When the stranger crossed from the dirt path and onto her land, Cheríse glanced up with a smile, expecting the old man who sometimes took his walk down her lane to check on her 'singular state' once more. A very tall, broad man, with crudely shaved head, thick beard, and burlap clothing approached instead, taking careful steps as though not to frighten a deer as he watched her. "Madame…" He began uncertainly when he at last came within earshot, fretting over eye contact now that she looked his way.
"Are you all right?" The young woman rose gradually from where her knees had been planted in the sparse garden. He startled at the concern in her voice, the kindness in her eye when he met it fearfully. With steps just as careful as his had been Cheríse drew a little nearer with her burden of a few vegetables weighing her drawn-up skirts.
"I… I have been traveling many days, and I have money to pay for a small place to sleep. Please…" His voice seemed to have taken as much wear as its owner had and was coarse as it came out, parched. When she did not immediately respond he hastened to amend his askance. "Please, I will sleep in the shed, outside under the lean-to. I will pay, I have money I have earned…" Rifling through his sack, he collected a few pieces of paper to prove his words.
She glanced at this and heard his words, but gently by-passed them and met his eye once more with ruth in her smile. "Are you thirsty, monsieur?" Her voice was soft, and its effect upon him was like a mother soothing her child's small hurts. Too shocked to answer, the man stood looking dumbly at the woman who had not yet cast a judging eye. "Come with me, I will draw some water for you from the well." An encouraging smile coaxed him to follow her around the small house and watch as she set down her produce and lift strong arms to pull at the rope.
This at last seemed to wake the stranger from the stupor her kindness had dealt him and, seeing that those strong feminine arms strained at the rope, he reached out and covered her hand, easily taking the load from her grip and bringing it up himself. The act of drawing a bucket of water could hardly be called a burden with the work of hauling skeletal ships his body had grown accustomed to. With the water brought up, she handed him a ladle and watched with a small smile as he drank his fill, glancing up at her intermittently to be sure that she still allowed it.
The bucket was near to empty when she spoke again and gathered those precious few vegetables in arms. "You are anything but 'small,' monsieur, and small is all I am able to give, but your place tonight will be by the fire." When she straightened Cheríse found him staring at her once more, baffled by her benevolence, and she furrowed her brow with a smile and nod. "It is all right." With that, she gathered up her skirts again and went into the house, leaving him to follow at will and trusting him to be alone on her property.
Cheríse had prepared her bounty carefully, cutting the pieces fine and making a broth with bones from an earlier meal to make it last. He entered finally as she was tending the fire, looking about him warily in anticipation of a man of the house ready to charge and cast him out on the street. At last his haggard eyes found her and she looked to him a tender princess living incognito, giving to the poor and being poor herself. She beckoned him to sit down by the flame where she knelt. The man settled opposite from her and watched the smaller hands tend to the meal, such a contrast to his larger ones, though they both bore scars and calluses. He was in the middle of wondering how she had received her few scars when she addressed him calmly. "What is your name?"
Clearing his throat, he spoke lowly. "Jean Valjean." He received her smile as reward.
"I am Cheríse Caprén. I notice you looking about for someone, but I am alone. My brothers left me and I am not wed." There was a sad resignation in the statement, but she did not dwell on it long. "It is unnecessary for you to keep anything quiet you wish to say, monsieur. I am not ignorant, for I can see with my eyes that you have recently lived in prison. If you have escaped, I have nothing of worth for you to steal, and what can be taken of me I think you would already have done if it were your intention… Are you on parole? You must have been there a long time."
Valjean marveled that she could talk of it so plainly and with such calm. Her openness encouraged his own, and soon he had told her of his crime, his release, and his encounter with the bishop of Digne only days ago that had caused him to resolve on a better way of living. The woman heard him with compassion and smiled at the mention of monseigneur Myriel, for he had visited her a few of times on his way to and from a place and given her hope and calm in her distress.
