|Felicia Graves was puzzled. The six weeks she had spent at the Pension
Boccard had confused many of her conceptions and brought things before
her judgment for which her standards were inadequate. Not that a girl
who had passed the few years of her young womanhood in the bubbling life
of a garrison town could be as unsophisticated as village innocence in
the play; but her fresh, virginal experience had been limited to what
was seemly, orthodox, and comfortable. She was shrewd enough in the
appreciation of superficial vanities, rightly esteeming their value as
permanent elements; but the baser follies of human nature had not been
reached by her young eyes. Her whole philosophy of life had been bound
up in well-ordered family systems, in which the men were honest and
well-bred, and the women either comfortable matrons or fresh-minded,
companionable girls like herself. She knew vaguely that sorrows and
bitterness and broken lives existed in the world, but hitherto she had
never reckoned upon coming into contact with them. They all lay in
the dim sphere where crime and immorality held sway, whose internal
upheavals affected her as little as dynastic commotions in China. The
lives and habits and opinions therefore of the six lonely women who,
with one old gentleman, formed her sole daily companions in the Pension
Boccard, were a subject of much puzzled and half-frightened speculation
on the part of the young English girl.
She was forced to speculate, not only because she was brought into
intimate touch with the unfamiliar, but also because there was little
else to do. The Pension Boccard was neither gay nor stimulating in
winter. Its life was dependent, first upon the ever-changing current of
guests, and secondly upon such public distractions as Geneva offers. In
the summer it was bright enough. The house was full from top to bottom
with eager, laughing holiday-makers, bringing with them the vitality and
freshness of the outside world. There were dances, flirtations, picnics.
New ideas, scraps of gossip and song from London, Paris, St. Petersburg
filled dining-room and salons. The pleasant friction of nationalities
alone was stimulating. The town, too, was gay. The streets were bright
with the cosmopolitan crowd of pleasure-seekers, the _cafés_ alive with
customers, the shop windows gay with jewellery and quaint curios to
dazzle the eyes of the reckless tourist. At the Kursaal were weekly
balls, entertainments, _petits chevaux_. Bands played in the public
gardens, and all the _cafés_ offered evening concerts gratis to their
customers. There were pleasant trips to be made on the lake to Nyon,
Lausanne, Montreux, Chillon. No one need be dull in summer time at
Geneva. But in the winter, when all the public festivities were over and
week after week passed without a stranger bringing a fresh personality
to the dinner-table, the Pension Boccard was an abode of drear
depression. If it had been chipped off from the earth's surface by the
tail of a careless comet and sent whirling through space on an ecliptic
of its own, it could not have been less in relation with external
influences. It was thrown entirely on its own resources, which only too
often gave way, as it were, beneath it.
There was nothing to do save reading and needlework and gossip. It
was while pursuing the last avocation that Felicia gathered her chief
materials for speculation. These women, what were they? Their names
were Mrs. Stapleton, Miss Bunter, Frau Schultz, Frâulein Klinkhardt, and
Madame Popea. American, English, German, Roumanian respectively. Yet in
spite of wide divergencies in creed, nationality, and character, they
all seemed strangely to belong to one class. They were apparently
isolated, selfcentred, without ties or aims or hopes. Each had travelled
through Europe from pension to pension--a weary pilgrimage. Their lives
were for the most part spent in listless idleness, only saved now and
then from inanition by the nerving influences of petty bickerings,
violent intimacies, sordid jealousies. All had moods of kindness
alternating with moods of cynical disregard of susceptibilities. Now and
then a wave of hysteria would pass through the atmosphere of depression,
when feminine velvet would be rudely thrust back and spiteful claws
exposed to view. Even Mrs. Stapleton would occasionally break through
her habitual restraint and be goaded into mordant expression. It was the
isolation of these women, their vague references to the sheltering home
of years ago, their cynical exposition and criticism of undreamed of
facts, that made Felicia look upon her surroundings with a child's alarm
at the unfamiliar.
Sometimes she felt home-sick and miserable, wished that her uncle and
aunt, with whom her home had been for many years since the death of her
parents, had taken her out with them to Bermuda. But they, worthy souls,
when Colonel Graves was ordered abroad with the regiment, had thought
that a year's continental life would be a treat for the girl, and
had sent her, in consequence, to the care of Mme. Boccard, a distant
kinswoman, whose prospectus read like a synopsis of Eden. They had so
set their hearts upon her enjoyment, that, now they were thousands of
miles away, she felt it would be ungracious to complain. But she was
very unhappy.
“Mon Dieu! This is getting terrible!” said Mme. Popea, one evening.
Dinner was over, and some of the ladies were passing the usual dreary
evening in the salon.
“It is enough to drive you mad. It would be livelier in a convent. One
would have Matins and Vespers and Compline--a heap of little duties. One
could go to one's bed tired, and sleep. Here one sleeps all day, so that
when night comes, one can't shut an eye.”
“Why don't you go to the convent, Mme. Popea?” asked Mrs. Stapleton,
mildly, looking up from her needlework.
“Ah! one cannot always choose,” replied Mme. Popea, with a sigh.
