This slid her easily along into talk of early days, a quarter of a century before, when she was in one of the first lycees, at the time when lay-school teachers were an abomination and a hissing to the decent church-going bourgeois.
Dryly, with the inimitable terse picturesqueness of phrase which made her famous as a talker with people who demanded a great deal more than youthful high spirits, she took them back with her, twenty years, into the remote provincial city where she had encountered every narrowness possible to bigotry and reaction, and had wound it all around her little finger. Through her highly amusing recital of how she had played on the prejudices of those provincials, how adroitly she had employed against them their very vices, their jealousy and suspicion of each other, their grasping avarice, their utter dumb-beast ignorance of what modern education meant, through all this played, like a little sulphurous flame, her acrid scorn and contempt for them, her vitriolic satisfaction in having cheated and beaten them, in having turned them inside out and made fools of them, without their ever once suspecting it. Her husband"s admiration of her powers was boundless.
"That is now one of the most prosperous and successful lycees in eastern France," he told the girls, "and every year they have a big dinner with my wife as guest of honor, with speeches and things, and somebody lays a wreath on her as though she were a statue. Quite a joke, hein?"
"Well, that must be an enjoyable occasion indeed," thought Marise, seeing the scene as though she had been there; the simple-minded provincials, trying simple-mindedly to honor the founder of their lycee; Mme. Vallery sitting at the right hand of their Mayor, with her mild air of deprecating the too-great honor done her--and her little sulphurous flame of vitriolic contempt playing over the convolutions of her brain.
"Yes, it is a very pretty world we live in," thought Marise, laughing heartily at Mme. Vallery"s satirical imitation of one of the clumsy speeches made in her honor on the last occasion.
She thought it still a prettier world, when in the cab as she was accompanying Eugenia back to Auteuil, Eugenia said, radiating satisfaction, "I"m to have my part in the fete-de-charite, too!"
"You _are_!" said Marise, "what are you going to do?"
"I"m going to give the money to pay for the appearance of a Russian dancer ... the very newest thing. It will be the _clou_ of the entire fete. And my name is going on the program!"
"Eh bien!" cried Marise in the liveliest surprise, "why, I didn"t hear a word about all this."
"No, it was in talking with M. Vallery that the plan was made. He hadn"t dreamed of their being able to afford such a thing. It was my own idea.
He was quite carried away by it, couldn"t see how I came to think of it."
Marise was silent, meditating profoundly on the prettiness of the world in which we are called upon to live. The more she meditated, the hotter grew her resentment. It was all very well to be cynical, and it was foolish and raw to be surprised at cynicism, but this was a little ...
really a _little_ excessive! She flushed angrily as she went over in her mind the oiled exact.i.tude with which each cog had slipped into the next, the casual invitation to Eugenia, M. Vallery"s admiration of her beauty, the talk on the balcony ... oh, poor Eugenia! what a fool she must have seemed, with her nave impression that it was her own idea! And how that fatuous barber"s model must have laughed with his wife after they had left! The shameless team-work with which they had turned the talk to something far-away, and kept it there ... and, she flinched, her vanity cut to the quick, her own nave blindness to the little game they were putting up on her. Well, she would know better next time. She had unpeeled one more layer from this pretty, pretty world of ours.
Speaking on impulse, she now said rather abruptly, to Eugenia, "I wouldn"t have much to do with the Vallerys, if I were you. He"s really an awful cad."
Eugenia looked at her with a knowing smile, "You"re jealous," she said laughing, "he didn"t take _you_ off to show you the Luxembourg in spring!"
Marise was for an instant stricken so speechless by this idea that she could only stare. And by the time she could have spoken, she perceived that there was nothing to say, no comment on the prettiness of the world and the people who live in it, that began to be adequate.
At the great gates of the school-parc, Eugenia and her maid descended.
Eugenia kissed Marise good-by, the correct kiss on each cheek this time.