After they had shared with one another, Cheríse dished them two humble servings of the broth and broke the last of her bread to share with him, eating contentedly until they had finished and she fixed him another bowl without a word. He stared at it for a moment and asked in disbelief. "You are not ignorant, no, but you are foolish to let a man—one surely able to overpower you—into your home and to give him your kindness."
"Perhaps. But has not the wisdom and mercy of God often been called foolishness by men's standards? I had no feeling of fear at seeing you, and I think God meant that I was to help you." Looking down at the second helping of broth in his grasp, Cheríse pressed her hand to his sorely scarred wrist and smiled again with meaning. "Eat your fill, do not worry."
It took time to shake off the wariness Valjean was used to, but at last the sun fell completely and he settled curled by the fire like a contented dog, Cheríse close by on her small cot. He gazed long on her during the night when he woke to add fuel to the fire, wondering at her calm and giving nature.
She woke alone at dawn, furrowing a worried brow when the man was nowhere in the house, his coat and clogs gone from where he'd put them at the door. And then she heard the axe fall. In moments she was wrapped in a thin blanket and out the door, bare feet in the dew without a thought but to find him. And there he was, her father's axe in hand, chopping firewood from one of several fallen trees on her land. He looked to be half way through his second tree already, judging by the pile of wood splits behind him. "Jean…" Cheríse spoke his name barely in voice, more like a gasp of disbelief.
Turning, he wiped his nose with the back of his hand and shrugged. "I thought to make myself useful to you." The lapse of silence would have made Valjean uncomfortable under her gaze had not a belated smile blossomed over her face to blush her cheeks. His scars had not horrified her, and his branded number did not appear to be the reason she turned slowly back into the house, even when she glanced once more over her shoulder at his ruddy figure.
Over the next several weeks he indeed made himself useful to her as promised. Valjean repaired the rickety house, made quick work of the trees round about that she asked him to fell, tilled the earth in the garden, and hauled away trash that her pruning had collected over the summer months. Cheríse had a few books inside, reading them with him to practice his ever-increasing skill, and made every meal as hearty as she could to provide for this great man who now became a part of the home she made. She often worked outside with him and found her eyes drawn to the marks prison had made in his flesh, perhaps too often gazing on the muscles that those scars enhanced and that worked mightily in whatever duty he performed.
Valjean had gone to hunt rabbits on the day Cheríse came to understand how reliant she had become upon his presence. Her flesh often raised in bumps with the chills from a new season's winds and she pulled her collar up higher to shield such gusts as she harvested the apples left in the wild trees. The best, of course, were in the uppermost branches and so she climbed. There were more than she had hoped and so gladly filled her apron while balancing between two limbs. It was something she usually took delight in that startled Cheríse so drastically, and two bright jays sprang from their roost on a nearby branch to assault her where they thought she had trespassed. It was so fast that she was slipped and landed hard on the ground quite far below before she could properly let out a scream.
Her head was fuzzy when she awoke, but its throb could not mask the true pain she felt assailing her from the swell of a crooked and now misshapen knee. The day had grown late, and Cheríse still lay prone amidst fallen branches and apples that she carried with such a fall. Tears unbidden stained the sides of her face and across her ears as she stayed on her back looking up into dusk. "Jean…" The name escaped her lips in a whimper before she even clearly thought that he might be her only aid. "Jean! Jean, help!" Cheríse knew it wasn't loud enough to be heard, and she trembled in pain and oncoming cold. With quiet cries she managed to drag herself out from under the tree's lower branches, but could not make it far with a broken leg and despair setting in.
The crunch of leaves alerted her to the surrounding woods, falling in the pattern of a man's gait, not any forest creature. "Cheríse! Cheríse, where are you?" His voice, she recognized it with a sob and realized he had come looking for her.
"Here, Jean! I am here!" The young woman wept afresh when he came into view, little more than a towering shadow from the trees, but she knew that silhouette.
Valjean was at her side instantly, looking over the leg that caused such agony and kneeling to assess the break. "Thank God, I found you. I didn't know where to look, you were supposed to be in the house…" Without realizing it, she had taken his arm in a desperate grasp as he spoke and now he registered the touch, sliding it until her hand fit inside his own securely. "How long have you lain here?"
