Marise had noticed as she left the stage, that Madame Garnier was there
with her son,--oh, yes, Danielle _had_ said her brother was back from
America. Now he'd be tagging around everywhere, tied to his mother's
apron-strings, as Papa said all young Frenchmen were. Yes, they were
holding hands this minute. How Papa would laugh to see that, as much as
he did when Frenchmen with beards kissed each other. And now he'd be
everlastingly coming in with his tiresome mother on Maman's days at
home, to fidget and stammer and drop his teaspoon. Oh, well, she thought
with a superior condescension, he had been hardly more than a boy, just
out of the lycee, only twenty-one. He might be better now. Perhaps he
had got rid of a little of his shyness in New York; although
twenty-three, for a _man_, was of course no age at all.
The fashion at school just then, was to look down on boys and young men
as green and insipid. The ideal of all the girls was an _old_ man of
forty, with white hair, and black eyebrows, a little pointed gray beard,
and such sad, sad eyes! Every girl was waiting for such a chance to
devote herself to healing the wounds made by other women, faithless,
heartless creatures who had ravaged his youth and destroyed his faith.
To prove to him what a woman's fidelity and love could be, and then die
in his remorseful arms, of slow consumption brought on by his
neglect...! Or, as the pious ones had it, to bring him back to the
Church, and have him become a monk after your death. Or, perhaps, as
some of the more dramatic ones imagined the matter, to find a plot
against his life, and to sacrifice yourself to defeat it, throwing back
at the last moment the hood of your long dark cloak, and showing a
beautiful white satin gown, stained with your heart's blood, as you
gasped out, "For you, for you, adored Rene."
The books from which the girls got these ideas, and many others not so
harmless, were kept in a hole hidden behind a big loose stone in the end
wall of the school garden. Though they were religiously wrapped in
oil-cloth, the damp did more or less penetrate. But spots of green mold
and limp damp pages which tore unless you held your breath as you turned
them, only added to their charm as you read them, two or three heads
bent over the page, while a friend kept guard at the turn of the path by
the magnolia tree.
Marise had read them with the others, and although neither Father nor
Maman paid the slightest attention to what she read, and there were lots
of places in Maman's novels ever so much worse than these, she naturally
felt an agreeable thrill at the thought of what an explosion there would
be if they were ever discovered, reading love-stories at school. It was
the fashion with the girls to do it. So she did, and as dramatically as
any of the others. But far down, deep under all this, was a hermetically
sealed chamber where she kept a secret disgust for the whole subject of
falling in love, a secret distaste for men, old or young, and a
furiously held determination never to have anything to do with them. It
was all very well to carry on against the rules and to play-act with the
girls about something in a book, but the faintest approach of the same
thing in reality, froze her stiff with indignation and repugnance. When,
walking on the street with Jeanne, some well-dressed young man cast a
glance of admiration at her, or some half-tipsy workman called out a
rough compliment she shrank away from them, hating them and herself; a
feeling which old Jeanne zealously fostered.
She did not often think about the gray cat now, but she had never
forgotten it, and she had picked up a great deal more information than
she had had, about what made people like Isabelle snigger and grin, when
there was talk of getting a husband. She intensely loathed all that she
had seen and learned, whether it were the shocked, nauseated expression
on the face of one of the older nuns at school, when she forbade any
talk among the girls over the gossip that one of the kitchen-girls had
let a young man into the kitchen at midnight; or a passage in one of
Maman's novels, which she had found lying open on the salon table, and
read before she could stop herself. Every such experience was like a
blow on a bruised spot, deep under the surface of her life, which was so
sore now that it ached at the slightest touch, ached and made her sick.
She had learned that she must protect it at all costs, and she fought
off blindly whatever seemed to threaten it, fought it off with
indignation, with brusqueness, with stiffness, with silence, using any
weapon she could snatch up. At school, if she found a group of older
girls with their heads together, and a certain expression on their
faces, the weapon was often simply to run away into another part of the
playground. "I can run away faster than they can run after me!" she told
herself, fleeing away to where the little girls were playing hop-scotch
and "chat-perche."
There were times of course when you couldn't run away literally, but
Marise had other methods of running away, the best one being a sudden
change of subject--"Oh, Isabelle, your chignon is coming untied!" or
"Gabrielle, isn't Sister Ste. Marie coming down the hall?" "Jeanne,
you're pulling my hair!"
And she had found, too, that to head people off from beginning on the
sort of thing you had to run away from, there was no better device than
lively spirits. If you kept joking and laughing and carrying on, the
girls didn't have time to lower their voices, look over their shoulders
and begin to talk with their faces close to yours.
