too heavily when the time for sleeping came. M. Deshoulières had done well to warn her, Sister Gabrielle to strengthen her for it; there was so much that was terrible and ghastly and full of horror. Not fear. There was no time for fear. But she was very young and tender-hearted, and somehow, at first, she had expected to see more relief, and to have the consolation of soothing these poor souls more than she found by experience to be the case. By and by she understood her position better, and was content to look for less, and yet Sister Gabrielle told her, smiling, that she was one of the most popular nurses among them all.

French organisation is the most perfect in the world, but the fever beat the organisation. If all that M. Deshoulières wanted had been done, there would scarcely have been room enough for the fresh patients. As it was, there was over-crowding and over-work. Now and then a nurse failed, and was carried away to the infirmary at the convent. It was found that such as fell ill for the first time at the hospital could not recover there, and so they were taken away at once. The precautions to avoid spreading the infection were strongly enforced. Still it spread. People went about the streets softly, with an awe-struck look on their faces. There were special services, litanies. Day after day the fierce sun beat down on Charville; day after day the fever smote its victims; day after day such doctors and such nurses as were spared were at their posts, fighting it.

M. Deshoulières seldom spoke to Thérèse, unless it was to give special orders, and she was quite unconscious how narrowly he watched her during this terrible time. He was ready to interfere at once if she flagged But she did not flag. Her eye was brighter, her face was alive with keener energy than he had seen in it yet. At first she had a great deal to learn, but by and by it became evident that among all the brave women who laboured there as women can labour, there was not one more self-denying, more courageous, more tender than Mademoiselle Veuillot. Where patient watching was needed, in cases where it seemed impossible not to shrink, she stood her ground. When speech failed, and only mute gestures, difficult to interpret, remained to the sufferer, those pitiful grey eyes were quick to read the hidden meaning. When these, too, ceased, and death followed upon his shadow, more than once dying looks or dying lips faltered blessings upon the faithful nurse who stood there faithful to the last.

And so it arrived that Sister Gabrielle told her that she was one of the most popular nurses among them all.

M. Deshoulières watched and wondered. She was different from what she had been. He had known her well enough to know that. But he was ignorant how the change had come, or, rather, how her character had thus ripened and opened out. Perhaps it was the outbreak of a heart tender enough to overcome selfishness. Perhaps there was a touch of shame about it that her own trials had seemed so unendurable, now that she was brought face to face with what we call life’s great realities. Least of all did he think, when he had time to think, which was not often, that his own example had any thing to do with it. Yet so it was. Thérèse had never been the same since that day when he and she had spoken together; and, seeing him in the heart of his work at the hospital, she owned that even yet she had not done him justice.

For now she could understand more fully what a great, noble heart was this man’s. She could understand why a soft light came into Sister Gabrielle’s eyes when she spoke of him—the sort of reverence with which the attendants in the wards obeyed his bidding. It seemed to her as if he, single-handed, did more to keep them all at work in the most efficient manner, than the other members of the staff put together. It seemed to her as if a great deal of the bravery and the cheerfulness which distinguished the workers grew in some fashion out of this bravery and cheerfulness which never failed. Always at his post, ready with keen promptitude to decide the crowd of doubtful questions brought for his opinions, accepting responsibilities from which others shrunk,—“My friend, the Minister of Health is in Paris, and I am here,” Thérèse heard, him say one day, in answer to a timid objection from little M. Pinot,—quick to note the first symptom of over-fatigue among the band of nurses; encouraging Sister Annette’s merry little sayings; swift, patient, tender, inflexible, all at once. It was here that she first realised Max Deshoulières’ kingdom.

Fanchon was well again. M. Deshoulières found means to let her know that. Nannon told her that the fever had not spread in the upper town; there were only a few isolated cases. Madame Roulleau had said that when there had been a little rain to cool the air, M. Roulleau would return.

“Otherwise I think she will fetch him,” said Nannon, laughing; “and, dame, I believe the fever would be less terrible to him than madame with her claws out.”

“But will it ever rain again!” answered Thérèse, who was walking by a cornfield in the early morning. All the nurses were compelled to be in the open air for half air hour daily, and she had been on night duty lately.