“Besides,” she added, “one would have to be so good!”
“Yes; there is some truth in that,” said Mrs. Stapleton. “It is better
to be a serene sinner than a depressed saint! And sometimes we sinners
have our hours of serenity.”
“Not after such a dinner as we had tonight,” remarked Frau Schultz, in
German, with strident irritability. “The food is getting dreadful--and
the wine! It is not good for the health. My stomach--”
“You should drink water, as Miss Graves and I do,” said Mrs. Stapleton.
“Ah, you American and English women can drink water. We are not
accustomed to it. In my home I never drank wine that cost less than
four marks a bottle. I am not used to this. I shall complain to Mme.
Boccard.”
“It is bad,” said Mme. Popea, “but it isn't as bad as it might be. At
the Pension Schmidt we couldn't drink it without sugar.” She was a plump
little woman, with a predisposition to cheerfulness. Besides, as she
owed Mme. Boccard some two months' board and lodging, she could afford
a little magnanimity. But Frau Schultz, who was conscious of scrupulous
payment up to date, had no such delicacy of feeling. She pursued
the subject from her own standpoint, that of her own physiological
peculiarities. By the time her tirade was ended, she had worked herself
up into a fit state to give battle to Mme. Boccard, on which errand she
incontinently proceeded.
“What a dreadful woman!” said Mrs. Stapleton, as the door slammed behind
her.
“Ah, yes. Those Germans,” said Mme. Popea, “they are always so
unrefined. They think of nothing but eating and drinking. Herr
Schleiermacher came to see me this afternoon. He has been to Hanover to
see his _fiancée_, whom he can't marry. He was telling me about it. 'Ach!'
he said, 'the last evening it was so grievous. She did hang round my
neck for dree hours, so that I could not go out to drink beer with my
vriendts!' Animal! All men are bad. But I think German men--ugh!”
She gave her shoulders' an expressive shrug, and resumed her reading of
an old copy of _Le Journal Amusant_, which she had brought down from her
room.
“Where are the others?” asked Felicia, dropping her book wearily on to
her lap. It was a much-thumbed French translation of “The Chaplet of
Pearls,” which Mme. Boccard had procured for her from the circulating
library in the Rue du Rhone. Felicia found it languid reading.
“Miss Bunter is tending her canary, which is moulting, or else she is
writing to her _fiance_ in Burmah,” replied Mrs. Stapleton.
“Is she _engaged_?”
Miss Bunter was some seven and thirty, thin and faded, the last person
in the world, according to Felicia's ideas, to have a lover. Both ladies
laughed at her astonishment.
“Yes. Hasn't she told you?” cried Mme. Popea. “She tells everyone--in
confidence. They have been engaged for fifteen years. And they write
each other letters--such fat packages--thick as that--every mail. Ah,
_mon Dieu!_ If a man treated me in that way--kept me waiting, waiting--”
She threw up her plump little hands with a half-threatening gesture.
“What would you have done?” asked Mrs. Stapleton.
“I should have consoled myself--_en attendant_. Oh, yes, I should have
gone on writing; but I would not have let myself become a poor old maid
for any man in the world. That is one thing I admire about Frâulein
Klinkhardt. You were asking where she was to-night. I know, but I
won't be indiscreet. She is _fiancee_ too. She is not getting less
young--_mais elle s'amuse, elle--en attendant_.”
Felicia did not grasp the full significance of Mme. Popea's
insinuations, but she caught enough to set her cheeks burning, and she
cast an appealing glance at Mrs. Stapleton.
“Won't you play us something?” said the latter, kindly, in response to
the appeal.
“Ah, do!” said Mme. Popea, serenely. “You play so charmingly.”
Felicia went to the piano, and ran her fingers over the keys. She did
not feel in a mood for playing; music with her was an accomplishment,
not an art to which she could instinctively bring bruised and quivering
fibres to be soothed. She played mechanically, thinking of other things.
Once she struck a false note, and her ear caught a little indrawn hiss
from Madame Popea, which brought her wandering attention sharply back.
But her heart was not in it. She was thinking of poor little Miss
Bunter, and the weary years of waiting, and how sad she must have been
as, year by year, she had seen the youth dying out of her eyes and the
bloom fading from her cheek. Frâulein Klinkhardt, too, who was amusing
herself--_en attendant_; she felt as if something impure had touched
her.
At the next false note, Mme. Popea rose softly, and went to Mrs.
Stapleton.
“I am going to bed,” she whispered. “These English girls are charming;
but they should have dumb pianos made for them, that would speak only to
their own souls.”
When Felicia heard the click of the closing door, she started round on
the music-stool.
“I hope I haven't driven Mme. Popea away with my strumming,” she said,
guiltily.
“Oh, no, dear,” replied Mrs. Stapleton, with cheerful assurance. “She is
a lazy little body that always goes to bed early.”
Felicia rose, took up _Le Journal Amusant_, which Mme. Popea had left
behind, and sitting down, began to look through it. A few seconds later,
however, she crumpled it fiercely, and threw it on the ground with a cry
of disgust.
“How can ladies read such things?” she exclaimed.