She was still flushed from laughing and talking and carrying on, when
she emerged from the side-stairs into the half empty assembly-room,
looking for her wraps, and saw beside Jeanne, Mme. Garnier and her son
evidently waiting for Danielle, for Mme. Garnier had Danielle's hat and
cloak on her arm. "Oh, zut! What a bore!" She'd have to speak to them;
the young man would fidget and make her nervous, and she did think Mme.
Garnier the tiresomest of all the frumps who came to call on Maman. She
was an old snake-in-the-grass, too,--to use one of Papa's expressions.
She pretended to say such sweet things to Maman, and really they were
all different ways to slight poor Maman, who didn't understand half the
time. But Marise did, and resented it for her. Poor Maman!
"Good morning, Madame Garnier," she said with a little bow, coming up to
them, and, "Good morning, Monsieur Jean."
She remembered to drop her eyes, following the precepts of the teacher
of deportment, and profited by the gesture to despise Mme. Garnier's
shoes, stuffed lumpily full, like badly made sausages.
When Mme. Garnier finished a long speech, she didn't mean a word of,
about how nicely Marise had played, "Oh, thank you very much, Madame
Garnier," she answered, looking up for a moment.
Jeanne put her hat and coat on now, as Danielle romped in, talking at
the top of her voice. Madame Garnier, with the perfunctory air of one
attending to a familiar duty, savagely reproached her for
boisterousness, and general heathenishness of manners. Danielle took
this as it was meant, and paying not the slightest attention to the
rebuke, went on talking at the top of her voice, telling her mother and
brother all about the foolishness back of the scenes. "It was simply
_killing_!" she shouted, laughing so that no one but Marise had any idea
what she was talking about, "I thought I'd die, didn't you, Marise? You
never saw anything in your life so funny! All of us wrong side up, with
our heads ... oh, ha! ha! ha!"
She and Marise went off into peals of laughter which they immediately
suppressed to giggles and then to smothered muffled gasps, as they saw
the Reverend Mother's dignified black draperies moving down the
side-aisle. They'd hear from it at school if Reverend Mother caught them
in such a breach of manners as _laughing in a public place_!
"Who won the prize, my darling?" whispered Jeanne, in Marise's ear, as
she smoothed down the collar of her coat.
"Oh, I did," Marise whispered back casually. She had left the big red
album of Morceaux de Salon with Mlle. Vivier, because she knew if she
tried to carry it home and passed by a school-mate she would be greeted
with howls of jeering laughter. She would bring some paper to-morrow, to
wrap it up.
"We may as well walk along together," said Mme. Garnier now. "Our road
lies your way."
Jeanne dropped respectfully behind, Mme. Garnier walked with Marise,
Danielle with her brother. Marise shot one sideways glance at Mme.
Garnier as they started along the sidewalks. "Sapristi," as Jeanne said,
"what an ugly hat! How could anybody not just drop dead to be seen with
such a horror on!" "Yes, Madame," she answered politely, at random, not
paying any attention to Mme. Garnier's drone. How vulgar it was to let
your dress wrinkle across the back where the top of your corset came.
And it was worse to let it cave in in front, at the same place. When she
was grown up, she would never let _her_ dress do that! Marise reflected
with the utmost satisfaction on the excellent cut and hang of her own
dress. There hadn't been a better one there, and she had silk stockings
while most of the girls had clumsy cotton ones, or at best lisle thread.
Jeanne certainly did know how to buy clothes, and Papa never said a word
against paying the bills. Well, she could wear them too! She had style.
She cast a pleased sideways glance at her slim straight silhouette,
reflected in the large window of a shop, saw in the same mirror Mme.
Garnier's uninteresting middle-aged figure, and then surprisingly she
also caught a glimpse of Jeanne, behind the others, her handkerchief at
her eyes as if she were crying. Marise stopped short, and turned sharply
to look back. For mercy's sake, what could be the matter with Jeanne?
Why, yes, she was, she was actually crying, the big tears rolling down
her leathery cheeks. With an unceremonious excuse to Mme. Garnier,
Marise left her planted there on the sidewalk, and darted back to
Jeanne, asking anxiously what had happened.
Jeanne looked at her fondly, her wrinkled old face bright with love, "I
am thanking Our Holy Mother and all the Saints for your triumph, my
darling!" she said, her voice trembling. "All this day I have been
praying for you, all this day."