People asked that question a hundred times in the day. The sky, with its bright sunny beauty, had grown quite terrible and fierce in their eyes. Water was becoming scarce, the air was so heated that the nights scarcely cooled it at all; while all this continued it was scarcely possible that the fever should subside.

One day there was great sorrow in the hospital. Kind little Sister Annette, whom every one loved, became dull, lost her appetite, and complained of headache. Within an hour, M. Deshoulières had taken her himself to the convent, and a rumour got about that it was a bad case. They missed her terribly. Her kindly, hopeful chatter had done more than any of them knew to keep their spirits from sinking. Somehow it was difficult to imagine her to be ill. Thérèse said so to Sister Gabrielle one day in their little room, which two other sisters shared with them now; and then Sister Gabrielle took her in her arms, and kissed her, and said, with a spasm of pain working her beautiful face, “She is not ill any longer, our dear sister; she is at rest.”

Thérèse nearly broke down herself after this. Probably she would have done so altogether if it had not been for M. Deshoulières and Sister Gabrielle, who watched her wisely and tenderly, and sent her more into the cornfields with Nannon. The days came and went, she scarcely knew how time passed, or that it was nearly five weeks since first she came to the hospital. It seemed, at last, as if the fever was stationary—the number of cases neither diminished nor increased.

But the sky was as fierce as ever.

One afternoon it changed. A greyness gathered over it, not big satisfactory clouds, but still something of the nature of cloud. A few scattered drops fell, enough to make large round holes in the white dust, and then it all cleared away, and the stars came out, and on the next morning the sun was braving it as undauntedly as he had done for those weary weeks past, and the Charville world was gasping and panting, and trying to make merry, with the thermometer at 90 degrees in the shade, with pestilence upon them, and drought at their very doors. Madame Roulleau, who had said that Ignace should not return until there had been rain, was frantic at the delay. There were cases of sunstroke among the reapers, a few old feeble people died literally of exhaustion from the stifling heat. Monseigneur at the Evêché had been at death’s door, and had driven them all distracted by refusing to allow M. Deshoulières to be called away from his other work, until he became so weak that his will had no longer any power of influencing them, and M. l’Abbé took matters into his own hands. But, indeed, those evil days brought out rare instances of devotion.

There came, at last, one day and night which exceeded every day and night that had gone before. Each door and window in the hospital was open, but it seemed as if all the air had gone out of the world. One or two of the patients who were thought to be doing well failed again, and sank rapidly on that terrible night. Great revolving fans had been placed in the wards, and were kept in motion continually, but nothing seemed to break the oppression; the very nurses lost heart under it. “Is it the end of the world?” one said, wearily. Thérèse, who had kept up bravely, when morning came was so spent and languid, that she could hardly drag herself across the ward. She flung herself across her little bed, too exhausted to speak to the sister, who shared her turn of rest, and fell into a dead, heavy sleep; when she awoke Sister Sara was standing at the window.

“It has rained!” she cried out, joyfully, hearing Thérèse stir.

Thérèse had not heard the thunder or the heavy drops, but all the air was cool, moist, and exquisitely delicious. Pools of water lay on the leads, the sun just gleamed out from between dark clouds, and birds chirped exultantly.

“Now we can breathe again, the saints be praised!” said the sister, with her little commonplace face made beautiful by thankfulness.

“Poor Sister Annette! Her rain has come at last,” said Thérèse, more slowly.

There was a Te Deum at the Cathedral, but grateful hearts did not wait for that to sing their own little special Te Deums. Never had the great plains been so delightful in their eyes as now, when a dense grey pall lay over them, blurring the outlines, creeping up thicker and thicker, dark, watery, heavy masses. The thunder-clouds had come first, great mountainous forms, with white mists floating across them; then followed a few hours of clear, cool, enchanting weather, and afterwards the plains were folded in the thick, close low rain, more beautiful to the people than the most gorgeous colouring could have been. It made itself felt upon the fever at once.

