As happens to us all, there were certain moments which stayed alive in
Marise's memory for years; and as is always the case, those moments did
not at all correspond with apparently important events. Such events
come, seem of great consequence, happen, and therewith sink down into
the featureless mass of things which happen only once and then are in
the past forever. The other moments, those queerly, heterogeneously
tumbled-together impressions, are the things which happen over again
every time one thinks of them.
One of Marise's fantastic notions was that the things which had happened
were piled up in a big junk-heap in your memory in front of a great
black curtain. But there were pinholes in the curtain, and if you put
your eye to one, there, right before you, one of the things that had
happened was alive again, and your heart knocked and your throat felt
queer just as it did the first time. This notion may have come to her in
this form because it was generally in the night that she experienced the
vivid living-over of some long past moment. Wakened from a sound sleep
by the hoarse whistle of one of the steamers in the Adour, taking
advantage of a favorable tide to weigh anchor and be off, she saw in the
instant while she drew a long breath and turned over in bed, one of
those living scenes again, as actual, as piercingly real to her as
though it were happening for the first time. Some of these she greatly
dreaded, some set her to ringing all through with happiness, others she
never understood at all.
I
One of the very happy ones was the moment when she had first really
heard music. She had been "taking lessons" of Mlle. Hasparren for weeks
and months. Mlle. Hasparren taught as Marise thought all the teachers
in France taught, the hardest possible way; scales, scales, scales and
then thumping, monotonous exercises, played over forty, fifty, sixty
times, till Marise felt as though there wasn't anything left of her
except that exercise, pound, pound, pound all over her. Marise saw
nothing in music except hatefully numerous little black dots on white
paper, and heard nothing in it beyond a combination of sounds as
interesting to hear as a problem in arithmetic is to look at.
She rather liked Mlle. Hasparren, although Maman thought she didn't have
a bit of style; but she certainly did hate the three-times-a-week music
lesson. She never could have kept on with it in America, but here
everything was hard work, and if you weren't working at your music
lesson, they'd expect you to be working at something else. And then,
too, there was what Father had said about keeping at what you were doing
until you got it just right. Marise's bed-room seemed to have taken up
the sound of Father's voice as he said that, so that many times, as she
sat there doing her lessons and not thinking of it, all of a sudden, the
very curtains and walls and chairs seemed to be reminding her of it.
That was really what kept her going, as day by day she sat down heavily
before the piano, prodding her mind up to keep it fixed on the little
black dots.
That at least was what had kept her at it till the evening which came
back to Marise so clearly. Father and Maman had gone out to dinner; she
had eaten alone, with Jeanne's chatter for company, and then on her way
back to her room, had wandered into the salon, candle-stick in hand,
sort of hoping she could think of something nice to do before she
settled down to study.
But there was certainly nothing nice to do in the salon. It was awfully
lonely in there, the chairs all empty and stiff, standing around
heavily, the thick curtains drawn close over the tall windows, and in
front of the alcove where Maman's writing-desk stood, the polished floor
shining hard and bright, the stands, the table with one of Maman's
yellow-covered books on it, the dark little cave of a fireplace. Marise
set her candle down on a stand, and herself sank down on the piano
stool, her back towards the keys, staring at the lonesome looking room.
How perfectly dead it did look. Marise could hear faintly in the
distance an echo of the brisk voice of Jeanne and Isabelle, laughing and
carrying on over the dishes. But in here, in the empty salon, there
wasn't a sound. Her ears fairly rang with the nothingness all around
her. Her heart was big and heavy.
At school that day, the girls had started up a new fad, the "wishbook."
You got a little blank book, and then went around asking everybody to
write down in it what she most wished to be. Marise was astonished at
what the other girls wrote; one, "I wish I could be a great actress,"
another, "I wish I could marry a millionaire," another, "I wish I could
be a great and holy saint." Marise had not been able to understand why
everybody did not write what she did, instantly, instantly, something
she had always known she wanted. What she had written in everybody's
book was, "I wish I could be happy." She thought of this now, and in the
empty, cold, echoing room cried it aloud, "I wish I could be happy."
