she was talking about.
The old lady--for when Lady Flower unbent she suddenly became an old
lady--took Mary upon her knee.
"You funny little thing," she said, "you and I are so very much alone
in the world."
Then a moment later she disengaged herself from Mary's warm, responsive
embrace and became her ivorine self.
"When you go to school, I want you to give up writing to Mr. and Mrs.
Fawcus. There will have to come a moment when you quite break off
communication with them, and it had better be sooner than later. They
have both behaved very well, which shows that they understand how
completely the relationship between you and them has changed. Now give
me a kiss and run off to Adèle. It is time you were in bed."
Mary went sadly upstairs and dreamed of a castle full of dungeons and
of being chased by a crocodile, the castle being the _pension de jeunes
filles_ and the crocodile being Mademoiselle Lucinge herself.
A week after this Lady Flower succeeded in making up her mind to brave
the long railway journey down through the heart of France and leave her
granddaughter at Châteaublanc.
"Perhaps after all I could go to Aix earlier this year," she sighed
with the air of proclaiming a martyrdom.
It was a fine June morning when they set out from the Gare de Lyon; but
Mary became sad and apprehensive as one green mile after another was
left behind under the changeless blue sky, for though she had ceased
to pine for the life of the basement in Paternoster Row, she always
felt while she was still in Paris that she knew the way back and that
if ever she should be faced with something unbearably disagreeable, she
should be able to escape. Now she was being carried farther away every
moment like that bluebottle who was buzzing on the warm glass of the
carriage windows. She began to make up a story about that bluebottle
while Grandmamma dozed among her cushions on the opposite seat--a
story of how this father bluebottle would arrive at Châteaublanc and
try to find the mother bluebottle and all the little bluebottles. Of
course if he knew the way back he would be better off than herself,
because he would be able to fly. But he wouldn't know the way back,
and he would go buzzing about Châteaublanc trying to find his home
until one day he would be killed, and the mother bluebottle and all
the little bluebottles in Paris would never know what had become of
him. Mary was so much moved by the woeful story that she felt a tear
spring to her eyes and a lump in her throat. If only she had thought
of it sooner, she might have let the bluebottle out. Perhaps even now
he would not have traveled too far to know his way back. Mary raised
the blind and tried to help the bluebottle out of the open window with
her handkerchief; but he did not seem able to understand that she was
trying to help him and went buzzing all over the compartment until at
last he buzzed across Grandmamma's nose and woke her up.
"What are you doing, Mary?"
Mary did not like to explain just what she was really doing. So she
looked abashed and said that she was doing nothing.
"Well, don't," said Grandmamma, dozing off again.
Mary tried to think how one did not do nothing; which raised an old
problem of how one thought about nothing, and she tried once more to
think about nothing.
"But if I think about nothing," she thought, "I'm thinking about
thinking about nothing. And if I think about thinking about nothing I'm
thinking about something."
She once asked Uncle William if he could think about nothing and if not
why not. Whereupon Uncle William had told her that Parmenides had been
puzzled by the same problem two thousand years ago and more.
"Who was Pa Many D's?" Mary had asked, for that was the way she
pictured the name.
Uncle William had informed her that Parmenides was a philosopher who
founded the Eleatic school.
"Well, when I'm old I'll marry a philosopher," Mary had announced,
for it sounded a pleasant word to say and a pleasant thing to be, and
Uncle William had founded schools. Mary thought about Pa Many D's now
in the hot dusty railway carriage, and tried to remember what school
he founded. But she could only think of "asthmatic" and "rheumatic,"
neither of which sounded right.
Mary printed S-K-O-O-L on the window with a wet finger, shuddered, and
looking round perceived that the bluebottle had escaped.
At that moment the train puffed into Dijon station, where Grandmamma
waking up decided it was time to have lunch. Mary enjoyed that while it
lasted. But after lunch Grandmamma went more fast asleep than ever; the
carriage grew hotter and hotter; the country grew greener and greener,
and the sky more blue.
"Pouff!" Mary sighed. "Pouff-ff-ff!"
The train reached Macon, when Mary was in the middle of speculating how
many times she had said pouff since Dijon.