Not many days after, Thérèse was sent for to the little room in the lobby, where Nannon was allowed to enter. Nannon was there, and M. Deshoulières also. Something in their faces made her ask quickly what was the matter. It was very soon told. Nannon had come from Rue St. Servan, where little Adolphe had the fever, and was crying out piteously for his mademoiselle, his dear Mademoiselle Thérèse.

“Shall you go, mademoiselle?” asked Nannon. M. Deshoulières said nothing, he only looked at her.

“Of course I shall go,” answered Thérèse; “that is, if you think I can be spared,” she went on, appealing to him.

“That can be arranged,” he said, gravely. “But do you understand what you are doing? I fear these people have not treated you well.”

“My poor little Adolphe!” was the girl’s only answer. She had learned something in these six weeks.

They were obliged to keep her departure a secret from the patients who had been especially under her care. The nurses all kissed her; some of them had tears in their eyes. With all her bravery, she was so young that, when she went away, she clung to Sister Gabrielle and sobbed. “I have been happier here than I ever was in my life before,” she said, between her sobs. I do not know whether it was really thus, but looking back she thought so; and M. Deshoulières, who could not bear to hear her say it, went back to the ward suddenly, so that when she looked round to wish him good-by, he was not there.

“Has that woman no perception, then,” Nannon said, indignantly, as they toiled up through the steep streets, “that she will not allow our doctor to come? Monsieur Pinot is not bad, no, he is not bad, but he is like the gosling waddling after the gander. Mademoiselle need not laugh, she knows what I mean. What would you have? Charville could not expect to see two M. Deshoulières.”

Nannon had been converted utterly, and like other converts she was not fond of hearing her former opinions quoted.

“After all,” she went on, “I am glad mademoiselle is out of that place.”

“Is the poor child very ill?”

“I believe so,” said the old woman, shrugging her shoulders. “Madame fought against it for days, she said it should not be the fever; she was like a mad woman. But now she is frightened. She loves her children, that wild-cat! Ouf, I am out of breath! Such a summer as this does not make one younger.”

So they went their way, picking their road over the wet stones, and keeping clear of little torrents of water that here and there spouted out wildly from the eaves. The flowers were gratefully drinking in the soft rain; a beautiful rich geranium flamed out against a grey stone background; the terrible oppressive cloud was lightened; there were people moving about again; little children playing; one little mite in a pink frock and a tight black cap, Thérèse longed to kiss, but she dared not let them approach her. Presently a girl standing at a door smiled and nodded and kissed both hands. It was Fanchon. The apparition gave Thérèse a little thrill of delight. “It is so odd to think how horribly frightened I was,” she said to Nannon, “and now it all seems so natural.” She went on with a lightened heart. That little glimpse of Fanchon, and afterwards the ever steadfast loveliness of the Cathedral, did her good. At the door of the Roulleaus’ house, Nannon detained her for a moment.

“Listen, mademoiselle,” she said. “Do you know last night I dreamed that Monsieur Fabien was come!”

“And so did I,” said Thérèse, smiling.

Madame in her linen camisole was at little Adolphe’s bedside copying a letter when Thérèse went softly into the room. Was she glad to see her? The girl could not tell. She was rigid and defiant, and yet every now and then an expression resembling terror flashed out from her eyes. Adolphe was glad at all events. He knew her directly, and put out his poor little weak arms. “Now you will tell me stories, mademoiselle,” he said, with a feeble triumph at having carried his own way. Thérèse knew well by this time what to do, and she changed the whole aspect of the uncomfortable little room in a few minutes. Every thing was put in order and ready for use. Poor Adolphe did not really want any stories, but, as he grew a little delirious in the evening, he said over and over again, “il y avait un géant, il y avait un géant.” Tears came into her eyes as she heard the little thin voice wandering on. Nothing soothed him so much as to have her close to his bedside, singing to him; and madame, who was very silent, sat and watched them with a fierce, jealous sorrow pulling at her heart. She knew little better than a baby what to do in a sick-room, but she loved her children passionately. It cut her to the heart that Adolphe should turn from her to another. It cut more deeply still that this other should be Mademoiselle Veuillot.

Chapter Sixteen.

“No tear relieved the burden of her heart; Stunn’d with the heavy woe.” Thalaba.

