CHAPTER VIII
I
Two plump ladies with large busts and very small waists were sitting in the salon of the Allen apartment, waiting for the mistress of the house. They wore very tight-fitting dresses of excellent silk, obviously not new, obviously made by the sort of "little dressmaker" who goes from house to house. Their shoes were stout and clumsy, their hats somewhat heavy in line, their gloves exquisitely fitting, perfectly fresh, made of the finest-grained leather. Although the sky was blue, each lady carried a small silk umbrella of the very best quality, tightly rolled with a masterly smoothness, as smoothly tubular as the day it was bought.
The two women held their cruelly corseted bodies very erect, and sat squarely on their chairs, both feet on the floor, their knees close together, their backbones very straight. Under the brims of their heavy, much-ornamented hats, their fresh, healthy faces wore an expression of perfect stability. They knew that they produced exactly the impression they meant to produce, and that they looked exactly like what they were. From every inch of them was proclaimed the fact that they were fine housekeepers and economical managers of their husbands' incomes, that they were of the well-to-do bourgeoisie and proud of it, as of everything else they were and did. They looked out on their lives and found them good in every detail, from their slightly and purposely behind-the-fashion dresses to their stout shoes, evidence of their respectability; from their fixed ideas to their excellent gloves.
They glanced about them now, keenly, with the penetrating survey of the professional good housekeeper, and found much to comment on.
"How strange to have no lace curtains over the windows, only the heavy ones at the side. Why, people outside must be able to look right in! Do you suppose they have taken them out to be washed? Or don't they know about curtains in America?"
They murmured their remarks in a low tone, keeping a weather-ear cocked to the hall.
"That wall-paper is disgraceful. It was on when the Charpentiers lived here."
"M. Lapagorry had expected, you know, of course, to do this apartment over after the Charpentiers moved out. But these new people never made a single comment, or complaint. Just accepted it."
"I daresay they are used to log-cabins at home, with Indians at the door."
"Oh, no, Madame Garnier, my Henri says that the Indians are quite civilized in America now."
Madame Garnier frowned slightly at the mention of Henri.
The other woman went on, "Apparently they thought it was all right to have faded paper and those awful old curtains. M. Lapagorry was so astonished he almost fell over backward. And when he saw they didn't find fault with anything, he asked a higher rent, ever so much higher than the Charpentiers had paid, and they took that too without a word. People say M. Lapagorry can't sleep nights now because he didn't ask more."
Madame Garnier observed, as one mentioning an obvious fact, "Oh, well, Madame Fortier, he will, of course, next time."
Madame Fortier saw nothing to smile at in this. "Yes, of course," she said seriously.
Madame Garnier now said, "They must be very rich. Where is it they are from, Buenos Aires?"
"Oh, no, Madame Garnier. I think it is somewhere in North America. My Henri says that …"
Madame Garnier broke in, irritated, to say with suppressed heat, "Oh, North America or South America, what's the difference? They are all foreigners, and who knows what strange, immoral ideas they have? They don't come to Mass, you know. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that the man is a Free-Mason. I wish M, Garnier had not asked me to call on them."
The other shrugged her shoulders resignedly, "Yes, it's a very strange thing to do, make the first call, and on people you know nothing about. But M. Fortier says the man, M. Allen, is very important in a business way, and he specially asked all the business men to have their wives call on his wife. He almost seemed to make it a sort of condition, so M. Fortier said, almost made them promise before he would talk business with them. It may be in America, they do. And of course anything M. Fortier thinks may be good for his business.…"
Madame Garnier's nod signified that of course that principle went without saying for any good wife; the expression of her face adding that this was an application of it which might count as one of a good wife's sacrifices. But she said hopefully, "Well, they won't stay very long, foreigners never do."
Madame Fortier now murmured, "They say she's very free with the gentlemen. M. Fortier and his friends are laughing about her. They say they really don't know how much of what she says is due to her bad French; or how far she really does expect them to go."
This did not surprise Madame Garnier. "What can you expect? I shall see to it that our Jean-Pierre has nothing to do with them."
