It was a pretty little house, in very charming country—in an untravelled corner of Normandy, near the sea; a country of orchards and colza fields, of soft green meadows where cattle browsed, and of deep elm-shaded lanes.

One was rather surprised to see this little house just here, for all the other houses in the neighbourhood were rude farm-houses or labourers’ cottages; and this was a coquettish little chalet, white-walled, with slim French windows, and balconies of twisted ironwork, and Venetian blinds: a gay little pleasure-house, standing in a bright little garden, among rosebushes, and parterres of geraniums, and smooth stretches of greensward. Beyond the garden there was an orchard—rows and couples of old gnarled apple-trees, bending towards one another like fantastic figures arrested in the middle of a dance. Then, turning round, you looked over feathery colza fields and yellow corn fields, a mile away, to the sea, and to a winding perspective of white cliffs, which the sea bathed in transparent greens and purples, luminous shadows of its own nameless hues.

A board attached to the wall confirmed, in roughly painted characters, the information I had had from an agent in Dieppe. The house was to let; and I had driven out—a drive of two long hours—to inspect it. Now I stood on the doorstep and rang the bell. It was a big bell, hung in the porch, with a pendent handle of bronze, wrought in the semblance of a rope and tassel. Its voice would carry far on that still country air.

It carried, at any rate, as far as a low thatched farm-house, a hundred yards down the road. Presently a man and a woman came out of the farm-house, gazed for an instant in my direction, and then moved towards me: an old brown man, an old grey woman, the man in corduroys, the woman wearing a neat white cotton cap and a blue apron, both moving with the burdened gait of peasants.

“You are Monsieur and Madame Leroux?” I asked, when we had accomplished our preliminary good-days; and I explained that I had come from the agent in Dieppe to look over their house. For the rest, they must have been expecting me; the agent had said that he would let them know.

But, to my perplexity, this business-like announcement seemed somehow to embarrass them; even, I might have thought, to agitate, to distress them. They lifted up their worn old faces, and eyed me anxiously. They exchanged anxious glances with each other. The woman clasped her hands, nervously working her fingers. The man hesitated and stammered a little, before he was able to repeat vaguely, “You have come to look over the house, Monsieur?”

“Surely,” I said, “the agent has written to you? I understood from him that you would expect me at this hour to-day.”

“Oh yes,” the man admitted, “we were expecting you.” But he made no motion to advance matters. He exchanged another anxious glance with his wife. She gave her head a sort of helpless nod, and looked down.

“You see, Monsieur,” the man began, as if he were about to elucidate the situation, “you see—” But then he faltered, frowning at the air, as one at a loss for words.

“The house is already let, perhaps?” suggested I.

“No, the house is not let,” said he.

“You had better go and fetch the key,” his wife said at last, in a dreary way, still looking down.

He trudged heavily back to the farm-house. While he was gone we stood by the door in silence, the woman always nervously working the fingers of her clasped hands. I tried, indeed, to make a little conversation: I ventured something about the excellence of the site, the beauty of the view. She replied with a murmur of assent, civilly but wearily; and I did not feel encouraged to persist.

By-and-by her husband rejoined us, with the key; and they began silently to lead me through the house.

There were two pretty drawing-rooms on the ground floor, a pretty dining-room, and a delightful kitchen, with a broad hearth of polished red bricks, a tiled chimney, and shining copper pots and pans. The drawing-rooms and the dining-room were pleasantly furnished in a light French fashion, and their windows opened to the sun and to the fragrance and greenery of the garden. I expressed a good deal of admiration; whereupon, little by little, the manner of my conductors changed. From constrained, depressed, it became responsive; even, in the end, effusive. They met my exclamations with smiles, my inquiries with voluble eager answers. But it remained an agitated manner, the manner of people who were shaken by an emotion. Their old hands trembled as they opened the doors for me or drew up the blinds; their voices trembled. There was something painful in their very smiles, as if these were but momentary ripples on the surface of a trouble.

“Ah,” I said to myself, “they are hard-pressed for money. They have put their whole capital into this house, very likely. They are excited by the prospect of securing a tenant.”

“Now, if you please, Monsieur, we will go upstairs, and see the bedrooms,” the old man said.

The bedrooms were airy, cheerful rooms, gaily papered, with chintz curtains and the usual French bedroom furniture. One of them exhibited signs of being actually lived in; there were things about it, personal things, a woman’s things. It was the last room we visited, a front room, looking off to the sea. There were combs and brushes on the toilet-table; there were pens, an inkstand, and a portfolio on the writing-desk; there were books in the bookcase. Framed photographs stood on the mantelpiece. In the closet dresses were suspended, and shoes and slippers were primly ranged on the floor. The bed was covered with a counterpane of blue silk; a crucifix hung on the wall above it; beside it there was a prie-dieu, with a little porcelain holy-water vase.

“Oh,” I exclaimed, turning to Monsieur and Madame Leroux, “this room is occupied?”