Marise's first impulse was to inquire stupidly, "What triumph?" and her
next was to burst into laughter as she realized that Jeanne had worked
herself up so about that old Gambert music prize, of all things! But
these gusts had come and gone before the expression of her face had had
time to change; and when they had gone, all she could see was the
affection shining in the old woman's eyes. Dear, _darling_ old Jeanne!
_Let_ her think it was a triumph! She should never know anything else
about it, bless her!
Marise remembered Danielle, the mocking, and glanced uneasily towards
where the Garniers stood, waiting for her to go on with them. No,
Danielle had not heard. Jeanne was safe.
Marise had grown so that she no longer needed to reach up to put her
arms around the neck of the tall old woman, and kiss her hard on both
tear-wet cheeks. "I owe my victory to thee, dear Jeanne, to thy
prayers," she whispered fervently. "And I shall never, never forget it."
All this was a lie, of course, but lies were easy to tell, and what harm
were they, if you made somebody more comfortable by telling them?
She pirouetted about on her toes, and ran back to take her place with
Mme. Garnier. "Jeanne had bad news from one of her family," she murmured
pensively in answer to Mme. Garnier's look of inquiry. "Oh, bah!" she
thought carelessly. "What was one more lie to head off an old cat like
that?" Besides, it was amusing to see how easy it was to lie, how with
one little phrase, this way or that, you could change facts.
After she had come in, and gone to her room to change to her usual dark
woolen school-dress, with the long-sleeved linen apron over it, Marise
happened to glance out through the lace curtain over her window and saw
that Mme. Garnier's son was sitting on the bench across the street in
front of the Chateau Vieux. "Well, that was queer, why hadn't he gone on
with his mother and Danielle?" She looked again, to make sure, herself
hidden at one side behind the heavy tapestry curtain, as Jeanne had
taught her, lest she be seen by men on the street. "Yes, it was
Danielle's brother, sure enough. Well, what could he be doing there?"
She turned back to her greenish mirror to take off the white ribbon from
her hair, and found that she had a dim recollection that before he went
away to America, he used to sit on that bench in the late afternoon and
evening. There was something unpleasant connected with that vague
memory, and after a time that came to her also. She had heard Anna
Etchergary, the concierge, and Jeanne laughing about it, and had
overheard them conjecture that the young man was no such innocent
mother's boy as he seemed, and then they had seen that Marise was there,
and stopped abruptly, looking at her with the expression that she hated.
Before she went in to dinner, she looked out once more to see if he were
still there. Yes, there he was leaning forward, the light from the
street-lamp full on his face. Marise could see that he was pale, but
there was a smile on his lips as if his thoughts were very pleasant.
When she stepped into the salon, she did not for a moment see that Maman
was already there, because she stood at one side of the window, half
hidden in the thick tapestry curtain, looking out through the lace over
the glass. By the expression of her back, Marise knew that she, too, was
looking at Mme. Garnier's son on the bench. For an instant, as though
Marise's fingers had dropped on white-hot metal, the wild idea came to
her that it was at Maman that Jean-Pierre was smiling, that it was for
Maman that he sat there. She jerked herself away angrily and
instantaneously from this thought, ashamed of herself. She was getting
like Jeanne, like the girls at school.
Maman had heard her move, and now turned sharply around from the window,
with the startled look of some one into whose bed-room you've walked
without knocking at the door. But Marise never knocked at the salon door
before going in. Why should she have thought of it to-day? Maman drew
the heavy curtain over the window with a sweep of her bare white arm.
For Maman was in grande tenue with her mauve satin low-necked evening
dress on, and a camellia in her hair. Marise's first thought was that
she was to have another solitary dinner. "Oh, Maman, are you going out?"
"Certainly not, what makes you think I am?" asked Maman quickly. She
added because it was perfectly evident what made Marise think it, "The
belt on this dress has been changed and I tried it on to see if it was
right. And then I saw it was dinner time."
Marise was about to say something about the flower in her hair, but her
antennae-like sensitiveness to what other people were feeling, made her
shut her lips. She looked hard at her mother, who made herself opaque,
looking back at Marise, her face and eyes and mouth firmly closed over
what was in her mind. Being able to see only the surface, Marise took
that in with a fresh impression of not having looked at Maman for some
time. How pretty she was, with her hair like gold threads, catching the
light, and how different from her crinkly hair like a golden mist around
her head, were the thick, thick petals of the camellia, with their
dense, close, fine-grained surface.
Jeanne came to the door. "Madame is served," she said in a correct tone,
standing aside as they came out. She did not look at Marise at all, but
Marise knew perfectly well that she too was wondering about the evening
dress and the flower. Marise began to try to invent some plausible
explanation for it which she could let drop in talk to-morrow as they
walked to school.
