I
May 12, 1898.
Two plump ladies with large busts and very small waists were sitting in
the salon of the Allen apartment, waiting for the mistress of the house.
They wore very tight-fitting dresses of excellent silk, obviously not
new, obviously made by the sort of "little dressmaker" who goes from
house to house. Their shoes were stout and clumsy, their hats somewhat
heavy in line, their gloves exquisitely fitting, perfectly fresh, made
of the finest-grained leather. Although the sky was blue, each lady
carried a small silk umbrella of the very best quality, tightly rolled
with a masterly smoothness, as smoothly tubular as the day it was
bought.
The two women held their cruelly corseted bodies very erect, and sat
squarely on their chairs, both feet on the floor, their knees close
together, their backbones very straight. Under the brims of their heavy,
much-ornamented hats, their fresh, healthy faces wore an expression of
perfect stability. They knew that they produced exactly the impression
they meant to produce, and that they looked exactly like what they were.
From every inch of them was proclaimed the fact that they were fine
housekeepers and economical managers of their husbands' incomes, that
they were of the well-to-do bourgeoisie and proud of it, as of
everything else they were and did. They looked out on their lives and
found them good in every detail, from their slightly and purposely
behind-the-fashion dresses to their stout shoes, evidence of their
respectability; from their fixed ideas to their excellent gloves.
They glanced about them now, keenly, with the penetrating survey of the
professional good housekeeper, and found much to comment on.
"How strange to have no lace curtains over the windows, only the heavy
ones at the side. Why, people outside must be able to _look right in_!
Do you suppose they have taken them out to be washed? Or don't they know
about curtains in America?"
They murmured their remarks in a low tone, keeping a weather-ear cocked
to the hall.
"That wall-paper is disgraceful. It was on when the Charpentiers lived
here."
"M. Lapagorry had expected, you know, of course, to do this apartment
over after the Charpentiers moved out. But these new people never made a
single comment, or complaint. Just accepted it."
"I daresay they are used to log-cabins at home, with Indians at the
door."
"Oh, no, Madame Garnier, my Henri says that the Indians are quite
civilized in America now."
Madame Garnier frowned slightly at the mention of Henri.
The other woman went on, "Apparently they thought it was all right to
have faded paper and those awful old curtains. M. Lapagorry was so
astonished he almost fell over backward. And when he saw they didn't
find fault with anything, he asked a higher rent, ever so much higher
than the Charpentiers had paid, and they took _that_ too without a word.
People say M. Lapagorry can't sleep nights now because he didn't ask
more."
Madame Garnier observed, as one mentioning an obvious fact, "Oh, well,
Madame Fortier, he will, of course, next time."
Madame Fortier saw nothing to smile at in this. "Yes, of course," she
said seriously.
Madame Garnier now said, "They must be _very_ rich. Where is it they are
from, Buenos Aires?"
"Oh, no, Madame Garnier. I think it is somewhere in North America. My
Henri says that...."
Madame Garnier broke in, irritated, to say with suppressed heat, "Oh,
North America or South America, what's the difference? They are all
foreigners, and who knows what strange, immoral ideas they have? They
don't come to Mass, you know. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that the
man is a Free-Mason. I wish M. Garnier had not asked me to call on
them."
The other shrugged her shoulders resignedly, "Yes, it's a very strange
thing to do, make the first call, and on people you know nothing about.
But M. Fortier says the man, M. Allen, is very important in a business
way, and he specially asked all the business men to have their wives
call on his wife. He almost seemed to make it a sort of condition, so M.
Fortier said, almost made them promise before he would talk business
with them. It may be in America, they do. And of course anything M.
Fortier thinks may be good for his business...."
Madame Garnier's nod signified that of course that principle went
without saying for any good wife; the expression of her face adding that
this was an application of it which might count as one of a good wife's
sacrifices. But she said hopefully, "Well, they won't stay very long,
foreigners never do."
Madame Fortier now murmured, "They say she's very free with the
gentlemen. M. Fortier and his friends are laughing about her. They say
they really don't know how much of what she says is due to her bad
French; or how far she really does expect them to go."
This did not surprise Madame Garnier. "What can you expect? I shall see
to it that our Jean-Pierre has nothing to do with them."
