little world where an allusion is all that is necessary to put one in
full possession of any drama, domestic or social, that Mr. Horace was
speaking of the wedding-night of madame, when the bridal party stood
as he described under the chandelier; the bride and groom, with each
one's best friend. It may be said that it was the last night or time
that madame had a best friend of her own sex. Social gossip, with
characteristic kindness, had furnished reasons to suit all tastes, why
madame had ceased that night to have a best friend of her own sex. If
gossip had not done so, society would still be left to its imagination
for information, for madame never tolerated the smallest appeal to her
for enlightenment. What the general taste seemed most to relish as a
version was that madame in her marriage had triumphed, not conquered;
and that the night of her wedding she had realized the fact, and, to
be frank, had realized it ever since. In short, madame had played then
to gain at love, as she played now to gain at solitaire; and hearts
were no more than cards to her--and, "Bah! Lose a game for a card!"
must have been always her motto. It is hard to explain it delicately
enough, for these are the most delicate affairs in life; but the image
of Myosotis had passed through monsieur's heart, and Myosotis does
mean "forget me not." And madame well knew that to love monsieur once
was to love him always, in spite of jealousy, doubt, distrust, nay,
unhappiness (for to love him meant all this and more). He was that
kind of man, they said, whom women could love even against conscience.
Madame never forgave that moment. Her friend, at least, she could put
aside out of her intercourse; unfortunately, we cannot put people out
of our lives. God alone can do that, and so far he had interfered in
the matter only by removing monsieur. It was known to notoriety that
since her wedding madame had abandoned, destroyed, all knowledge of
her friend. And the friend? She had disappeared as much as is possible
for one in her position and with her duties.
"What there is in blue eyes, light hair, and a fragile form to impress
one, I cannot tell; but for us men it seems to me it is blue-eyed,
light-haired, and fragile-formed women that are the hardest to
forget."
"The less easy to forget," corrected madam. He paid no attention
to the remark.
"They are the women that attach themselves in one's memory. If
necessary to keep from being forgotten, they come back into one's
dreams. And as life rolls on, one wonders about them,--'Is she happy?
Is she miserable? Goes life well or ill with her?'"
Madame played her cards slowly, one would say, for her, prosaically.
"And there is always a pang when, as one is so wondering, the response
comes,--that is, the certainty in one's heart responds,--'She is
miserable, and life goes ill with her.' Then, if ever, men envy the
power of God."
Madame threw over the game she was in, and began a new one.
"Such women should not be unhappy; they are too fragile, too
sensitive, too trusting. I could never understand the infliction
of misery upon them. I could send death to them, but not--not
misfortune."
Madame, forgetting again to cheat in time, and losing her game, began
impatiently to shuffle her cards for a new deal.
"And yet, do you know, Josephine, those women are the unhappy ones of
life. They seem predestined to it, as others"--looking at madame's
full-charmed portrait--"are predestined to triumph and victory.
They"--unconscious, in his abstraction, of the personal nature of his
simile--"never know how to handle their cards, and they always play a
losing game."
"Ha!" came from madame, startled into an irate ejaculation.
"It is their love always that is sacrificed, their hearts always that
are bruised. One might say that God himself favors the black-haired
ones!"
As his voice sank lower and lower, the room seemed to become stiller
and stiller. A passing vehicle in the street, however, now and then
drew a shiver of sound from the pendent prisms of the chandelier.
"She was so slight, so fragile, and always in white, with blue in her
hair to match her eyes--and--God knows what in her heart, all the
time. And yet they stand it, they bear it, they do not die, they live
along with the strongest, the happiest, the most fortunate of us,"
bitterly; "and"--raising his eyes to his old friend, who thereupon
immediately began to fumble her cards--"whenever in the street I see
a poor, bent, broken woman's figure, I know, without verifying it
any more by a glance, that it is the wreck of a fair woman's figure;
whenever I hear of a bent, broken existence, I know, without asking
any more, that it is the wreck of a fair woman's life."
Poor Mr. Horace spoke with the unreason of a superstitious bigot.
"I have often thought, since, in large assemblies, particularly in
weddings, Josephine, of what was going on in the women's hearts there,
and I have felt sorry for them; and when I think of God's knowing what
is in their hearts, I have felt sorry for the men. And I often think
now, Josephine,--think oftener and oftener of it,--that if the
resurrection trumpet of our childhood should sound some day, no matter
when, out there, over the old St. Louis cemetery, and we should all
have to rise from our long rest of oblivion, what would be the first
thing we should do? And though there were a God and a heaven awaiting
us,--by that same God, Josephine, I believe that our first thought in
awakening would be the last in dying,--confession,--and that our first
rush would be to the feet of one another for forgiveness. For there
are some offenses that must outlast the longest oblivion, and a
forgiveness that will be more necessary than God's own. Then our
hearts will be bared to one another; for if, as you say, there are
no secrets at our age, there can still be less cause for them after
death."