She had never seen such a picture before, never conceived that the
like could even have been visualized by the imagination. Its cynical
immodesty, its obscene suggestion, gave her a sickening sensation of
loathing.
Mrs. Stapleton picked up the offending journal, and skimmed over its
pages with calm eyes and a contemptuous curl of the lip.
“Oh, how can you?” cried Felicia, writhing.
The other smiled, and, opening the door of the great porcelain stove,
thrust the paper in amongst the glowing coals, and closed the door
again. Then she came quickly up to the couch where Felicia was, and
sitting down by her side, took her hand.
“My poor child,” she said, “I hope you are not too unhappy here.”
The elder woman's voice was so soft, her manner was so gentle and
feminine, that the girl's heart, that had been longing for six weeks,
with a greater hunger day after day, for womanly sympathy, leapt towards
her, and her eyes filled with tears.
“It is so strange here,” she said, piteously, “and I feel so lost,
without my friends and occupations, and--and--”
“Well? Tell me. Perhaps I may be able to help you.”
The girl turned away her head.
“Other things. Sometimes I feel frightened. To-night--that
newspaper--what Mme. Popea was saying--it seemed to scorch me.”
Mrs. Stapleton registered a mental resolution to talk pointedly to Mme.
Popea on the morrow. If English girls should have dumb pianos, it was
only fair that Roumanian widows should have invisible indecent pictures.
She smoothed the back of Felicia's hot hands. Her own were cool and
soft, and their touch was very grateful to Felicia.
“My poor child,” she said, “my poor child.”
She herself had suffered. She knew from sad tasting the bitterness of
many fruits that grow in the garden of life. Like many women, she judged
the flavour of another's future experiences by the aftertaste of her
own past. There were many, many Dead Sea apples that a woman had to eat
before the grave closed over her. The sight of the young soul shrinking
at the foretaste filled her with a sense of infinite pathos.
“I wonder if you would let me call you by your name sometimes when we
are alone,” she said, gently.
The girl flashed a grateful glance.
“Would you really? It is Felicia.”
“And mine is Katherine. I wonder how it would sound?”
“Katherine?” echoed Felicia, with a puzzled smile. “What do you mean?”
“I have not heard it for very many years. To everybody I have known I
have been Mrs. Stapleton. I should like to be called by my own name once
again. Would you do so?”
“Oh! yes--gladly. But how sad! How very, very lonely you must be. I
think I should pine away with loneliness. There must be quite a hundred
people who call me Felicia.”
“Then you must give us poor forlorn creatures some of your happiness,”
said Katherine, with a smile. “You must make allowances for us. Do not
judge us too harshly.”
“Oh! you must not compare yourself with the others,” said Felicia; “you
are quite different from--Mme. Popea, for instance.”
“Ah, no, not very much,” said Katherine, with a touch of bitterness.
“We only differ a little through the circumstances of our upbringing,
nationality, and so on. We are all the same at heart, weary of
ourselves, of life, of each other. Most women have their homes, their
children, their pleasant circle of friends. None of us has. We are
failures. Either we have sought to get too much from life and heaven
has punished us for presumption, or circumstance has been against us--we
have been too poor to conquer it. Ah, no, my dear child, don't think
that we are merely a set of selfish, coarse, ill-tempered women. Each of
us knows in her own heart that she is a failure, and she knows that all
the others know it.”
A flush of colour bad come into her delicate cheek as she said this,
and her lips closed rather tightly, showing fine, almost imperceptible
vertical lines. Yet her eyes looked kindly at Felicia and smoothed any
rough impression her words may have made.
The other's eyes met hers rather wonderingly. The tragedy that underlay
this commonplace pension life was a new conception.
“I'll try to think more kindly of them,” she said.
“And what about poor me?”
“Ah, you! I have never thought unkindly about you. In fact, I have
wanted to know you, but you have always been so distant and reserved,
until this evening; you and Mr. Chetwynd. He is so clever, and so
old--and I am only a girl--that I am afraid of boring him.”
Katherine laughed at her naïve confusion. “Why, Mr. Chetwynd is the
kindest and most courteous old man in the world! I'll tell you what
we'll do. I will get your seat moved up to our end of the table--away
from Mme. Boccard, who has had you long enough--and then you can sit
next to him. Would you like that?”
Felicia assented gladly. Mme. Boccard was a rather oppressive neighbour.
Her conversation was as chaff before the wind, both in substance and
utterance; and the few straws that Felicia, with her schoolgirl's
knowledge of French, was able to seize, did not afford her much
satisfaction.
“How can I thank you for being so kind to me?” she said, a little later,
before they parted for the night.
“By calling me Katherine sometimes,” said the other. “I am not so very,
very old, you know; and, my dear child, it would comfort me.”
Felicia went to sleep that night happier than she had done since her
arrival in Geneva. But she pondered many things before her eyes closed.
She was ready to pity Mme. Popea for being a failure, but Mrs. Stapleton
had failed to explain to her the necessary connection between an unhappy
life and _Le Journal Amusant_. If the latter was a necessary solace, it
brought fresh terrors to the anticipation of sorrow.