"I must have said a thrillion pouffs," she decided, and wished that
Grandmamma would wake up and be conversational, so that she might
display her acquaintance with that numeral. Or perhaps she had better
reserve it for Mademoiselle Lucinge. How could she bring it in? Mary
began to compose the interview with her mistress.
"How do you do, my little girl?"
"I am very well, thank you, Mademoiselle."
"Did you have a comfortable journey?"
"Yes, thank you, Mademoiselle. My grandmamma and I passed a very
pleasant day in the train. What a long way off you live! About a
thrillion miles, I suppose."
Mary decided that this sounded a little too far when it was put into
speech. Perhaps on consideration she had better be content with
impressing Grandmamma.
"Supposing she never wakes up!" Mary thought in alarm. "Supposing she's
gone to sleep like the Sleeping Beauty for thrillions of years? Only
she's not a Beauty," Mary added to herself in hopeful parenthesis.
However, soon after this Grandmamma did wake up, by which time Mary
herself had fallen asleep, and did not wake until the train reached
Lyon, where they got out and drove in the dusk along the banks first
of one river and then of another equally large until they reached
their hotel. Mary was sent with the chambermaid to have a bath before
she went to bed, and she had to walk along half a dozen dark, crooked
passages before she reached the bathroom, which was full of steam; the
bath itself was covered with a large sheet which floated about in the
water and kept bellying out on either side of Mary as she splashed
about. Her bath seemed to have caused much excitement in the hotel,
for all the time people kept coming to the door and shouting outside
to the chambermaid, who kept shouting back as excitedly while the
pipes on the wall groaned and bubbled and clashed until Mary was glad
when her bath was finished and the chambermaid, after wrapping her in
several towels, picked her up in her arms and carried her back through
the corridors, running fast and shouting to everybody she met to get
out of the way. That night Mary slept in an enormous four-poster with
heavy red curtains, and in the morning she went for a drive with her
grandmother first along the banks of the sluggish, dark green Saône
and then beside the sparkling azure Rhône. But what Mary liked best in
Lyon was the Cathedral on the top of a steep hill, which looked like
an elephant upside down with gilded legs and a golden trunk. After
_déjeuner_ they got into a most extraordinary train with carriages as
tall as houses where passengers sat on top without any roof over them,
in which they were puffed along until they reached their destination.
Châteaublanc was a small red-roofed town built upon the southern slopes
of a range of low hills that rose not much higher than the rolling
countryside of woodland, pasture, and vineyard, at the foot of which
a small tributary of the Saône ran its shallow course over a bed of
limestone. The ruins of the castle that gave its name to Châteaublanc
still stood like an acropolis above the town, the sight of which
compensated Mary for much, since this must really once upon a time
have been an enchanted castle without any need to pretend that it was
one. In fact, from the moment she alighted at the station Mary liked
Châteaublanc. She liked the wide main street, where the houses dreamed
in the sunlight behind green shutters and Gloire de Dijon roses, and
where in the middle of the front parterres beautiful purple and silver
globes shimmered with the movement of the small world therein reflected.
"Oh, Grandmamma, how beautiful they are!" she cried, clapping her hands.
"Yes, you're in roseland here," said Lady Flower.
"No. Not the roses. They're beautiful too. But those purple balls!"
"My dear child, you don't mean to say you think those monstrous tinsel
spheres beautiful! Why, they're perfectly hideous!"
Mary regarded her grandmother in amazement. She must be mad. She must
be upset by the journey. She must be joking.
"Oh, and look! That garden's got five!" she shrieked, nearly falling
out of the _fiacre_ in her delight. "One purple. One silver. One blue.
One gold. And one red. I hope in heaven there are thrillions and
thrillions of them."
"God forbid!" exclaimed Lady Flower, sniffing her vinaigrette in dismay
at the picture. "And I suppose you mean trillions."
Mary was silent after this until the _fiacre_ took them beyond the main
street into an avenue of clipped acacias and limes, from which they
turned aside through wide paths into a curved drive where hydrangeas
bloomed in the beds on either side.
