Part 19 (1/2)
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 cla.s.s-room door. Sister Ste. Julie pa.s.sed 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 cla.s.s 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 hoa.r.s.e 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 pa.s.s, 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 ap.r.o.n 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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--n.o.body 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 G.o.d, 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....”