This apparently started a new train of thought for Madame Fortier, for she now said with the cheery warmth of one who brings out something which will be a bitter pill to her interlocutor. "It seems the American, M. Allen, has taken quite a fancy to our Henri. We think we can get a position for Henri, through him, in America, where Henri can learn English, and study the American market. It would be a great help in the business if Henri knew English and all about American imports. And of course the salaries paid in America are enormous."
Madame Garnier's eyes opened wide. She fell into a trance-like meditation, and presently murmured, "Our Jean-Pierre made quite a specialty of English in the lycée. I should think.…"
The mother of Henri shook her head decidedly, "I don't think America would suit your Jean-Pierre's temperament," she said. "He's not at all practical. And you get skinned alive by American business men if you're not as sharp as they. No, you'd better keep Jean-Pierre away from them."
The two looked at each other hard. A brilliant light of rivalry came into their eyes. It brought an animation, a zest into their faces, which made them look years younger. A main-spring had been touched, and all their wheels began visibly to turn.
Steps were heard in the hall.
They composed their faces, and turned towards the door. The American lady now came in, and they rose to greet her. They were extremely cordial, a competitive friendliness in their manner.
They went down the well-polished oaken stairs in silence, each holding up her long heavy skirt with one gloved hand and letting the other rest on the railing. At the bottom, each with an automatic gesture like a reflex action, looked at the palm of her glove to see if it had been soiled by the railing, and with a similar mechanical action, shook their heads disapprovingly, although there was not a grain of dust on the smooth, tightly-stretched, pale kid.
They shook out the trains of their skirts and swept into the street, conscious of the pouncing inspection of Anna Etchergary, gazing at them from the loge of the concierge, and proudly aware that there was nothing to criticize in any detail of their backs or anywhere else about them. They turned to the left and began to climb the steep street which led towards the Cathedral. Madame Fortier remarked presently, "Very bad taste, that dress, like an actress. All that white silk and lace. And slippers like a dancing girl's. It must be she never puts her hand to anything in the house."
"No, she doesn't," returned the other disapprovingly. "My Marguerite meets her Jeanne every morning at market. She says that Jeanne says the American lady never does anything about the house, and doesn't even verify her accounts. You can just imagine what Jeanne is getting out of it. It quite upsets Marguerite, and I have to be specially careful with my own accounts. Everybody near them is getting a rake-off on everything." She made these revelations with a satisfied look as though the words had a pleasant taste in her mouth.
Madame Fortier's comment was made with the accent of mature, worldly experience, "Mark my words, money spent in a loose careless way like that must have been ill come by. That's the way disreputable women spend money."
"It's very hard on the rest of us, at any rate. And Jeanne tells our Margot that she is a very poor housekeeper, as heedless as a child, wears her best tailored street dress in the house as like as not, lies down on the bed when she is not sick at all, and doesn't do a thing but read novels all the time; or fool away a whole afternoon in the Museum. Very suspicious, that, too. Why should anybody go to the Museum so much? I'd just like to know whom she meets there. A regular place of rendezvous, the Museum. I wonder if her husband knows."
They were enjoying the conversation so much that their faces looked quite sunny and bright. The other shook her head forebodingly. There was a silence as they climbed steadily up the steep, narrow, stone-flagged street.
Then Madame Garnier remarked, "The little girl is quite pretty, though so mannerless."
"Her dress was covered with grease spots, and had a hook off the back," reported Madame Fortier.
"I didn't see but three grease spots," demurred Madame Garnier, "and she really has lovely eyes and hair."
"How badly that woman speaks French. Without the little girl to interpret, it would actually have been hard to know what she was saying. Strange they don't know French better. But perhaps they don't have regular schools like ours."
Madame Garnier made no answer to this conjecture, but asked, looking sideways at her neighbor, "Shall you ask them to dinner?"
Madame Fortier all but groaned, and said in a martyr's tone, "Oh, I suppose so, for Henri's sake."
The other digested this thrust in silence, and then changed the subject. "What was that she was saying about De Maupassant? Was she quoting him, to us? What did she take us for?"