There was no answer from the stiff stuffed chairs, from the
well-polished tables, from the black hole of the fireplace. Marise had
expected no answer, would not have expected one if her parents had been
there, never expected one. What answer could Father give, Father who
apparently never thought of such a thing as being happy, and never hoped
for anything more than to be a little less tired and bored. And if Maman
had been there, she wouldn't even have heard what Marise said, busy as
she always was with thinking something of her own. Maman wasn't nearly
so cheerful as she had been. What _was_ it Maman was thinking about when
she sat so still and her face got dark and drawn? Certainly not about
Marise.
The little girl sat on the piano stool, dangling her long legs and
looking straight ahead into the empty room, which looked back at her,
she thought, as though it had a low opinion of her and a very high
opinion of its own importance and elegance. She knew she ought to get up
and go into her own room and study a very long lesson on the reign of
Henri IV. But she couldn't seem to get up the strength to do this,
sitting fallen together on the piano stool, her heart heavier and
heavier.
She looked hard at the empty chairs, and thought to herself that it
wasn't any worse to see them empty, than to see the people that usually
sat on them--not one who could help a little girl to be more happy.
There wasn't a single person she knew, whom she'd wish sitting there
now, unless it might be Cousin Hetty! Marise felt a knot come in her
throat, and the corners of her mouth began to tremble. She would _like_
to get up in Cousin Hetty's lap again.
But Cousin Hetty was not there. There was nothing there but the circle
of unfriendly chairs and tables and the empty, silent room. The
trembling of her lips got worse; Marise was afraid she was going to cry.
She turned round on the piano stool, put one bent arm up on the music
which stood there, and hid her face in it. She was not crying; though
she wished she could, because the ache in her heart and the knot in her
throat hurt too much.
The silent, motionless room stood aloof and meaningless about the
silent, motionless child. Marise pressed her face closer against her
arm. She was trembling now, all over her body.
The silence was intense.
And then it seemed to her that the silence had been broken by a voice, a
beautiful, quivering voice, deep and true, which went straight to her
heart, as though some one had spoken a strong, loving word. At the sound
she stopped trembling and sat motionless.
Before she could draw her breath in wonder, she knew what it had
been ... only a note of music. Her own hand falling on a key of the
piano had struck a note, which was even then echoing in her ears.
But the first impression was ineffaceable. That, too, rang in her ears.
It seemed as though it was the first time she had ever heard a note of
music. Really, really that was so. She had never been _still_ enough
before to hear how a note sounded. How it rang and rang in the
stillness, its deep vibration stirring echoes deep within Marise's
heart! She had thought it was a voice. Why, it was like a voice, a
voice speaking to her, just when she had been so sure that there wasn't
any voice she could possibly expect to hear.
She sat up marveling, and struck another note. Into the dead, stagnant
air of the room, and into her loneliness, it sang out bravely, the same
living voice, thrilling and speaking to her. She struck a chord,
astonished at what she heard in it--all those separate voices, each one
rich and true and strong and different from the others, and all shouting
together in glorious friendliness. "That's the way things _ought_ to
be," thought Marise, "that's the way _people_ ought to be." But, oh, how
little they were like that! But here was a world where she could always
make it come true, where she could have that singing-together any time
she wished to make it for herself.
She struck more chords, her fingers finding the keys with the
second-nature sureness, learned in her months of dreary practice.
She listened to the sounds, shaken and transported to hear how they
flooded the barren emptiness of the room with glory, how they filled her
heart full, full of happiness ... only if she were happy, why was she
crying, the tears running as fast as they could down her cheeks?
This was one of the remembered moments which brought nothing but a pang
of joy to Marise. When it came, the world about her brightened.
