I
Now that she was in an advanced class, she stayed all day in the school
and convent, taking her lunch with the "internats" in the refectory. So
that it was always six o'clock before Jeanne came for her, with the
first, thin twilight beginning to fall bluely in the narrow, dark
streets, and sunset colors glimmering from the oily surface of the
Adour. That evening when Jeanne came for her, she said that Maman had
decided to go back for a day or two to Saint Sauveur for the sake of the
change of air and to try the baths again. Jeanne never permitted herself
the slightest overt criticism of her mistress in talking to Marise, but
she had a whole gamut of intonations and inflections which Marise
understood perfectly and hated--hated especially because there was
nothing there to quarrel with Jeanne about. Jeanne had told her the news
in the most correct and colorless words, but what she had really said
was, "Just another of her idle notions, gadding off for more sulphur
baths. Nothing in the world the matter with her. And it's much too early
for the Saint Sauveur season."
Marise could resent such intimations, although Jeanne was too adroit to
give her grounds for open reproach. She had her own gamut of expression
and attitudes, with which to punish the old woman. She immediately
stopped chattering, looked coldly offended, and walked beside Jeanne,
her face averted from her, out towards the street, now crowded with
two-wheeled ox-wagons, and donkeys, and men with push-carts starting
back into the country after market day. She could feel that she was
making Jeanne suffer and she was glad of it.
As she kept her eyes steadily turned through the tangle of traffic
across to the sidewalk on the other side, not more than ten feet away,
so narrow was the street, she caught sight of Mme. Garnier's son. He had
a small valise in his hand, and was idling along as though he were
waiting for something. As she looked, their eyes met. He looked at her
hard, and crossed the street towards her. He came swiftly now, as if,
all of a sudden, he were in a great hurry. How oddly he was staring at
her! Not as though he recognized her, as though he took her for somebody
else. Oh, perhaps he wasn't looking at her at all! Perhaps there was
somebody behind them, at whom he was staring so hard. The tall
school-girl jerked her head around for a quick glance over her shoulder.
But there was nobody else on the sidewalk!
The young man had come up to them now, had taken off his hat and stood
there, bowing. How white that bluish light made people look! Marise and
Jeanne slackened their pace for an instant, thinking that he wished to
speak to them, but all that he brought out was, "Good evening,
Mademoiselle," in a low voice.
They stood for an instant, Marise feeling very awkward, as though she
had misunderstood something. Then he put his hat back on, and stooping
forward as though he were tired and his valise heavy, hurried on. Marise
looked over her shoulder again and saw that he was almost running. But
he had plenty of time to catch that train to Lourdes, which was the only
one due to leave Bayonne that evening.
Jeanne's turn had come, in the little guerilla skirmish between Marise
and herself. "_Don't_ turn around in the street that way!" she cried in
a shocked tone. "Haven't you any sense of what is proper? Don't you know
if you turn around like that, just after a young man has passed you, he
is likely to think that you are _looking after him_!" She had no idea
that Marise was really guilty of such a heinous misdemeanor, and had
only snatched the phrase up as a weapon.
II
That night Jeanne rolled the little fold-up cot-bed in across the
landing and setting it up in Marise's room, slept there beside her.
This was what they had done before, when Maman was at Saint Sauveur, on
the nights when Father had to be away too. Isabelle hadn't the slightest
intention of sleeping over on the other side by herself, and she always
came too, bringing her own sheets to put on Maman's bed. She remarked
that she couldn't afford to have it said of her that she had spent the
night in the apartment without another woman with her. Marise did not
see in the least why any one should object to having this said of her,
but the tone of Isabelle's voice as she spoke, and the fact that it had
something to do with passing the night warned her off from asking any
explanation. She had already gleaned from many sources, in and out of
books, that there was something about accounting for where you were at
night, about which she didn't want to have Jeanne and Isabelle talk. So
she began to sing a new satirical verse to the air of "Maman, les petits
bateaux" which one of the girls had made up that day.
