Paris, May, 1905.
"Hola ... p-s-st! Allen!" called Marthe Tollet, as Marise passed through
the glass-covered verandah, on her way to the street door. In her haste
to stop Marise, she used the abrupt surname hail which the girls thought
so very chic and truly English, which the older teachers forbade as rude
and barbarous, a typical manifestation of the crumbling down of
civilized French ways under the onslaught of modern Anglo-Saxon
roughness.
"Eh bien, the little Tollet, what is it?" asked Marise in the same
vernacular, pausing in front of the concierge's door. Marthe left the
Swedish ladder, where she was twisting her flexible young body in and
out of the rungs, and coming up to Marise remarked casually, "Oh, I just
thought maybe you'd like to go to the dormitory and see that little
compatriot of yours. She's crying like everything, la pauvre, and nobody
can do a thing with her."
"The pretty little girl with blonde hair?" asked Marise, somewhat vague
as to the younger girls in the lower classes. "What's the matter with
her?"
"A perfectly horrible attack of homesickness, they say. The English
teacher is up there--she's the only one who can talk to her; but you
know how likely the MacMurray will be to put balm on a sore heart, eh?
And you could make a wooden man split his sides laughing, once you get
started. _You_ could cheer her up."
Marise hesitated, looked in at the clock in the concierge's loge, and
nodded. She started towards the door of the dormitory building, stopped
and called back, "O la, the little Tollet, what's her name?
"Eugenie," said the other, "Eugenie Mille."
As she climbed the dark, winding, well-waxed stairs, Marise reflected
that that didn't sound like an American name, and made a guess that, as
had happened to her before, she would find that the "American girl" was
from Martinque, or Peru or Sao Paulo.
But it was English, sure enough, that Miss MacMurray was talking, as she
bent over the sobbing blue-serge heap, on the narrow iron bed. She was
saying helplessly, "There now, it's verra har-rd, I know, I'm far from
home, mysel'," patting the heaving shoulders with one hand, and
anxiously looking at her watch. She was due at a private lesson in ten
minutes, and a private lesson meant five irreplaceable francs.
She welcomed the tall American girl with relief, "Ah, that's right,
that's right, you'll know how to get her quieted down," and fled before
Marise could protest that she did not even know the homesick child.
Rather at a loss, and very unenthusiastically, Marise stood looking down
on the crumpled, untidy bed, and the mass of disordered golden hair,
noting the fineness of the tailored blue serge, and the excellently made
small shoes. They were unmistakably North American in their shapeliness.
Nothing Peruvian or Brazilian about them!
What could you do for somebody who was homesick? She certainly did not
know from experience. Nobody had ever done anything for her. She sat
down on the edge of the bed, laid her arm over the narrow shoulders, and
said cheerfully, "Hallo there, what's the matter? You'll run out of
tears, if you aren't careful!"
At the sound of her voice the sobbing stopped abruptly. The girl on the
bed started, dashed the floating brilliant hair from her face, and
turned on Marise, blue eyes dimmed with tears. She looked exhausted by
her passion of sobbing.
"Why, you poor kid!" said Marise compassionately. She hadn't thought it
was as serious as all _that_!
The other with a rough, scrambling sprawl, got herself to her knees and
sat up, rubbing the tears away from her eyes with the backs of her
hands, and drawing long, quivering breaths. Her lips were swollen, her
cheeks fiery and glazed.
Marise was touched, and putting out her arms drew the other into them.
"Here, you must let me help you get used to things. _I've_ been
homesick, too."
The girl tried to speak, was on the point of bursting into tears again,
struggled wildly to get the better of her excitement and emotion, and
finally brought out in a strangled voice, "I'm not _homesick_! I _hate_
my home! I wouldn't go back theah for _any_thing!"
The words in themselves were sufficiently astonishing to Marise, and the
raging accent with which they were cast out made them even more
disconcerting. She felt that the little quivering body in her arms was
clinging desperately to her, and sat silent, holding the unhappy child
close, because she did not know what else to do with her.
Presently, however, she ventured to ask, "Where is your home?"
"It _was_ in Arkansas," said the other, in a muffled, defiant tone. "It
isn't anywheah now. It's heah."
Marise not being very intimately acquainted with the shades and phases
of certain American prejudices, saw nothing peculiar in having one's
home in Arkansas. Why not?
Apparently some hint of this reached the other, for after a moment of
silent, expectant tension, she lifted her face from Marise's shoulder
and looked up searchingly into her face. How pretty she must be, thought
Marise, when she hadn't been crying. She must look like a pink lily in
the midst of the dark-skinned, dark-haired, city-sallow little girls of
her class.