"What funny flowers!" Mary exclaimed. "They're like the little woman
in a house Uncle ... Fawcus ... Mr. Fawcus gave me. When it was going
to be wet, her bonnet and dress was pink and when it was going to be
fine they were blue. Only really she wasn't ever pink or blue, but like
those flowers, and then she was always wrong."
The _fiacre_ pulled up before a house with a white portico and French
windows opening to the wide verandah that ran round it.
"Is this really going to be my school?" Mary asked incredulously. "Why,
I thought it was going to be quite an ugly place. Oh, Grandmamma," she
cried, "how kind of you to give me such a nice school!"
Lady Flower had been influenced by a number of considerations in her
choice of a school for Mary, but what undoubtedly had least influence
was her granddaughter's point of view in the matter. Nevertheless,
as grown-up people use, she accepted the child's gratitude with
complacency.
It certainly was a good school. Mademoiselle Lucinge was a woman of
taste and breeding, who when little more than a girl had gone as
governess to the house of an English nobleman, where she had remained
ten years. Having inherited from a distant relative a house and a
small property, she had felt justified in carrying out a project
upon which she had for a long time set her heart. During her stay
in England she had had an opportunity of coming into contact with a
number of distinguished people, and from the moment she had opened her
_pension_ she had been successful. The greater number of her pupils
were English, but many other nationalities were represented; and Lady
Flower, who was prejudiced in favor of a cosmopolitan education,
thought that in Mademoiselle Lucinge she had found the ideal person to
correct in her granddaughter the effects of a deplorable upbringing,
for which, strange to say, she did not in the least blame herself.
When Mary went to Châteaublanc, she found herself the youngest of
thirty-five girls, and it had been agreed between Lady Flower and
Mademoiselle that for the first two years she was to spend all her
time there. So, when her grandmother bade good-by on the day after her
arrival it was to be a long good-by, although it was understood that
she might expect a visit whenever Lady Flower should be on her way to
Aix.
Mary was too much delighted with the _pension_ to feel any sorrow at
the prospect of so long a parting. Nor indeed was it to be expected
that in barely three months her grandmother would have become
indispensable to her happiness. Her new surroundings had already begun
even to dim the basement of Paternoster Row. Uncle William and Aunt
Lucy were now far away indeed. It would not be long before Mary would
begin to remember her past life in a few bright patches like the bright
patches of a faded carpet.
A month after Mary had arrived at the _pension_ war was declared
between France and Prussia. The pupils went home for their summer
holidays, and Mary was left with two girls from South America, both
considerably older than herself. During this time Mademoiselle Lucinge
took a great deal of trouble with Mary's education and was really more
like a private governess in the care she lavished than the proprietress
and headmistress of a fashionable school. The war was going so badly
for France that it seemed more prudent to close the school that autumn.
The two South American girls were sent off to Bordeaux that they might
sail thence for home and relieve the minds of their parents who had
sent a packet of anxious and excited letters. Mademoiselle Lucinge
wrote to her grandmother to ask what she would like Mary to do. Lady
Flower wrote back to say that she was convinced that the French defeats
were of no importance and that very shortly the Prussians would be
driven back over the Rhine. In any case, Paris was no place for her
granddaughter, and in Paris she herself must stay to do her work with
the Red Cross. Would Mademoiselle keep Mary at Châteaublanc?
Nothing could have fallen out better for Mary. She had now the entire
attention of Mademoiselle; she had a beautiful house and beautiful
gardens to herself; she had as many books to read as she wanted.
Mademoiselle Lucinge was a devout Catholic, and so were most of
her pupils. As regards Mary's religious teaching, Lady Flower let
Mademoiselle understand that she had no objection to as much religion
being instilled into her granddaughter as was consonant with her social
obligations in days to come; but she particularly requested that no
attempt should be made to lure her into Catholicism. The Papacy was
very unpopular in England at this period, and Lady Flower would have
regarded it as a serious reflection upon her duty as guardian if she
had allowed her granddaughter to enter society under such a handicap.
She herself privately believed in nothing that was not material, even
obvious, but inasmuch as positive scepticism would be considered as
unbecoming as Popish extravagance she conformed to the religious mode
of the time and expected her granddaughter to do the same.