Everything went exactly as usual the next morning, the absence of the
mistress of the house not making the faintest difference. Jeanne and
Isabelle went through their usual domestic ritual in exactly the same
order, whether Madame told them or not. Indeed, whatever she might tell
them, they changed no slightest tittle of what they did, as she had long
ago found out. Jeanne brought in the breakfast tray, and did Marise's
hair as usual, and although not a soul had stepped into the salon since
the day before, Isabelle was skating back and forth on the waxed floor,
woolen cloths on her feet, when Marise passed the door. Outside it was a
breathless still day, with a hazy sun, very hot for so early in the
spring.
As they crossed the Adour, Marise caught the first whiff of its summer
smell, compounded of decaying sea-weed, tar and stale fish. She and
Jeanne said little, although they had wordlessly made up their tiff the
evening before, and had gone to sleep after exchanging their usual
hearty good-night kisses. Their quarrels although frequent never lasted
long.
Everybody at school was dull, too, from the first heat. The hours seemed
very long, with little in them. Marise felt listless and rather cross,
and dreaded the exertion of taking her music lesson, although she
usually looked forward eagerly to those hours with Mlle. Hasparren, the
best and happiest of her days.
At four o'clock the music-teacher called to take her home. She also was
hot and tired and fearfully nervous, she said, after a terribly trying
day in her class-room, with her forty-five squirming little Basques. As
a rule she and Marise had a good deal to say to each other, because
Mlle. Hasparren was the only person Marise knew who had any interest in
America. The rest never spoke of it, or if by chance they did, they only
asked about buffaloes and Indians, and evidently didn't believe her when
she said she'd never seen either. But Mlle. Hasparren knew better, and
loved to talk about it, and actually knew the difference between the
Civil War and the Revolution, and had heard of Abraham Lincoln and
thought he was a greater man than _Napoleon_! Marise, who was reading a
great deal of Victor Hugo, hardly knew whether to agree with this
startling idea or not, but she felt when she was with Mlle. Hasparren,
that it was safe to open many doors which she usually kept locked, and
to talk with her about things she never dreamed of mentioning to anybody
else. Which did not, of course, at all prevent her from wishing to
goodness Mlle. Hasparren didn't wear such fearful hats, and that her
skirts would hang better.
But this hot day of early spring, she thought neither of America or of
hats, as she plodded silently beside the equally weary school-teacher,
through the dusty stone streets. The depression which had hung over her
all day deepened till she felt ready to cry. Wherever she looked she saw
Maman standing in that stealthy attitude, looking out of the window.
Mlle. Hasparren's worn, swarthy face, under her home-made hat, was
plainer than usual.
Isabelle let them in to the empty salon, with her usual air of being
cheered up to have something happen, and bustlingly arranged two seats
before the piano. Mlle. Hasparren took off her hat and pushed her
fingers through her graying hair. Marise fumbled among the music on the
piano and pulled out what they were working on, the Toccata in D minor.
She flattened it out with both hands on the music-rack above the keys,
and sat down. She raised her fingers, made sure of the notes of the
first twiddle, and began to play.
She had not wished to take this music-lesson. She had been hot and
listless and tired; with a secret heartache and a dread like a black
shadow on her heart. She had sat down before a great black varnished
wooden box and,--detached, indifferent, pre-occupied, had set her
fingers to pushing first one and then another bit of wood covered with
white bone.
And what happened?
Out of the black, varnished box, like the mighty genii of the Arabian
Nights, soared something beautiful and strong, something that filled the
dreary, empty salon and her heavy heart with sonorous life, something
which like the genii put its greatness at the service of the being who
knew the charm to free it from imprisonment.
"Stronger there, as you come up from the bass," said Mlle. Hasparren,
and Marise knew from her voice that she too was soaring up. And yet,
although she sounded no longer dull and weary, but strong and joyful,
she abated nothing of her exacting rigor. "No, don't blur it because you
make it louder. Don't lean on the pedal. Clean power of stroke, that's
the thing for Bach. Now try again. Roll it up from that lowest note,
like a mid-ocean wave."
She listened, all her personality concentrated on her hearing, her head
turned sideways, her eyes fixed on a point in the very far distance.