"Yes, she didn't realize what we might think of her. It was that indecent Boule-de-Suif, too. But she knows so little French most likely she didn't understand what it was all about."
"Have you read that?" asked Madame Garnier.
"Yes, I thought it my duty to, as a mother, to know what it is. But I burned the book, and you may be sure I don't go around letting everybody know I've read it. Did you find her pretty?"
Madame Garnier answered obliquely, but quite understandably. "I daresay a man would think so. I couldn't think of anything but her manners. How she lolled in her chair, and crossed her legs. I wouldn't want my Gabrielle to see her. And to my eyes she had a faded look. Queer, her being so fair. I don't see any trace of Indian blood. I thought all Americans had Indian blood."
"Oh, no, Madame Garnier, my Henri says that.…"
Madame Garnier made a gesture of one thoroughly out of patience with Henri, and ended the conversation abruptly, "Oh, here we are at the corner. I must turn down here. Good-day, Madame Fortier,"
II
The rosy, wrinkled face of the Sister of Charity shone out from the white quilled band over which the black veil was draped. Beside her the distinguished old lady showed, under her long crape veil, a face as quiet as that of the nun. The two elderly women sat at ease, their hands folded in their laps, chatting in a pleasant low tone.
"Yes, so every one says, a great deal of money, Madame la Marquise," said the nun in her murmuring monotone, "as all Americans have."
The other breathed out with a great wistful sigh, "Oh, Sœur Ste. Lucie, if only the good God has sent us at last the opportunity to get our chapel."
"Yes, yes indeed," assented the nun, drawing in her breath sharply between her teeth. She raised her eyes, singularly bright and personal in her professionally passive face. "They say there is a child, too. Perhaps a soul to save. Our Mother Superior always so zealous for the honor of our Order has asked us specially, specially … the Bishop has so much to say about one of the Sisters of the St. Francis Order because of the conversion of a Swedish sailor, whom she nursed in their hospital. The Mother Superior hopes very much that some one in our Order.…"
"Yes, yes, I understand," said the great lady, nodding.
The nun went on, deferentially, "Madame la Marquise is so good to be willing to come to call on the foreign lady! I shall see to it that the foreign lady understands the honor done her."
The other made a graceful deprecatory gesture with a shapely black-gloved hand, and explained with great simplicity and gentleness, "Oh, no, ma sœur, it is nothing, nothing to praise. I would make a far greater sacrifice for the sake of our beloved work. But in this case, there is no risk of being misunderstood. It is not as though they were French bourgeois, who might have their heads turned. There can be no question of social equality with transient foreigners." She smiled, bowed her head with humility and said, "So you see, dear Sœur Ste. Lucie, that I deserve no praise for making a sacrifice."
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, Sœur 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 impassive.
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 Petit 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-class 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. Nobody lives on the rue d'Espagne, that anybody would ever have occasion to visit."
III
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 passed, 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 class, 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 passionately, "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.
The door opened, and showed the upright frame of Jeanne Amigorena. There was a moment of mutual surprise, and exclamations of greeting and inquiry. "Why, Jeanne, you here? I thought you were on the farm at Midassoa! "
Jeanne broke out upon them with a great rush of Basque, enchanted to see familiar faces, enchanted to have a new audience. "Oh, good-day, Madame Hardoye. Good-day, Mlle. Hasparren. Who ever would think to see you here? Yes, here I am in a family of the queerest foreigners you ever saw. But they pay very well. They have both apartments on this floor. Yes, they must be made of money, and I have little Isabelle from Midassoa with me, as femme de chambre, and what do you think, we have each a room, a real furnished bedroom, just as though we were guests. The madame took one look at the maids' rooms, under the roof, on the fifth floor, you know, and when she saw they are all dark except that little sky-light, with no furniture to speak of, she said she wouldn't let a dog sleep there. The idea! It would have been plenty good enough for Isabelle and enough sight better than what she ever had at home. She is getting beyond herself all the time, Isabelle is. I have an awful time keeping her in her place. The lady hasn't the least idea of doing it. They are such queer people, I can't tell you! She knows no more about taking care of a child, our madame! She started to let our little mademoiselle go alone to school, through the streets! And the poor child was so disgraceful with spots and dirt on her dresses that I was ashamed to have people see her and had Madame buy her some aprons and now I keep her in order myself. She is a sweet child, only brought up the way you'd expect a little savage to be, puts her feet on the chairs! Or else sits on the floor! And runs on the street, or else loiters along looking at shop-windows. But she is learning fast. I don't complain, oh, no. I know well enough that when you are a servant, you must take what comes to you, and make the best of it. But I never thought I would work in a family of free-thinkers! Still, they sleep over there on that side of the landing, and Isabelle and I sleep here. I keep the holy-water shell well filled, and we brought the branch of box from home that had been blessed last Palm Sunday, and we sprinkle a few drops of Lourdes water on the table before we eat. I hope we are safe. M. le Curé says that is enough. I often think that …"
Madame Hardoye had been listening to this flood of talk, her lively interest in the matter struggling with her distaste for Jeanne's familiar manner.