"I ate a little bread at noon and then came here to pick the apples…"
"That is at least six hours!"
"When I fell, I hit my head, and just woke up a while ago. Jean, it's cold." Indeed the air had grown much cooler with the setting sun and Cheríse continued to shake from exposure. Immediately Valjean shrugged off his jacket and covered her as though it were a blanket, sparing a gentle touch to the side of her head as he looked down upon her. Attention was then necessary to be given her leg, which lay at an odd angle, even though she had dragged herself a little ways.
Searching for a suitable branch, the man broke and stripped the bark till it was green and handed it to her with careful instructions. "Cheríse, you must bite down on this. I will have to set the bone." Something within him twisted painfully to hear her breath hitch and expression resign to fear, but she nodded and took the little branch to obey. Her cries ended abruptly when she fainted at the worst of it, and that twisting simply fisted tighter to become a weight in his belly. Finishing the ugly task, Valjean tore strips off his shirt and fastened straight branches about the knee tightly, hoping to jostle it as little as possible when he brought her back to the house.
A quiet prayer of thanks left his breath when he came up to gather Cheríse in arms, cradling her close into him, that she did not have to be awake for this portion of the ordeal that would doubtless be excruciating. Even through intense worry, Valjean's senses were still intact and took in the delight of being so close to this woman with whom he now lived. A month ago he could not fathom being so close to anything so lovely, and as night enveloped them and he brought her inside the little house once more, Valjean found himself reluctant to put her down on the cot and let go. Once separated, however, he got to work building up the fire and pulled her bed closer so that she reaped full benefit, even turning it around a little later so that one side would not grow too warm.
While Cheríse slept, discomfort staining her countenance every so often, Valjean could not remember ever praying so long. Had he done all he could? He had nothing for her pain, and surely she would need a doctor to look more closely at the break. How was he to get one, when he still looked to be a convict? She was not his wife; he could not expose her to shame by explaining that he had been living with her for all these weeks, alone. Anxiety plagued him and his only reprieve was when the woman's face seemed to calm into true slumber and the fullness of her beauty brought him to a sort of trance.
It must have been during one of these calm moments that his head had fallen on the mattress at her side and he found rest, for when he woke it was light and something brushed his head with soothing strokes through short hair. Valjean could not at once bring himself to open his eyes and end the sweet dream he had obviously entered into, but when his lids betrayed him and parted half way, the dream remained. Cheríse was not looking at him, her eyes were shut in consciousness and face lifted upward, but her hand had found his head and petted him sweetly, as though it were soothing to her as well.
His traitorous voice apparently desired the moment to end and he spoke her name in a rasp, drawing her attention. Though pain was evident behind her eyes, still she smiled at him, continuing the easy movements that ran through his hair. "Jean… thank you."
He could hardly bear to hold that gaze and shook his head slightly, capturing that sweet hand and pressing it in both of his own. "There is still much to be done. You need a doctor and I cannot bear to leave you here alone, nor go and tell others that you have kept a strange man in your home when I am a vagabond and they will think that I've…"
"Jean." Cheríse's calm voice silenced him before he could go on, and its quietness demanded that he look up and meet her eyes. "You are right, I need a doctor. You have done everything right, I am certain, but I need something for the pain, and more bandages. Do not worry for me, Jean, you will be all right to go fetch the doctor." He made to dispute her, but Cheríse grasped his hand tightly and used him to help her sit upright, breathing deeply for a few moments before continuing. "Fetch me those clipping shears and I will make you a bit more presentable, and if asked, you are my husband." Valjean stared at her incredulously but could not speak. The gentle press of her hand encouraged him to obey and soon he sat meekly at the bedside, letting her hands touch him and trim the wayward beard into normalcy. Sitting with eyes closed as she tended him, Valjean could hardly think except to remark silently that they must resemble a meadowlark combing the fur of a great ragged bear.