"Have you any of your family here in Paris with you?" she asked now.
"I haven't any family left, only some lawyers and guardians and things,"
said the other. She spoke as though she were glad of it, Marise thought,
so that she suppressed the "_oh!_" of sympathy which she was on the
point of uttering. What a strange little thing!
The strange little thing now looked up at her. "Do you know what I was
crying for just now?" she said. Marise could not understand why she
asked this in an accusing tone of blame.
"No!" said Marise, as utterly at a loss as ever in her life. "How could
I?"
"Because I hate myself so, because I hate my looks and my clothes and
_every_thing!" the other burst out passionately, "I feel like po' white
trash. They had plenty of money! Why didn't they send me here befoah?"
"_Before!_" cried Marise. "Why, you're only a child now."
"I'm almost as old as you are," said the other. "I'm seventeen and
you're eighteen."
She flung it out like a grievance.
"Eh _bien_!" cried Marise in great astonishment. She had not thought the
other girl over fourteen.
She said now, sitting up straight and looking wistfully at Marise,
"_Will_ you be friends? You came of your own accord to be nice to me.
Tell me about things. _Everything!_ I want so like sin to know! I'll do
anything to learn."
"Know what?" asked Marise, bewildered, looking about her, as if she
might catch a glimpse of the things the other wanted to know.
"What they all know oveh heah ... everything _you_ know."
Marise drew back with an abrupt gesture, "No, _indeed_!" she cried, her
face darkening, the words leaping out before she could stop them.
"Oh, I don't mean your secrets. I don't care about that. And I don't
mean the way you play the piano, although I know some of the girls are
envious of that. And I'd despise to have to study as hard as you-all in
the upper classes do. I mean the right way to sit down and hold your
hands and speak and weah clothes."
Marise began to laugh, "_I_ don't know how to wear clothes. What do you
want anyhow? You're prettier than any girl in the school, and you are
wearing a dress that cost more than anybody's else, and finer shoes than
you could buy in all Paris."
"But they're not right," the girl said petulantly, "or else I don't
_weah_ them right, or something! I hate them! I have lots of money, but
I don't know how to buy what I want." She flung herself again on
Marise, holding her closely, "Help me!" she begged, "help me buy what I
want."
Marise was touched by the loneliness which underlay the other girl's
appeal. She knew what it was to be lonely! It was the first time that
any one had broken through into her loneliness as this quivering,
passionate, unhappy little thing had done; the first time anybody had
asked her for help. From the very first word of their talk, the light
chaffing manner which was her usual shield had been torn into shreds by
the other girl's driving directness. She looked deep into the other's
eyes, fixed breathlessly on her, and said seriously, "Yes, Eugenie, I'll
help you ... all I can."
"There!" said the other, "that's a specimen. My name's not Eugenie. It's
Eugenia. Isn't that turrible?"
Marise did not follow this at all. "It's just the same thing, only in
English, isn't it?"
"Yes, but it's horrid and common in English, and it's lovely in French.
Why can't I _have_ it Eugenie?" She looked up keenly and searchingly
into Marise's face, and at what she caught there, she contradicted
herself hastily, before Marise could open her lips.
"No, no, I see. It would be silly to change it--to pretend. I'd better
make the best of it. There! There's one fool mistake you kept me from
making, you see!"
Marise felt that the talk was on a plane different from hers, so that
she did not get its meaning, although the words were clear enough. What
was all that about Eugenia and Eugenie? She hadn't caught the point of
that, at all.
Being only eighteen, she found her bewilderment rather comic, and began
to laugh. "I still don't see that Eugenia isn't just as good as
Eugenie!" she said, "I honestly don't know what you're talking about,
Eugenia, but if _you_ do, it's all right."
"Oh, _I_ do," said the other with conviction.
Marise was relieved to see that her small, pretty face, although still
flushed from her fit of tears no longer looked distraught.
"How strange!" thought Marise. They had never spoken a word to each
other ten minutes before, and now they were sitting side by side, hand
in hand, like sisters.
"I'm awfully glad I came in," she said.
"So am I," said Eugenia, "I'd been just crazy to talk to you, but you're
so many classes higher than me. Oh, how I _hate_ my class--to be put
back with all those young ones! And study such _turribly_ stupid things!
And the teacher! Such an old frump. And I'm not having _any_thing of
what I want. I'm not getting on a bit. What do I care what France did in
India before the English got there? I didn't come to France to learn
those sort of things! Marise--please can I call you Marise? Do you
suppose I'll _ever, ever_ speak French as you do?"