This apparently started a new train of thought for Madame Fortier, for
she now said with the cheery warmth of one who brings out something
which will be a bitter pill to her interlocutor. "It seems the American,
M. Allen, has taken quite a fancy to our Henri. We think we can get a
position for Henri, through him, in America, where Henri can learn
English, and study the American market. It would be a great help in the
business if Henri knew English and all about American imports. And of
course the salaries paid in America are enormous."
Madame Garnier's eyes opened wide. She fell into a trance-like
meditation, and presently murmured, "Our Jean-Pierre made quite a
specialty of English in the lycee. I should think...."
The mother of Henri shook her head decidedly, "I don't think America
would suit your Jean-Pierre's temperament," she said. "He's not at all
practical. And you get skinned alive by American business men if you're
not as sharp as they. No, you'd better keep Jean-Pierre away from them."
The two looked at each other hard. A brilliant light of rivalry came
into their eyes. It brought an animation, a zest into their faces, which
made them look years younger. A main-spring had been touched, and all
their wheels began visibly to turn.
Steps were heard in the hall.
They composed their faces, and turned towards the door. The American
lady now came in, and they rose to greet her. They were extremely
cordial, a competitive friendliness in their manner.
* * * * *
They went down the well-polished oaken stairs in silence, each holding
up her long heavy skirt with one gloved hand and letting the other rest
on the railing. At the bottom, each with an automatic gesture like a
reflex action, looked at the palm of her glove to see if it had been
soiled by the railing, and with a similar mechanical action, shook their
heads disapprovingly, although there was not a grain of dust on the
smooth, tightly-stretched, pale kid.
They shook out the trains of their skirts and swept into the street,
conscious of the pouncing inspection of Anna Etchergary, gazing at them
from the loge of the concierge, and proudly aware that there was nothing
to criticize in any detail of their backs or anywhere else about them.
They turned to the left and began to climb the steep street which led
towards the Cathedral. Madame Fortier remarked presently, "Very bad
taste, that dress, like an actress. All that white silk and lace. And
slippers like a dancing girl's. It must be she never puts her hand to
anything in the house."
"No, she doesn't," returned the other disapprovingly. "My Marguerite
meets her Jeanne every morning at market. She says that Jeanne says the
American lady never does anything about the house, and doesn't even
verify her accounts. You can just imagine what Jeanne is getting out of
it. It quite upsets Marguerite, and I have to be specially careful with
my own accounts. Everybody near them is getting a rake-off on
everything." She made these revelations with a satisfied look as though
the words had a pleasant taste in her mouth.
Madame Fortier's comment was made with the accent of mature, worldly
experience, "Mark my words, money spent in a loose careless way like
that _must have been ill come by_. That's the way disreputable women
spend money."
"It's very hard on the rest of us, at any rate. And Jeanne tells our
Margot that she is a very poor housekeeper, as heedless as a child,
wears her best tailored street dress in the house as like as not, lies
down on the bed when she is not sick at all, and doesn't do a thing but
read novels all the time; or fool away a whole afternoon in the Museum.
Very suspicious, that, too. Why should anybody go to the Museum so much?
I'd just like to know whom she meets there. A regular place of
rendezvous, the Museum. I wonder if her husband knows."
They were enjoying the conversation so much that their faces looked
quite sunny and bright. The other shook her head forebodingly. There was
a silence as they climbed steadily up the steep, narrow, stone-flagged
street.
Then Madame Garnier remarked, "The little girl is quite pretty, though
so mannerless."
"Her dress was covered with grease spots, and had a hook off the back,"
reported Madame Fortier.
"I didn't see but _three_ grease spots," demurred Madame Garnier, "and
she really has lovely eyes and hair."
"How badly that woman speaks French. Without the little girl to
interpret, it would actually have been hard to know what she was saying.
Strange they don't know French better. But perhaps they don't have
regular schools like ours."
Madame Garnier made no answer to this conjecture, but asked, looking
sideways at her neighbor, "Shall you ask them to dinner?"
Madame Fortier all but groaned, and said in a martyr's tone, "Oh, I
suppose so, for Henri's sake."
The other digested this thrust in silence, and then changed the subject.
"What was that she was saying about De Maupassant? Was she quoting him,
to _us_? What did she take us for?"
"Yes, she didn't realize what we might think of her. It was that
indecent Boule-de-Suif, too. But she knows so little French most likely
she didn't understand what it was all about."
"Have you read that?" asked Madame Garnier.