II
There was another, one of those which came very seldom, which brought
something deeper than pain or joy. This was the recollection of an
instant, just one instant, of the day when Maman let Soeur Ste. Lucie
take her to Lourdes. It was the feast of St. Louis, and Soeur Ste. Lucie
always went every year then. She had been awfully nice and jolly, the
way she always was with Marise, and it was fun to start off with her
early in the morning, at dawn, in the special excursion train. At
Lourdes it was fun, too, really exciting to be in such a monstrously
big crowd, oh, _what_ a crowd! She heard somebody tell Soeur Ste. Lucie
that there were thirty thousand pilgrims there that day. It amused
Marise very much to hear them called pilgrims and to think that she and
Soeur Ste. Lucie were counted as pilgrims, too. She had always thought
of "pilgrims" as people who landed on a stern and rock-bound coast and
began to fight with Indians; and nothing could be more unlike that than
the crowd at Lourdes, swimming in the dusty, yellow sunshine, everybody
dressed up in his best, walking around in groups, talking and singing.
Marise held on to the Sister's nice, soft, old hand and followed her
around from one thing to another, taking a good big drink of the water,
and kneeling down whenever Soeur Ste. Lucie stopped to pray before a
shrine. Marise didn't pray much, but watched the crowd, the endless
crowd shuffling slowly past. She was proud to be kneeling there beside a
Sister, who had the right of entrance everywhere, who opened any gate in
any railing she liked, and walked right in to say a prayer where the
common run of people didn't dare go.
At noon, after three hours of this, Soeur Ste. Lucie took her charge off
up along the bright, quick-flowing stream, off into the real country,
till finally they came to a field that wasn't too thick with people.
There they sat down on the grass, under a tree. Soeur Ste. Lucie got out
the pasteboard shoe-box they had taken turns carrying around all the
morning and they ate their lunch. Marise was simply starving by that
time and anything would have tasted good. But that lunch would have made
a stone statue eat, it was so good. Cold roast chicken, plenty of it,
big slices cut recklessly right off the breast, tender and juicy and
_flavored_; and crispy, crunchy rolls and fresh butter; and little
radishes and green onions and salt, and a half bottle of the best white
wine, which they watered down in their cups with Lourdes water. Soeur
Ste. Lucie laughed over this as she poured it out and said they ought to
be saints at least for a day or so, after drinking Lourdes water with
their lunch, oughtn't they? She was as jolly as could be, anyhow, and
was enjoying herself so much that she kept Marise laughing at her jokes
all the time. One of those numerous friends of hers turned up here too,
a stout, red-faced farmer's wife, who shouted with pleasure at seeing
Soeur Ste. Lucie, and came over from the other side of the field to
bring her lunch and eat with them. She and Soeur Ste. Lucie got into
gales of laughter in which Marise joined with all her heart although she
didn't always quite see what the joke was. Then they had their dessert,
a triangle of creamy Camembert cheese, spread on the crust end of their
roll, and after this a great golden pear apiece, so full of sweet juice
that you couldn't take a bite of it without its running down your chin,
so you had to lean way forward, to the tune of everybody laughing at
you, and doing the same thing themselves.
After they had packed up what was left, and the farmer woman had gone
back to her family, Soeur Ste. Lucie got very quiet and still, pulled
out her rosary and began to murmur her prayers in a very fast, low tone,
her eyes almost shut up. Marise sat beside her in the grass, watched the
crowds beginning to turn back towards the Basilica, and a couple of
little gnats dancing round and round each other in the air. The murmur
of the prayers was like a bee-hum in her ears. She leaned back against
the tree and drew a long breath, and the next thing she knew it was
hours later, and Soeur Ste. Lucie was shaking her gently and saying
she'd better wake up because it was time to go back if they were going
to get a place to see the blessing of the sick.