His voice ended in the faintest whisper. The table crashed over, and
the cards flew wide-spread on the floor. Before we could recover,
madame was in the antechamber, screaming for Jules.
One would have said that, from her face, the old lady had witnessed
the resurrection described by Mr. Horace, the rush of the spirits with
their burdens of remorse, the one to the feet of the other; and she
must have seen herself and her husband, with a unanimity of purpose
never apparent in their short married life, rising from their common
tomb and hastening to that other tomb at the end of the alley, and
falling at the feet of the one to whom in life he had been recreant in
love, she in friendship.
Of course Jules answered through the wrong door, rushing in with his
gas-stick, and turning off the gas. In a moment we were involved in
darkness and dispute.
"But what does he mean? What does the idiot mean? He--" It was
impossible for her to find a word to do justice to him and to her
exasperation at the same time.
"Pardon, madame; it is not I. It is the cathedral bell; it is ringing
nine o'clock."
"But--"
"Madame can hear it herself. Listen!" We could not see it, but we were
conscious of the benign, toothless smile spreading over his face as
the bell-tones fell in the room.
"But it is not the gas. I--"
"Pardon, madame; but it is the gas. Madame said, 'Jules, put out the
gas every night when the bell rings.' Madame told me that only last
night. The bell rings: I put out the gas."
"Will you be silent? Will you listen?"
"If madame wishes; just as madame says."
But the old lady had turned to Mr. Horace. "Horace, you have seen--you
know--" and it was a question now of overcoming emotion. "I--I--I--a
carriage, my friend, a carriage."
"Madame--" Jules interrupted his smile to interrupt her.
She was walking around the room, picking up a shawl here, a lace
there; for she was always prepared against draughts.
"Madame--" continued Jules, pursuing her.
"A carriage."
"If madame would only listen, I was going to say--but madame is too
quick in her disposition--the carriage has been waiting since a long
hour ago. Mr. Horace said to have it there in a half hour."
It was then she saw for the first time that it had all been prepared
by Mr. Horace. The rest was easy enough: getting into the carriage,
and finding the place of which Mr. Horace had heard, as he said, only
that afternoon. In it, on her bed of illness, poverty, and suffering,
lay the patient, wasted form of the beautiful fair one whom men had
called in her youth Myosotis.
But she did not call her Myosotis.
"_Mon Amour!_" The old pet name, although it had to be fetched across
more than half a century of disuse, flashed like lightning from
madame's heart into the dim chamber.
"_Ma Divine!_" came in counter-flash from the curtained bed.
In the old days women, or at least young girls, could hazard such pet
names one upon the other. These--think of it!--dated from the first
communion class, the dating period of so much of friendship.
"My poor Amour!"
"My poor, poor Divine!"
The voices were together, close beside the pillow.
"I--I--" began Divine.
"It could not have happened if God had not wished it," interrupted
poor Amour, with the resignation that comes, alas! only with the last
drop of the bitter cup.
And that was about all. If Mr. Horace had not slipped away, he might
have noticed the curious absence of monsieur's name, and of his own
name, in the murmuring that followed. It would have given him some
more ideas on the subject of woman.
At any rate, the good God must thank him for having one affair the
less to arrange when the trumpet sounds out there over the old St.
Louis cemetery. And he was none too premature; for the old St. Louis
cemetery, as was shortly enough proved, was a near reach for all three
of the old friends.
PUPASSE
Every day, every day, it was the same overture in Madame Joubert's
room in the Institute St. Denis; the strident:
"Mesdemoiselles; à vos places! Notre Père qui est dans le ciel--Qui a
fait ce bruit?"
"It's Pupasse, madame! It's Pupasse!" The answer invariably was
unanimous.
"But, Madame Joubert,--I assure you, Madame Joubert,--I could not help
it! They know I could not help it!"
By this time the fresh new fool's cap made from yesterday's "Bee"
would have been pinned on her head.
"Quelle injustice! Quelle injustice!"
This last apostrophe in a high, whining nasal voice, always procured
Pupasse's elevation on the tall three-legged stool in the corner.
