Chapter 8

"At sixteen and twenty-one it is hard to realize that one is arranging one's life to last until sixty, seventy, forever," correcting himself as he thought of his friend, the dead husband. If madame had ever possessed the art of self-control, it was many a long day since she had exercised it; now she frankly began to show ennui.

"When I look back to that time,"--Mr. Horace leaned back in his chair and half closed his eyes, perhaps to avoid the expression of her face,--"I see nothing but lights and flowers, I hear nothing but music and laughter; and all--lights and flowers and music and laughter--seem to meet in this room, where we met so often to arrange our--inevitabilities." The word appeared to attract him. "Josephine,"--with a sudden change of voice and manner,--"Josephine, how beautiful you were!"

The old lady nodded her head without looking from her cards.

"They used to say," with sad conviction of the truth of his testimony--"the men used to say that your beauty was irresistible. None ever withstood you. None ever could."

That, after all, was Mr. Horace's great charm with madame; he was so faithful to the illusions of his youth. As he looked now at her, one could almost feel the irresistibility of which he spoke.

"It was only their excuse, perhaps; we could not tell at the time; we cannot tell even now when we think about it. They said then, talking as men talk over such things, that you were the only one who could remain yourself under the circumstances; you were the only one who could know, who could will, under the circumstances. It was their theory; men can have only theories about such things." His voice dropped, and he seemed to drop too, into some abysm of thought.

Madame looked into the mirror, where she could see the face of the one who alone could retain her presence of mind under the circumstances suggested by Mr. Horace. She could also have seen, had she wished it, among the reflected bric-a-brac of the mantel, the corner of the frame that held the picture of her husband, but peradventure, classing it with the past which held so many unavenged bad dinners, she never thought to link it even by a look with her emotions of the present. Indeed, it had been said of her that in past, present, and future there had ever been but the one picture to interest her eyes--the one she was looking at now. This, however, was the remark of the uninitiated, for the true passion of a beautiful woman is never so much for her beauty as for its booty; as the passion of a gamester is for his game, not for his luck.

"How beautiful _she_ was!"

It was apparently down in the depths of his abysm that he found the connection between this phrase and his last, and it was evidently to himself he said it. Madame, however, heard and understood too; in fact, traced back to a certain period, her thoughts and Mr. Horace's must have been fed by pretty much the same subjects. But she had so carefully barricaded certain issues in her memory as almost to obstruct their flow into her life; if she were a cook, one would say that it was her bad dinners which she was trying to keep out of remembrance.

"You there, he there, she there, I there." He pointed to the places on the carpet, under the chandelier; he could have touched them with a walking-stick, and the recollection seemed just as close.

"She was, in truth, what we men called her then; it was her eyes that first suggested it--Myosotis, the little blue flower, the for-get-me-not. It suited her better than her own name. We always called her that among ourselves. How beautiful she was!" He leaned his head on his hand and looked where he had seen her last--so long, such an eternity, ago.

It must be explained for the benefit of those who do not live in the little world where an allusion is all that is necessary to put one in full possession of any drama, domestic or social, that Mr. Horace was speaking of the wedding-night of madame, when the bridal party stood as he described under the chandelier; the bride and groom, with each one's best friend. It may be said that it was the last night or time that madame had a best friend of her own sex. Social gossip, with characteristic kindness, had furnished reasons to suit all tastes, why madame had ceased that night to have a best friend of her own sex. If gossip had not done so, society would still be left to its imagination for information, for madame never tolerated the smallest appeal to her for enlightenment. What the general taste seemed most to relish as a version was that madame in her marriage had triumphed, not conquered; and that the night of her wedding she had realized the fact, and, to be frank, had realized it ever since. In short, madame had played then to gain at love, as she played now to gain at solitaire; and hearts were no more than cards to her--and, "Bah! Lose a game for a card!" must have been always her motto. It is hard to explain it delicately enough, for these are the most delicate affairs in life; but the image of Myosotis had passed through monsieur's heart, and Myosotis does mean "forget me not." And madame well knew that to love monsieur once was to love him always, in spite of jealousy, doubt, distrust, nay, unhappiness (for to love him meant all this and more). He was that kind of man, they said, whom women could love even against conscience. Madame never forgave that moment. Her friend, at least, she could put aside out of her intercourse; unfortunately, we cannot put people out of our lives. God alone can do that, and so far he had interfered in the matter only by removing monsieur. It was known to notoriety that since her wedding madame had abandoned, destroyed, all knowledge of her friend. And the friend? She had disappeared as much as is possible for one in her position and with her duties.

