Rough-Hewn/Chapter 39
CHAPTER XXXIX
"Wouldn't you think," asked Eugenia, looking about her, "that anybody who could get up such a room as this, such a perfect room, would know how to get herself up better?"
"You don't suppose for a minute that she doesn't know how to!" Marise rejoined. She added after a moment, to tease Eugenia, "Perhaps she thinks it ordinary to be chic. Perhaps she thinks it is more distinguished to have her very own genre."
Eugenia said with a nettled accent, "Well, wouldn't you think if she were going in for a genre of her own, she'd pick out one that was a little more ornamental than her flat-chested, old-maid, provincial school-teacher variety?"
Marise laughed. It always gave her a little malicious amusement to make Eugenia uneasy. To make her still more so, she added, "Yet you know well enough, Eugenia, in any room full of people, let Mme. Vallery come in with that mild, oh-I'm-nobody, don't-mind-me sort of air of hers, and everybody else looks like a dressmaker's mannequin."
Eugenia, alarmed for her standards, annoyed and aroused, disputed the point with warmth, "That's only because you know who she is. If you didn't, you'd take her for the concierge's country cousin."
Marise shook her head exasperatingly, "No you wouldn't. She has cachet. You can see it a mile away."
Eugenia suddenly conceded the point with grudging wonder, "How does she do it?" she marveled, unreconciled.
"Personality," diagnosed Marise, and then seeing that Eugenia's face looked really clouded, she stopped her teasing abruptly, ashamed of the unkind impulse which drove her to it, and of the malicious pleasure she took in it. What was the inner irritation with everything that kept her so aware of other people's weak points and so easily led into playing ill-naturedly on them. Now, here and now, let her resolve she would never tease Eugenia again.
But she knew she would.
She did, however, resist an easy opening, given her by the next remark of Eugenia's, as she looked across the beautiful room, "What makes it all so just right? I'm going to start in at that corner, and look at every single thing, and find out what makes it right."
Marise restrained the mocking words on the tip of her tongue, and turned away to the half-open window, near which she stood. Across the empty street in the pale gold of the spring sunshine, the vaporous young green of the Luxembourg showed like a mist through the tall iron palings. The light blue sky above was veiled with hazy white clouds, stirred by a young little spring breeze, which blew languorously on the girl's cheek.
It came over her, all of it, with a soft rush, the invitation to life, the lovely, treacherous, ever-renewed invitation to live. And she drew back from it, with her ever-renewed determination not to be taken in by it. It was always too horribly lovely in May. It made her ache, it made her want to cry, it made her horribly unhappy. How detestable to have it so lovely, looking so seductive as though this were only the promise of something lovelier … when there wasn't anything to redeem the promise, when it was all just a part of the general scheme to fool you.
Behind her Eugenia's voice said enviously, "Where did she get all these terribly quaint Louis XVI things?"
How thoroughly Eugenia's English diction teacher had rooted out that "turribly" of Eugenia's, thought Marise.
Aloud she answered, "She began collecting years ago, before anybody else thought of it."
"I shouldn't think a teacher would have much money to collect."
"Oh, she picked them up for nothing, in corners of whatever province she happened to be in, out of barns and chicken-houses and attics."
Eugenia said complainingly, "It seems to me she always has been able to pick up something for nothing. Look at her husband."
Marise said over her shoulder, "Oh, she didn't get much, when she got him. He never would have been anything except his good looks, if she hadn't taken him up. And she didn't get him for nothing—not much! Mlle. Hasparren says—every one who knows them says—that she made him. She writes his speeches now. I've seen her. And never bothers him by being jealous."
"I should hope not," commented Eugenia. "She's ages older than he. And he's such a ripping good-looker."
Marise found Eugenia's fervent accent rather distasteful. Not that she minded her latest fad of finding married men so much more interesting subjects than the others. Eugenia's affairs never lasted more than a minute anyhow. But she wished Eugenia would pick out somebody with more brains than Mme. Vallery's husband, somebody not so well satisfied with himself.
"He's an awful imbecile," she said.
"What did Mme. Vallery marry him for, if she's so terribly intelligent?" challenged Eugenia. She delighted in using the words she had formerly mis-pronounced, and giving them the purest, most colorless intonation. There was not a trace now, in her speech, of the sweet, thick, unstrained honey of her original southern accent.