The days went on for Thérèse very much as they had done at the hospital. She had but one patient instead of many, it is true, but that one absorbed all her care. Octavie had been sent from the house; the file, who was in the habit of coming for a certain number of hours daily, took fright and kept away. Nannon took her place, but she was not permitted to enter the sick-room, and madame was utterly incapable of those little feminine cares which nursing demands. So it all rested upon Thérèse, and even when the child was unconscious there seemed to be an increase of disquietude if she was not close at hand. She thought it a bad case, and longed for M. Deshoulières’ swift perception to be brought to bear upon it, and she could not help remembering Nannon’s irreverent simile when little Pinot came into the room, with his little attempt at imitation of the other’s manner. But madame broke out violently when she suggested that M. Deshoulières should be sent for. And so there was nothing for it but to remember his injunctions, and patiently to do what was needed for the poor little man, whose naughtinesses and obstinacies were forgotten now, or recalled only with shame at her own want of forbearance.

She wondered sometimes at madame’s strange ways. It was impossible to say in what mood the next hour would find her, fierce or remorseful, snappish or affectionate. Thérèse would have understood better had she known what coals of fire her unconscious hands were heaping and shovelling upon madame’s head just then. Nothing could have been so terrible to her as to see this girl whom she had injured sitting with the little hot hand in hers which the mother loved above all others in the world, and longed to tear away out of her clasp. Nothing. It almost maddened her.

At last one morning M. Pinot also told her that he would suggest her sending for M. Deshoulières. “It would be a satisfaction to himself,” he said. Thérèse, who knew what those words meant, turned a little pale, and looked tenderly down upon the little ugly brown face, now so pinched and wizened and changed, which kept slipping down from the pillow.

“M. Deshoulières shall not come,” answered madame, in her strange defiant tone. “The child is no worse.”

“Pardon, madame. It grieves me to say—”

“He is not worse, I tell you. The fever must run its course, and I have heard you say it is now only weakness.”

“Madame, at this stage—”

“He is not worse, I repeat again. I do not choose that M. Deshoulières should come.”

“In that case—Is Monsieur Roulleau aware of the extent of this illness, may I inquire of madame?”

“My husband comes to-day.”

“How has she brought him?” thought Thérèse, who knew something of the force of the little notary’s fears. She had brought him by not telling him of the illness at all. There was business waiting for him, and she had told him that after it had rained she should demand his return. In her next letter she said that it had rained, that the fever was diminishing, and that on such a day he was to be at Rue St. Servan. That was all. Nannon, who admitted him, wondered as much as any one. Madame come slowly down the stairs and signed to him to enter the little bureau.

“Zénobie, my angel,” he said, turning to meet her as she followed him. Something, it might have been a grey look on her face, arrested him, “What is the matter?” he said, faltering.

She was a woman, after all,—wicked, cruel, but a woman. Her sin was smiting her sorely; there were those terrible coals of fire scorching, consuming her. And he was her husband, the father of her children. “Oh, Ignace, Ignace, mon ami,” she cried, piteously, stretching out her arms for support, “our little Adolphe!”

“What then?”

“Ah, he suffers so!”

“Suffers! Is he ill?”

“The fever—”

“The fever!” he cried, springing back with one bound against the wall. “The fever is in this house and you let me come?”

She would be patient yet. It was the first shock. He had not realised her words. “He will not know you, Ignace; he is changed and so weak; it is terrible to see him.”

“Keep back!” he cried out, for she was drawing closer; “keep back! You have been nursing him, and now you speak to me! Let me go out into the air. Zénobie, how could you be so imprudent?”

“You will not see him—your son?”

“What is the good, what is the good? I can do nothing. See here, what a palpitation you have given me. Let me pass! I will go back to Tours at once. Let me pass! I shall be a dead man if I stay in the house with a fever.”

Her wrath blazed out. “Coward!” she said, standing between him and the door, and holding him immovable with a look of supreme scorn. “Coward! And while you stand there trembling, shaking, do you know who it is who is there by his side, nursing and tending him until I am driven mad? That girl. Do you know that while I hate her, it is all I can do sometimes not to fall on my knees before her and tell her all? Do you know that he cares for her more than for me,—me, his mother?”

