Part 55 (1/2)

He was aware that Marise looked at him surprised by his fire. He was surprised by it, himself. He guessed perhaps he was ready to go back to work; perhaps he'd had enough of sauntering around. ”That's what you learn in college athletics--how to give yourself to some aim and not to keep anything back for yourself. That's great, you know,” he told her imperatively. ”It is! It takes the personal littleness out of a boy to give his all to reach a goal. It makes a man out of a boy. But, oh, Lord!” he burst out with a great swing of his arm, ”When that _has_ made you a man, why don't they let you know that you have more goals to choose from than just different ways of making your living, most of them just buying and selling different sorts of things? You're trained in athletics to put your very heart and all of it, into what you do. That's _fine_! But why don't they train you just as hard to put your whole intelligence into being sure that what you're putting your heart into is worth doing, and is what you're meant to do? They don't train you for that, they won't even let you have a quiet minute to think of it yourself. They keep you up in the air all the time, whooping it up about your duty to 'win out!' to win the game! Sure, any man that's got blood in his veins wants to win the game. But _which_ game? It's all very well, turning a boy into a grown-up human being, but you've got to....”

”I wonder,” broke in Marise thoughtfully, ”I wonder what might turn a girl into a grown-up human being?” And then before Neale could open his lips she blushed, shook her head as if at a slip on her part, and said quickly, ”Oh, there's my car, now.”

She ran out to take it. Neale stood on the corner, cursing the whole race of tram-cars.

When it pa.s.sed him, close to him in the narrow street, he caught sight of her face. It was bent downward as if to hide it from the other people in the car. He saw that there was a very faint smile on her lips as if she could not keep it back, a little sweet, secret, happy smile. Her whole face was softly s.h.i.+mmering with it.

Good heavens! why hadn't he gone on with her! He leaped forward and sprinted after the rapidly disappearing car.

And stopped short in the midst of the traffic. You can't make love in a _street-car_! What an imbecile he was!

Often, after she had left him, he pelted off into the Campagna, walking for miles ”like a madman,” said the leisurely Italian countrymen, slowly stepping about their work. Neale felt himself rather mad, as though the steady foundations of his life had been rent and shattered, as by a blast of dynamite.

Dynamite? What was it somebody had said to him once, about dynamite? He tried to think, but could not remember. Perhaps it was something he had read in a book.

Once, after such a headlong tramp, he came in and wrote a long letter to his mother, telling her all about Marise; a strange thing for him to do, he thought, as he dropped the letter in the box. But everything he did now seemed strange to him. Strange and yet irresistibly natural.

CHAPTER XLIX

If only Marise would go away, would go _away_ and give her a chance, thought Eugenia despairingly, coming slowly into her sitting-room where Mlle. Vallet sat writing in her journal. Josephine heard the door close and hurried in with her quick silent step to take off her mistress'

wraps.

”Mademoiselle looks so _tired_ after these long walks!” she said solicitously, scrutinizing with a professional expertness the color of the young face. ”I don't think they agree with Mademoiselle at all. This climate is too soft to walk about so. n.o.body does. Mademoiselle might--without presuming to advise--Mademoiselle might be wiser to go in cabs.”

Eugenia held out her arms as Josephine slipped off her pretty, fawn-colored silk coat and then let them fall at her sides. She was thinking, ”_Cabs!_ What would he say to some one who went everywhere in cabs!”

”Oh!” cried Josephine. ”Those abominable ruins! Mademoiselle's dear little bronze shoes! Cut to pieces! Oh, Mlle. Vallet, just look at our poor Mademoiselle's shoes, the beautiful bronze ones. And there's no replacing them in the shops of _this_ country!”