Nothing annoyed Eugenia more than any reference, intended or imaginary, to the time when she had gone about kissing her school-mates on the mouth.
After the other two had rung the clanging bell and been admitted, Marise stood for a moment, hesitating. Then she decided to walk home, although home was a long, long way from Auteuil. It would do her good, she thought, setting out at the powerful, swinging gait she had for the long walks which for her, as for the more energetic of her cla.s.smates, had been the only form of outdoor sport accessible.
She had decided to walk so that she could cool off, and think over the Vallerys" manoeuver, and as she walked she had it out with herself, going deep. By the end of the first mile she knew it was foolish and futile to resent the afternoon"s comedy. That was the sort of thing everybody tried to do, only few people were as successful as Mme.
Vallery. She knew well enough what she would get, if she pelted right in on them now, as they sat laughing over their little triumph. They would never dream of denying it, any more than she or her father would deny being the author of a far-laid plan in chess, which led to an opponent"s defeat.
It was all a part of the game, and she might as well make up her mind to it, and renew her determination to keep out of the game as far as she personally was concerned. They were no worse than other people, only more intelligent and more interesting. She could tell, to the very turn of the phrase, what Mme. Vallery would say to her if she should have the cra.s.sness to go in and make a scene.
"My dear child, no power on earth can protect navete! It is a lamb whose wool belongs to the best shearer. Let her sharpen her wits, your young friend. She"ll need to, sooner or later. It ought to have been the best of practice for her, a little skirmish like the one we just furnished her. She would do well to practise before she gets into a serious skirmish with somebody who _really_ wants something out of her.
What is this fete-de-charite for? To please me? Not at all. To make some money for poor people, mothers and anaemic babies. Show me another woman in our circle who puts herself out as much as I do for the poor! Your pretty friend has more money than is good for her. I"m only securing a little of it for the needy."
That was true, too, thought Marise. Mme. Vallery really did a lot of good, and very unostentatiously. If people were only far enough beneath her in intelligence and social position and money, she would do anything for them, very simply, in the nicest sort of way. And if she took a rather horrid delight in making fools of people more pretentious, what had Marise to reproach her with--she who could not refrain from malicious teasing! It was part of the same thing. Everything was part of the same thing. And the same thing always turned out to be very much the same. Also, Mme. Vallery had really always been very kind to Marise, seemed really fond of her, had given her innumerable opportunities which otherwise she would never....
"What does she want to get out of _me_?" Marise suddenly asked herself, struck by a sudden suspicion and wondering why she had never thought of this before.
Pondering this, unpeeling another layer, an acrid odor in her nostrils, she struck out into a longer, swifter gait, at her old futile trick of trying to hurry away from what was inside her heart.
The tall, slim, lithe girl, walking swiftly through the sweet spring twilight looked like the personification of spring-time with her fresh young face, her dewy dark eyes, her sensitive mobile young mouth, red as a dark red rose. She looked like Youth itself, welcoming in the new season. Several people glanced after her, and smiled with sympathy for her freshness and bloom and untouched virginal candor.
CHAPTER XL
I
Paris, May, 1908.
Eugenia had been complaining that her new teacher in advanced French diction was very ill-natured and exacting, and had asked Marise to go with her to a lesson to back her up in a protest against his unreasonable demands.
The two girls drove up to the Francais in Eugenia"s inevitable cab, and leaving her inevitable maid to wait in it, pa.s.sed through the dingy little side-door into an ill-lighted corridor and felt their way toilsomely up a stairway not lighted at all. A dingy, stone-colored corridor with painted and numbered doors on each side, like a needy old-man"s home or ill-kept reformatory. A knock at one of these, opened by a bald, pale, elderly man, with a k.n.o.bby nose and several chins. A tiny, cluttered, stuffy room, with a lumpy sofa, two chairs, an easel and a window.