* * * * *
Marise had lessons to get that evening, lots of them, and hard ones, as
usual. After dinner, she went back to her room, opened her history and
began. It was very still in the apartment. No sound at all from Maman in
the salon. Of course, Jeanne and Isabelle were both across the landing
in the other kitchen, doing the work as they always were unless Maman
expected callers.
Marise leaned over her table and concentrated with all her might on the
role played by Colbert in the economic organization of the seventeenth
century. She was trying to memorize the outline of his introduction of
sounder account-keeping in government administration, when all at once,
there in her mind, instead of Louis XIV and his court, was the picture
of Maman standing beside the window, looking out. If Marise were now to
step quickly into the salon, would she again find Maman...?
Marise tossed her head angrily at the possibility of her doing such a
sneaky thing as to go to see.... Like some nasty idea of Jeanne's that
was! She drew her history closer to her, changed her position and went
on studying. "Colbert a souvent repete que c'est par le commerce qu'un
pays s'enrichit...."
Although she had not meant to, she started up and went to the window,
opening the heavy curtains a tiny crack, to look out.
Yes, he was still there, two hours after they had left him. He had not
even gone home for dinner. But old Madeleine, the flower seller must
have passed by on her way home, after shutting up her flower-stand, for
now he had a white rose bud in his hands, looking down at it fixedly,
turning it about between his fingers, once in a while touching a petal
delicately, or holding it up to draw in its fragrance.
Marise pulled the curtain shut, and hurried back to the improvement of
the French army from 1680 on. She felt very miserable, as though she'd
eaten something she ought not to ... was it a headache? She had heard
ladies talk so much about headaches, and had never had one. Yes, it must
be a headache. That was it, her first headache. By thinking about it she
felt it very distinctly now in the back of her head--like a great weight
there drawing her head back. She tried to think of Colbert; she looked
hard at the familiar picture of Colbert rubbing his hands in glee over
all the work piled up on his desk, but what she saw was Maman standing
at one side of the window looking out. Was that Maman she heard moving
about in the salon?
What time was it? Wasn't it time for her to go to bed? The soapy dark
green clock on her mantel piece showed only half past eight. Too early.
She started at a sudden sound, her hand beginning to tremble. The
door-bell rang. Jeanne and Isabelle were both on the other side of the
landing and would not hear. She listened, her hands and feet cold, heard
Maman go to the door herself and Jean-Pierre Garnier's voice asking if
Monsieur and Madame and Mademoiselle Allen were at home. Maman laughed
and said that Monsieur was away on business and Mademoiselle was, of
course, busy with her lessons, but Madame was there!
Marise heard Mme. Garnier's son also laugh nervously and say that he
would come in for a moment to pay his respects to Madame. They both
spoke English, which Jean-Pierre had learned so well in New York. Well,
why not? In America anybody might happen to make an evening call at half
past eight. And Mme. Garnier's son had just been in America. Heavens!
How her head ached! She would go to bed anyway, whether it was time or
not. She undressed rapidly and getting into bed pulled the covers over
her head. It seemed to her that she lay thus for ages, her eyes pinched
shut in the smothering air under the blankets. Then she pulled them down
to breathe and found that she had forgotten to put out her candle, which
was guttering low and showing by the clock that her "ages" had been less
than an hour. It was twenty minutes past nine.
She blew out her candle, and decided that Jeanne or no Jeanne, she must
have more air. She was suffocating. She drew the curtains aside and
secure in the darkness of the room, opened both sides of the window
wide. The fresh air came in like waking up from a nightmare.
But she had not waked up, for there on the bench across the street was
Mme. Garnier's son again. Had she dreamed that he had come to the door?
How strangely he sat now, flung down sideways, his face hidden on his
arm. As Marise stared, understanding nothing of what she saw, he started
up spasmodically as though some one had struck him from behind. Then he
collapsed again, his face buried on his out-flung arm. After this he was
perfectly motionless, like everything around him, the somber wall of the
Chateau Vieux, the sickly light of the street-lamp, the bench, the rough
paving-stones, the vacant, gray shutters of the department store further
along the street.
As Marise stood there, shivering in her night-gown, staring, she heard
Maman's quick light step at the other end of the corridor, and the sound
of Maman's voice, humming a little trilling song. She turned her head,
and saw the cheerful yellow flicker of a candle coming nearer her open
door. Maman was going down to her dressing-room to get ready for bed.
