"No, they don"t even understand French, but the madame can read it a little."
"Oh, Spanish, then."
"No, I had Pedro Gallon go up to see them and they don"t speak a word of Spanish. They"re not even Catholics!"
The two women stared at each other. What could people be who were not Spanish or French or Basque, or even Catholics?
Anna went on, "Tante Jeanne, come upstairs and see for yourself what they are like. You have seen so many bourgeois families, you can tell better than I. I"ll only say you have come to help me find servants for them."
Anna followed her aunt out into the hall and locked the door behind her.
The key to the door hung with a dozen others, large and clanking at the belt of her blue jeans ap.r.o.n. Anna"s philosophy of life consisted in having plenty of keys and keeping them in constant use. The only things you could be sure of were the things you yourself had locked up.
They climbed the shining, well-waxed, oaken stairway, Anna"s special care and pride, turning itself around and around in the circular white-washed well, lighted by small pointed windows, which showed the three-foot thickness of the stone walls. They stood before the dark paneled door, its highly polished bra.s.s k.n.o.b in the middle, and pulled hard at the thick, ta.s.seled bell-rope. A bell jangled nervously, light uneven footsteps sounded on the bare floor inside, and a small, pretty, fair-haired woman stood before them, dressed in a pale blue house-gown elaborately trimmed with white silk. She smiled a pleasant recognition at Anna, and gave a friendly nod to the older woman.... Jeanne disliked her on sight.
The old peasant a.s.sumed a respectful, decorous, submissive att.i.tude as became her social position, and made a quick estimate at the age of the other woman. She made it thirty-six at a guess although she reflected that probably any man would guess not more than twenty-eight. Jeanne knew by the sixth sense which comes from many years of unbiased observation of life, that the other woman was the sort who looks much younger than she is. She also was aware as by an emanation, that the other woman was not French. That was apparent from every inch of her, the way she stood and smiled and wore her gown; and yet she was dressed like any French lady, with a high, boned collar up to her ears, sleeves with a stiff puff at the shoulders, and a full, long, heavy skirt that hung in ripples and lay on the floor behind. Also her fair hair was tousled up into a pompadour, with a big, shining knot on top. Jeanne, her head a little to one side and bent forward in a patient pose of silent respect, wondered if that fair hair were her own or were false, and made a guess that a good deal of it was false.
All this Jeanne took in and pondered while Anna was trying to explain by dumb-show who her aunt was and why she had come. The foreign lady listened intently, but it was evident that she did not understand at all.
Jeanne took advantage of her absorption with Anna to look at her intently, with the ruthless peasant scrutiny, going straight through all the finer distinctions of character, deep down to the one fundamental, the one question essential to the peasant mind in all human relationships, "Is she stronger than I?"
Jeanne saw at once that the lady before her was not stronger than she, was not indeed strong at all, although she looked as though she might have an irritable temper. She was one you could always get around, thought Jeanne, her strong hands folded meekly before her, her powerful body a little stooped to make herself look politely mild. She was one who didn"t know what she wanted enough to go after it and get it, thought Jeanne, casting her black eyes down, the picture of a well-trained, European servant, with a proper respect for the upper cla.s.ses she served.
The lady, laughing and fluttering, now motioned them into the salon.
Some of the furnishings had been taken away, thought Jeanne, looking about out of the corner of her eye--no lace over the windows! In this room sat the monsieur of the family, a large man, smoking a large cigar, and reading an enormous newspaper.
On encountering a new member of the male s.e.x, Jeanne, although she had long pa.s.sed the age when she needed personally to make the distinction, always made a first, sweeping division of them into two cla.s.ses: those who were dangerous to women and those who were not. She instantly put down the monsieur of the new family among those who were not, although he was not bad looking, not more than forty-five, with all his teeth still in his mouth and all his thick, dark hair still on his head. But a woman of Jeanne"s disillusioned experience of human nature knew from the expression of his listless brown eyes, from his careless att.i.tude in his chair, from the indifferent way he looked at the three women before him, from the roughness of his hair, evidently combed but once a day, with no perfumed dressing on it, that he was not now and never had been a man who cared for conquests among women, or who had had many. She immediately felt for him a slight contempt as for somebody not all there mentally, and wondered if his wife were not occasionally unfaithful to him. She looked as though she might be that kind, a rattling, bird-headed little thing like that, reflected Jeanne behind her downcast eyes, changing imperceptibly from one humble, self-effacing pose to another.