“Zénobie, Zénobie, have patience! You will ruin us with your impetuosity.”

“Listen, then. You who have not so much as the bravery of a woman in your miserable little heart—it is your child whom that girl is nursing night and day. You have no courage—have you no pity? Do you, remembering who she is, and what she is doing,—do you refuse to let her know that this man, her lover, is alive,—that you could lay your hand upon him, and bring him back to her? Do you refuse that? She may die, remember, die of nursing your child!”

“Not so loud, not so loud,” said the little man uneasily. “If she were to die, we should lose the money, it is true, but it might be the safest. There would be fewer complications.”

She turned from him with a look of unutterable horror. In his cowardice, and in his cruelty, he had fallen far below even her measure of wrongdoing. With a pale scared face, he was watching the door with the hope of escape, but she, like an avenging fury, stood between it and him.

“Let us go into the street,” he said feebly. “I have always heard there is less danger in the open air. You will not? N’importe. Do not let me keep you, my Zénobie. Can I convey any message to your mother?”

She faced him again. “If he dies!”

“He will not die—no, no, he will not die, believe me. You are a little nervous, that is all. Oh, he will not die; he has an excellent constitution—Holy Virgin, what is that!”

It was M. Deshoulières knocking sharply at the door. Madame Roulleau, rigid and defiant again, opened it; the little notary shrank further into the corner; the doctor entered hastily.

“Mademoiselle Thérèse?” he said, looking round. “Ah, madame, may I ask you to request her to descend at once. I bring news, or, believe me, I would not incommode you at such a time.”

“What news, monsieur?” asked madame, still erect.

“Monsieur Saint-Martin has arrived.”

Her head sank, she went out of the room and up the stairs slowly. There was a tempest in her heart when she opened the door of the sick-room. It was all very solemn and quiet, solemn with the foreshadowing of that quietness which is infinite. The child lay on the little white bed, Thérèse knelt by its side, the persiennes were half closed, one quivering ray of sunlight touched the girl’s head, the sweet young face was full of tender sorrow. For a moment she stood speechless, watching; the next Thérèse heard a sharp keen voice in her ear:—

“Why do you look like that, you! He is mine, I will not have you take away his love. And I have hated you and done you all the harm I could—do you hear?”

“Hush, hush, madame,” said Thérèse softly. She looked at her, and knew that this woman in her strange excitement was speaking truth; at another time she might have been angry at the confession, but for weeks past she had been walking on the borders of that land where wrath and bitterness are hushed. She lifted her hand and pointed to the little face on the pillow. Madame dared not speak, she fell on her knees and trembled. Thérèse gently drew back the persiennes; a sweet cool breeze came into the room, the plains were all steeped in a kind of subdued sunshine, silvery, and broken with clouds. There were long shadows on the roofs and gables, birds singing in the gardens of the Evêché; presently the murmur of a distant chant came swinging up from the Cathedral, where all the windows were open. No service was going on, but the choristers were practising a requiem, very sad and sweet, yet now and then breaking into triumphant chorus. Thérèse fancied she caught the words,—“requiem, dona eis requiem,” shrill, clear, boyish voices answering one another. Rest was very near one of the three in that room. She touched madame, and said, “See, I think he knows us.”

Yes. For the last time the dim eyes turned and looked into theirs,—for the last time the little weak hand just moved as if to seek their clasp; the little voice, so strangely pathetic in its hoarse unchildlike accent, tried to reach Thérèse. For the last time. After that there was peace—the peace echoed by the choristers in the Cathedral—the peace that could never any more be broken. So best!

Chapter Seventeen.

“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. Deshoulières, 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. Deshoulières 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 Thérèse 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 Préfet, 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 Deshoulières 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. Deshoulières made straight for the church, skirted it, and found himself in front of a bran-new hotel, having a narrow façade, 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 curé 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 curé, 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. Deshoulières, 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 Curé, 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. Deshoulières 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 Curé 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 Curé at my first interview? At all events it matters little. The will itself can be placed in M. Saint-Martin’s hands to-morrow.”