6
Title: "Touched by God"
Author: Darkover
Rating: K
Disclaimer: The characters of "Les Miserables" were created by the French author Victor Hugo, not by me. No violation of copyright is intended or should be inferred. I wrote this story for love, not for money. The original characters in this story are mine.
Summary: A lady becomes fascinated by the white-haired man she sees on the street. One shot.
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She was with her husband when she saw him first: the man with the white hair. He was quite handsome, almost shockingly so, although he did not carry himself like a man who was aware of his appeal. He was also shabbily dressed, with an old redingote that had seen better days and a hat that had been rather more fashionable a few years earlier. She wondered if he was a gentleman who had fallen on hard times. She had no time to meditate on the thought, however, because then her husband was helping her into a fiacre, and they drove off. She had not thought she would see the white-haired man again.
But a few weeks later, when the weather was warmer, she saw him again. The snow-white hair made him stand out from the crowd. She was tempted to speak to him, although she knew not what she would say, or even if she should speak to him at all. She was a bourgeois, after all, the respectable wife of an equally respectable gentleman, and this man did look like a beggar, even though he did not ask for money. But something about the white-haired man appealed to her, and made her feel sorry for him. But soon she and her husband were past him, and the opportunity for any speech was gone. She told herself it did not matter.
A week later, the sun was shining, and she proposed to her husband that they take a walk. He was agreeable, and when they passed through that area again, as she made sure that they would, she saw the shock of white hair again. As she and her husband approached, she saw that this time the white-haired man was with a little girl. From the affectionate attention he lavished on her, clearly she was either his daughter or his granddaughter. The child seemed to be rather better-dressed than the man, who was clad in the exact same old yellow redingote and hat the lady had seen him wear on the previous two occasions.
Her husband, noticing her staring at the man, spoke her name in an inquiring tone. "Veronique?"
"What a lovely child," she said, as if she had been gazing at the little girl, so that her husband might have no cause for rebuke.
He looked over at the little girl with a touch of surprise, and very little interest. "I suppose so, for the offspring of a beggar. At least those two look clean enough."
"If he is in need, then we should help him," she said impulsively, and pulled her hand free of her husband's arm. She reached into her bag, brought out a coin, and ignoring her husband's call to her, walked swiftly over to the elderly beggar and the child. The two looked at her as she approached. "For you, Monsieur," she told the man, gently but firmly pressing the coin into his hand, which was surprisingly warm. To spare his masculine pride, for even beggars sometimes still retained some, she added; "Buy something for the little one."
He looked at her for a moment, and she saw that the white hair was deceptive; he was not quite as old as he seemed. His expression was unreadable, and for just a moment, she was afraid she had erred in some way. Then his gaze softened, he pulled his hat from his head, and bowed low. "Thank you, Madame. May our Lord bless you for your kindness."
She smiled at him, feeling her face getting warm. She was not quite sure why he was affecting her this way. She was a respectable married woman, who had not played the coquette in some time, and this was an elderly beggar, a man who while he might not be quite as old as she had originally assumed, was still clearly old enough to be her father. But there was something about the way he gazed at her. She had the curious thought that he was looking at her as if she were something both delicate and valuable, the gaze of a man who had a great, if distant, fascination with and admiration for women because he had known so few of them in his life, and had never had one of his own. But that was mad, surely. The mere presence of the little girl indicated that he must have had a wife at some time.
Her husband had come up behind her, and taken her arm, rather possessively. The white-haired man looked away from her to her husband, and the spell was broken. Turning away from her husband to the child, the white-haired man said; "Come, Cosette. It is time we went home." He reached down, picked up the little girl with no sign of effort at all, and then carried the child off down the street.
Her husband was speaking to her. "Why did you do that? You cannot give out money to every beggar in the street, Veronique. It destroys their will to work."
"I did not give out money to every beggar, just to one," she responded, so spiritedly that her husband seemed startled. She caught a glimpse of their reflections in a shop window, saw spots of color on each of her cheeks. "And it was for the child that I gave it," she added, knowing even as she spoke that the latter remark was untrue. Something about the man had appealed to her, and continued to do so even now. He seemed to possess a radiance that emanated from within. She had found him powerfully attractive, although she could not explain why even to herself.
Her husband smiled. "I never could fault your generosity, my dear." He looked at her more closely, seeming concerned. "Are you quite all right? Your cheeks are a bit red."
"I fear I have a touch of the sun, Charles."
"Then we must take you home." He hailed a passing fiacre.
Moments later, he was helping her into the carriage. As she stepped up into the vehicle, she hesitated for just a moment, glancing back down the street, hoping to catch a glimpse of snow-white hair. There was none, of course, and she entered the carriage, her husband climbing in beside her. The driver lifted the reins, clucked to the horses, and they set off. She felt odd, not unpleasantly so, and not as if she were in a dream, exactly; in a way she felt she had never been so aware in her life. She had the strange feeling, which she never had experienced before, nor would she again, that somehow she had touched the hand of one of those chosen by God to be one of His saints.
"He still had his yellow redingote, his black breeches, and his old hat. In the street he was taken for a pauper. It sometimes happened that respectable women would turn round after him and give him a sou. Jean Valjean would take the sou and bow deeply. It also sometimes happened that he met some miserable wretch begging for charity; and when he did he would look around to see if anyone were watching, furtively go up to the poor derelict and thrust a coin in his hand…before swiftly moving on….They were beginning to know him in the quartier as 'the beggar who gives alms.'"-from "Les Miserables," by Victor Hugo