"Yes, I thought it my duty to, as a mother, to know what it is. But I
burned the book, and you may be sure _I_ don't go around letting
everybody know I've read it. Did you find her pretty?"
Madame Garnier answered obliquely, but quite understandably. "I daresay
a man would think so. I couldn't think of anything but her manners. How
she lolled in her chair, and crossed her legs. I wouldn't want my
Gabrielle to see her. And to my eyes she had a faded look. Queer, her
being so fair. I don't see any trace of Indian blood. I thought all
Americans had Indian blood."
"Oh, no, Madame Garnier, my Henri says that...."
Madame Garnier made a gesture of one thoroughly out of patience with
Henri, and ended the conversation abruptly, "Oh, here we are at the
corner. I must turn down here. Good-day, Madame Fortier."
II
May 15, 1898.
The rosy, wrinkled face of the Sister of Charity shone out from the
white quilled band over which the black veil was draped. Beside her the
distinguished old lady showed, under her long crape veil, a face as
quiet as that of the nun. The two elderly women sat at ease, their hands
folded in their laps, chatting in a pleasant low tone.
"Yes, so every one says, a great deal of money, Madame la Marquise,"
said the nun in her murmuring monotone, "as all Americans have."
The other breathed out with a great wistful sigh, "Oh, Soeur Ste. Lucie,
if only the good God has sent us at last the opportunity to get our
chapel."
"Yes, yes indeed," assented the nun, drawing in her breath sharply
between her teeth. She raised her eyes, singularly bright and personal
in her professionally passive face. "They say there is a child, too.
Perhaps a soul to save. Our Mother Superior always so zealous for the
honor of our Order has asked us specially, specially ... the Bishop has
so much to say about one of the Sisters of the St. Francis Order because
of the conversion of a Swedish sailor, whom she nursed in their
hospital. The Mother Superior hopes very much that some one in _our_
Order...."
"Yes, yes, I understand," said the great lady, nodding.
The nun went on, deferentially, "Madame la Marquise is so good to be
willing to come to call on the foreign lady! I shall see to it that the
foreign lady understands the honor done her."
The other made a graceful deprecatory gesture with a shapely
black-gloved hand, and explained with great simplicity and gentleness,
"Oh, no, ma soeur, it is nothing, nothing to praise. I would make a far
greater sacrifice for the sake of our beloved work. But in this case,
there is no risk of being misunderstood. It is not as though they were
French bourgeois, who might have their heads turned. There can be no
question of social equality with transient foreigners." She smiled,
bowed her head with humility and said, "So you see, dear Soeur Ste.
Lucie, that I deserve no praise for making a sacrifice."
The nun nodded her understanding. It was evident that they understood
each other to perfection. "Yes, yes, of course, I see. No social
equality possible," she murmured, drawing in a sharply taken breath
again.
They looked about them in silence now, the restrained calm of their
faces uncolored by their thoughts. Hearing steps in the hall, Soeur
Ste. Lucie shook out her long black sleeves to cover her hands more
completely, and cast down her eyes so that her sweet, rosy, wrinkled old
face was once more blank and impassive.
* * * * *
Anna Etchergary was waiting at the door of her loge as they descended
the stairs, and she ran before them out to the old closed carriage,
which stood at the curb. Bowing deferentially and murmuring under her
breath, "... Madame la Marquise...." she held the door open for them.
The lady smiled her thanks at her, a pre-occupied, well-modulated smile
which took for granted the deference and the service.
As the nun stepped into the carriage she said with unction, "Now I see
how lives in the world can be as useful to Our Lady as those of the
convent. No one could have resisted Madame this afternoon. To have a
great name and all worldly graces, and to use them only for the greater
glory of Our Lady!"
The other sighed and said sadly, "Dear Ste. Lucie, since the death of my
dear one, there is nothing for me in the life of the world, except an
opportunity to serve our good work." She went on more cheerfully, with a
little animation, "Yes, I must say, it seemed like fruitful ground this
afternoon, fruitful ground. I think we may say we made a good
beginning."
The old coachman came to the door for his orders. "To 4 rue Marengo, in
the Petit Bayonne," said his mistress, and as he stepped to his seat,
she explained to the nun, "I feel so much encouraged that I am going
straight to an architect to have him make an estimate of what the chapel
would cost."
