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. Joséphine 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. Nobody does. Mademoiselle might—without presuming to advise—Mademoiselle might be wiser to go in cabs."
Eugenia held out her arms as Joséphine 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 Joséphine. "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 class-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 exactitude, 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 amusement to writing down dates and things in a journal!
"If Mademoiselle will step into her own room," said Joséphine. 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 Joséphine, 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 Joséphine 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 Joséphine 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 soirée 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 Joséphine, 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 washing 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."
Joséphine knew everything there was to know about toilet-reparations, and about how to use them. She adored her profession and adored Mlle. Mills for being such a beautiful subject. There were times, when she had pinned the last shining curl in place, put the last breath of invisible powder on the rounded young white neck, fastened the last hook in the exquisitely fitting gown, and got down on her knees to straighten the gleaming silk of the fine silk stockings, when she wondered what she had done to deserve such good fortune.
She often watched Eugenia out of the door, as tenderly, impersonally proud of her as a painter of his canvas, as a patissier of his tart; and then feeling somewhat worn with activity and emotion, stepped back, took off her corsets, got into the rumpled untidy wrapper which was her personal favorite, put carpet slippers on her tired feet, and sat down with a novel of high-life to rest.
Eugenia occasionally thought seeing her thus, that she never was allowed to relax in unpicturesque ease. It seemed to her that Mlle. Vallet and Joséphine were the ones who were really enjoying Rome! She worked so hard, she had paid the full price—and somehow the coin was of no value in this new country to which she was now transported, where she had not wanted to come, from which she would give anything to get away. She did not like Mr. Crittenden—she never had liked him—oh, why wouldn't he just once look at her and see what was there, instead of talking over her head that queer talk of his? She put on her loveliest toilettes, things that made Joséphine almost weep for pleasure, while Marise wore that same old gray dress day after day—she ruined her bronze shoes for him, stumbling around on foot over those horrible old ruins—how she loathed ruins! Why on earth did any one want to pretend to like to look at them!
History! That was what he was always talking about—history that she had always hated. Here it was again to plague her! How could she have guessed that he would care about history? She sat up now till all hours reading it, till Mlle. Vallet was afraid for her eyes, and yet he didn't seem to notice when she said something about it. He just took it for granted, as if she were a man.
What did Marise want of him anyhow? She couldn't possibly expect to marry him … neither of them had a cent of money. She ought to think of that, to think what was best for him. It was selfish, self-centered of Marise. A man like Neale ought of course to marry money. When she thought what she could do for him! Married to her he could have exactly the life he was meant for—travel, leisure, ease—! What was it about Marise that he liked? She could do everything better than Marise now, except play the piano, and it evidently wasn't that he cared for in her, because the afternoon they had all gone to the Visconti recital, he had listened just as intently to the men students and the other girls as to Marise. And when Marise asked him afterwards what music he liked best he told her bluntly the Bach that Professor Visconti himself had played, and Marise had said she did too. She hadn't seemed to realize what an affront to her that was. Why did Marise care so much about him? Why did anybody? Eugenia couldn't understand. She couldn't understand. Her throat had a hard aching lump in it because she couldn't understand.
"A loose soft coiffure for to-night," murmured Joséphine dreamily to herself, happily twisting together the beautiful golden strands, "and the pale-blue mousseline de soie—not the evening-dress!" she was shocked at the idea, though nobody had suggested it, "the high-necked one with the little myosotis embroidered on the ruffles." Joséphine worshipped that dress.
Her strong dark flexible fingers hovered around the golden head as though she were calling down blessings on it. As a matter of fact she was. She slipped off the silk peignoir, washed with almond-scented water the white arms and neck, and the white tired feet. She dried them with a fine linen towel by gentle pattings, not to coarsen the skin. She put on the white silk stockings and white high-heeled slippers, and a white satin underslip. She stood a moment to be sure she had thought of everything. Then carefully, carefully she slipped on the pale blue mousseline-de-soie. "A-ah!" it was as sweet as she remembered it!
Eugenia had submitted to all this with a forlorn patience. That was all the good it would do. He would look at her as if she were dressed in a meal-sack, never even notice that she had changed her dress. What else could she do, could any one do? What more did he want? She was betrayed; somehow life had played her false, a callous heartless dishonest trick! Why should she care so much? She didn't want to care. Why did she long to have him look kindly at her, till her heart ached? Why every day, every day, should the disappointment hurt her so? She hadn't done anything wrong to deserve to be hurt so. If she could only stop caring. If only Marise would go away.
Eugenia sat very still, while Joséphine set a jeweled comb at exactly the right angle in the golden hair. One lovely little hand was at her heart as if by pressing hard on it she could stop the ache, the other held the fresh, scented handkerchief clutched tightly, in case this time she could not keep back the tears. She mustn't cry. She mustn't cry, because Joséphine would have to do her face all over.