"What there is in blue eyes, light hair, and a fragile form to impress one, I cannot tell; but for us men it seems to me it is blue-eyed, light-haired, and fragile-formed women that are the hardest to forget."

"The less easy to forget," corrected madam. He paid no attention to the remark.

"They are the women that attach themselves in one's memory. If necessary to keep from being forgotten, they come back into one's dreams. And as life rolls on, one wonders about them,--'Is she happy? Is she miserable? Goes life well or ill with her?'"

Madame played her cards slowly, one would say, for her, prosaically.

"And there is always a pang when, as one is so wondering, the response comes,--that is, the certainty in one's heart responds,--'She is miserable, and life goes ill with her.' Then, if ever, men envy the power of God."

Madame threw over the game she was in, and began a new one.

"Such women should not be unhappy; they are too fragile, too sensitive, too trusting. I could never understand the infliction of misery upon them. I could send death to them, but not--not misfortune."

Madame, forgetting again to cheat in time, and losing her game, began impatiently to shuffle her cards for a new deal.

"And yet, do you know, Josephine, those women are the unhappy ones of life. They seem predestined to it, as others"--looking at madame's full-charmed portrait--"are predestined to triumph and victory. They"--unconscious, in his abstraction, of the personal nature of his simile--"never know how to handle their cards, and they always play a losing game."

"Ha!" came from madame, startled into an irate ejaculation.

"It is their love always that is sacrificed, their hearts always that are bruised. One might say that God himself favors the black-haired ones!"

As his voice sank lower and lower, the room seemed to become stiller and stiller. A passing vehicle in the street, however, now and then drew a shiver of sound from the pendent prisms of the chandelier.

"She was so slight, so fragile, and always in white, with blue in her hair to match her eyes--and--God knows what in her heart, all the time. And yet they stand it, they bear it, they do not die, they live along with the strongest, the happiest, the most fortunate of us," bitterly; "and"--raising his eyes to his old friend, who thereupon immediately began to fumble her cards--"whenever in the street I see a poor, bent, broken woman's figure, I know, without verifying it any more by a glance, that it is the wreck of a fair woman's figure; whenever I hear of a bent, broken existence, I know, without asking any more, that it is the wreck of a fair woman's life."

Poor Mr. Horace spoke with the unreason of a superstitious bigot.

"I have often thought, since, in large assemblies, particularly in weddings, Josephine, of what was going on in the women's hearts there, and I have felt sorry for them; and when I think of God's knowing what is in their hearts, I have felt sorry for the men. And I often think now, Josephine,--think oftener and oftener of it,--that if the resurrection trumpet of our childhood should sound some day, no matter when, out there, over the old St. Louis cemetery, and we should all have to rise from our long rest of oblivion, what would be the first thing we should do? And though there were a God and a heaven awaiting us,--by that same God, Josephine, I believe that our first thought in awakening would be the last in dying,--confession,--and that our first rush would be to the feet of one another for forgiveness. For there are some offenses that must outlast the longest oblivion, and a forgiveness that will be more necessary than God's own. Then our hearts will be bared to one another; for if, as you say, there are no secrets at our age, there can still be less cause for them after death."

His voice ended in the faintest whisper. The table crashed over, and the cards flew wide-spread on the floor. Before we could recover, madame was in the antechamber, screaming for Jules.

