He was saying to himself, "Five days since she left! Only five days!
G.o.d! How am I going to live through any more of them. How many more sleepless nights! Will she ever get back!"
"Yes, isn"t it warm to-night?" said Eugenia, seeing that he was wiping his wet forehead with his handkerchief.
"Unseasonable, very," agreed Neale. He had turned sick with his recurrent panic lest she _never_ come back. He ought to have taken that next train and gone right after her, as he wanted to.
The waiter brought the fish. It was not what Neale had ordered, but a more expensive variety. He looked somewhat apprehensively at the gentleman as he offered it, but the gentleman did not seem to notice. On this the waiter disappeared and brought back a bottle of wine, not the variety Neale had bargained for.
"Have you any news from Miss Allen?" asked Neale.
"Oh, no," said Eugenia, slightly surprised. "When she"s coming back so soon, she probably doesn"t see there"s any need to write."
She began on the fish. After the first mouthful she said to Neale with enthusiasm, "You know how to order a dinner as well as to choose a table, that"s evident."
"It was the first fish he proposed," said Neale.
Eugenia thought, "How much better breeding he has, after all, than Mr.
Livingstone, always boasting of his savoir-faire."
Neale"s thoughts were jumping incoherently from one thing to another.
"Funny place Rome is, to be planning how to run a wood-working plant in Vermont. Funny change of direction, from planning to go out to China and the East, about-face to planning to settle down and take root. You wouldn"t think that would appeal to a man who had had the idea of ranging the world a while longer, to tie himself...." This attempt at reasonable consideration of things vanished in an explosion of emotion, as if a spark had fallen into gunpowder. "Oh, if she _will_! If she _will_! Why didn"t I make a chance to see her alone before she went away?"
Eugenia was talking about traveling. She had noticed Neale"s interest in travels. "I"m thinking, Mr. Crittenden, of making a leisurely trip around the world--not one of those detestable, herded, conducted tours.
And yet how else can I go about it? What would _you_ do? I"m so ignorant of anything outside of Europe. I _wish_ I had some one intelligent and enlightened to go with me. It"s so forlorn to travel alone!"
"Why, you"ll _like_ traveling alone!" said Neale rea.s.suringly, thinking of his own past year. "It"s great not to have to bother with some one"s else tastes and notions and foolishness and limitations."
"Oh, but," said Eugenia, looking down at her winegla.s.s pensively, "of course it"s better to be alone than with some one whose tastes and interests are nothing to you. But to have with you some one you really _care_ for...."
Neale thought suddenly what the past year would have been if he had had Marise with him, and cried out fervently, "Oh, of course, _that_ would be the ideal!"
The waiter brought the roast and the Frascati. And still the gentleman made no objection. Well, he would bring a cordial with the coffee, ordered or not. The gentleman didn"t seem to know what he had ordered or what he was eating. And no wonder, with such a beautiful girl across the table. The waiter shot an experienced, appraising eye at Eugenia"s clothes. "He ought to be good for a big tip," he reflected hopefully.
Eugenia thought best to leave a thoughtful silence after the remarks on companionship in travel, and sipped her wine with downcast eyes.
Neale was trying again to think things over reasonably, trying to do as he had always done about everything, to get things clear and straight and sure in his head. There must be no possibility of a mistake where Marise was concerned. "How _about_ this now? I"ve gone stale on other things. How do I know I won"t have a slump some time later? A human being is so full of such d.a.m.n unexpected things--I must be _sure_ for Marise"s sake. How can any man be...." At this he was shaken by so terrible a throe of desire, of longing for Marise that he was frightened. He sat pale, breathless, helpless before it; suffering, tortured, exalted.
When he could breathe he wiped his forehead again. His fingers were shaking. He would go out of his mind if she didn"t come back soon. His need for her was like a man"s need for air and food and water and sleep.
Think reasonably about such essential needs as that! A man cannot live without them. He could not live without Marise. He had not lived before he knew her.
"How moved he is," thought Eugenia, seeing his pale, shaken look. "But he doesn"t dare speak. He will to-morrow. Or the day afterwards."
The waiter brought the dessert. Also coffee with the unordered cordial.
CHAPTER LII
Father had grown stouter. He always did. But he looked very well. And his shirts and socks seemed to be all right. Melanie had seen to them, although the dust was thick all over the furniture, and the windows were semi-opaque with smoke. Father was glad to see her, said she was looking very pretty and asked her kindly if she didn"t need some more money; but he was not in the least enthusiastic over her reforms in the housekeeping. "Who cares about dust!" he told her. "And as for smoke on the windows, I"m never here in the daytime anyhow except for lunch--and I don"t want to look out of the windows then." And as for getting hold of Biron to keep him up to the mark, Marise found that it was trying to put your finger between the tree and the bark, to get between Biron and her father. Every evening after they had both earnestly finished the serious business of eating dinner, Biron left Melanie to the mere brute labor of cleaning up and washing dishes while he put on a clean ap.r.o.n and came into the salon to consult with his employer about the two meals of the morrow. Marise was astonished at the learning and ac.u.men displayed by both of them in the matter. However had her father learned so intimately all the resources of Les Halles in all the seasons? He subscribed to a newspaper which gave a complete report of the arrivals at the market from both sea-sh.o.r.e and country-side, over which he and Biron pored intently, putting on round spectacles and bending their portly frames over the page. And there was a wine-sellers" journal too, the news items of which were brought up for consideration once a week.