"She has brains for two," said Marise shortly, displeased by the direction of the talk. As a matter of fact, Mme. Vallery had once informed her why she had married her handsome, unintelligent husband. She had said warningly one day, when Marise had drawn back from a match Mme. Vallery had proposed for her, "Don't carry that too far, dear child. You will have to give in to the flesh sooner or later. You might as well do it young, before the growth of your intelligence spoils your enjoyment of it, as wait till you're driven to it, as I was. It's not amusing in the least, to have to take it all mixed with the contempt of your brains. You'll find you have to take your share, one way or another."
Marise looked out frowningly at a great beech tree bursting into life in the garden across the street. It held its huge, flowering crest proudly into the spring air. To look at it was like hearing a flourish of trumpets, triumphal, exulting.
That was all very well for trees, thought Marise, that stupid, yearly emergence into a life that promised so much and brought futility.
Along the gravel-walk, inside the Luxembourg, under the hedge of lilacs, under the new splendor of the great beech, a young man and a girl in a pale gray dress were strolling. They looked at each other, and smiled.
"That's the way my father and mother probably walked together," thought Marise, wincing. "That" was one of the clumsiest, most obvious parts of the general conspiracy to fool you. But when you had the key to the code, as Marise had, there was little danger that you would be taken in.
"I think I hear them coming," said Eugenia, "I do hope Monsieur is with her! Not that he ever condescends to pay the slightest attention to me!" She assumed carefully a pose of unconscious ease on her small, spindle-legged chair. Marise turned around from the window and looked at her with appreciation. Was it only two years ago, that Eugenia had scrambled up from the crumpled bed on which she had lain a-sprawl?
"Nobody can say your genre is not decorative, Eugenia," she remarked with the sincere intention of pleasing the other girl, "that's a perfectly glorious toilette, just right. And oh, how divinely that broadcloth is tailored."
Eugenia looked at her resentfully, with a flash of her old suspicion that she was not being treated as an equal.
"I haven't any cachet, and you know it," she said, "if Mme. Vallery can have cachet do you suppose I'm going to be satisfied with just chic?"
Marise felt one of her claps of laughter rising within her, but kept it back, as the beautifully proportioned paneled door opened to admit their hostess. A tall, spare, stooped, gray-haired woman, dressed plainly in fine black, with a shrewd, wrinkled, fresh-colored face, well-washed and guiltless of the smallest trace of powder. She looked like an elderly Jesuit, one who wields a great deal more power than he likes to show.
"Good-day, my children," she greeted the girls in a clear voice, with the utmost simplicity and directness of intonation. "Have we kept you waiting long? I told Auguste that we were a little late."
Auguste, magnificently tall and magnificently bearded, having now followed her in, the four sacramental hand-shakes were accomplished, Eugenia's this time the promptest of all.
After the equally sacramental exchange of salutations and questions and answers had been achieved, questions as to health and general news, which did not in the least denote any interest in these matters, answers which were pronounced with perfunctory indifference and received in the same way, the necessary civilized preliminaries were considered disposed of, and the first moves of the game could be taken. M. Vallery's gambit was to say, looking admiringly at Eugenia, "Such a piece of the month of May oughtn't to be within four walls. Come over to the balcony a moment, and let me show you your sister, the Luxembourg, in flower."
Mme. Vallery's move was to sit in the winged, brocaded, deep-cushioned bergère, and motion Marise to sit beside her.
"Let's get our business done and off our hands first of all," she said, smiling up at the tall girl in an admiration as frank as her husband's for Eugenia, and for Marise, vastly more valuable.
The others, in a little chiming burst of chatter and high spirits, moved off towards the balcony. Mme. Vallery glanced after them with an inscrutable expression and then at Marise with a brisk, business-like manner.
The matter at issue just then, the occasion of the girls' call, was a fête de charité at the lycée, over which Mme. Vallery's sister was Directrice, shoved up to that position, so the lycée teachers said, by the political pull of Madame Vallery herself. But even they could not deny that the connection was highly advantageous for the lycée. There was not another one in Paris, which felt itself more "protégé" in high places, more sure of its standing with the Ministry of Education. And its annual charity fête, from being the usual small-bourgeois bazar with home-made aprons and pin-cushions on sale, and perhaps an inexpensive conjuror pulling rabbits out of silk hats in the assembly-room to amuse the children, had become one of the most elaborate and unique annual events of the city. A good part of Tout-Paris lent its highly ornamental presence to these affairs, and helpless before Mme. Vallery's energy and acumen, always left much more of the contents of its purse than it had the slightest intention of leaving in the amusingly decorated stalls where pretty, well-trained amateur salesgirls sold the goods furnished at cost (under pressure from Mme. Vallery), by the most fashionable shops in Paris.