Mademoiselle had not been a governess in England for ten years without
learning how little the English mind being considered eccentric
abroad, how much they hate to be thought eccentric at home. At the
same time, Mary was the youngest pupil in her school, and she regarded
her own duties of guardianship more gravely than Lady Flower regarded
hers. Whatever might be Mary's life in days to come, Mademoiselle was
determined that she should not be denied in childhood an opportunity to
prepare the soul for those deep consolations of religious belief that
might one day come to her aid in a time of stress. And Mary loved the
quiet hours with Mademoiselle, when in her gray boudoir she spoke to
her about God.
One mellow Sunday evening in mid-September, when the news from the
seat of war was as bad as it could be and when Mademoiselle's austere
and gracious countenance was lined with care and grief for her country,
Mary had been learning the fifth commandment in the catechism of the
Church of England:
_Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long in the
land which the Lord thy God giveth thee._
A robin redbreast was singing in the magnolia on the lawn beneath the
turret window of Mademoiselle's gray room, and Mary's thoughts on
seeing the bird went back to the attic in Paternoster Row, where she
had first read of the death of poor Cock Robin. When Mademoiselle's
exposition of filial piety was concluded, Mary asked her if she ought
to honor her grandmother as much as she would have honored her father
and mother were they alive.
"Quite as much, my child," said Mademoiselle.
Mary thought for a moment or two.
"But oughtn't I to honor Mr. and Mrs. Fawcus, who Grandmamma says I
mustn't call Uncle William and Aunt Lucy any more?"
It was Mademoiselle's turn to think for a moment.
"You ought to honor their memory," she said at last.
"But why mayn't I write to them and tell them where I am? And tell
about you, Mademoiselle, and what I'm doing and about the garden and
the lizards and the white cows who pull the carts and about treading on
the grapes and beating the corn with those funny sticks and about my
sabots and the melon I have for breakfast? They would like to hear."
Mademoiselle could not bear that the gratitude and affection of a
little child should be thus discouraged, although Lady Flower's last
words had been to forbid any communication between Mary and her former
guardians. In the end she compromised by letting Mary write a letter
and writing herself by the same post to Mr. Fawcus, begging him not to
reply and explaining the circumstances in which she had allowed Mary to
write. It was unlike Mademoiselle to compromise; but she was tormented
by the woes of France that autumn and not so much mistress as usual of
her judgment or emotions. Her kindly intention did much harm, for when
Mary received no answer to her letter she was embittered by the thought
that her beloved friends had already forgotten her, and this was the
first disillusion of her life.
During this time Mary, with the facility of childhood, learned to speak
French, so that before the leaves fell from the trees that year she was
as fluent as if she had been living in Châteaublanc from infancy. One
day in October--it was soon after the news had arrived of Gambetta's
escape from Paris in a balloon--Mary, wandering in a remote corner of
the grounds, discovered a stripling of about sixteen who was digging
holes for young trees to be planted in them when the autumn rains
should have soaked down into the soil. He was a slim, handsome boy with
fine features and dark, silky hair; but it was not his good looks that
interested Mary so much as the fact that he seemed to be working in a
frenzy of despair.
"_Qu'est-ce que tu as?_" she demanded.
"_J'ai mal au cœur_," he replied sullenly, wiping a tear from his eye
and bending low over his spade.
"But why are you crying?" she persisted. She spoke in French, of course.
"My tears belong to me," he said. "At least the Prussians have left us
our tears."
"Are you the son of our gardener?" she asked.
To this ollendorfian query he nodded.
"Of Monsieur Menard?"
He nodded again.
"_Alors, tu es Pierre?_"
"_Oui, je suis Pierre._"
Mary produced an apple from the pocket of the hideous crimson pelisse
she was wearing, and while she slowly munched it she regarded the boy
with solemn curiosity. She had heard of young Pierre Menard who had run
away from home to join the troops that were everywhere being recruited
in the provinces to drive the Prussians out of France, and of how his
father had found him in the market-place of Villefranche and brought
him back, because he was too young to be a soldier.
"I'm sorry you could not go to be a soldier, Pierre," she said at last.
"Would you like the other half of my apple?"
