April 10, 1898.
Old Jeanne Amigorena was on her way to Bayonne to complain to her niece
of her rheumatism and her daughter-in-law. She detested the railroad, as
she did everything new and not Basque, but at her age it was not easy to
foot it along the fourteen kilometres of white road between Midassoa and
Bayonne. So, grimly disapproving, she hoisted her square, stalwart,
black-clad body into the third-class compartment of the slow way-train
which comes shuffling up from the Spanish frontier about noon.
Even for a Basque of the oldest rock, there is one satisfaction to be
had out of the forty-minute trip by rail to Bayonne. This is at the
station of La Negresse where your way-train meets the down express from
Paris. The chic people from the first-class compartments are there
summoned to get out and change to the little local line which jolts them
the three kilometres to Biarritz. This change of cars is never announced
at Paris, it is always furiously exasperating to tourists, and in
consequence they afford an entertaining spectacle to any one with a low
opinion of human nature. Jeanne, who had less than no regard for any
human nature outside the Basque race, always enjoyed the contempt she
felt for these fashionably-dressed, ineffectual French weaklings. She
took advantage of the leisurely wait at La Negresse, while the luggage
was noisily transferred from one train to the other, to lean her head
and shoulders out of the window, and to indulge herself in a hearty bout
of derision for the uncomely fashionable Parisians, city-pale and
flabby. She drew a long breath of satisfaction in her own untrammeled
ribs, to see their rigid bodies like badly carved pieces of wood in the
steel armor of their corsets, their shoulders grotesquely widened by
their high puffed sleeves. Used to stepping out for a daily ten-mile
walk over mountain paths, free and rhythmic in her flexible
cord-and-canvas sandals, she laughed inwardly at these fine ladies,
tottering on their high-heeled leather shoes.
Some of them were dragging along tired, over-dressed, pasty-faced
children. Jeanne had a passion for children, and she now cried to
herself, for the thousandth time, "What can the Blessed Virgin be
thinking of, to trust babies to such creatures!" Straight as a lance,
with more vigor in her body at seventy than any of them at twenty, with
more glistening black hair of her own under her close black coif than
any of them could afford to buy, Jeanne who never altered her costume by
a hair or a line from one year's end to another, who looked forward
confidently to fifteen or twenty years of iron health, felt a cheerful
glow of contempt as she watched them, running here and there, screaming
nervously that one of their innumerable bags or valises was lost, their
faces distorted with apprehension for some part of their superfluities.
She did not altogether approve of the hatted, conventionally dressed
women she passed half an hour later in the sunny streets of the little
city on her way to the home of Anna Etchergary. Anna was concierge of
one of the apartment houses on the Rue Thiers, opposite the Old Castle,
and to reach it, Jeanne had to pass through the new quarter of Bayonne,
the big open square where the fine shops are and the Frenchified madames
walking about. Bayonne was a poor enough apology for a Basque city,
thought Jeanne, but its somewhat backsliding and partly Gascon and
Spanish inhabitants were at least not such grimacing monkeys as those
Parisians.
She strode along with the swift, sure, poised gait of sandal-wearing
people, her mind full of the grievances she wanted to pour out to Anna;
the disrespect of her son's wife, and the scandalous extravagances of
her expenditures. "Consider, Anna," she rehearsed her story beforehand.
"She uses the eggs herself, instead of sending them to market. She
serves _omelettes_, as though Michel's house were a hotel! And she will
not spin! She uses Michel's money to _buy yarn_! To think that money
from the Amigorena farm should go to buy yarn, with a distaff hanging on
the wall and ten idle, good-for-nothing fingers at the end of her arms."
On the terrible subject of lack of children in that house Jeanne could
not trust herself to speak. It was too sore a spot that with all
Jeanne's five grown sons, she had not a grandchild to hold in her arms.