The carriage proceeded very slowly and rackingly over the rounded
boulders of the pavement. Inside it, the two women, accustomed to such
joltings, thrust their arms through the broad, hanging loops, and went
on talking.
"Not a disagreeable person," said the great lady in a kind tone of
tolerance. "A very middle-class little woman, but no harm in her, I
should say. I was afraid to find some one not quite--not quite--you know
it is said that American women are not very moral--so many divorces in
America."
"And still you went...!" breathed the nun, lost in admiration of the
other's heroic devotion, "when you ran the risk of meeting a _divorced_
woman!"
The Marquise made another gentle, fatigued gesture of warding off
praise. It was a practised gesture as though she had occasion to make it
often.
After a time she said, "Odd she should be so interested in the Cathedral
here, and yet a free-thinker. What made her talk so much about the South
Portal? I never heard of anything unusual about it, did you? Except that
that disagreeable, anti-clerical fountain is somewhere near there, to
the memory of those wicked revolutionists."
The nun shook her head, indifferently. "I always enter by the North
Portal," she said. "I don't believe I ever happened to see the south
one."
After reflection, the marquise said, "I don't believe I ever saw it
either. Why should any one? You never enter from that side. Nobody lives
on the rue d'Espagne, that anybody would ever have occasion to visit."
III
May 20, 1898.
Anna Etchergary measured accurately the social status of the two ladies
who asked for Madame Allen's apartment, and without getting up, or
stopping her sewing, she answered in the careless tone suitable for
people who wore home-made hats and cotton gloves, that Madame Allen was
at the top of the first flight. After they had passed, she thought to
herself that she believed she knew them, Mlle. Hasparren, the
school-teacher and her married sister. They were Basques, like Anna, but
of the small government employee class, who put on airs of gentility,
and wore hats and leather shoes. Mlle. Hasparren gave music lessons, as
well as teaching school. Probably she had come to try to be taken on as
Marise's music-teacher.
The two ladies were mounting the stairs in silence and very slowly,
because the school-teacher had taken off her cotton gloves and was
putting on a pair of kid ones, which she had pulled from her hand-bag.
She explained half-apologetically, to her sister, who had only cotton
gloves, "It's to do honor to America!" and then with a long breath, "The
first American I ever saw."
"What do you care if it is, Rachel?" asked her sister languidly. She
added with more animation, "Your hat is over one ear again."
The other stopped short on a stair. "America! ... free America!" she
said passionately, "don't you remember what Voltaire said, 'Europe can
never be wholly a prison so long as it has America for open window?'"
She knocked her hat back into place with the effect of using the gesture
to emphasize violently what she said.
"I wouldn't quote Voltaire, if I were you," advised her sister mildly.
"You never know who may be listening. People think badly enough of you
for being a school-teacher in a lay-school as it is."
"There you are!" Rachel caught this up as a point for her side. "There
it is, our airless, stagnant European prison-house of prejudice!" She
struck a hand, gloved in kid now, on her breast, with the gesture of one
suffocating.
Her sister shrugged her shoulders resignedly and said, "Which door do
you suppose it is? We forgot to ask which side."
They were now on the landing, hesitating between the two exactly similar
doors. Rachel made a quick decision at random, crossed to the right-hand
side, and pulled the bell-rope.
The door opened, and showed the upright frame of Jeanne Amigorena. There
was a moment of mutual surprise, and exclamations of greeting and
inquiry. "Why, Jeanne, you here? I thought you were on the farm at
Midassoa!"
Jeanne broke out upon them with a great rush of Basque, enchanted to see
familiar faces, enchanted to have a new audience. "Oh, good-day, Madame
Hardoye. Good-day, Mlle. Hasparren. Who ever would think to see you
here? Yes, here I am in a family of the queerest foreigners you ever
saw. But they pay very well. They have both apartments on this floor.
Yes, they must be _made_ of money, and I have little Isabelle from
Midassoa with me, as femme de chambre, and what do you think, we have
each a room, a real furnished bedroom, just as though we were guests.