The boy accepted the proffered fruit with a surly grace, and presently
he was confiding in Mary the tale of his wrecked ambition.
"If I'm strong enough to plant trees, I'm strong enough to carry a
_chassepot_," he declared. "If I can dig holes for trees, I can dig
graves for Prussians."
Mary condoled with him, listened to his tales of the Emperor, not the
degenerate captive of the enemy, but the great Napoleon, and lamented
with him the glory of which he was being foiled by his father's cruelty.
"We must fight on for years, Gambetta says, and, who knows? I may rise
to be a marshal of France before the war comes to an end."
"You might be Emperor," Mary agreed with enthusiasm.
Pierre tried to look modest and disclaim so exalted an ambition as
that; but there was in the manner of his disclaimer a suggestion that
he did not think such an altitude impossible.
Mary saw a good deal of Pierre, because Mademoiselle who was sorry for
the boy raised no objection to her frequenting his company. For a long
time Mary had been anxious to visit the ruined castle on the hill above
the town, and on All Saints' Day she begged and obtained permission
to be escorted there by Pierre. There was not much left of the old
castle beyond crumbling ivy-colored walls and nettle-grown courts,
although there was one round tower, which was still almost intact.
Below the foundations of this tower was a large _oubliette_ bristling
with the very spikes which had impaled unhappy prisoners precipitated
upon them years ago. Mary and Pierre gazed down with awe through the
open trap and imagined that they could still see bones and bloodstains
upon the floor thirty feet below. Immediately beside the trap was a
small embrasure in the thick walls of the tower lighted by a lancet
window through which could be seen a vast expanse of country, meadows
and woods and vineyards and that great serpent the Saône. Hither it
was that the prisoner condemned to die was led up blinking from the
dungeons below to take his last look at France; here he was allowed to
spend a few wistful moments; hence he stepped upon the trap to vanish
forever from the eyes of men.
There was room for both Mary and Pierre to stand close together in the
embrasure and on this holy morn to gaze out at the russet landscape
breathless beneath the milky blue of the November sky.
"My little one," said Pierre, "I would rather throw myself down into
that _oubliette_ than stay here any longer while France bleeds to
death. Hark! Do you hear the sound of drums?"
"Yes, very far away. Trump--trump--trump--trump!" she whispered in awe
of the menacing beat.
"_Alors, je file!_" he cried. "You can find your way home alone?"
"But suppose there are cows on the road?"
"My little one, it is impossible to permit cows to stand in the way of
_la patrie et la gloire_. I will conduct you outside the Castle gates
and you must find your way home. As for me, this time I will go to the
war. _Vive la France!_"
Mary stood in the ruined gateway, waving her hand to Pierre who went
running and skipping along the white road after those faint-heard,
those elusive drum-taps that might have been anywhere and seemed to be
everywhere.
"We shall meet again after the war," he had called back to her.
Mademoiselle sent for Monsieur Menard and begged him not to interfere
again with his son's desire to serve France, and she was so eloquent
that Monsieur Menard gave way. But when peace was signed, Pierre did
not come back to Châteaublanc, because his father vowed that there
would be no doing anything with him nowadays. So through the interest
of one of Mademoiselle's patrons he was found a clerkship in the
English branch of a big French commercial house, and Mary did not see
him again in Châteaublanc.
But he was her first romance, and the memory of Pierre did not fade
quickly, even when Mademoiselle's house was full of girls again and
Mary's real school life began.
_Chapter Three_
THE MAIDEN
_Chapter Three: The Maiden_
On a January afternoon, the afternoon of her twentieth birthday, Mary
Flower stood by the drawing-room windows of a house in King's Gate,
staring out across the Knightsbridge road to where in soot and snow the
trees of Hyde Park were etched upon a gray expanse of sky. The house
was very still, for it was the time when old Lady Flower took her daily
nap, to the routine of which she attributed the vitality that enabled
her at seventy to sustain the exertion of arranging an advantageous
marriage for her granddaughter. To-day lunch had been protracted
to celebrate with various dishes Mary's birthday, and to-night a
dinner-party was to be followed by a musical reception. The house,
seeming to conspire with her ladyship's snores, achieved a stillness
that was even more perceptible than usual.