It was a theory of the little girls in the primary class that Madame
Joubert would be much more lenient to their own little inevitabilities
of bad conduct and lessons if Pupasse did not invariably comb her
the wrong way every morning after prayers, by dropping something,
or sniffling, or sneezing. Therefore, while they distractedly got
together books, slates, and copy-books, their infantile eyes found
time to dart deadly reproaches toward the corner of penitence, and
their little lips, still shaped from their first nourishment, pouted
anything but sympathy for the occupant of it.
Indeed, it would have been a most startling unreality to have ever
entered Madame Joubert's room and not seen Pupasse in that corner, on
that stool, her tall figure shooting up like a post, until her tall,
pointed _bonnet d' âne_ came within an inch or two of the ceiling.
It was her hoop-skirt that best testified to her height. It was the
period of those funnel-shaped hoop-skirts that spread out with such
nice mathematical proportions, from the waist down, that it seemed
they must have emanated from the brains of astronomers, like the
orbits, and diameters, and other things belonging to the heavenly
bodies. Pupasse could not have come within three feet of the wall with
her hoop-skirt distended. To have forced matters was not to be thought
of an instant. So even in her greatest grief and indignation, she had
to pause before the three-legged black stool, and gather up steel
after steel of her circumference in her hands behind, until her calico
skirt careened and flattened; and so she could manage to accommodate
herself to the limited space of her punishment, the circles drooping
far over her feet as she stood there, looking like the costumed stick
of a baby's rattle.
Her thinness continued into her face, which, unfortunately, had
nothing in the way of toilet to assist it. Two little black eyes fixed
in the sides of a mere fence of a nose, and a mouth with the shape and
expression of all mouths made to go over sharp-pointed teeth planted
very far apart; the smallest amount possible of fine, dry, black
hair--a perfect rat-tail when it was plaited in one, as almost all
wore their hair. But sometimes Pupasse took it into her head to plait
it in two braids, as none but the thick-haired ventured to wear it.
As the little girls said, it was a petition to Heaven for "eau
Quinquina." When Marcelite, the hair-dresser, came at her regular
periods to visit the hair of the boarders, she would make an effort
with Pupasse, plaiting her hundred hairs in a ten-strand braid. The
effect was a half yard of black worsted galloon; nothing more, or
better. Had Pupasse possessed as many heads as the hydra, she could
have "coiffe'd" them all with fools' caps during one morning's
recitations. She entirely monopolized the "Daily Bee." Madame Joubert
was forced to borrow from "madame" the stale weekly "Courrier des
Etats-Unis" for the rest of the room. From grammar, through sacred
history, arithmetic, geography, mythology, down to dictation, Pupasse
could pile up an accumulation of penitences that would have tasked the
limits of the current day had not recreation been wisely set as a term
which disbarred, by proscription, previous offenses. But even after
recreation, with that day's lessons safely out, punished and expiated,
Pupasse's doom seemed scarcely lightened; there was still a whole
criminal code of conduct to infract. The only difference was that
instead of books, slates, or copy-books, leathern medals, bearing
various legends and mottos, were hung around her neck--a travestied
decoration worse than the books for humiliation.
The "abécédaires," their torment for the day over, thankful for any
distraction from the next day's lessons, and eager for any relief
from the intolerable ennui of goodness, were thankful enough now for
Pupasse. They naturally watched her in preference to Madame Joubert,
holding their books and slates quite cunningly to hide their faces.
Pupasse had not only the genius, but that which sometimes fails
genius, the means for grimacing: little eyes, long nose, foolish
mouth, and pointed tongue. And she was so amusing, when Madame
Joubert's head was turned, that the little girls, being young and
innocent, would forget themselves and all burst out laughing. It
sounded like a flight of singing birds through the hot, close, stupid
little room; but not so to Madame Joubert.
"Young ladies! But what does this mean?"
And, terror-stricken, the innocents would call out with one voice,
"It's Pupasse, madame! It's Pupasse who made us laugh!" There was
nothing but fools' caps to be gained by prevaricating, and there was
frequently nothing less gained by confession. And oh, the wails and
the sobs as the innocents would be stood up, one by one, in their
places! Even the pigtails at the backs of their little heads were
convulsed with grief. Oh, how they hated Pupasse then! When their
_bonnes_ came for them at three o'clock,--washing their tear-stained
faces at the cistern before daring to take them through the
streets,--how passionately they would cry out, the tears breaking
afresh into the wet handkerchiefs:
"It's that Pupasse! It's that _vilaine_ Pupasse!"