The two, Americans now, who were in the Argentine making their fortunes,
were married and had families, but what were grandchildren on the other
side of the globe to Jeanne? The two younger ones, who were sailors,
were not married, and Michel, who had promised to be the mainstay of her
life and had stayed at home to run the farm, here he had been caught by
that impudent little French girl, one of the chambermaids in a Biarritz
hotel, a girl who did not know how to spin, who laughed at the decent
Basque ways, and who had no shame for her sterility, refusing to go to
Lourdes to pray for children.
Jeanne had never had any romantic feeling for her shiftless,
hard-drinking husband, whose irregular earnings as a fisher she had been
forced to piece out with much domestic service in the houses of others;
and now he was dead, she never thought of him. She had never been to a
theater in her life, nor read a novel, for she could not read at all.
None of her native capacity for emotion had been used in her youth, nor
frittered away later in the second-hand make-believes of modern life. It
had all been poured out upon children; on her five sons, and on the one
little dark-eyed, black-haired daughter, the little Marie--who had died
at eleven, so many years ago, just after her first communion--the
blessed saint Marise had looked, slim and straight in her white dress!
The Blessed Virgin had found her namesake too sweet to wait for, and had
taken her at once.
And now those strong, yearning old arms were empty of young life, and
Jeanne's heart was bitter. She might scold her loudest over the waste of
butter and eggs at the farm, she might gossip her head off about the
faults of the neighbors, and shriek out maledictions on the stingy
bourgeoise who wanted to buy her vegetables for nothing, she could not
drown out the forlorn echo of emptiness and loneliness within.
She turned up the Rue Thiers, glanced frowningly at the Paris-like
department store on the other side of the street with its gaudy
plate-glass show-windows, the pride of the younger generation in
Bayonne, and looked up with approval at the huge, thick, battlemented
walls of the Old Castle, substantial enough that, and plain enough and
old enough to please even a Basque.
As she turned in at the door of Anna's apartment house, her mouth was
open to begin her litany of grievances; but when she entered Anna's
one-room, brick-paved lodging, she found her niece with a budget of
exciting news of her own, "Oh, Tante Jeanne, what do you think...." she
burst out as the old woman swung lightly in; but before she would go on,
she went to close the door, bearing herself so secretly, with such
self-importance that Jeanne was between exasperation and greediness to
hear. Like all illiterates who cannot glut on the newspapers their
appetite for gossip, she was insatiable for it in talk. She sat down on
the front of her chair, her ear cocked eagerly. Anna drew her own chair
up close and began to speak in Basque very rapidly. "I'm so glad you've
come, Tante Jeanne, you've had so much experience in working out in
families, you know about things. You know about those American farm
machines, that they're beginning to use on the big farms, painted red,
you know. Well, the American agent for that company, he has come here to
live, here in this house, the grand second-floor apartments, the ones
old Pere Lapagorry rents furnished, on _both_ sides of the landing, yes,
the two of them, because his wife, a very chic madame, didn't think one
was big enough, and what can one family do with two kitchens, tell me
that, and they with only one child to their name, a little girl, who
doesn't take up any more room than a flea, so to speak, and the lady has
asked me to find her a cook and a maid, and listen, Tante, she says she
will pay sixty francs a month _each_, and fed and lodged!"
She paused to underline this and looked triumphantly at her aunt, who
for years had worked as cook in families for forty francs a month and
lodged herself. Jeanne looked back at her hard, a new possibility
lifting a corner of its veil in her mind.
"What are they like, these Americans?" she asked, "Spanish-Basque or
French-Basque?" (To a Basque, the term "_American_" means one of his own
race who has emigrated to South America, made his pile, and returned to
his own country to spend it.)
"They're not Basques at all," said Anna.
"What, French?" said Jeanne instantly incredulous of Anna's story. There
was no use trying to tell _her_ that any French family was willing to
pay twice the usual wage for servants.
"No, they don't even understand French, but the madame can read it a
little."
"Oh, Spanish, then."