Anna now turned to her aunt with a long breath, "I cannot make her understand," she said in Basque. "Think of a nice, pretty-looking lady like that not being able to talk! I cannot make her think anything but that you have come to be the cook yourself."
"Well, I might do worse," said Jeanne unexpectedly, her mouth watering at the chance for pickings. She spoke in Basque. Her face remained as unmoved as though it were the wood-carving it seemed.
Her niece stared for a moment, horizons opening before her. "Oh, Tante Jeanne, if you only would! With you here and me in the concierge"s loge, what a chance for commissions off everybody from the grocer to the wash-woman!"
Jeanne agreed although with no enthusiasm. "But I"m not young. I don"t need the money, if only Michel"s wife would...." She gave a quick look at the man and woman before her, who were now exchanging some words in their queer-sounding tongue. "They seem such odd people. Who knows what they are like? Their not being able to talk, and all--and not even Catholics!" She hesitated, feeling a distaste for their foreignness, and for the fussy, effusive smilingness of the madame. Jeanne always distrusted ladies who smiled at their servants. There could only be war to the knife between servants and their employer. Why pretend anything else?
A little girl in a white dress came swiftly into the room now, a long-legged, slim child of eleven. She darted in as though she was looking for something, and in a hurry to find it. When she saw the two Basque women, she paused, suddenly motionless, and gave them a steady inquiring gaze out of clear dark eyes.
Jeanne stared at her, startled. The child had thick black hair, glossy and straight, a cream-like skin, and long eyes with arching eyebrows as black as her hair, which made a finely-drawn curving line on her forehead and ran back at the sides upon her temples.
Anna noticed the older woman"s surprise and said casually, "Yes, isn"t it queer how the little girl looks like one of us, a real little Basque?
She seems nice enough, only with no manners. See how she comes bursting into a room and then only stares; but none of the family have any manners, if it comes to that."
The child made a quick move now and still moving swiftly stepped to Jeanne"s side. To Jeanne"s astonishment she put out her small white fingers and took Jeanne"s gnarly old hand in a firm grip. "Bonjour, Madame," she said, smiling faintly at her attempt to speak the foreign language, although her eyes were grave.
Jeanne had for an instant a strange impression that the child seemed to think that she had found what she was looking for. At the sight of the little girl, at the living touch of that small, warm hand, Jeanne forgot the chic madame with the shallow eyes, and the dull monsieur with the tired eyes. She looked down at the child who had eyes that were looking for something. The old woman and the little girl exchanged a long serious gaze, one of those deep, inarticulate contacts of human souls which come and go like a breath taken, and leave human lives altered for always.
Jeanne drew a long breath. She said in a low tone to the child, forgetting that she could not understand, "What do you call yourself, dear?"
The child answered in French haltingly, but with a pure accent, "I call myself Mary."
"Oh, yes," explained Anna, "the little girl is picking up French fast. I can make her mother understand now, through her. She does the ordering for them at the Bouyenval pension already. They are taking their meals there, till they get servants to begin housekeeping. Madame Bouyenval was telling me this morning...."
Jeanne interrupted her niece, speaking in Basque, "Well, if you think you can make that featherhead of her mother understand anything, you can tell them that I"ll come to-morrow to stay, and I"ll bring a chamber-maid with me."
To the foreign lady she said respectfully in French, with a deferential inclination of her tall strong body, "A votre service, Madame."
CHAPTER VII
May 10, 1898.
Marise sat in her room, in front of her table, a copy-book opening blank pages of coa.r.s.e paper before her, a thin, mean-looking, pale-blue book marked "Mots Usuels" on her lap. It was her own impression that she had stopped for a minute"s rest from study (although she had not yet begun), and that she was thinking hard. But she was not thinking. She was feeling.
She sat with her elbows on the table, her chin in her two hands, braced so that she was quite motionless. Her eyes were fixed on the candle flame, burning bright, fluttering and throbbing in the draughts which came into the old room, around the decrepit window-casing, under the door, through the worm-eaten base-board. There seemed to be a thousand wandering puffs from every direction. What Marise called her "thoughts"
were burning bright, fluttering and throbbing like the tiny flame at which she stared. They too were blown upon by a thousand breaths from every direction. If they would only hold still for a moment, Marise thought, and give out a steady light that she could see something by! If she only had some shade to put around those flickering thoughts so they wouldn"t quiver so! It upset her, jerking around so, from one way of seeing things to another. What she wanted to know was, how did things _really_ look?