Madame Leroux did not appear to hear me. Her eyes were fixed in a dull stare before her, her lips were parted slightly. She looked tired, as if she would be glad when our tour through the house was finished. Monsieur Leroux threw his hand up towards the ceiling in an odd gesture, and said, “No, the room is not occupied at present.”

We went back downstairs, and concluded an agreement. I was to take the house for the summer. Madame Leroux would cook for me. Monsieur Leroux would drive into Dieppe on Wednesday to fetch me and my luggage out.

On Wednesday we had been driving for something like half an hour without speaking, when all at once Leroux said to me, “That room, Monsieur, the room you thought was occupied——”

“Yes?” I questioned, as he paused.

“I have a proposition to make,” said he. He spoke, as it seemed to me, half shyly, half doggedly, gazing the while at the ears of his horse.

“What is it?” I asked.

“If you will leave that room as it is, with the things in it, we will make a reduction in the rent. If you will let us keep it as it is?” he repeated, with a curious pleading intensity. “You are alone. The house will be big enough for you without that room, will it not, Monsieur?”

Of course, I consented at once. If they wished to keep the room as it was, they were to do so, by all means.

“Thank you, thank you very much. My wife will be grateful to you,” he said.

For a little while longer we drove on without speaking. Presently, “You are our first tenant. We have never let the house before,” he volunteered.

“Ah? Have you had it long?” I asked.

“I built it. I built it, five, six, years ago,” said he. Then, after a pause, he added, “I built it for my daughter.”

His voice sank, as he said this. But one felt that it was only the beginning of something he wished to say.

I invited him to continue by an interested, “Oh?”

“You see what we are, my wife and I,” he broke out suddenly. “We are rough people, we are peasants. But my daughter, sir”—he put his hand on my knee, and looked earnestly into my face—“my daughter was as fine as satin, as fine as lace.”

He turned back to his horse, and again drove for a minute or two in silence. At last, always with his eyes on the horse’s ears, “There was not a lady in this country finer than my daughter,” he went on, speaking rapidly, in a thick voice, almost as if to himself. “She was beautiful, she had the sweetest character, she had the best education. She was educated at the convent, in Rouen, at the SacrÉ Cour. Six years—from twelve to eighteen—she studied at the convent. She knew English, sir—your language. She took prizes for history. And the piano! Nobody living can touch the piano as my daughter could. Well,” he demanded abruptly, with a kind of fierceness, “was a rough farm-house good enough for her?” He answered his own question. “No, Monsieur. You would not soil fine lace by putting it in a dirty box. My daughter was finer than lace. Her hands were softer than Lyons velvet. And oh,” he cried, “the sweet smell they had, her hands! It was good to smell her hands. I used to kiss them and smell them, as you would smell a rose.” His voice died away at the reminiscence, and there was another interval of silence. By-and-by he began again, “I had plenty of money. I was the richest farmer of this neighbourhood. I sent to Rouen for the best architect they have there. Monsieur Clermont, the best architect of Rouen, laureate of the Fine Arts School of Paris, he built that house for my daughter; he built it and furnished it, to make it fit for a countess, so that when she came home for good from the convent she should have a home worthy of her. Look at this, Monsieur. Would the grandest palace in the world be too good for her?”

He had drawn a worn red leather case from his pocket, and taken out a small photograph, which he handed to me. It was the portrait of a girl, a delicate-looking girl, of about seventeen. Her face was pretty, with the irregular prettiness not uncommon in France, and very sweet and gentle. The old man almost held his breath while I was examining the photograph. “Est-elle gentille? Est-elle belle, Monsieur?” he besought me, with a very hunger for sympathy, as I returned it. One answered, of course, what one could, as best one could. He, with shaking fingers, replaced the photograph in its case. “Here, Monsieur,” he said, extracting from an opposite compartment a little white card. It was the usual French memorial of mourning: an engraving of the Cross and Dove, under which was printed: “Eulalie-JosÉphine-Marie Leroux. Born the 16th May, 1874. Died the 12th August, 1892. Pray for her.”

“The good God knows what He does. I built that house for my daughter, and when it was built the good God took her away. We were mad with grief, my wife and I; but that could not save her. Perhaps we are still mad with grief,” the poor old man said simply. “We can think of nothing else. We never wish to speak of anything else. We could not live in the house—her house, without her. We never thought to let it. I built that house for my daughter, I furnished it for her, and when it was ready for her—she died. Was it not hard, Monsieur? How could I let the house to strangers? But lately I have had losses. I am compelled to let it, to pay my debts. I would not let it to everybody. You are an Englishman. Well, if I did not like you, I would not let it to you for a million English pounds. But I am glad I have let it to you. You will respect her memory. And you will allow us to keep that room—her room. We shall be able to keep it as it was, with her things in it. Yes, that room which you thought was occupied—that was my daughter’s room.”

Madame Leroux was waiting for us in the garden of the chalet. She looked anxiously up at her husband as we arrived. He nodded his head, and called out, “It is all right. Monsieur agrees.”