One would have said that, from her face, the old lady had witnessed the resurrection described by Mr. Horace, the rush of the spirits with their burdens of remorse, the one to the feet of the other; and she must have seen herself and her husband, with a unanimity of purpose never apparent in their short married life, rising from their common tomb and hastening to that other tomb at the end of the alley, and falling at the feet of the one to whom in life he had been recreant in love, she in friendship.

Of course Jules answered through the wrong door, rushing in with his gas-stick, and turning off the gas. In a moment we were involved in darkness and dispute.

"But what does he mean? What does the idiot mean? He--" It was impossible for her to find a word to do justice to him and to her exasperation at the same time.

"Pardon, madame; it is not I. It is the cathedral bell; it is ringing nine o'clock."

"But--"

"Madame can hear it herself. Listen!" We could not see it, but we were conscious of the benign, toothless smile spreading over his face as the bell-tones fell in the room.

"But it is not the gas. I--"

"Pardon, madame; but it is the gas. Madame said, 'Jules, put out the gas every night when the bell rings.' Madame told me that only last night. The bell rings: I put out the gas."

"Will you be silent? Will you listen?"

"If madame wishes; just as madame says."

But the old lady had turned to Mr. Horace. "Horace, you have seen--you know--" and it was a question now of overcoming emotion. "I--I--I--a carriage, my friend, a carriage."

"Madame--" Jules interrupted his smile to interrupt her.

She was walking around the room, picking up a shawl here, a lace there; for she was always prepared against draughts.

"Madame--" continued Jules, pursuing her.

"A carriage."

"If madame would only listen, I was going to say--but madame is too quick in her disposition--the carriage has been waiting since a long hour ago. Mr. Horace said to have it there in a half hour."

It was then she saw for the first time that it had all been prepared by Mr. Horace. The rest was easy enough: getting into the carriage, and finding the place of which Mr. Horace had heard, as he said, only that afternoon. In it, on her bed of illness, poverty, and suffering, lay the patient, wasted form of the beautiful fair one whom men had called in her youth Myosotis.

But she did not call her Myosotis.

"_Mon Amour!_" The old pet name, although it had to be fetched across more than half a century of disuse, flashed like lightning from madame's heart into the dim chamber.

"_Ma Divine!_" came in counter-flash from the curtained bed.

In the old days women, or at least young girls, could hazard such pet names one upon the other. These--think of it!--dated from the first communion class, the dating period of so much of friendship.

"My poor Amour!"

"My poor, poor Divine!"

The voices were together, close beside the pillow.

"I--I--" began Divine.

"It could not have happened if God had not wished it," interrupted poor Amour, with the resignation that comes, alas! only with the last drop of the bitter cup.

And that was about all. If Mr. Horace had not slipped away, he might have noticed the curious absence of monsieur's name, and of his own name, in the murmuring that followed. It would have given him some more ideas on the subject of woman.

At any rate, the good God must thank him for having one affair the less to arrange when the trumpet sounds out there over the old St. Louis cemetery. And he was none too premature; for the old St. Louis cemetery, as was shortly enough proved, was a near reach for all three of the old friends.

PUPASSE

Every day, every day, it was the same overture in Madame Joubert's room in the Institute St. Denis; the strident:

"Mesdemoiselles; à vos places! Notre Père qui est dans le ciel--Qui a fait ce bruit?"

"It's Pupasse, madame! It's Pupasse!" The answer invariably was unanimous.

"But, Madame Joubert,--I assure you, Madame Joubert,--I could not help it! They know I could not help it!"

By this time the fresh new fool's cap made from yesterday's "Bee" would have been pinned on her head.

"Quelle injustice! Quelle injustice!"

This last apostrophe in a high, whining nasal voice, always procured Pupasse's elevation on the tall three-legged stool in the corner.