The madame took one look at the maids' rooms, under the roof, on the
fifth floor, you know, and when she saw they are all dark except that
little sky-light, with no furniture to speak of, she said she wouldn't
let a dog sleep there. The idea! It would have been plenty good enough
for Isabelle and enough sight better than what she ever had at home. She
is getting beyond herself all the time, Isabelle is. I have an awful
time keeping her in her place. The lady hasn't the least idea of doing
it. They are such queer people, I can't tell you! She knows no more
about taking care of a child, our madame! She started to let our little
mademoiselle go _alone_ to school, through the _streets_! And the poor
child was so disgraceful with spots and dirt on her dresses that I was
ashamed to have people see her and had Madame buy her some aprons and
now I keep her in order myself. She is a sweet child, only brought up
the way you'd expect a little savage to be, puts her _feet_ on the
_chairs_! Or else sits on the _floor_! And _runs_ on the street, or else
loiters along looking at shop-windows. But she is learning fast. I don't
complain, oh, no. I know well enough that when you are a servant, you
must take what comes to you, and make the best of it. But I never
thought I would work in a family of free-thinkers! Still, they sleep
over there on that side of the landing, and Isabelle and I sleep here. I
keep the holy-water shell well filled, and we brought the branch of box
from home that had been blessed last Palm Sunday, and we sprinkle a few
drops of Lourdes water on the table before we eat. I hope we are safe.
M. le Cure says that is enough. I often think that...."
Madame Hardoye had been listening to this flood of talk, her lively
interest in the matter struggling with her distaste for Jeanne's
familiar manner.
She now broke in with an accent which she meant to express, "There
you've talked quite enough. After all, though my sister has queer ideas,
we are not in your class. We are not peasants. And it's high time you
remembered that." What she actually said in a curt tone was, "Where do
we ring to make a call on your mistress?"
Jeanne understood the implication perfectly. It was one quite familiar
to her. With a change of manner she motioned them silently across the
hall. "There," she said laconically, her face suddenly hard and somber.
Rachel Hasparren also understood the implication and flushed an even
more vivid color than that habitually on her dark cheeks. She held out
her hand, her kid-gloved hand, to Jeanne, with a defiant gesture of
equality, "Good-by, Jeanne. I'm glad we had a glimpse of you."
Jeanne took the hand awkwardly, with a sort of rancorous reluctance to
have her grievance appeased, and turning back, shut the door behind her.
"Now, Rachel!" expostulated her sister.
Rachel breathed ragingly and stared at her sister in an old resentment,
which the other took calmly, looking inside her card-case.
Rachel advanced provocatively, "Did you hear what old Jeanne said, how
the American lady would not put a dog to sleep in lodgings in which we
French expect to house our servants?"
The married sister resented this spiritedly. "Spoiling servants for the
rest of us, that's what it is!" she said impatiently. "And what good
does it do? You saw how old Jeanne only thinks the less of her for it.
The more you try to do for that class, the less they think of you."
"That's because Jeanne's whole nature has been degraded by our caste
ideals!" shouted Rachel. "She's a poor, superstitious, medieval old
thing, incapable of ordinary decent human relations. If she'd lived in
America...!"
Angele pulled the other bell-cord here with an air of cutting short
another out-burst, and they both stood silently looking at the closed
door, which presently was opened by little Isabelle.
As they went down the stairs, Angele remarked, "Well, she seems to be
all right. Like everybody else, as far as I can see. I expected to see
her with a Liberty cap on her head and swinging a lighted bomb, to hear
you going on."
Rachel was taking off her kid gloves and putting on cotton ones. She
said dreamily, her black eyes deep and glowing, "When I asked her how
the peasants lived in America, she said ... the dear American ... 'there
aren't any peasants in America.'"
Her dark flushed face was shining as they came out on the rue Thiers and
stood for an instant, glancing up at the battlemented walls of the dark
old Castle.
Rachel suddenly shook her fist at it, her cotton-gloved fist, and cried
out, "You needn't glower down like that, you hideous old relic of an
evil past! There's a great, wide, rich country across the seas, that
never heard of such as you, that never had a feudal castle in it, that
isn't darkened by a single hateful shadow such as you still throw down
on us here."
"Hush, Rachel," said her sister, patiently attempting to quiet her,
"Anna Etchergary is looking out of the window at us."
Rachel instantly lowered her voice, with an instinctive response of
caution to this warning, but she was furious that she had done so.
"That's Europe, that's Europe for you!" she said hotly, under her
breath. "Spied upon every minute by suspicious, mean, malicious eyes."
Angele broke in on her to say reasonably, "Well, anyhow, your hat is on
one side again."