This year Marise had been asked to play, along with two other de la Cueva pupils, in the afternoon concert which was the clou of the three days' fête. Mme. Vallery had written her to ask her to come to talk over the choice of music, and to Eugenia's surprise and extreme pleasure had mentioned casually that she would be glad to see her pretty friend, Miss Mills, also. Marise had instantly wondered what she wanted to get out of Eugenia, and now behind her fresh, open, unlined young face she was hiding a determination to find out what, and to keep Eugenia from being unduly exploited. She might tease Eugenia herself, but she had an elder-sister feeling of protective care towards her. Eugenia was so awfully defenseless, in spite of her money, and so naïve still in spite of the sophisticated lore and manners which she had so energetically acquired. She had not learned that thorough-going suspicion of everything, which is the only valid protection against life.
But Mme. Vallery said nothing whatever about Eugenia, other than to comment in passing on how excessively pretty she was, a real late-Régence type, such as one seldom sees now-a-days. Marise found herself, as usual, quite helpless before the Vatican antechamber suavity of the older woman, and reflected, not without some resentment, that she probably seemed as naïve to Mme. Vallery, as Eugenia did to her.
After some desultory talk about other features of the fête, they got out a pile of music, went together to the piano, where Marise tried the effects of various combinations, and finally decided on a desirable one.
All this time M. Vallery and Eugenia spent on the balcony, leaning over the railing, the sound of their voices and occasional laughter coming in pleasantly through the open windows. They came in together, when Mme. Vallery summoned them to share the Muscat and hard sweet biscuits which it was part of her genre to serve at four o'clock instead of the newly introduced tea.
"Business is over," she announced, settling herself in the chair back of the little stand, where the tray stood. "Now for some talk." She put her hand to the crystal carafe and held it there for a moment. Another of the ecclesiastical details of her appearance was the beauty of her hands, white and shapely.
M. Vallery seated the girls and then himself, smiling into his beautiful, glistening brown beard. Eugenia too was smiling, with a dazzled look of pleasure. Mme. Vallery looked down at the wine she was pouring. Marise suppressed a qualm of distaste for M. Vallery, and started the talk by laughing outright as at a sudden recollection of something comic. She explained that she had just had a letter from America, from an old cousin of her father, who always kept her au courant of the quaint and humorous goings-on of the country-side.
"Her letters are as good as a comic paper," said Marise, sipping her wine.
"Translatable?" asked M. Vallery, "most of the comic things that happen in the French country-side aren't. But they're very funny for all of that." He laughed reminiscently and stroked his beard.
Memories of Jeanne and Isabelle, and what they considered comic stories rose blackly to Marise's mind. She turned a gay, laughing face to M. Vallery and translated for his benefit Aunt Hetty's latest story about what happened when a skunk got into the hen-house, and she and Agnes went to the rescue at midnight in their night-gowns and night-caps. It was as much to drown out what was going on inside her own mind, as to amuse the others that she did her liveliest best by the story, telling it with the gusto and brio which made her a favorite with people who liked youthful high spirits. It was broad farce, nothing else, and she did not draw back from the farcical color it needed to carry it off. It was a story, she told herself, that either made people laugh aux éclats, or it was a failure. Her audience was certainly laughing aux éclats when she finished the account of the homeric night-battle, laughing and wiping their eyes.
"That reminds me," said M. Vallery, his eyes glistening with mirth, "of a story about a love-sick dog that my uncle used to have."
"You're not going to tell that story here," announced his wife, with the calm accent of mastery, which once in a while slipped from her in an unguarded moment. He went through the form of protesting, claiming that it was nothing—now-a-days people were not prudish—but his wife settled the matter by taking the floor herself, turning to the girls, and saying laughingly, "That uncle of my husband's—he was one of the old school—out of a Balzac novel of the provinces. There aren't any more like him. It was through a to-the-death quarrel with him that Auguste and I met each other."
This slid her easily along into talk of early days, a quarter of a century before, when she was in one of the first lycées, 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 properous and successful lycées 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 lycée; 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 fête-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 fête. 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 exactitude 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 naïve 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 naïve 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-pare, 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 class-mates, had been the only form of out-door sport accessible.
She had decided to walk so that she could cool off, and think over the Vallerys' manœuver, 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 crassness to go in and make a scene.
"My dear child, no power on earth can protect naïveté! 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 fête-de-charité for? To please me? Not at all. To make some money for poor people, mothers and anæmic 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.