SONIA was awakened early by sounds in the room next her own, and as she
opened her eyes with perfect recollection of all that had passed the
night before, she wondered if it could possibly be that Harold had
returned. It might be only the maid opening and airing the room; but
whatever it was, she could not sleep again, and she began to devise a
plan for getting away early, so that she might avoid the possibility of
meeting Harold. She got out of bed, parted the curtains, and opened the
casement of the low French window. The early sunshine had washed
everything with its faint golden glow, and the little new-born leaves
that covered the trees in the _place_ with a foliage of feathery green,
paler than ever in its transparence against the sun, made a delicate
filmy screen, through which she looked down on an exquisite moving
picture.
The doors of the beautiful, great Madeleine were open wide, and through
them was pouring a long white rivulet that seemed to have its source in
the little covered doorway in the side of the basement of the great
building, and flowed thence in an even stream around the corner, and up
the great steps of the building, passing between its central pillars,
and so into the interior of the church. This stream was composed of what
seemed an unending number of little girls dressed for their first
communion. They were all in spotless white, with thin, transparent veils
reaching to the hems of their gowns, white wreaths upon their heads,
white stockings, shoes, and gloves, and each of them carried a tall
white taper, to be presently lighted in the church. Stationed like
sentinels along the line were gray-clad, white-bonneted sisters of
charity, who directed the children’s movements as they walked with an
awed stateliness out of the little door, up to the corner and around it,
and then through the gate and up the steps, and were lost to sight
beyond the wide church-door.
Sonia could see the very expressions of their faces as they would look
up for direction to the sisters as they passed, lifting their meek and
timid glances with an air of solemnity which in some instances
struggled with a sense of pride in their unwonted paraphernalia.
Somehow, the sight of so much ignorance, trust, and innocence, and the
thought that each one of them possessed a woman’s heart, with all its
capacity for suffering, for hoping, for loving, for regretting,
absolutely overcame her. How ignorant they were of what lay before them!
How fearlessly their little feet were entering upon the long journey of
life, so blind to the pains and bitterness of its way! It seemed
heartrendingly cruel to her, to think how they must suffer from the mere
fact that each one of them was a woman-child. O God, that women had to
suffer so!--that even love, the one delight, should bring in its wake
such pain! She could see none of the joy ahead of these sweet children;
she thought only of what her own heart suffered now--the regret, the
longing, the unfathomable sadness, the blight, the disappointment, the
despair! The passionate pain of her heart broke forth in violent sobbing
as she stood between the parted curtains, fascinated by the lovely
sight, but scarcely able to see it for her tears.
“O God, have pity on them--have pity on them!” she sobbed aloud; and
then, while her whole frame shook with her violent weeping, she
suddenly became aware of the stealing on of a new influence. What was
it? Nothing so definite as sight or sound, but something subtly powerful
in its significance to her. It was the pungent odor of a certain kind of
cigar which had once made part of the familiar atmosphere of her life.
It dominated her now, as if by a spell. She was instantly calmed, and,
as if by magic, swept back into the thrilling past. Then, suddenly,
penetrating this familiar atmosphere, there came a familiar sound--no
articulate utterance, but just a sound in the throat, which seemed
somehow meant to challenge attention. She would have known that voice in
the most distant and unlikely spot of earth; and now it became quite
plain to her that Harold had returned, and was watching the scene
opposite from his open window, scarcely a yard away.
He must have heard her words and sobs! He must have understood them, he
was so well practised in reading her heart. It had been an open book to
him once, though now it must be forever locked and sealed.
Her hands had fallen from the curtains, and she had moved backward.
There had seemed to come into her strength and support from the mere
sound of that voice. There was nothing new in this. Often, often had she
felt it before. And once it had been in her power to summon this support
at will, in any hour of grief or trial. That power was gone now, never
to come again; but for this once this supreme and availing help had been
afforded her. She felt within her the power to be strong, to collect
herself, and to form and execute plans of getting away from this place
of temptation and danger.
She fell on her knees. Her soul uttered a prayer of mingled thanksgiving
and entreaty. As she raised her eyes she could see through the slightly
parted folds of the curtains the pointed arch that topped the Madeleine.
Carved in enduring stone, that generations to come might see and gather
comfort from it, was the gracious figure of Jesus, spreading out his
arms of welcome to the poor Magdalen, who knelt in supplication at his
feet. At his side was a glorious, great angel, who, with drawn sword,
stood over the woman, and thrust back with his other hand the evil
creatures who in vain besieged her. On the right hand of Christ another
angel, with wings at rest, held a great horn of triumph, and behind him
were women crowned and garlanded, with little children clinging to them.
Farther still was a woman on a bed of illness, over whom another angel
of mercy had spread its wings as she came to Christ to have her body
healed.
The center of it all was the beneficent figure of the human Saviour; and
Sonia, looking down from this immutable image carved in stone to the
flowing, changing, passing stream of young human creatures beneath, felt
calmed and comforted. So they could keep their childish faith, there was
a refuge for them, and she saw them now without any prompting to tears.
She got up from her knees, bathed her face, smoothed her hair before the
mirror, and then, after darkening the room a little, rang for the maid,
and asked for her coffee.
By the time it came she was almost dressed, and she instructed the
servants very carefully not to disturb her young mistress, but to call a
cab for her at once,--as she found it necessary to go home early,--and
to tell Martha, when the latter awoke, that she was very well, but was
obliged to be at home at a certain hour.
Her plan worked perfectly, and on her way to the cab she saw no one
except the American maid, who went down with her. In passing through the
antechamber she noticed a man’s covert-coat, stick, and hat, together
with some crushed newspapers, thrown on a sofa. But she had not needed
this to convince her of the fact that Harold had returned, and had been
in his room, watching, as she had watched, the stream of little girls
beginning their celebration of the month of Mary by taking their first
communion.
The first of May being also what is known as “Labor Day,” it was a
strange contrast to the unworldliness and other-worldliness of these
little _religieuses_ to see the alert military forces now beginning to
fill the streets, in anticipation of possible insurrection and danger,
of which there was strong menace that year.
Gendarmes in groups of six and eight, and sometimes even more, dotted
the streets in all directions, and the mounted guard was out in full
force. Sonia, looking from her cab window, heard repeated orders given
to small groups of citizens to disperse. Even two men were not
permitted to stand and talk together, and she was conscious of a certain
amusement at seeing two groups of gendarmes combine forces to separate
these little knots of two and three. Occasionally there was some
resistance, and she saw several arrests made, which frightened her. She
felt lonely and unprotected, driving through the streets of Paris with
an unknown cabman at that early hour, when there was even a possibility
of such a horror as an insurrection of the French lower orders.
It came over her with piercing power how Harold would once have felt
about her being in such a position, and how strange, how inexplicable,
how unnatural, it was that it could be nothing to him now--that, even if
he knew it, he would feel bound to accept it passively; for nothing, she
was certain, could induce him to exercise the semblance of a right over
her.
She got out of the cab at her own door, safe in body, but more excited
and confused in mind than she had ever been in her life--and perhaps, in
this moment, more wretched also.