"_When it fails, I go out and run a mile, and then I can eat anything._"
Melanie was no longer allowed to serve the meals thus prayerfully planned and created. It was Biron himself who brought in the _plat_, set it down and waited anxiously till it had been tasted and the verdict p.r.o.nounced. He did not sit down opposite his master and share the meal ... not yet! But Marise had an intuition that it would not be long before he would. Why not? He was the only other person capable of appreciating that meal. He and her father were bound together by a common pa.s.sion: they completed and rounded out each other"s lives. Where else could Mr. Allen find such another cook? Where else could Biron find another such employer? They were blood-brothers, fellow-priests of a common cult. They might be thankful that somehow they had found each other in the world.
When, after a few days of sharing this menage, she told her father she thought she would go down to see Jeanne, he said, sure, that was all right if she felt like it, and was she sure she didn"t need any more money?
Under the thick green shade of pollarded sycamores sat old Jeanne in the wheeled-chair Marise and her father had given her. The young girl, whom Marise and her father paid to take care of Jeanne, came running to unlock the gate and let the visitor in.
There was old Jeanne, her head tied up in the black coif, just as Marise had seen her a thousand times, her face all twisted to one side just as she had seen her that one time she could not forget. And how glad she was to see Marise, pulling her down to kiss her on both cheeks, crying a little for joy and wiping away the tears with her one active hand; for although she had recovered somewhat, so that she could eat and talk a little if she formed the words very slowly and was not excited, she had never been able to use her paralyzed arm or leg again.
Marise must sit beside her, and let old Jeanne look into her face closely with her loving old eyes, and stroke her white young hand with her gnarled fingers that had worked so hard for the child Marise. And when her first agitation was over, and she was calm enough to try to talk, the questions, the loving, anxious questions: Was she well, the darling, darling girl? And was she happy? And did that Parisian s.l.u.t of a maid look out for her decently? And who did the marketing? And who did her hair, her beautiful, beautiful hair? Jeanne"s brown hand rested lightly on the shining dark head. No one had hair like her Marise. She must let it down so that Jeanne could see it again as in the old days.
And how about her linen? Jeanne was troubled on this point. Linen was not what it had been and the way it was washed in Paris was a crime. A Parisian family were staying near by, and Jeanne"s daughter-in-law did their washing. Such grimy, gray linen--it made Jeanne sick to think that perhaps her darling was no better cared for. Marise must needs open her valise there and then, and take out a chemise to show Jeanne, who handled it, held it close to her one good eye, touched the tip of her tongue to it, and gave it back, saying, with an attempt at tolerance, "Oh, well, it"s as good as a laundress can do nowadays, I dare say," and possessed herself of Marise"s hand again, holding it to her heart fondly.
Marise found the tears were in her eyes. How sweet it was to be loved!
She clung to the old hand as she had when she was a child and Jeanne"s had been the only hand held out to her.
The old, crafty wrinkles came around Jeanne"s eyes. She pulled Marise"s head close to her and whispered, "You"ve never told? n.o.body at all?"
"No, no," said Marise hastily. "No one." She felt the old sickness rise to her throat as she said it.
"And you"re not ... no man ... you"re not engaged or...."
"No, oh, no!" said Marise, still more hastily.
Jeanne"s face quieted. She drew a long breath and stroked Marise"s hand.
"That"s right! That"s right! They"re all alike, my darling. Don"t forget that. They"re all alike when it comes to women."
Next morning Marise was amazed to have Jeanne greet her all over again, as though she had not seen her, with fresh surprise and joy, the same questions, the same trembling stroking of her hair. Only why was her hair up on her head? That must be just a joke. She must be playing being a lady. And was she sure she knew her catechism? Her white veil was ready, finer than any other little girl"s veil. How lovely she would look in it!
"Yes," whispered the young caretaker, in answer to Marise"s look of bewilderment, "she doesn"t remember you were here yesterday. She often imagines you are with her when she is quite alone. We hear her talking happily to you. And now she does not know the difference between you and her own daughter who died. No, she will never know if you just slip away now. She will never know that you came or that you are not still here."
When Marise went quietly out at the gate she left Jeanne dozing in her chair under the plane-trees, dozing, and waking to talk lovingly to the two little girls who had both died so long ago.
She had learned in the village that Mlle. Hasparren was no longer teaching in Bayonne, had gone back to her own little hill-town in the Pyrenees. Marise knew the way there very well, having spent many a week-end and vacation with Mlle. Hasparren in the old days. The boy from the farm where Jeanne was living chanced to have an errand that took him over the pa.s.s and down into that valley. On an impulse Marise asked to go with him. She stowed her valise away under the plank seat and scrambled up beside the bullet-headed boy in the blue beret. How it all took her back to her childhood! The little two-wheeled cart flew off behind the swift small horse, rattling and jolting up hill and down, just as when she and Mlle. Hasparren had gone off together.
At the beginning of the long steep road up to the divide, she and the boy got out and walked, her shoes soon powdered white with dust. How dusty Mlle. Hasparren"s shoes had been the day they stood waiting in the station...!
They plunged down the other side into the green, poplar-planted valley with every home, every turn of the road as it had been. They stopped at the tiny, white-washed cabin, with its leafy atrium of sycamores. As the boy drove away and the sound of his rattling wheels died to silence, Marise heard from within the first notes of the Sonata in G, the one she had first studied with Mlle. Hasparren.
She went in without knocking, sure that the little home contained no servant, and there sat Mlle. Hasparren, her hair several shades whiter, her black dress several degrees shabbier, her quiet worn face and steady eyes bent lovingly over the keys. The music was like the very sound of her voice.
They sat up late that night talking--Marise must tell all about Rome and the old Visconti, as legendary a figure to Mlle. Hasparren as Paganini; and Mlle. Hasparren must tell how she came to leave her city-school and go back to the little mountaineers in the rough, plain village cla.s.s-room. "I seemed to feel nearer to them," she said, not knowing very well how to tell why she had, "and I felt a great longing for my mountains and my own old home. And they need music here. Do you remember Father Armandariz?"