She thought of course that Marise was in bed and asleep by this time
and when she came by, looking down at the lighted candle in the pretty
little gilt candle-stick she did not even glance into the dark room
where the child stood bewildered. For the instant she was framed in the
square of the open door, she was brilliantly painted on the darkness,
all the bright colors of her fair hair, her shining eyes, her red lips,
softly gleaming in the warm, golden light of the little flame. The
picture was printed indelibly on the child's wide eyes sensitized by the
darkness; and long after the sound of the gay little song had died away,
long years after the sound of the light footstep was silent, Marise
could see, hung on the blackness around her bed at night, the shining
picture, golden-bright in the quivering, living flame of the candle, the
dense waxy petals of the camellia against the vaporous blonde hair, the
smiling curved lips, the velvet white of the slender bare neck and arms,
the rich sheen of the mauve satin flowing about the quick, light feet.
She got into bed warmed, comforted. Nothing could be the matter if Maman
was smiling so cheerfully. She fell asleep at once, desperately tired,
giving up as an unanswerable and no longer very interesting riddle, the
question of what was the trouble with Mme. Garnier's son.
But in the night, without knowing how, she found herself once more by
the open window--she had been dreaming, she had got up to see about
something in her dream--something about ... why, there he was still on
the bench, all huddled and stooped together now, his face hidden in both
arms crossed on his knees. Perhaps he had dropped asleep there.
Br-r-r-r! he would be cold when he woke up. How chilly it still was at
night! Well, yes, it was evident that she had dreamed it about his
ringing at the door. She plunged back under the covers, she heard the
long sonorous hoot of a steamer going out to sea, and was asleep before
it died away.
She overslept in the morning, so that Jeanne, when she came with the
tray, ran to shake her and said she must hurry to dress or she would be
late to school. Marise sprang up, thinking of nothing but the reprimand
she risked, and flung on her clothes, stopping to bite off big
mouthfuls of the buttered croissants and drink big swallows of the
cafe-au-lait. Jeanne buttoned her behind while she brushed furiously at
her hair. "Where are my books? Oh, never mind that last hook, it'll
never show. Oh, just _once_ without my gloves! No I don't _need_ my
coat, the sun is so warm." She ran out to the corridor, snatched her
hat, and, her teeth set in the last morsel of her bread, darted down the
hall, Jeanne galloping stiffly behind her, as anxious as she over the
possibility of being late.
But at the outer door, she paused, one hand on the knob, something
imperatively urging her to return. What had she seen as she passed the
open door of the salon? Just the every morning scene, Isabelle with her
head tied up in a cloth, a brush-broom in her hand, all the windows wide
open, the rugs hanging over the sills, the sun streaming in with the
particular clean fresh brilliance it always seemed to have early in the
morning, while the room was still empty of life. How could there have
been anything threatening about that familiar sight? It was Isabelle's
face. She had been standing perfectly still, the long handle of her
brush-broom held under one arm, looking down with a puzzled expression
at something she held in her hand.
Marise had wheeled so instantly in answer to the vague warning of
danger, that she was back at the door of the salon, before Isabelle's
position had changed. She still stood there, looking down at a wilted,
white rose-bud. And now her face was suspicious as well as puzzled.
Glancing up she said meaningly to Jeanne, over Marise's shoulder, "Now,
_where_ do you suppose _this_ came from? I found it on the floor by the
sofa! There were no roses brought into the house by any one _we_ saw
yesterday!"
Jeanne thrust her long stringy neck forward, and passed her head over
Marise's shoulder to verify the fact. Marise could see the glitter in
her eye. Marise cried out instantly, "Oh, my poor rose! _That's_ where
it was! I looked for it everywhere last night to put it in water."
Jeanne and Isabelle turned their eyes on her penetratingly. She held
them energetically at bay, hardening her gaze, defying them.
"I didn't see you have any rose yesterday," said Jeanne. But Marise knew
by the tone of her voice that she was not sure.
"Well, I did," she repeated, "Gabrielle Meunier gave it to me out of her
bouquet. Oh, I'm so sorry it's spoiled."
"I believe you, that it's spoiled," said Isabelle carelessly, dropping
it into the dustpan. "Somebody must have stepped on it to crush it like
that."
Her interest in it was gone. She began to hum her favorite dance-tune,
"jig-jig, pr-r-rt!" and to shake out a rug.
Marise fled down the slippery waxed stairway, three steps at a time, and
dashed out on the street, Jeanne, purple-faced and panting, close at her
heels. How she hurried, how breathlessly she hurried that morning; but a
thought inside her head doggedly kept pace with her hurry.