Of course it was worse here in France, where everything was so uncertain, but it had started back home in America, it had always been going on ever since she could remember. It had always made her feel queer, as though she were holding an envelope up to a mirror to read the address and saw it wrong end to, the way everything looked different at Ashley the moment Maman came up to Vermont to take her home after vacations with Cousin Hetty. Marise loved it so there at Ashley, the dear darling old house in the mountains, with its nice atticky smell that no other house in the world had! It just fitted all around you, when you went in the door, the way Cousin Hetty"s arms fitted around you, when she took you up on her lap, and rocked and sang, "We hunted and we hallooed."
At the memory, Marise"s heart gave a great homesick throb. How far away she was from Cousin Hetty and Ashley now! How long since she had sat on anybody"s lap.
And yet when Maman came to take you away, from the first minute she went in and looked around her, you could see right through her eyes and what you saw was something different. After all it was just a homely old house with ugly crocheted tidies on the chairs, and splashers done in outline st.i.tch back of the wash-stands, and old red figured carpets on the floors, the way _no_body did at home in Belton. And Cousin Hetty talking so queer and Vermonty, her white hair smoothed down flat over her ears instead of all roughed up, fluffy, over a rat the pretty way other ladies did, with her funny clothes, her big cameo pin holding down her little flat round collar, and all other ladies so stylish with high collars under their ears. Yes, of course, the minute Maman looked at her, you saw how ashamed you"d be of Cousin Hetty if she came to visit your school at Belton. And yet there _was_ the other Cousin Hetty you"d been having such a good time with. You just flickered away from Maman"s way of seeing it to yours and never could make up your mind which was the real way.
Marise shook her head, drew a long breath and looked down again at her spelling lesson. It was a list of the names of furniture and household utensils, all very familiar to her from old Jeanne"s thinking them so terribly important. My! How much more Jeanne cared about her work than any girl they"d ever had in Belton.
"_Lit ... sommier ... traversin ..._" all the names of the complicated parts of a bed, a sacred French bed. As Marise looked at them on the page she could see Jeanne in the mornings, taking poor stupid little Isabelle"s head right off because she didn"t make the bed up smoothly enough; and all the time it was about a million times smoother than any bed ever was in America! Marise didn"t believe the President of the United States had his bed-clothes pulled so tight and smooth. And she wondered if Jeanne worked in the White House, if she would let even the President"s little girl sit down on the bed in the daytime. How _particular_ they were about things in France! About everything. When you bought anything in a store how they did drive you wild with their slowness in getting it put up in the package just _so_, as if it mattered, when you were going to take it out of the package three minutes later, as soon as you got home. And at school how they did fuss about neatness! The lessons were easy enough to learn. Marise never had any trouble with lessons, but how could anybody ever do things as neatly as they wanted you to. And how the teacher jumped on you if you didn"t, ever so much worse than if you got the answer to an arithmetic problem wrong. Mercy! How she did scold! There wasn"t anybody in America knew _how_ to scold like that even if they wanted to, and they didn"t. It had scared Marise at first, and made her feel like crying, and she never had got entirely used to it although she saw how all the other girls did, just took it and didn"t care and did whatever they liked behind her back.
Marise couldn"t get used to Jeanne that way either, to her yelling so when she scolded. Marise hated to have people get mad and excited. And how Jeanne did carry on about the house being neat, the part that is, where company could come; (under her kitchen sink it smelled awfully and was full of greasy rags) and yet she"d shine up the salon floor over and over when it was already shiny, and never think of those rags. The least little bit of clutter left around in the dining-room, or even your own room, and how she would scold! And yet she was so awfully good to you, and was always giving you big, smacking kisses, and hugging you, and she always saved over the best things to eat when Maman had a lunch party, and you were at school. Even when Maman had said you couldn"t have any of something Jeanne always brought it to your room, under her ap.r.o.n, after you"d gone to bed. It wasn"t very nice to do things behind Maman"s back, but everybody seemed to be doing things behind everybody else"s back. Maman did behind Father"s, lots of times, and it was perfectly understood between them that Marise was never to tell Father on her. And it would be telling on Jeanne if you told Mother. And anyhow Marise didn"t see Maman so very much any more, to tell her things; it was mostly Jeanne who did things for her.
Marise laid down her book again, lost in one of her recurrent attacks of amazement at there being so many different Jeannes inside that one leathery skin. There was the Jeanne who came every morning to take orders, and folded her hands on her ap.r.o.n, and sort of stooped herself over and said, "Oui, Madame," to everything Maman said. You"d think she was scared to death of Maman, and yet she went away to the kitchen on the other side of the landing and became another Jeanne who never paid the least attention to what Maman had said, but ran the house just the way she thought it ought to be.