After her presentation to M. Vaudoyer, Marise sat down on one of the hard chairs to await developments. The actor was in a long, paint-stained blouse, and excused himself by saying that his pupil was a little ahead of time, "A real American," he said, smiling at both of them. He had been painting, he explained, waving a wrinkled old hand towards a canvas on an easel.
"Oh, you are twice an artist," remarked Marise, doing as she had been taught to do, automatically turning a pretty speech. As a matter of fact, she thought the sketch anything but artistic.
The old man"s face clouded. "To be a painter, that was all I ever wanted," he said, looking with affection at the very mediocre landscape, and adding sadly, "All my life ... all my life."
"But to have been--to be such an artist as you are on the stage--surely that ought to be enough," said Marise. This time she spoke sincerely, out of a very genuine admiration for his acting.
"One does what one can, what one can," said the old man, resignedly, unb.u.t.toning his blouse and dragging it off, revealing snuffy and crumpled black garments. He looked, thought Marise, like the parish priest of a very poor and neglected parish. And he had been for years--why, for a life-time, one of the most solidly esteemed and admired actors in the finest theatrical company in the world. "What more does any man want?" Marise asked herself, wondering why his face in repose was so bitter and melancholy.
Before beginning his lesson, he gave a last look at his painting, "What do you think of it? What do you think of it?" he asked suddenly, turning on Marise, the question like a loaded revolver at her temple.
Much practice had steadied Marise"s nerves against any sort of hold-up that could be practised in social relations. She said instantly, "I think it shows one of the most charming landscapes I ever saw. Where in the world is there such a delightful composition?"
She was dealing with some one infinitely more practised than she, who was not in the least taken in by her evasion. Sighing, he turned the canvas with its face to the easel, and told her over his shoulder, "It"s in my own country, where I ought to have stayed and been a dumb-beast, and happy. Nowhere you ever heard of, a far corner of the Pyrenees.
Saint-Sauveur is the name." And as if, in spite of himself, to p.r.o.nounce the name moved him, he broke out, "It"s the most beautiful place--a little heaven on earth--why should any one leave it to spend his life in this boulevard h.e.l.l of malignity? Such n.o.ble lines in its mountains, such grand pacifying harmony in the valleys--enough to reconcile a man to being alive! Such details as it has too! There is a gorge there where the _gave de_ Gavarnie rushes down. Always on the hottest, dustiest, most blinding summer day, it is cool there, the air green like Chartres stained-gla.s.s, and alive with the thunder of the water."
He frowned, shook his head, put his hand to a book on the table, and said, dismissing his evocation with a shrug, "Eh bien ... eh bien...!"
The lesson began but Marise heard not a word of it, not a word. She sat straight on the hard chair, her face a blank, and walked up the street with Jeanne, seeing in the blue twilight, the pale face of Jean-Pierre Garnier approaching them. The alcove curtains hung close before her, and Jeanne"s voice was on the other side. And then, the burst of men"s laughter from across the landing, cut short by Jeanne"s closing the door; and then the heavy, dragging step in the corridor, the loud, harsh breathing. She waited, tense with fright, to see the curtains twitch open, and Jeanne"s dreadful face appear ... some one was speaking to her, urgently, insistently, by name....
"Marise, Marise...." It was Eugenia speaking to her, "Help me explain to M. Vaudoyer that I haven"t the least desire to become an actress, or to know every word of Moliere by heart! That I simply want lessons in how to p.r.o.nounce French correctly, the kind of lessons my English-diction teacher gives me." She spoke with an impatient accent, and Marise coming to herself saw the two facing each other with angry looks.
M. Vaudoyer said indignantly, "It"s not worth my while to give instruction to a student who will not do the necessary work."
"I will do any _necessary_ work," Eugenia answered hotly, "but what has reading a lot of deadly dull old books to do with p.r.o.nouncing French correctly? And if I"m not going to be an actress or a singer, what _is_ the use of all those idiotic ah! ah! oh! oh! fee! fee! exercises?"