"No, I had Pedro Gallon go up to see them and they don't speak a word of
Spanish. They're not even Catholics!"
The two women stared at each other. What could people be who were not
Spanish or French or Basque, or even Catholics?
Anna went on, "Tante Jeanne, come upstairs and see for yourself what
they are like. You have seen so many bourgeois families, you can tell
better than I. I'll only say you have come to help me find servants for
them."
Anna followed her aunt out into the hall and locked the door behind her.
The key to the door hung with a dozen others, large and clanking at the
belt of her blue jeans apron. Anna's philosophy of life consisted in
having plenty of keys and keeping them in constant use. The only things
you could be sure of were the things you yourself had locked up.
They climbed the shining, well-waxed, oaken stairway, Anna's special
care and pride, turning itself around and around in the circular
white-washed well, lighted by small pointed windows, which showed the
three-foot thickness of the stone walls. They stood before the dark
paneled door, its highly polished brass knob in the middle, and pulled
hard at the thick, tasseled bell-rope. A bell jangled nervously, light
uneven footsteps sounded on the bare floor inside, and a small, pretty,
fair-haired woman stood before them, dressed in a pale blue house-gown
elaborately trimmed with white silk. She smiled a pleasant recognition
at Anna, and gave a friendly nod to the older woman.... Jeanne disliked
her on sight.
The old peasant assumed a respectful, decorous, submissive attitude as
became her social position, and made a quick estimate at the age of the
other woman. She made it thirty-six at a guess although she reflected
that probably any man would guess not more than twenty-eight. Jeanne
knew by the sixth sense which comes from many years of unbiased
observation of life, that the other woman was the sort who looks much
younger than she is. She also was aware as by an emanation, that the
other woman was not French. That was apparent from every inch of her,
the way she stood and smiled and wore her gown; and yet she was dressed
like any French lady, with a high, boned collar up to her ears, sleeves
with a stiff puff at the shoulders, and a full, long, heavy skirt that
hung in ripples and lay on the floor behind. Also her fair hair was
tousled up into a pompadour, with a big, shining knot on top. Jeanne,
her head a little to one side and bent forward in a patient pose of
silent respect, wondered if that fair hair were her own or were false,
and made a guess that a good deal of it was false.
All this Jeanne took in and pondered while Anna was trying to explain by
dumb-show who her aunt was and why she had come. The foreign lady
listened intently, but it was evident that she did not understand at
all.
Jeanne took advantage of her absorption with Anna to look at her
intently, with the ruthless peasant scrutiny, going straight through all
the finer distinctions of character, deep down to the one fundamental,
the one question essential to the peasant mind in all human
relationships, "Is she stronger than I?"
Jeanne saw at once that the lady before her was not stronger than she,
was not indeed strong at all, although she looked as though she might
have an irritable temper. She was one you could always get around,
thought Jeanne, her strong hands folded meekly before her, her powerful
body a little stooped to make herself look politely mild. She was one
who didn't know what she wanted enough to go after it and get it,
thought Jeanne, casting her black eyes down, the picture of a
well-trained, European servant, with a proper respect for the upper
classes she served.
The lady, laughing and fluttering, now motioned them into the salon.
Some of the furnishings had been taken away, thought Jeanne, looking
about out of the corner of her eye--no lace over the windows! In this
room sat the monsieur of the family, a large man, smoking a large cigar,
and reading an enormous newspaper.
On encountering a new member of the male sex, Jeanne, although she had
long passed the age when she needed personally to make the distinction,
always made a first, sweeping division of them into two classes: those
who were dangerous to women and those who were not. She instantly put
down the monsieur of the new family among those who were not, although
he was not bad looking, not more than forty-five, with all his teeth
still in his mouth and all his thick, dark hair still on his head. But a
woman of Jeanne's disillusioned experience of human nature knew from the
expression of his listless brown eyes, from his careless attitude in his
chair, from the indifferent way he looked at the three women before him,
from the roughness of his hair, evidently combed but once a day, with no
perfumed dressing on it, that he was not now and never had been a man
who cared for conquests among women, or who had had many. She
immediately felt for him a slight contempt as for somebody not all there
mentally, and wondered if his wife were not occasionally unfaithful to
him. She looked as though she might be that kind, a rattling,
bird-headed little thing like that, reflected Jeanne behind her downcast
eyes, changing imperceptibly from one humble, self-effacing pose to
another.