With all her intelligence she listened, and when the immature
intelligence of the pupil faltered or failed, she came swiftly to the
rescue. "No, take care! you're losing yourself in that passage. You're
playing each note correctly but you haven't the sense of the whole
thing. There's a rhythmic progression there that starts four measures
back, and doesn't end till you swing into those chords. Don't lose your
way in what is only a little ornamentation of the line. See, to
here--all that is half of the rhythmic figure, and here it is repeated
in the bass. Now again! Read it so the meaning comes out."
The nimble flexible young fingers went flying at the passage again,
guided and informed by the ripe soundness of the older mind, and from a
passage which Marise had physically mastered as mechanically as she
would an exercise, she heard the master-voice speak out again.
Her teacher leaned forward beside her, working as hard as Marise,
although she did not touch the keys. Four years of incessant work
together had made them almost like one mind. From time to time, they
wiped the perspiration away from their foreheads with a hasty pass of
their handkerchiefs, Mlle. Hasparren's gesture as hurried as Marise's.
"Pearly in the treble--clear, clear--try that bar of triplets again.
Again! Again! Once more! There, now start at the double bar--like
running water. No, not so much shading, ugh! _no_, that's not classic,
let it speak for itself! You don't need to use those theatrical swells
and die-aways here. You're not playing Gounod. Start that movement over
again. Every note's a pearl, remember, string them together in a
necklace. Don't jumble them in a heap."
They were still at it, laboring like slaves, putting their backs into it
like ditch-diggers, exalted as young-eyed cherubim, when Jeanne came
discreetly to the door to look in on them. This was her decorous method
of intimating that she was about to put Marise's dinner on the table.
"Oh, la! la!" cried Mlle. Hasparren, "is it as late as that? And my
sister told me to be sure to start early enough to buy some salad for
our supper." She slammed on her hat, took her bag, and darted away.
Marise got up, feeling numb, flung her arms high over her head, and
stretched herself like a cat, although she knew that like any other
vigorous and forthright bodily gesture this would call down a reproof
from Jeanne as not being "convenable." But she did not care what Jeanne
said to her. She did not care about anything in the world but the
deep-rolling waves of rhythm, and the clear tinkling rain of pearls
which went on and on in her head as she ate her solitary dinner, and
studied her lessons in her solitary room afterwards.
When Jeanne came to set up her bed for the night, she remarked "What a
horrid sticky hot day it has been!"
"Has it?" asked Marise, in genuine forgetfulness of the weather. Also,
caught up into another world as she was, she forgot for an hour or two
all about the white rose-bud.
III
But she was reminded of it as she opened her eyes the next morning. It
was her fifteenth birthday and to celebrate it, Jeanne had already been
out to the market and brought home a great bouquet of white rose-buds.
She was loitering around, pretending to pick up the room, but really
waiting to hear what Marise would say, so of course Marise must conquer
the nausea that white rose-buds gave her and exclaim that they were
lovely, and kiss Jeanne and thank her and lean over them and smell them
rapturously. What a lot of this sort of thing there was to do, Marise
thought, if you didn't want to hurt people's feelings, or let them
suspect things you didn't want them to know.
Jeanne tried to restrain herself to decorum, but her overwhelming
jealousy of any one else who touched Marise's life was too much for her,
"They're nicer than that one wilted old thing Gabrielle Meunier gave
you, hein?" Marise understood then why Jeanne had chosen white
rose-buds. Down below the surface where she kept her real feelings she
heard a sick sort of laugh. What she said was, with fervor, "Oh, yes,
Jeanne, a thousand times better!" (You might as well make it a thousand
times while you were about it.)
"Well, I should hope so!" said Jeanne, satisfied at last.