She now broke in with an accent which she meant to express, "There you've talked quite enough. After all, though my sister has queer ideas, we are not in your class. We are not peasants. And it's high time you remembered that." What she actually said in a curt tone was, "Where do we ring to make a call on your mistress?"
Jeanne understood the implication perfectly. It was one quite familiar to her. With a change of manner she motioned them silently across the hall. "There," she said laconically, her face suddenly hard and somber.
Rachel Hasparren also understood the implication and flushed an even more vivid color than that habitually on her dark cheeks. She held out her hand, her kid-gloved hand, to Jeanne, with a defiant gesture of equality, "Good-by, Jeanne. I'm glad we had a glimpse of you."
Jeanne took the hand awkwardly, with a sort of rancorous reluctance to have her grievance appeased, and turning back, shut the door behind her.
"Now, Rachel!" expostulated her sister.
Rachel breathed ragingly and stared at her sister in an old resentment, which the other took calmly, looking inside her card-case.
Rachel advanced provocatively, "Did you hear what old Jeanne said, how the American lady would not put a dog to sleep in lodgings in which we French expect to house our servants?"
The married sister resented this spiritedly. "Spoiling servants for the rest of us, that's what it is!" she said impatiently. "And what good does it do? You saw how old Jeanne only thinks the less of her for it. The more you try to do for that class, the less they think of you."
"That's because Jeanne's whole nature has been degraded by our caste ideals!" shouted Rachel. "She's a poor, superstitious, medieval old thing, incapable of ordinary decent human relations. If she'd lived in America…!"
Angèle pulled the other bell-cord here with an air of cutting short another outburst, and they both stood silently looking at the closed door, which presently was opened by little Isabelle. As they went down the stairs, Angèle remarked, "Well, she seems to be all right. Like everybody else, as far as I can see. I expected to see her with a Liberty cap on her head and swinging a lighted bomb, to hear you going on."
Rachel was taking off her kid gloves and putting on cotton ones. She said dreamily, her black eyes deep and glowing, "When I asked her how the peasants lived in America, she said … the dear American … 'there aren't any peasants in America.' "
Her dark flushed face was shining as they came out on the rue Thiers and stood for an instant, glancing up at the battlemented walls of the dark old Castle.
Rachel suddenly shook her fist at it, her cotton-gloved fist, and cried out, "You needn't glower down like that, you hideous old relic of an evil past! There's a great, wide, rich country across the seas, that never heard of such as you, that never had a feudal castle in it, that isn't darkened by a single hateful shadow such as you still throw down on us here."
"Hush, Rachel," said her sister, patiently attempting to quiet her, "Anna Etchergary is looking out of the window at us."
Rachel instantly lowered her voice, with an instinctive response of caution to this warning, but she was furious that she had done so. "That's Europe, that's Europe for you! she said hotly, under her breath. "Spied upon every minute by suspicious, mean, malicious eyes."
Angèle broke in on her to say reasonably, "Well, anyhow, your hat is on one side again."