To Pupasse herself would be meted out that "peine forte et dure," that
acme of humiliation and disgrace, so intensely horrible that many a
little girl in that room solemnly averred and believed she would kill
herself before submitting to it. Pupasse's voluminous calico skirt
would be gathered up by the hem and tied up over her head! Oh, the
horrible monstrosity on the stool in the corner then! There were no
eyes in that room that had any desire to look upon it. And the cries
and the "Quelle injustice!" that fell on the ears then from the hidden
feelings had all the weirdness of the unseen, but heard. And all the
other girls in the room, in fear and trembling, would begin to move
their lips in a perfect whirlwind of study, or write violently
on their slates, or begin at that very instant to rule off their
copy-books for the next day's verb.
Pupasse--her name was Marie Pupasse but no one thought of calling
her anything but Pupasse, with emphasis on the first syllable and
sibilance on the last--had no parents only a grandmother, to describe
whom, all that is necessary to say is that she was as short as Pupasse
was tall, and that her face resembled nothing so much as a little
yellow apple shriveling from decay. The old lady came but once a week,
to fetch Pupasse fresh clothes, and a great brown paper bag of nice
things to eat. There was no boarder in the school who received
handsomer bags of cake and fruit than Pupasse. And although, not two
hours before, a girl might have been foremost in the shrill cry, "It
is Pupasse who made the noise! It is Pupasse who made me laugh!" there
was nothing in that paper bag reserved even from such a one. When the
girl herself with native delicacy would, under the circumstances,
judge it discreet to refuse, Pupasse would plead, "Oh, but take it to
give me pleasure!" And if still the refusal continued, Pupasse would
take her bag and go into the summer-house in the corner of the garden,
and cry until the unforgiving one would relent. But the first offering
of the bag was invariably to the stern dispenser of fools' caps and
the unnamed humiliation of the reversed skirt: Madame Joubert.
Pupasse was in the fifth class. The sixth--the abécédaires--was
the lowest in the school. Green was the color of the fifth;
white--innocence--of the abécédaires. Exhibition after exhibition, the
same green sash and green ribbons appeared on Pupasse's white muslin,
the white muslin getting longer and longer every year, trying to keep
up with her phenomenal growth; and always, from all over the room,
buzzed the audience's suppressed merriment at Pupasse's appearance
in the ranks of the little ones of nine and ten. It was that very
merriment that brought about the greatest change in the Institute
St. Denis. The sitting order of the classes was reversed. The first
class--the graduates--went up to the top step of the _estrade_; and
the little ones put on the lowest, behind the pianos. The graduates
grumbled that it was not _comme il faut_ to have young ladies of their
position stepping like camels up and down those great steps; and the
little girls said it was a shame to hide them behind the pianos after
their mamas had taken so much pains to make them look pretty. But
madame said--going also to natural history for her comparison--that
one must be a rhinoceros to continue the former routine.
Religion cannot be kept waiting forever on the intelligence. It was
always in the fourth class that the first communion was made; that is,
when the girls stayed one year in each class. But Pupasse had spent
three years in the sixth class, and had already been four in
the fifth, and Madame Joubert felt that longer delay would be
disrespectful to the good Lord. It was true that Pupasse could not
yet distinguish the ten commandments from the seven capital sins, and
still would answer that Jeanne d'Arc was the foundress of the "Little
Sisters of the Poor." But, as Madame Joubert always said in the little
address she made to the catechism class every year before handing it
over to Father Dolomier, God judged from the heart, and not from the
mind.
Father Dolomier--from his face he would have been an able contestant
of _bonnets d'âne_ with Pupasse, if subjected to Madame Joubert's
discipline--evidently had the same method of judging as God, although
the catechism class said they could dance a waltz on the end of his
long nose without his perceiving it.
There is always a little air of mystery about the first communion: not
that there is any in reality, but the little ones assume it to render
themselves important. The going to early mass, the holding their
dog-eared catechisms as if they were relics, the instruction from the
priest, even if he were only old Father Dolomier--it all put such a
little air of devotion into their faces that it imposed (as it did
every year) upon their companions, which was a vastly gratifying
effect. No matter how young and innocent she may be, a woman's
devotion always seems to have two aims--God and her own sex.
The week of retreat came. Oh, the week of retreat! That was the _bonne
bouche_ of it all, for themselves and for the others. It was the same
every year. By the time the week of retreat arrived, interest and
mystery had been frothed to the point of indiscretion; so that the
little girls would stand on tiptoe to peep through the shutters at the
postulants inside, and even the larger girls, to whom first communion
was a thing of an infantile past, would condescend to listen to their
reports with ill-feigned indifference.
