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, Soeur 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 impa.s.sive.
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 Pet.i.t 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-cla.s.s 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. n.o.body lives on the rue d"Espagne, that anybody would ever have occasion to visit."
III
May 20, 1898.
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 pa.s.sed, 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 cla.s.s, 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 pa.s.sionately, "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 Mida.s.soa!"
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 Mida.s.soa 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 ap.r.o.ns 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 sh.e.l.l 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 Cure 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 cla.s.s. 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 cla.s.s, 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, superst.i.tious, medieval old thing, incapable of ordinary decent human relations. If she"d lived in America...!"
Angele pulled the other bell-cord here with an air of cutting short another out-burst, and they both stood silently looking at the closed door, which presently was opened by little Isabelle.
As they went down the stairs, Angele 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."
Angele broke in on her to say reasonably, "Well, anyhow, your hat is on one side again."