That morning when Marise stepped into the courtyard at school a group of
older girls had their heads together over a newspaper, and when they saw
her, they all started. Elise Fortier rolled the paper up rapidly and put
it in her leather portfolio with her school-books. They looked at her
very oddly. Four years ago, Marise would have run up to them, demanding,
"What's the matter? What makes you look so funny? What is it in the
paper?" That was before she became aware of any mire in the world,
invisible, wide-spreading, into which almost any casual inquiry seemed
likely to plunge you. Marise knew what it was to have some of that
indelibly staining mire splashed upon her, from a look, an intonation or
a phrase that meaningly expressed much more than it said. She walked
with a desperate wariness now, trying to pick her way dry-shod, in the
dark. So that morning she was only afraid that the girls _would_ tell
her what it was they had found in the paper that made them look so. She
pretended that she had seen nothing, ran up to them with a funny story
to tell, and went at once to hang up her wraps in the hall outside the
class-room door. Sister Ste. Julie passed her and said, "Good-morning,
my child." It seemed to Marise that she too looked queerly at her. She
reached her hand over her shoulder to make sure her dress was hooked,
and felt of the ribbon in her hair. No mirrors were allowed inside the
school and convent walls, or she would have stepped to look in one to
see what was wrong.
At eleven o'clock while the class in advanced geography was reciting,
the street bell rang. Sister Ste. Marie went to answer, and came back to
say that Mlle. Allen was wanted. Her maman was ill, and the bonne had
come for her. All the girls turned instantly and looked at her without
surprise, as though they had been expecting this. Marise started up,
suddenly very pale, put on her wraps in a great hurry and ran to where
Jeanne was waiting for her. Jeanne looked just as usual, although
everything else seemed to have changed in an instant and to look
threateningly upon Marise.
"Your maman is home from the baths," said Jeanne, as though she were
saying something she had made up to say beforehand, "and she doesn't
feel very well. Since Monsieur is not here, I thought we would better
come and get you."
Marise seized Jeanne's arm and dug her fingers deep into it, "Jeanne ...
Jeanne ... nothing's happened ... Maman's not...."
Jeanne said with the very accent of truth, "No, no, no. Madame is not
dead--never fear, my darling. She is only very ... nervous." She said it
with the very accent of truth, but Marise knew perfectly well that
Jeanne could say anything she pleased with that accent. She never
believed a thing Jeanne said unless she knew it already.
But in spite of herself she was relieved from her first wild panic.
Nothing so very bad could have happened, with Jeanne standing there,
carved out of brown wood, just as usual. They began to hurry up the
narrow short-cut by the market, and Jeanne told her a little more. Maman
had come back by the first train. She must have taken the afternoon
train down from Saint Sauveur to Lourdes, and have waited hours in the
station at Lourdes, till the west-bound train from Toulouse came along.
And she had come in, perfectly worn out, staggering, and pushed right by
Isabelle to go to her room. And she had locked the door, and wouldn't
answer when they knocked, and wouldn't open when they brought a tray
with some food, only called out to them in a queer hoarse voice to go
get Soeur Ste. Lucie. And they could hear her crying and sobbing, so
they had sent Anna Etchergary to get the nun, and she, Jeanne, had come
of her own idea to get Marise.
Marise read into this Jeanne's dislike of the nun and her usual
suspicious idea about poor Maman that it was all just some new notion of
hers. But she also felt that the old woman had had a real fright and she
walked faster and faster.
The door on the landing was ajar, and inside the hall they saw a tall
old monk, his bare feet in sandals, his bald head bowed over his clasped
hands, his lips moving in prayer. When he saw the girl and the old
servant, he made way for them to pass, and without interrupting his
prayers, motioned them to enter. His gesture was so imperious that
without a word they tip-toed in past him. Isabelle, her eyes wide, and
not as red-faced as usual, was standing uncertainly in the door of the
salon, her apron up to her lips, looking scared, "Soeur Ste. Lucie has
gone in to Madame," she said to Jeanne in a whisper. "She said you and
Mademoiselle were to go to Mademoiselle's room and wait until she came."
Jeanne inquired wildly with a silent jerk of the head who in the world
was the monk who stood praying before Madame's closed door; and Isabelle
answered with a desperate rolling of her eyes that she had no more idea
of that than Jeanne.
They all went down the corridor on tip-toes, to Marise's room, where
automatically Marise took off her hat and coat. She saw to her amazement
that Jeanne had dropped down on the crimson quilt on the bed. Nothing
that had happened had startled Marise so much as to see this.