There were two Jeannes right there, and there was another one, the outdoor Jeanne, who took her to school every morning--how funny that in France a great girl of eleven had to have somebody tagging along every time she stepped outside the house! This was the most interesting Jeanne of all. She told stories every single minute. Lots of them were about when she had been a little girl--gracious! think of Jeanne ever having been a little girl! That was ever so long ago, before the Emperor and the Empress had made Biarritz the fashion. Jeanne said those were the good days, when the Basques had their country to themselves, and you never saw a hat on any woman"s head; they all wore the black kerchief for everyday and mantillas on Sunday for Ma.s.s, and lived like Christians. Jeanne could remember when Biarritz was just a little fishing village, a decent place, and _now_ look at it! She could remember just as well when Napoleon and his Spanish wife first began to come down there so the Empress could get as near to Spain as possible.
Many and many"s the time Jeanne had seen them in their springy barouche, driving right along this very street, he with his eyes as dead as a three-days-caught fish"s, and she as handsome as any Basque girl!
They weren"t all stories of Jeanne when she was a little girl. Lots of them were of what had happened hundreds and hundreds of years ago around here. There were ever so many stories of witches and ghosts and sorcerers. There were plenty of those still in the Basque country. There was a sorcerer living in that little tumble-down house near the river on the road to St. Barthelemy. Why, Jeanne"s own mother, years ago, one day looked up from her spinning and saw a monstrous pig, big and black. She jumped up and ran out to try to catch it. Her grandmother went out too, and there were a lot of the neighbors who were trying to drive the pig away. But it didn"t pay a bit of attention, b.u.t.ted at them so fierce when they came near they were afraid, for he was as tall as a calf, and whoever saw a pig as big as that? And then the grandmother made the sign of the cross, Spanish fashion ... and like snapping your fingers, didn"t the pig change, right before their eyes, into a little wee woman they"d never seen, and she went up in the air as thin and light as a loose spider"s thread, and drifted away and there was nothing there.
The little American girl knew enough to know that this story couldn"t be true, of course. And yet Jeanne"s mother and all those people had seen it. They saw a pig and it turned into a wee witch woman.
Marise stopped thinking about that, leaned forward and began kneading the softened tallow at the upper end of the candle. Father could say all he liked about candles being a bother, they were lots of fun. This part up next the flame got just right so you could poke it and it stayed put, any way you wanted it. And it was fun to lean the candle over and drop the melted tallow on your hands in little drops that got hard and you could peel them off.
As she poked at it, a dozen pictures flickered through her mind; the bridge over the Adour with the river flowing yellow and strong under it, and the bright painted vessels loading and unloading; the Sister who opened the door at school, always so calm and silent; the playground at school with the black-ap.r.o.ned girls, their faces twisted up with running and screaming and catching each other; and the same girls at their desks, with their faces all smoothed and empty, looking up at Mademoiselle as though they had never thought of doing anything she told them not to; the school-room itself, battered and gray with age, the old black desks with the slant lids that lifted up; Reverend Mother stopping in to hear a lesson, with her old, old quiet face; Maman so pretty and stylish, looking so sweet when she made mistakes in French that n.o.body minded, or thought of laughing at her.
Marise tipped the candle over carefully and let some melted tallow fall on the back of her hand. As she set it back and waited for the tallow to harden, she was thinking how very different from home Bayonne was; the Basque fish-women, with the shiny fish in the round flat baskets on their heads; the white oxen with the sheep-skin on their horns, and their red-striped white canvas covering, pulling those two-wheeled carts; everybody streaking it along in canvas sandals and berets, talking French and Basque and Spanish and never a word of English. And yet, Marise reflected as she slowly peeled off the hardened tallow drops, none of that was the _real_ difference. And there was a real difference. The real difference was something inside you. You felt different, as if you"d looked in the gla.s.s and seen somebody not quite you. It was....
Somebody was walking slowly down the brick-floored hall to her room. It was Father"s heavy step. That was nice! She hadn"t thought she would see either Father or Maman, because there had been company to dinner again.
She gathered the tallow drops together and dropped them in the base of the bra.s.s candle-stick. Then she remembered that Jeanne would scold if she did that. These candle-sticks like everything else in the house had to be just _so_, or everybody caught it. She swept them out again with her fingers, and stood holding them in her hand, looking around her for some place to put them. The waste-paper basket was too open, they would fall right through on the floor, and what a fuss there would be over that! Oh, there was the fireplace, if you put things way back of the sticks, Jeanne didn"t see them.