Anna now turned to her aunt with a long breath, "I cannot make her
understand," she said in Basque. "Think of a nice, pretty-looking lady
like that not being able to talk! I cannot make her think anything but
that you have come to be the cook yourself."
"Well, I might do worse," said Jeanne unexpectedly, her mouth watering
at the chance for pickings. She spoke in Basque. Her face remained as
unmoved as though it were the wood-carving it seemed.
Her niece stared for a moment, horizons opening before her. "Oh, Tante
Jeanne, if you only would! With you here and me in the concierge's loge,
what a chance for commissions off everybody from the grocer to the
wash-woman!"
Jeanne agreed although with no enthusiasm. "But I'm not young. I don't
need the money, if only Michel's wife would...." She gave a quick look
at the man and woman before her, who were now exchanging some words in
their queer-sounding tongue. "They seem such odd people. Who knows what
they are like? Their not being able to talk, and all--and not even
Catholics!" She hesitated, feeling a distaste for their foreignness, and
for the fussy, effusive smilingness of the madame. Jeanne always
distrusted ladies who smiled at their servants. There could only be war
to the knife between servants and their employer. Why pretend anything
else?
A little girl in a white dress came swiftly into the room now, a
long-legged, slim child of eleven. She darted in as though she was
looking for something, and in a hurry to find it. When she saw the two
Basque women, she paused, suddenly motionless, and gave them a steady
inquiring gaze out of clear dark eyes.
Jeanne stared at her, startled. The child had thick black hair, glossy
and straight, a cream-like skin, and long eyes with arching eyebrows as
black as her hair, which made a finely-drawn curving line on her
forehead and ran back at the sides upon her temples.
Anna noticed the older woman's surprise and said casually, "Yes, isn't
it queer how the little girl looks like one of us, a real little Basque?
She seems nice enough, only with no manners. See how she comes bursting
into a room and then only stares; but none of the family have any
manners, if it comes to that."
The child made a quick move now and still moving swiftly stepped to
Jeanne's side. To Jeanne's astonishment she put out her small white
fingers and took Jeanne's gnarly old hand in a firm grip. "Bonjour,
Madame," she said, smiling faintly at her attempt to speak the foreign
language, although her eyes were grave.
Jeanne had for an instant a strange impression that the child seemed to
think that she had found what she was looking for. At the sight of the
little girl, at the living touch of that small, warm hand, Jeanne forgot
the chic madame with the shallow eyes, and the dull monsieur with the
tired eyes. She looked down at the child who had eyes that were looking
for something. The old woman and the little girl exchanged a long
serious gaze, one of those deep, inarticulate contacts of human souls
which come and go like a breath taken, and leave human lives altered for
always.
Jeanne drew a long breath. She said in a low tone to the child,
forgetting that she could not understand, "What do you call yourself,
dear?"
The child answered in French haltingly, but with a pure accent, "I call
myself Mary."
"Oh, yes," explained Anna, "the little girl is picking up French fast. I
can make her mother understand now, through her. She does the ordering
for them at the Bouyenval pension already. They are taking their meals
there, till they get servants to begin housekeeping. Madame Bouyenval
was telling me this morning...."
Jeanne interrupted her niece, speaking in Basque, "Well, if you think
you can make that featherhead of her mother understand anything, you can
tell them that I'll come to-morrow to stay, and I'll bring a
chamber-maid with me."
To the foreign lady she said respectfully in French, with a deferential
inclination of her tall strong body, "A votre service, Madame."