After that ceremony was over, everybody was perfectly worn out and
almost starved. Soeur Ste. Lucie went to one of the convents for supper,
where the good Sisters took care of hundreds of the pilgrims, and looked
as tired as Marise felt, and walked as though their feet hurt as hers
did. But there was still one more Lourdes sight to see, the procession
of the lights in the evening. When they came out of the convent, they
found the weather changed, the wind blowing hard and a light rain
falling and not a bit of light coming from the black, black sky. The
damp was bad for rheumatism, and Soeur Ste. Lucie's knee began to pain
her, so that she said they would not march in the procession but go up
along the side of the high horse-shoe staircase, where they could see on
both sides and along the esplanade. How black and empty that looked,
that enormous stretch of pavement, like a great empty hole, outlined by
the street lights on all four sides of it. Back of it, down towards the
Grotto, there seemed to be millions of people, judging by the lights
which danced around, every way at once; and through the wind and the
rain and the darkness, Marise and Soeur Ste. Lucie could hear snatches
of singing, the chant which fairly rings from the stones and walls of
Lourdes.
[Music: A-ve! A-ve! A-ve Ma-ri-a! A-ve! A-ve! A-ve Ma-ri-a!]
Then as Marise stuck her head through the railing to watch what went on
there, far, far below them, she saw the lights begin to straighten out
into two long lines and start streaming up the lower part of the
horse-shoe staircase where she and Soeur Ste. Lucie stood. The
procession had started; two by two they were marching up towards the
blaze of light at the top where the door of the upper church stood open.
The sound of their voices grew louder and louder and there they were!
The first ones were a mother and her little girl; after them a couple of
working men; after them a man and his wife; after them a priest and a
soldier; after them--after them--Marise lost count, she felt her head
whirl, she couldn't see the people any more, only the little dancing,
quivering lights they were carrying, candle-flames, scarcely at all
protected from the wind by a bit of card-board, or a hand curved about
them.
They kept going by and going by, those little flames, until Marise's
eyes ached. And yet she couldn't look at anything else, she couldn't
stop staring at those flickering, swaying little flames.
After a long time she was able to pull her eyes away from them, to look
past them down at the great esplanade--and oh! now it was not a black
and empty hole; it was all full, full of lights, a million little
marching and singing flames, in endless lines, ordered, purposeful,
marching to and fro. So small, so tiny and feeble each one, but enough
all together to make a great light in the blackness, to fill all the
emptiness with glory.
It was then that the terrible great moment came to Marise, something
that she could never think about long enough to try to understand,
because when she tried to think about it, she began to shake all over
just as she had then, when, across the line of chanting pilgrims, she
looked down at all those little, marching, singing flames. What was it
that came to her then? The most aching sorrow; and yet an exaltation as
though broad wings were lifting her up in a solemn beat of power.
It was all over in an instant. Whenever it came after that, it always
came and went between heart-beats. But after it had come and gone,
everything looked different. It was as though, plodding along on foot, a
great wind had snatched her up, and blowing mightily for an instant so
that all the world was filled with it, had set her down, ever so much
farther along the road she had to go. And always after this moment, she
had an hour or so when she liked people better, everybody, the dirty old
flower-vendor, the street-sweeper, Jeanne, the teachers at school,
Father and Maman. It was as though she saw them all in a procession,
each trying to keep alive a precious, flickering flame.
III
There was another, a horrid one from which Marise always looked away the
instant she knew it was coming because she couldn't bear it. And yet she
never could be quick enough. She always saw it, as though in her, as in
a camera, a lens had whirringly clicked open and shut.
And yet there was nothing to it. She had come from school with Jeanne,
who had gone to the kitchen. Marise had crossed the landing and started
to pull the bell-rope, and then noticed that the door happened to be a
little ajar. So she pushed it open and walked in. As she walked past the
salon door she had glanced in, and saw M. Fortier there, just going
away from making a call, the father of Elise Fortier, her classmate at
school. He had his broad, fat back turned to her and was stooping to
kiss Maman's hand. There was nothing surprising in this; everybody knew
that gentlemen who kept on with the old ways of doing things, always
kissed ladies' hands. She had seen the father of one of the girls kiss
the bony hand of Mlle. Ballot, the head teacher at school. What was
registered indelibly on Marise's mind was the expression on Maman's
face. Maman was looking--oh, it was horrid to think such a thing, to say
such a thing, to have looked at her and seen such a thing.... Maman was
looking sort of.... Marise could never, try as she might, shut down on
this moment quickly enough to shut out the ugly thought she hated so....