"Why, of course," Marise answered her reasonably, "everybody does, who
lives here. Why shouldn't you?" The echo of the famished, burning accent
of the other struck now oddly on her ear. She repeated, "Of course you
will, if you care to," and went on, "but why should you bother to care
so much? What difference does it make? They don't bother themselves to
learn English."
Eugenia flashed a look of quick astonishment at her. Apparently this was
an entirely new idea to her. After an instant's silent consideration of
it, she flung it away with the aggrieved cry, "Oh, but you _do_! You
_do_!" as though, thought Marise, that incapacitated her from having a
valid opinion about it. But this too, like the Eugenie-Eugenia
discussion had somehow taken place in another dimension than the one she
knew. She was not allowed to ponder the question, however, receiving at
this point another impassioned embrace from Eugenia, who cried, "You
don't _know_ how glad I am you came! Now it'll be all right. And I've
been so miserable. Let's talk! Let's talk!"
"I must soon be going to a music-lesson," said Marise, glancing at the
little jewel-crusted watch, which hung on a black ribbon around the
other girl's neck.
Eugenia caught at her despairingly. "Oh, don't go away. I haven't
_begun_ yet! I haven't said a _word_!" Then struck by another
possibility, "Can't I go with you? We could talk in the cab, and I
wouldn't say a word at your lesson. Yes, _do_ let me."
"I wasn't going to take a cab," protested Marise, "I don't go round in
cabs except when I'm dressed up in the evenings. It would be pretty
expensive, ma foi! to take a cab everywhere I went in the daytime.
Mostly I walk."
"Oh, I hate to walk, let _me_ take the cab," the other girl begged,
beginning hastily to arrange her hair. "I've got plenty of money. It's
the only thing I have got." She paused, the brush in her hand. "Haven't
you?" she asked, addressing herself to Marise's reflection in the glass.
Marise was passably astonished at the unceremonious question, but
answered it simply, "I haven't any of my own. I live with my father. And
he hasn't any either, but he makes a good deal, gets a good salary, I
mean. He lets me have all I need."
Eugenia's comment on this was to say bitterly, "Think of not knowing
more than to ask such a question! I told you I don't know anything. But
I can learn. I can learn in a minute if only I get the chance. I learned
then ... from the way you looked. I'll never make _that_ fool mistake
again."
She pinned on a very pretty, costly hat, and Marise saw that she really
did not look like a child, after all. She ran her arm under Marise's
now, and gave it an ecstatic squeeze. "Oh, I'm so happy!" she cried, "I
wish I could buy you a diamond necklace!"
The talk in the cab as they clattered over the big paving-stones of the
quiet, half-deserted left-bank streets turned on the school, and very
soon Marise was led to say, "But, see here, I don't believe, Eugenia,
you've got into the right school at _all_. It's not a bit chic, you
know, to go to a girl's lycee, and ours is one of the plainest of them
all. The teachers are terrible grinds, the girls are fearfully
serious-minded. They don't care a thing about their looks. All they want
is to pass the competitive exams for the Ecole Normale at Sevres, and
get in there for four more years of grind, lots and lots worse than at
the lycee. You'd better believe there's nothing _but_ what France did
in India before the English got there, et ainsi de suite."
Eugenia made a gesture of despair. "_There!_" she lamented, "that's it!
Not even to know enough to pick out the right school!"
And then a curious expression of suspicion coming into her eyes, she
said skeptically, "but _you_ go to that school! If it's good enough for
you...!"
Here again was something in that baffling other dimension, and this time
though she understood it as little as ever, Marise did not like it at
all. She said stiffly, "I'm going because you can get serious
instruction in some things I need to enter the classes at the Sorbonne
next year."
Eugenia sprang at her, remorsefully crying, "I won't again. I don't know
what made me." She kissed her once more, rubbing her cheek against the
other's shoulder.
Her bewildering alternations of mood, the reckless way in which she
threw herself on Marise to embrace her; and the way, very startling to a
girl brought up in France, in which Eugenia kissed her on the mouth like
a lover, were very exciting to Marise. Not since Jeanne's big double
kisses had she been so fondled and caressed, and never had she been
kissed on the lips before. That was something closely associated in her
mind with secrecy and passion. It made her feel very queer; partly
stand-offish and startled, partly moved and responsive--altogether
shaken up, more alive, but apprehensively uncertain of what was coming
next.
"And what _is_ the Sorbonne?"
"It's the University," Marise explained, "I was half-way through a
woman's college in America, when we came abroad again. So I wanted to go
on and study some more here although I have to work so many hours a day
on my music that I can't ever hope to have a degree."