As the day of the first communion neared, the day of the general
confession naturally neared too, leading it. And then the little
girls, peeping through the shutters, and holding their breath to see
better, saw what they beheld every year; but it was always new and
awesome--mysterious scribbling in corners with lead-pencils on scraps
of paper; consultations; rewritings; copyings; the list of their sins,
of all the sins of their lives.
"_Ma chère!_"--pigtails and sunbonnets hiving outside would shudder.
"Oh, _Mon Dieu!_ To have to confess all--but _all_ your sins! As for
me, it would kill me, sure!"
And the frightful recoils of their consciences would make all
instantly blanch and cross themselves.
"And look at Pupasse's sins! Oh, but they are long! _Ma chère_, but
look! But look, I ask you, at them!"
The longest record was of course the most complimentary and honorable
to the possessor, as each girl naturally worked not only for
absolution but for fame.
Between catechisms and instructions Madame Joubert would have "La Vie
des Saints" read aloud, to stimulate their piety and to engage their
thoughts; for the thoughts of first communicants are worse than flies
for buzzing around the forbidden. The lecture must have been a great
quickener of conscience; for they would dare punishment and cheat
Madame Joubert, under her own eyes, in order surreptitiously to add a
new sin to their list. Of course the one hour's recreation could not
afford time enough for observation now, and the little girls were
driven to all sorts of excuses to get out of the classroom for one
moment's peep through the shutters; at which whole swarms of them
would sometimes be caught and sent into punishment.
Only two days more. Madame Joubert put them through the rehearsal,
a most important part of the preparation, almost as important as
catechism--how to enter the church, how to hold the candle, how to
advance, how to kneel, retire--everything, in fact.
Only one day more, the quietest, most devotional day of all. Pupasse
lost her sins!
Of course every year the same accident happened to some one. But it
was a new accident to Pupasse. And such a long list!
The commotion inside that retreat! Pupasse's nasal whine, carrying her
lament without any mystery to the outside garden. Such searching of
pockets, rummaging of corners, microscopic examination of the floor!
Such crimination and recrimination, protestation, asseveration,
assurances, backed by divine and saintly invocations! Pupasse accused
companion after companion of filching her sins, which each after
each would violently deny, producing each her own list from her own
pocket,--proof to conviction of innocence, and, we may say, of guilt
also.
Pupasse declared they had niched it to copy, because her list was the
longest and most complete. She could not go to confession without her
sins; she could not go to communion without confession. The tears
rolled down her long thin nose unchecked, for she never could remember
to use her handkerchief until reminded by Madame Joubert.
She had committed it to memory, as all the others had done theirs;
but how was she to know without the list if she had not forgotten
something? And to forget one thing in a general confession they knew
was a mortal sin.
"I shall tell Madame Joubert! I shall tell Madame Joubert!"
"_Ma chère_!'" whispered the little ones outside. "Oh, but look at
them! _Elles font les quatre cents coups_!" which is equivalent to
"cutting up like the mischief."
And with reason. As if such an influx of the world upon them at this
moment were not sufficient of itself to damn them. But to tell Madame
Joubert! With all their dresses made and ready, wreaths, veils,
candles, prayer-books, picture-cards, mother-of-pearl prayer-beads,
and festival breakfasts with admiring family and friends prepared.
Tell Madame Joubert! She would simply cancel it all. In a body they
chorused:
"But, Pupasse!"
"_Chère_ Pupasse!"
"_Voyons_, Pupasse!"
"I assure you, Pupasse!"
"On the cross, Pupasse!"
"Ah, Pupasse!"
"We implore you, Pupasse!"
The only response--tears, and "I shall tell Madame Joubert."
Consultations, caucuses, individual appeals, general outbursts.
Pupasse stood in the corner. Curiously, she always sought refuge in
the very sanctum of punishment, her face hidden in her bended arms,
her hoops standing out behind, vouchsafing nothing but tears, and the
promise to tell Madame Joubert. And three o'clock approaching! And
Madame Joubert imminent! But Pupasse really could not go to confession
without her sins. They all recognized that; they were reasonable, as
they assured her.
A crisis quickens the wits. They heard the cathedral clock strike the
quarter to three. They whispered, suggested, argued--bunched in the
farthest corner from Pupasse.
"Console yourself, Pupasse! We will help you, Pupasse! Say no more
about it! We will help you!"