Maman was looking sort of foolish and silly, as though, as though....
But here Marise was always able to snap the shutter shut and put it all
out of her mind, except the dull heaviness it left.
IV
But the worst, the very worst and most awful of all those remembered
parts of the past, was what happened about the gray cat. No, that
wasn't the way to put it, because you couldn't say that anything had
_happened_ ... and yet how sick it had made Marise, and did every time
something reminded her of it!
One day when Marise came home from school, Jeanne gave her a big,
pretty, gray, yellow-eyed cat and said she thought it might be company
for her. Marise was awfully pleased, took the cat in her arms, bending
her cheek down to rest it against the soft fur, and carried her off to
her room to try to get acquainted with her.
But there seemed to be something the matter. She didn't act like Cousin
Hetty's Tommy, up in Ashley, nice and cuddlesome; she seemed to have
something on her mind. She wouldn't sit still on Marise's lap and be
petted, she wouldn't play with a string nor drink the milk Marise put in
a saucer for her, nor lie down and go to sleep the cozy way cats usually
do. She tramped around and around the room, and every once in a while
she'd give a loud miauw, in an anxious voice.
Marise thought it was because she was with strangers in a strange place,
and that as she grew wonted, she would be happier. But she kept this up
all that day, and at night when Marise shut her up in the extra kitchen
they didn't use, she yowled so that Maman complained. And the next day
she was even worse, acting so queer, doing such funny things, stooping
her front paws down, and tramping hard with her back paws. And as she
did this, she would look up at Marise and miauw in a loud, anxious way
as though she were asking Marise to do something for her. At the end of
that second day, Marise was too worried to keep it to herself, although
she had resolved not to bother either Maman or Jeanne because they
didn't like cats. She went across the landing to ask Jeanne to come.
Jeanne came and Isabelle too, instantly sure of the worst as usual, and
declaring that the man who had sold them the cat was a thief and a
robber and had palmed off on them a sick cat that nobody wanted. They
added emphatic precautions to Marise about not touching her if she was
sick, because a sick cat's bite meant poison.
They went into the room. The cat got up and came towards them that same
queer way, stooping and treading and switching her tail. And she gave
again that strange, anxious cry.
"There, that's the way she does all the time," said Marise, troubled and
concerned. She came round in front of the two women, so that she could
look full up into their two faces, to see what they thought.
Not a turn, or color, or tone, or line of what they looked and said and
did ever faded from her mind. Her first feeling as she looked up into
their faces was of utter amazement; and after this an instant cold
premonition of something evil. She stood perfectly still gazing at
them.... What could it mean?... What made them look so...?
Jeanne and Isabelle looked down at the cat; the anger went out of
their faces, and in its place came a singular, secret expression, half
amused ... half _horrid_.... Marise could never think of any other
name for it.
Then they looked at each other, their eyes meeting, their eyebrows
arched high, and they laughed.
At the sort of laugh they gave, Marise burned hot all over, although she
had no idea of what there could be to laugh at. But every line of the
two women's bodies and faces, the tone of their laugh, the look of their
glistening, amused eyes told her that it was something they thought
shameful. And she was ashamed.
Then, as she stood there, cold and burning hot, they had both as by a
common impulse glanced at her as if something about her also seemed very
funny to them. That glance was the worst of all--like a smear she could
never wipe off.
She felt very sick, her knees shook under her. But something furious and
strong inside her told her that whatever else she did, she must not let
them see how sick they made her. She stood her ground, her eyes burning,
utterly at a loss. What could it be? What was this awful joke they
laughed at and she couldn't see?