It was a theory of the little girls in the primary class that Madame Joubert would be much more lenient to their own little inevitabilities of bad conduct and lessons if Pupasse did not invariably comb her the wrong way every morning after prayers, by dropping something, or sniffling, or sneezing. Therefore, while they distractedly got together books, slates, and copy-books, their infantile eyes found time to dart deadly reproaches toward the corner of penitence, and their little lips, still shaped from their first nourishment, pouted anything but sympathy for the occupant of it.

Indeed, it would have been a most startling unreality to have ever entered Madame Joubert's room and not seen Pupasse in that corner, on that stool, her tall figure shooting up like a post, until her tall, pointed _bonnet d' âne_ came within an inch or two of the ceiling. It was her hoop-skirt that best testified to her height. It was the period of those funnel-shaped hoop-skirts that spread out with such nice mathematical proportions, from the waist down, that it seemed they must have emanated from the brains of astronomers, like the orbits, and diameters, and other things belonging to the heavenly bodies. Pupasse could not have come within three feet of the wall with her hoop-skirt distended. To have forced matters was not to be thought of an instant. So even in her greatest grief and indignation, she had to pause before the three-legged black stool, and gather up steel after steel of her circumference in her hands behind, until her calico skirt careened and flattened; and so she could manage to accommodate herself to the limited space of her punishment, the circles drooping far over her feet as she stood there, looking like the costumed stick of a baby's rattle.

Her thinness continued into her face, which, unfortunately, had nothing in the way of toilet to assist it. Two little black eyes fixed in the sides of a mere fence of a nose, and a mouth with the shape and expression of all mouths made to go over sharp-pointed teeth planted very far apart; the smallest amount possible of fine, dry, black hair--a perfect rat-tail when it was plaited in one, as almost all wore their hair. But sometimes Pupasse took it into her head to plait it in two braids, as none but the thick-haired ventured to wear it. As the little girls said, it was a petition to Heaven for "eau Quinquina." When Marcelite, the hair-dresser, came at her regular periods to visit the hair of the boarders, she would make an effort with Pupasse, plaiting her hundred hairs in a ten-strand braid. The effect was a half yard of black worsted galloon; nothing more, or better. Had Pupasse possessed as many heads as the hydra, she could have "coiffe'd" them all with fools' caps during one morning's recitations. She entirely monopolized the "Daily Bee." Madame Joubert was forced to borrow from "madame" the stale weekly "Courrier des Etats-Unis" for the rest of the room. From grammar, through sacred history, arithmetic, geography, mythology, down to dictation, Pupasse could pile up an accumulation of penitences that would have tasked the limits of the current day had not recreation been wisely set as a term which disbarred, by proscription, previous offenses. But even after recreation, with that day's lessons safely out, punished and expiated, Pupasse's doom seemed scarcely lightened; there was still a whole criminal code of conduct to infract. The only difference was that instead of books, slates, or copy-books, leathern medals, bearing various legends and mottos, were hung around her neck--a travestied decoration worse than the books for humiliation.

The "abécédaires," their torment for the day over, thankful for any distraction from the next day's lessons, and eager for any relief from the intolerable ennui of goodness, were thankful enough now for Pupasse. They naturally watched her in preference to Madame Joubert, holding their books and slates quite cunningly to hide their faces. Pupasse had not only the genius, but that which sometimes fails genius, the means for grimacing: little eyes, long nose, foolish mouth, and pointed tongue. And she was so amusing, when Madame Joubert's head was turned, that the little girls, being young and innocent, would forget themselves and all burst out laughing. It sounded like a flight of singing birds through the hot, close, stupid little room; but not so to Madame Joubert.

"Young ladies! But what does this mean?"

And, terror-stricken, the innocents would call out with one voice, "It's Pupasse, madame! It's Pupasse who made us laugh!" There was nothing but fools' caps to be gained by prevaricating, and there was frequently nothing less gained by confession. And oh, the wails and the sobs as the innocents would be stood up, one by one, in their places! Even the pigtails at the backs of their little heads were convulsed with grief. Oh, how they hated Pupasse then! When their _bonnes_ came for them at three o'clock,--washing their tear-stained faces at the cistern before daring to take them through the streets,--how passionately they would cry out, the tears breaking afresh into the wet handkerchiefs:

"It's that Pupasse! It's that _vilaine_ Pupasse!"

