Part 6 (1/2)
The nun nodded her understanding. It was evident that they understood each other to perfection. ”Yes, yes, of course, I see. No social equality possible,” she murmured, drawing in a sharply taken breath again.
They looked about them in silence now, the restrained calm of their faces uncolored by their thoughts. Hearing steps in the hall, Soeur Ste. Lucie shook out her long black sleeves to cover her hands more completely, and cast down her eyes so that her sweet, rosy, wrinkled old face was once more blank and impa.s.sive.
Anna Etchergary was waiting at the door of her loge as they descended the stairs, and she ran before them out to the old closed carriage, which stood at the curb. Bowing deferentially and murmuring under her breath, ”... Madame la Marquise....” she held the door open for them.
The lady smiled her thanks at her, a pre-occupied, well-modulated smile which took for granted the deference and the service.
As the nun stepped into the carriage she said with unction, ”Now I see how lives in the world can be as useful to Our Lady as those of the convent. No one could have resisted Madame this afternoon. To have a great name and all worldly graces, and to use them only for the greater glory of Our Lady!”
The other sighed and said sadly, ”Dear Ste. Lucie, since the death of my dear one, there is nothing for me in the life of the world, except an opportunity to serve our good work.” She went on more cheerfully, with a little animation, ”Yes, I must say, it seemed like fruitful ground this afternoon, fruitful ground. I think we may say we made a good beginning.”
The old coachman came to the door for his orders. ”To 4 rue Marengo, in the Pet.i.t Bayonne,” said his mistress, and as he stepped to his seat, she explained to the nun, ”I feel so much encouraged that I am going straight to an architect to have him make an estimate of what the chapel would cost.”
The carriage proceeded very slowly and rackingly over the rounded boulders of the pavement. Inside it, the two women, accustomed to such joltings, thrust their arms through the broad, hanging loops, and went on talking.
”Not a disagreeable person,” said the great lady in a kind tone of tolerance. ”A very middle-cla.s.s little woman, but no harm in her, I should say. I was afraid to find some one not quite--not quite--you know it is said that American women are not very moral--so many divorces in America.”
”And still you went...!” breathed the nun, lost in admiration of the other's heroic devotion, ”when you ran the risk of meeting a _divorced_ woman!”
The Marquise made another gentle, fatigued gesture of warding off praise. It was a practised gesture as though she had occasion to make it often.
After a time she said, ”Odd she should be so interested in the Cathedral here, and yet a free-thinker. What made her talk so much about the South Portal? I never heard of anything unusual about it, did you? Except that that disagreeable, anti-clerical fountain is somewhere near there, to the memory of those wicked revolutionists.”
The nun shook her head, indifferently. ”I always enter by the North Portal,” she said. ”I don't believe I ever happened to see the south one.”
After reflection, the marquise said, ”I don't believe I ever saw it either. Why should any one? You never enter from that side. n.o.body lives on the rue d'Espagne, that anybody would ever have occasion to visit.”
III
May 20, 1898.
Anna Etchergary measured accurately the social status of the two ladies who asked for Madame Allen's apartment, and without getting up, or stopping her sewing, she answered in the careless tone suitable for people who wore home-made hats and cotton gloves, that Madame Allen was at the top of the first flight. After they had pa.s.sed, she thought to herself that she believed she knew them, Mlle. Hasparren, the school-teacher and her married sister. They were Basques, like Anna, but of the small government employee cla.s.s, who put on airs of gentility, and wore hats and leather shoes. Mlle. Hasparren gave music lessons, as well as teaching school. Probably she had come to try to be taken on as Marise's music-teacher.
The two ladies were mounting the stairs in silence and very slowly, because the school-teacher had taken off her cotton gloves and was putting on a pair of kid ones, which she had pulled from her hand-bag.
She explained half-apologetically, to her sister, who had only cotton gloves, ”It's to do honor to America!” and then with a long breath, ”The first American I ever saw.”
”What do you care if it is, Rachel?” asked her sister languidly. She added with more animation, ”Your hat is over one ear again.”
The other stopped short on a stair. ”America! ... free America!” she said pa.s.sionately, ”don't you remember what Voltaire said, 'Europe can never be wholly a prison so long as it has America for open window?'”
She knocked her hat back into place with the effect of using the gesture to emphasize violently what she said.
”I wouldn't quote Voltaire, if I were you,” advised her sister mildly.
”You never know who may be listening. People think badly enough of you for being a school-teacher in a lay-school as it is.”
”There you are!” Rachel caught this up as a point for her side. ”There it is, our airless, stagnant European prison-house of prejudice!” She struck a hand, gloved in kid now, on her breast, with the gesture of one suffocating.
Her sister shrugged her shoulders resignedly and said, ”Which door do you suppose it is? We forgot to ask which side.”
They were now on the landing, hesitating between the two exactly similar doors. Rachel made a quick decision at random, crossed to the right-hand side, and pulled the bell-rope.