Jeanne said, as they looked at the cat with a greedy amusement in their
eyes, "Oh, she's not _sick_. She's looking for a husband, that's all."
Isabelle laughed again at this, and said something to Jeanne in Basque.
Marise could not understand a word of this, but her hot, straining eyes,
fixed on their two faces, with a helpless fascination, received another
deep and indelible impression of conscious shamefulness.
Jeanne nodded and said to Marise, "I'll take her back to M. Bergeret's
brother-in-law for a few days, where there are other cats, and then
she'll be all right again."
She picked the cat up by the middle and held her so, while she listened
to Isabelle, who now said something else in Basque, half-grinning, her
lips curled in an embarrassed, half-pleased way. Jeanne glanced sharply
at Marise, as if to see whether she had understood this, in spite of its
being said in Basque.
Then they both went out of the room, Jeanne carrying the cat by a hard,
careless grasp about her middle. Outside the door they both burst into
giggles, as though they had been restraining themselves before Marise.
The little girl heard them giggling all the way down the hall, the
sound broken once by the loud anxious miauw of the cat.
Marise stood perfectly still till she heard the outer door open and
close. Then she looked about her wildly. She wanted to run somewhere and
hide her face. She wanted to sink down on the floor; she wanted somebody
to help her, to make it up to her, some one to wipe it away and put her
back where she had been three minutes before, when Jeanne and Isabelle
had come in the door. She _couldn't_ go on, living the way she felt now,
as though she were dirty inside and couldn't wash herself clean. What
was it all about? What had it meant? What was there about having a
husband that people thought was so...?
At this it came over her in a wave again, so that she started as though
she had been struck a slashing blow, and ran, ran breathlessly out to
get help.
In the dark hall she stood still, the thump, thump of her heart loud in
her ears. A murmur of voices came from the salon. Maman had callers....
But even if she hadn't, Marise now knew she could not have spoken to
Maman about it. Something came and stood between her and Maman so that
she knew she could not tell her. She had a horrible fear that Maman
would look that way, too, perhaps she might laugh that way ... perhaps
everybody would. Perhaps that was one of the things they _did_. Not
Father, either ... no, she'd be ashamed of ... not ... why, there was
_nobody_ she could tell; there was nowhere to run for help.
She went slowly back to her room. The sight of it brought up before her
again the glistening eyes of the two women as they had looked at the cat
and laughed. A terrible burning came up all over her so that she was
almost suffocated. She wanted to hide her face. She found herself
leaning against the dingy, checked red-and-white curtains. They smelled
of dust as she buried her face in them, burrowing deeper and deeper
among them as though she must hide herself, hide herself from ... but
she couldn't hide herself from what was inside her own mind.
She stood there a long time, her face pressed into the dusty curtains,
her body buried in them. She was sick, sick from head to foot.
And then ... nobody came to help her, since there was nobody to come;
nothing happened ... nothing could happen. She had thought she
_couldn't_ live, feeling like this. But she would have to, since there
wasn't anything else to do.
* * * * *
This came to her slowly, and slowly sank into her, like still, deep
cold.
Two days after this, as Jeanne was brushing her hair, she said to
Marise, "Our cat will be brought back to us to-morrow. She is all right
now, M. Bergeret says."
Marise waited until the wave of sickness passed and she felt she could
make her voice sound as usual. Then she said casually, "I've changed my
mind. I don't want a cat now. It would bother Maman too much."
Jeanne was relieved. "Oh, very well. I don't ask anything better. I hate
cats around the house anyhow." She went on brushing Marise's hair, with
careful, loving skill, proud of its thickness, its sheen, its silky
blackness. She thought to herself, "What a beautiful child our Marise
is. And how I love her! There isn't anything I wouldn't do for her! May
the Holy Virgin guard her and keep her safe always, Amen." She never
thought again of the cat.
_NEALE BEGINS TO BE NEALE_