Almost at once Soeur Ste. Lucie entered, and coming up to Marise put her
arms around her and kissed her very tenderly. Then she turned and
motioned the two servants out of the room, "I must speak to Mlle. Marise
alone," she said. Isabelle was only too glad to go, but Jeanne looked
furious and stood for a moment with darkened face, lowering down on the
nun, as if she were on the point of defying her. But she finally thought
better of it, and followed Isabelle out.
Soeur Ste. Lucie stood in the open door till they were both well down
the corridor. Then she shut it carefully and came back to Marise whose
heart was beating wildly and whose knees were shaking under her. Soeur
Ste. Lucie sat down, and made Marise sit down, holding both the child's
cold hands in her soft, kind, old fingers. "Dear child, there are times
in every life when we must ask God for courage. Your mother is not sick
or hurt, but she needs all your prayers. She has had a terrible shock, a
dreadful tragedy that took place before her eyes, and she will need all
the help our Holy Mother can give her, to recover her calm. It seems
that----" Soeur Ste. Lucie stopped an instant, as if to consider how to
put what she had to say, and changed the form, "Your dear mother was in
Saint Sauveur, and by chance a person from Bayonne passed through, whom
your dear mother knew. And it seems they went out to walk together, as
any one might, and descended the paths and steps, that lead visitors
down the face of the Gavarnie Gorge, towards the place arranged so that
tourists can look up at the arch of the great bridge. And then--nobody
knows just what happened--the water was very high and violent, the other
person must have slipped and fallen in, and was instantly killed by
being flung by the current against a great rock. Your dear mother saw
it, and sensitive and high-strung as she is, it ... it slightly unhinged
her. She said a great many wild things...." Soeur Ste. Lucie stopped,
drew a long breath and began again. Nothing that she had said had made
the slightest impression on Marise. It sounded far off, as though Soeur
Ste. Lucie were reading something out of a book. Marise could not seem
to put her mind on it, and when she did, she could not understand it.
Soeur Ste. Lucie went on, "But by the mercy of God, I had just written
her that the holy Father Elie was once more here; and after they had got
the body out of the water and carried it to the hotel they--your mother
remembered about Father Elie and turning in her trouble to the only
source of strength, she--your mother wishes to make a retreat for a few
days at our convent, and I am sure that it is much the best thing for
her to do. It is a shelter for her--Father Elie is with her now, I have
sent for a carriage...."
"Oh, but can't I see her? Can't I kiss her good-by? How long will she be
away?" cried Marise wildly, starting from the fascinated immobility in
which she had gazed at the nun's face.
Soeur Ste. Lucie laid a quieting hand on her shoulder, her kind old face
yearning over the child. "Dear little Marise, I think it will be better
for your mother not to see you, or any one just now. She needs quiet,
perfect quiet."
Marise looked at her hard. She had no idea whether she was being told
the truth, or only some kind invention which they thought suitable for
her to hear. "Can't I go to see her at the Convent?" she asked in a
whisper, giving up the first point.
"Oh, yes, yes, my darling, _any_ time ... only a little later, when your
mother is calmer." Soeur Ste. Lucie's face shone suddenly, radiantly,
"God uses all means to His great ends," she said fervently. "This may be
the means of giving your dear mother in the end, the holy peace of
faith."
She looked so serenely trusting and hopeful that Marise felt comforted,
"I'll do just as you say, dear Soeur," she said in a trembling voice.
Soeur Ste. Lucie drew a long breath, as though she had been steering a
difficult course. She kissed Marise again, told her to stay in her room
for the time being, to say her prayers, not to worry, her Maman would
soon be all right, and probably happier than she had ever been in her
life. All this might open the door to salvation for her.
She left Marise standing in the middle of the floor, and closed the door
carefully behind her. But not so carefully that Marise could not, a
moment later, hear Maman crying and crying and crying as she went down
the hall and out of the door. Marise began to tremble and cry at the
sound. She ran to her window, and saw down below, Maman, her hands over
her face, with Soeur Ste. Lucie's arm around her, the tall old monk on
the other side, cross the sidewalk and get into the carriage.
As the carriage rolled away the weeping child at the window remembered
that Soeur Ste. Lucie had not mentioned who the person from Bayonne was
who had been killed. Well, what did Marise care who it was!