When she had finished, Cheríse combed her fingers through his hair and along his jaw with satisfaction, catching his humble eye and showing him a different light through hers that stirred something pleasing within him. "You are very handsome." She said softly, and spared another touch that glanced down the side of his neck. He helped her to lie back down, and was given instruction to the direction and name he should be searching for. When everything she might need was put within reach, he left with heavy steps.
By the next morning the doctor had come and gone, bandaging the leg efficiently, giving ingredients for a calming draught, and administering a little vial of medicine that Valjean discreetly paid for before the man departed. The question of his relation to the woman was answered and met only with a careless eye up and down his figure before the matter was left alone. The ex-convict could not keep his heart from racing at its mention, but apparently it was enough for the doctor to accept. They were again alone, and Valjean quietly brought in another armload of fuel for the fireplace, feeling Cheríse's perfect eyes upon him as he moved about.
"I am sorry if it made you uncomfortable." She spoke softly, as though guilty, and when he looked her way Cheríse was studying her fingers playing with the blanket hem. He said nothing, but started at her with question until she clarified. "Having you tell him you were my husband. I think… perhaps you felt wrong to say it."
Valjean sat by the fire and rested his elbows at each knee, staring blankly at the floor. "I did not mind. Only wish I were a man better worthy of playing your husband."
"Do you think you are not worthy?"
He merely scoffed.
When she began again it was in a lower voice. "If you asked me to be Madame Valjean, I would not be unhappy."
He started, visibly shaken though he dared not look at her. In a quivering voice he breathed. "There can never be a Madame Valjean… her life would be a misery full of lies, running from persecution with her wretch of a husband."
"The lies would not be between us, though." How had they started this conversation? "God knows the man you are in your heart, as He knows a woman's heart when her name is changed in marriage. You need only change your name, Jean, for you are already a better worthy man."
Valjean's breath came in shallow pants, her words sinking in and piercing his soul with truth and devotion. How had she come to rely on him? Could he trust himself to care for her? This was not only his pitiful life to be responsible for, but now also an angel asking to share that life that had started so miserably. It was a few minutes before he responded to hearing his name spoken in concern and his eyes involuntarily locked upon that beauty of a woman who had given rise to these thoughts. Slowly he rose and staggered to her bedside, hesitantly reaching for her arm when her hands willingly took his. "You must not say these things with pity, you must mean them." Begging, he knelt before her, still clinging to her soft flesh. "Cheríse do not tempt me. You have raised my hopes intolerably high and they cannot come down without being dashed like glass upon stone. Cheríse…"
With the man's face buried in her hands, she felt his bearded lips cover her fingers reverently. If anything, this passionate reaction spoke volumes to answer her hopes that he, indeed, felt as she had come to feel… to love her as she had come to love him. "Jean, look at me." It was like coaxing a child, and she felt tears burn her eyes because his face was full of hope and tremulous innocence as a child's would be. "I mean them."
Thinking back, Valjean could not remember who had moved first to press their lips together, to taste each other for the first time. With his beard shorter, he could feel her face pressed fervently to his, taste the salt that gathered at the corner of her mouth, and worship the softness of her cheek that now he, alone, was privileged to touch. She would belong to him, and in ecstasy he envisioned caring for her every day of his life, his every action having its focal point in her well being. He trembled with happiness and her loving hands did nothing to calm him, merely exciting more joy to shudder through his limbs. At length he rose to sit hip to hip with her on the cot, holding her in a strong embrace as she laughed gently and he murmured love into her neck.
It was another month before Valjean could be parted from his beloved long enough to fetch the bishop. They had agreed none other could perform their little ceremony and it was with surprise, soon followed by delight that Monseigneur Myriel agreed and took his donkey to accompany Jean Valjean back to the Mademoiselle. The bishop rained sympathy and affection upon Cheríse as though she were his granddaughter, and they performed the ceremony under the oak behind the little house. Valjean carried his bride back inside and they counseled a long time with the Monseigneur until agreeing that a new name and new place would do well to start their new lives together. The fresh surname would be Madeleine.