Part 18 (1/2)
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, s.h.i.+vering 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 b.u.t.tered croissants and drink big swallows of the cafe-au-lait. Jeanne b.u.t.toned 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, s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 k.n.o.b, something imperatively urging her to return. What had she seen as she pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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.
CHAPTER XIX
I
Now that she was in an advanced cla.s.s, 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 att.i.tudes, 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.