To Pupasse herself would be meted out that "peine forte et dure," that acme of humiliation and disgrace, so intensely horrible that many a little girl in that room solemnly averred and believed she would kill herself before submitting to it. Pupasse's voluminous calico skirt would be gathered up by the hem and tied up over her head! Oh, the horrible monstrosity on the stool in the corner then! There were no eyes in that room that had any desire to look upon it. And the cries and the "Quelle injustice!" that fell on the ears then from the hidden feelings had all the weirdness of the unseen, but heard. And all the other girls in the room, in fear and trembling, would begin to move their lips in a perfect whirlwind of study, or write violently on their slates, or begin at that very instant to rule off their copy-books for the next day's verb.

Pupasse--her name was Marie Pupasse but no one thought of calling her anything but Pupasse, with emphasis on the first syllable and sibilance on the last--had no parents only a grandmother, to describe whom, all that is necessary to say is that she was as short as Pupasse was tall, and that her face resembled nothing so much as a little yellow apple shriveling from decay. The old lady came but once a week, to fetch Pupasse fresh clothes, and a great brown paper bag of nice things to eat. There was no boarder in the school who received handsomer bags of cake and fruit than Pupasse. And although, not two hours before, a girl might have been foremost in the shrill cry, "It is Pupasse who made the noise! It is Pupasse who made me laugh!" there was nothing in that paper bag reserved even from such a one. When the girl herself with native delicacy would, under the circumstances, judge it discreet to refuse, Pupasse would plead, "Oh, but take it to give me pleasure!" And if still the refusal continued, Pupasse would take her bag and go into the summer-house in the corner of the garden, and cry until the unforgiving one would relent. But the first offering of the bag was invariably to the stern dispenser of fools' caps and the unnamed humiliation of the reversed skirt: Madame Joubert.

Pupasse was in the fifth class. The sixth--the abécédaires--was the lowest in the school. Green was the color of the fifth; white--innocence--of the abécédaires. Exhibition after exhibition, the same green sash and green ribbons appeared on Pupasse's white muslin, the white muslin getting longer and longer every year, trying to keep up with her phenomenal growth; and always, from all over the room, buzzed the audience's suppressed merriment at Pupasse's appearance in the ranks of the little ones of nine and ten. It was that very merriment that brought about the greatest change in the Institute St. Denis. The sitting order of the classes was reversed. The first class--the graduates--went up to the top step of the _estrade_; and the little ones put on the lowest, behind the pianos. The graduates grumbled that it was not _comme il faut_ to have young ladies of their position stepping like camels up and down those great steps; and the little girls said it was a shame to hide them behind the pianos after their mamas had taken so much pains to make them look pretty. But madame said--going also to natural history for her comparison--that one must be a rhinoceros to continue the former routine.

Religion cannot be kept waiting forever on the intelligence. It was always in the fourth class that the first communion was made; that is, when the girls stayed one year in each class. But Pupasse had spent three years in the sixth class, and had already been four in the fifth, and Madame Joubert felt that longer delay would be disrespectful to the good Lord. It was true that Pupasse could not yet distinguish the ten commandments from the seven capital sins, and still would answer that Jeanne d'Arc was the foundress of the "Little Sisters of the Poor." But, as Madame Joubert always said in the little address she made to the catechism class every year before handing it over to Father Dolomier, God judged from the heart, and not from the mind.

Father Dolomier--from his face he would have been an able contestant of _bonnets d'âne_ with Pupasse, if subjected to Madame Joubert's discipline--evidently had the same method of judging as God, although the catechism class said they could dance a waltz on the end of his long nose without his perceiving it.