Mlle. Vallet tipped her head forward to look seriously over her steel-rimmed spectacles, agreed seriously that there was certainly very little left of the pretty bronze shoes, and went seriously back to writing with her sharp steel pen a detailed description of her expedition to the Catacombs. Mlle. Vallet was a very happy woman in those days. To be in Rome, after years of grinding drudgery in the cla.s.s-room, to be free to look and wander and observe at her leisure for so much of the day--she often told Eugenia that she had never in her wildest dreams supposed she would have such an opportunity! She studied and sight-saw with conscientious and absorbed exact.i.tude, and wrote down voluminous accounts of every day's sights and the thoughts they aroused in her. ”It will be the treasure-book of my old age!” she said. ”I shall take it down from the shelf when I am old, and live myself back into this wonderful experience!”

”Her old age!” Eugenia wondered when she thought old age would begin.

She looked a thousand years old already to Eugenia. Heavens! Think of ever being old like that, yourself. What use _could_ there be in living if you were old and reduced for your amus.e.m.e.nt to writing down dates and things in a journal!

”If Mademoiselle will step into her own room,” said Josephine. Eugenia came to herself with a start. She had been standing in the middle of the room staring at Mlle. Vallet's back. But she had been thinking about Neale Crittenden, about those deep-set eyes of his, and how his face was lighted up when he smiled. When he smiled at her, Eugenia felt like moving from wherever she was and going to stand close beside him. What made her feel so? It was like a black-art. There was that girl at school who had been bewitched by the Breton mission-priest,--bewitched so that she fell into a fever if she could not see him every day.

”There! Sit there!” said Josephine, pressing her competently into an easy chair, and beginning to undo her hooks and eyes. ”I haven't much time. Mademoiselle is so late in coming in. Just a little cold-cream--this horrible southern sun burns so! Oh, I can feel this awful Roman dust thick on every hair! I do wish--without seeming to presume--I do _wish_ that Mademoiselle would consent to wear a veil--everybody does.”

Eugenia moved her head from one side to the other wearily. How Josephine did chatter! She never had a quiet moment, _never_, and she was so _tired_. Feeling the supple, smooth professional fingers beginning to put on the cold cream, she held her head still and thought.

Very bitter thoughts and bewildered ... of a person betrayed. She _was_ betrayed! She had done everything ... everything that she had known how to do. She had spared neither time nor money nor effort. She had worked (and she hated to work) she had _worked_ to learn all the things she should know. She had beaten Marise at her own game. She talked better French than she, so her diction teacher said; and ever so much more distinguished English--she _never_ made those slips into Americanisms or Gallicisms that Marise did. At least not in conversation, sometimes she still thought in American. She knew ever so much more about dressing than Marise, and about lace, and about manners. She had come to the point at last of being sure of her manners, of being able to sit down, instinctively composing herself so that she would look well from all angles, of not having to think of how to shake hands or leave a room, any more than she thought of the adjustment of a gown that Josephine had put on her. Whereas Marise still fumbled at the back of her neck at times to make sure of a hook, or had that common trick of feeling her hair to see if it were in order. Marise had stood still in all that, and she had gone forward to the goal. But as she reached it...!

How could she have thought for a moment that she cared a thing about him--he was horrible and rough and as American as--as--a typewriter!

What _made_ her care about such a man? She wouldn't have, if it had not been for Marise. It was Marise's fault. She never would have dreamed of looking at him if she hadn't seen that first evening at Donna Antonia Pierleoni's soiree that Marise had lost her head over him. That made her curious about him of course, and somehow before she knew it something about his eyes or smile--oh, it _was_ as if she were bewitched that he should make her feel so, make her want and want and want till she ached, to have him look at her--and all the time he never looked away from Marise.

”There,” said Josephine, slipping out the hairpins, and taking up a handful of the bright hair to inspect it, ”I believe--I _believe_,” she pondered the matter profoundly, her dark, sharp intelligent face selflessly focussed on the problem, ”I _wonder_ if we ought to wash it a little oftener here than in Paris? There is more dust. But was.h.i.+ng it takes the oil out so. Perhaps a little more of the Meylan dressing.

That has a little fine oil in it. I know the recipe.”