The old woman took my hands, wringing them hysterically almost. “Ah, Monsieur, you are very good,” she said. She raised her eyes to mine. But I could not look into her eyes. There was a sorrow in them, an awfulness, a sacredness of sorrow, which, I felt, it would be like sacrilege for me to look at.

We became good friends, the Leroux and I, during the three months I passed as their tenant. Madame, indeed, did for me and looked after me with a zeal that was almost maternal. Both of them, as the old man had said, loved above all things to talk of their daughter, and I hope I was never loth to listen. Their passion, their grief, their constant thought of her, appealed to one as very beautiful, as well as very touching. And something like a pale spirit of the girl seemed gently, sweetly, always to be present in the house, the house that Love had built for her, not guessing that Death would come, as soon as it was finished, and call her away. “Oh, but it is a joy, Monsieur, that you have left us her room,” the old couple were never tired of repeating. One day Madame took me up into the room, and showed me Eulalie’s pretty dresses, her trinkets, her books, the handsomely bound books that she had won as prizes at the convent. And on another day she showed me some of Eulalie’s letters, asking me if she hadn’t a beautiful hand-writing, if the letters were not beautifully expressed. She showed me photographs of the girl at all ages; a lock of her hair; her baby clothes; the priest’s certificate of her first communion; the bishop’s certificate of her confirmation. And she showed me letters from the good sisters of the Sacred Heart, at Rouen, telling of Eulalie’s progress in her studies, praising her conduct and her character. “Oh, to think that she is gone, that she is gone!” the old woman wailed, in a kind of helpless incomprehension, incredulity, of loss. Then, in a moment, she murmured, with what submissiveness she could, “Le bon Dieu sait ce qu’il fait,” crossing herself.

On the 12th of August, the anniversary of her death, I went with them to the parish church, where a mass was said for the repose of Eulalie’s soul. And the kind old curÉ afterwards came round, and pressed their hands, and spoke words of comfort to them.

In September I left them, returning to Dieppe. One afternoon I chanced to meet that same old curÉ in the high street there. We stopped and spoke together—naturally, of the Leroux, of what excellent people they were, of how they grieved for their daughter. “Their love was more than love. They adored the child, they idolised her. I have never witnessed such affection,” the curÉ told me. “When she died, I seriously feared they would lose their reason. They were dazed, they were beside themselves; for a long while they were quite as if mad. But God is merciful. They have learned to live with their affliction.”

“It is very beautiful,” said I, “the way they have sanctified her memory, the way they worship it. You know, of course, they keep her room, with her things in it, exactly as she left it. That seems to me very beautiful.”

“Her room?” questioned the curÉ, looking vague. “What room?”

“Oh, didn’t you know?” I wondered. “Her bedroom in the chalet. They keep it as she left it, with all her things about, her books, her dresses.”

“I don’t think I follow you,” the curÉ said. “She never had a bedroom in the chalet.”

“Oh, I beg your pardon. One of the front rooms on the first floor was her room,” I informed him.

But he shook his head. “There is some mistake. She never lived in the chalet. She died in the old house. The chalet was only just finished when she died. The workmen were hardly out of it.”

“No,” I said, “it is you who must be mistaken; you must forget. I am quite sure. The Leroux have spoken of it to me times without number.”

“But, my dear sir,” the curÉ insisted, “I am not merely sure; I know. I attended the girl in her last agony. She died in the farm-house. They had not moved into the chalet. The chalet was being furnished. The last pieces of furniture were taken in the very day before her death. The chalet was never lived in. You are the only person who has ever lived in the chalet. I assure you of the fact.”

“Well,” I said, “that is very strange, that is very strange indeed.” And for a minute I was bewildered, I did not know what to think. But only for a minute. Suddenly I cried out, “Oh, I see—I see. I understand.”

I saw, I understood. Suddenly I saw the pious, the beautiful deception that these poor stricken souls had sought to practise on themselves; the beautiful, the fond illusion they had created for themselves. They had built the house for their daughter, and she had died just when it was ready for her. But they could not bear—they could not bear—to think that not for one little week even, not even for one poor little day or hour, had she lived in the house, enjoyed the house. That was the uttermost farthing of their sorrow, which they could not pay. They could not acknowledge it to their own stricken hearts. So, piously, reverently—with closed eyes as it were, that they might not know what they were doing—they had carried the dead girl’s things to the room they had meant for her, they had arranged them there, they had said, “This was her room; this was her room.” They would not admit to themselves, they would not let themselves stop to think, that she had never, even for one poor night, slept in it, enjoyed it. They told a beautiful pious falsehood to themselves. It was a beautiful pious game of “make-believe,” which, like children, they could play together. And—the curÉ had said it: God is merciful. In the end they had been enabled to confuse their beautiful falsehood with reality, and to find comfort in it; they had been enabled to forget that their “make-believe” was a “make-believe,” and to mistake it for a beautiful comforting truth. The uttermost farthing of their sorrow, which they could not pay, was not exacted. They were suffered to keep it; and it became their treasure, precious to them as fine gold.

Falsehood—truth? Nay, I think there are illusions that are not falsehoods—that are Truth’s own smiles of pity for us.