"College? University?" Eugenia was horrified. "Mercy! What makes you
want to do that? And music lessons, too. I should think you'd be working
every minute."
"I do," said Marise.
"Just study, study, study, and practise, practise, practise?" asked the
other, astonished.
"Mostly," said Marise.
"Why, that's _turrible_!" cried Eugenia, beginning to look alarmed.
"That's the way everybody does over here," said Marise.
"They _do_!" cried Eugenia, aghast and astounded. "Why, I thought
they...."
Marise corrected herself, "Oh, of course not. What am I talking about? I
mean the kind of folks I know. There are millions of others, I suppose,
yes, of course, all the rue de la Paix clientele, who don't work at
all."
Eugenia was relieved at this, and relapsed for a moment into silence,
which she finally broke by asking, "Well, wheah _would_ you go to
school, if you were me?"
Marise had been thinking of this, and was ready, "There's a very grand
private school, I've heard about out at Auteuil, in what was somebody's
country estate, when Auteuil was the country, with a chateau and a park.
It's fearfully expensive and so it must be very chic. The girls never go
out by themselves, always have a maid, or a teacher with them; the old
ideas, aristocratic, you know, that ordinary French people don't hold to
any more. Mrs. Marbury could tell you all about it."
"Who?... Mrs. Mahbury?"
"Oh, she's an American, who's always lived over here, in the American
colony. Her husband and my father are in the same sort of business. We
know her. She'd be _sure_ to know what was chic."
"Well, I'll go to that school," announced Eugenia. "I just _knew_
there'd be a place like that, if I could only find out wheah. I bet you
I won't have to study French history _theah_."
Marise laughed, "You'll probably have to work like a dog, for the
teacher who teaches _la tenue_."
"What's that?"
"Oh, all I know about it is what the dancing teacher used to make us do
in the convent-school I went to in Bayonne; walk into a room, pretend
to greet somebody, step into a make-believe carriage and out of it, sit
down with him for a talk; and first he'd pretend to be a girl like you,
and then he'd pretend to be an older woman, and then he'd pretend to be
a man (only of course he really was that), and you'd have to have the
right manner for each one.... All that kind of foolishness, you know."
"No, I don't know!" cried Eugenia angrily.
The cab drew up and stopped. "I suppose we're theah," said Eugenia, "you
tell him to wait till we come out."
She was cautiously silent during the introduction to Mme. de la Cueva,
and during the hour of the lesson. But if she gave her tongue little
employment, she kept her eyes busy, absorbing every detail of the long,
bare room, with its four long windows opening on a balcony overlooking
the little, dank, unkempt Jardin de Cluny. After the lesson, Mme. de la
Cueva stepped into another room to get some music, and Marise, rather
pale with fatigue, walked wearily out on the balcony for a breath of
fresh air. Eugenia sprang to follow her, as if she had been wishing to
do this, and had not known if it were allowable. But before she looked
down on the medieval building below them she said in a whisper to
Marise, "You're dog-tired. Why, I wouldn't work that hard for _any_body!
And for that fat old dowd!"
Marise looked down at her astonished. "I'm not working for _her_!" she
exclaimed. But this was, evidently, from the look of Eugenia's face a
fourth dimensional remark for her, for she made no answer, turning
instead to look at the gray-black old mass of Cluny.
"What is it?" Eugenia asked.
Marise had not yet wholly emerged from a struggle with an exercise which
she had not been able to execute with the inhuman, neat-fingered
velocity demanded by Mme. de la Cueva. The hour in that other world to
which music always transported her had broken the continuity of her
impressions of her new friend. She stared rather blankly at Eugenia's
question, and looked from her to the well-known medieval pile below
them. It did not for the instant occur to her, that the other girl did
not recognize what the building was. The turn of her phrase suggested an
inquiry about the architecture, and though she had never thought about
Cluny before, the look of it stirred recollections of a certain fierce
history teacher, whose specialty had been the transitions of the reign
of Louis XII. She looked down on the stone lacework opposite, and said
doubtfully, "What is it? Domestic Gothic, shouldn't you think? But some
of it pretty late. Those square dormer-windows are Louis Douze, aren't
they?"
She looked away from the Cluny and down at Eugenia as she finished, and
had once more a shock of astonishment. The other's eyes were flaming.
"Theah, that's it," she said fiercely, showing her white teeth as she
spoke, but not in a smile. "That's it. That's _just_ it! _Wheah did you
learn that?_"
She dashed the question in Marise's face as though it had been her fist.
Marise positively drew back from her. Too startled to be anything but
literal, she answered, "Why, why, I don't know where I did. Oh, yes, in
my French history class, I suppose. They make you learn everything so
hard, you know. You yourself were saying what a grind it is."
Eugenia breathed hard and said, "History again, darn it! But I didn't
dream you'd learn _that_ sort of thing in it." She added defiantly, and
for Marise quite cryptically, "Well, _I'm_ going to learn it without!"
Mme. de la Cueva came back with the music in her hand. "Voila, mon
enfant," she said, shaking Marise's hand heartily. She reached for
Eugenia's hand too, which was hanging at her side, till Eugenia, seeing
the meaning of the other's gesture, brought it up with an awkward haste,
a painful red burning in her cheeks.
Some one came in as they went out, another student evidently, for he had
a roll of music in his hand. He stopped and stood aside with a deep bow
to let the two girls pass.
"Good-day, Mlle. Allen," he said, looking at her intently.
"Good-day, M. Boudoin," she answered. Neither girl spoke as they went
down the endless, winding stairs and passed out to the street.
As they turned into the Boulevard, and jogged past the Jardin de Cluny,
Eugenia asked tensely, "What are those queer-looking broken-down walls?"
Marise answered circumspectly, fearing another out-burst, "I think
they're Roman ruins ... what's left of the baths the Romans had here."
Eugenia made no answer, but looked at them hard.
Marise went on, "Awfully interesting, isn't it, to see Roman ruins right
in Paris, across the street from a cafe. But I suppose they'd look like
small potatoes to anybody who's seen Rome. Mme. Vallery says they look
comically small, after Rome."
Eugenia put her arm around her neck, and kissed her once more,
fervently, disturbingly, on the lips, "Would you like to go to Rome?
I'll _take_ you to Rome. I'll hire a private car for the two of us."
And before Marise could answer, before she could even bring out the
laugh which rose to her lips, Eugenia said with another of her abrupt
leaps, "That young man is in love with you. The one who came in
afterwards. He's awfully good-looking, too." She looked into Marise's
face with her avid, penetrating gaze, and said, "But you don't like
him!"
"I never thought about him in my life," cried Marise, exasperated. She
was beginning to feel desperately tired of the mental gymnastics of such
talk.
"But there was something you didn't like as I spoke about him. Don't you
_like_ men? Don't you like men to be in love with you? I do, I love it."
She made another flying leap, and asked, "Are many French women like
your music-teacher--so fat--no style?"
"She's not French, Madame de la Cueva."
"What, then?"
"A Levantine."
"A what? What's a Levantine?"
Marise considered, "What _is_ a Levantine, anyhow? A little of
everything, I should say, and all more or less oriental and southern.
She's part Spanish, part Jewish from Asia Minor, brought up in Cairo and
Paris."
Eugenia sheered off on another tack, "And who is Madame Va... Va...
something?"
"Madame Vallery? She's a ... she's a sort of friend of mine. Yes, she's
a friend. My old music-teacher, when I was a little girl, got us
together. She's the wife of a Deputy, you know, like our Congressmen."
"Is she chic, too," asked Eugenia, "like Mrs. Marbury? Is she young? Is
she pretty?"
Marise laughed, "No, she's not pretty or young. She must be fifty years
old."
Eugenia was shocked. "And a friend of _youah's_!"
Marise explained, "She has more brains than you and I and forty other
girls rolled into one. And I've met more interesting people at her house
than...."
"Will you take me sometime--will you take me?" asked Eugenia.
"Yes, if you like," said Marise.
Eugenia looked around her wildly, as if to find some way of saying her
thanks. Something in the street caught her eye. They were passing a
florist's shop. She slammed the door open, curved her flexible little
body around the frame, and caught at the driver's coat-tails. "Stop a
minute!" she cried to him and dashed into the shop. When she came out
she had a huge bunch of mauve-colored orchids in her arms.
"For you, for you," she cried, elated at her idea, thrusting them into
Marise's hands, and kissing her again. And then, suddenly downcast, "Oh,
it oughtn't to have been orchids! What? Roses? Lilies? Violets?... Yes,
violets."
This time Marise protested energetically against this assumption of
meanings in her face.
"I don't know what makes you _say_ such things," she cried out
helplessly, half-angrily. "Orchids are lovely--_beautiful_. How could
anything be better? I never had any before in my life."
But the other was not to be comforted. "Yes, it ought to have been
violets," she murmured, and then squaring her jaw, "And it _will_ be
violets, the next time. You just see!"