Jeanne tried to restrain herself to decorum, but her overwhelming jealousy of any one else who touched Marise's life was too much for her, "They're nicer than that one wilted old thing Gabrielle Meunier gave you, hein?" Marise understood then why Jeanne had chosen white rose-buds. Down below the surface where she kept her real feelings she heard a sick sort of laugh. What she said was, with fervor, "Oh, yes, Jeanne, a thousand times better!" (You might as well make it a thousand times while you were about it.)
"Well, I should hope so!" said Jeanne, satisfied at last.
That morning when Marise stepped into the courtyard at school a group of older girls had their heads together over a newspaper, and when they saw her, they all started. Elise Fortier rolled the paper up rapidly and put it in her leather portfolio with her school-books. They looked at her very oddly. Four years ago, Marise would have run up to them, demanding, "What's the matter? What makes you look so funny? What is it in the paper?" That was before she became aware of any mire in the world, invisible, wide-spreading, into which almost any casual inquiry seemed likely toplunge you. Marise knew what it was to have some of that indelibly staining mire splashed upon her, from a look, an intonation or a phrase that meaningly expressed much more than it said. She walked with a desperate wariness now, trying to pick her way dry-shod, in the dark. So that morning she was only afraid that the girlswouldtell her what it was they had found in the paper that made them look so. She pretended that she had seen nothing, ran up to them with a funny story to tell, and went at once to hang up her wraps in the hall outside the class-room door. Sister Ste. Julie passed her and said, "Good-morning, my child." It seemed to Marise that she too looked queerly at her. She reached her hand over her shoulder to make sure her dress was hooked, and felt of the ribbon in her hair. No mirrors were allowed inside the school and convent walls, or she would have stepped to look in one to see what was wrong.
At eleven o'clock while the class in advanced geography was reciting, the street bell rang. Sister Ste. Marie went to answer, and came back to say that Mlle. Allen was wanted. Her maman was ill, and the bonne had come for her. All the girls turned instantly and looked at her without surprise, as though they had been expecting this. Marise started up, suddenly very pale, put on her wraps in a great hurry and ran to where Jeanne was waiting for her. Jeanne looked just as usual, although everything else seemed to have changed in an instant and to look threateningly upon Marise.
"Your maman is home from the baths," said Jeanne, as though she were saying something she had made up to say beforehand, "and she doesn't feel very well. Since Monsieur is not here, I thought we would better come and get you."
Marise seized Jeanne's arm and dug her fingers deep into it, "Jeanne ... Jeanne ... nothing's happened ... Maman's not...."
Jeanne said with the very accent of truth, "No, no, no. Madame is not dead—never fear, my darling. She is only very ... nervous." She said it with the very accent of truth, but Marise knew perfectly well that Jeanne could sayanything she pleased with that accent. She never believed a thing Jeanne said unless she knew it already.
But in spite of herself she was relieved from her first wild panic. Nothing so very bad could have happened, with Jeanne standing there, carved out of brown wood, just as usual. They began to hurry up the narrow short-cut by the market, and Jeanne told her a little more. Maman had come back by the first train. She must have taken the afternoon train down from Saint Sauveur to Lourdes, and have waited hours in the station at Lourdes, till the west-bound train from Toulouse came along. And she had come in, perfectly worn out, staggering, and pushed right by Isabelle to go to her room. And she had locked the door, and wouldn't answer when they knocked, and wouldn't open when they brought a tray with some food, only called out to them in a queer hoarse voice to go get Sœur Ste. Lucie. And they could hear her crying and sobbing, so they had sent Anna Etchergary to get the nun, and she, Jeanne, had come of her own idea to get Marise.
Marise read into this Jeanne's dislike of the nun and her usual suspicious idea about poor Maman that it was all just some new notion of hers. But she also felt that the old woman had had a real fright and she walked faster and faster.
The door on the landing was ajar, and inside the hall they saw a tall old monk, his bare feet in sandals, his bald head bowed over his clasped hands, his lips moving in prayer. When he saw the girl and the old servant, he made way for them to pass, and without interrupting his prayers, motioned them to enter. His gesture was so imperious that without a word they tip-toed in past him. Isabelle, her eyes wide, and not as red-faced as usual, was standing uncertainly in the door of the salon, her apron up to her lips, looking scared, "Sœur Ste. Lucie has gone in to Madame," she said to Jeanne in a whisper. "She said you and Mademoiselle were to go to Mademoiselle's room and wait until she came."
Jeanne inquired wildly with a silent jerk of the head who in the world was the monk who stood praying before Madame's closed door; and Isabelle answered with a desperaterolling of her eyes that she had no more idea of that than Jeanne.
They all went down the corridor on tip-toes, to Marise's room, where automatically Marise took off her hat and coat. She saw to her amazement that Jeanne had dropped down on the crimson quilt on the bed. Nothing that had happened had startled Marise so much as to see this.
Almost at once Sœur Ste. Lucie entered, and coming up to Marise put her arms around her and kissed her very tenderly. Then she turned and motioned the two servants out of the room, "I must speak to Mlle. Marise alone," she said. Isabelle was only too glad to go, but Jeanne looked furious and stood for a moment with darkened face, lowering down on the nun, as if she were on the point of defying her. But she finally thought better of it, and followed Isabelle out.
Sœur Ste. Lucie stood in the open door till they were both well down the corridor. Then she shut it carefully and came back to Marise whose heart was beating wildly and whose knees were shaking under her. Sœur Ste. Lucie sat down, and made Marise sit down, holding both the child's cold hands in her soft, kind, old fingers. "Dear child, there are times in every life when we must ask God for courage. Your mother is not sick or hurt, but she needs all your prayers. She has had a terrible shock, a dreadful tragedy that took place before her eyes, and she will need all the help our Holy Mother can give her, to recover her calm. It seems that——" Sœur Ste. Lucie stopped an instant, as if to consider how to put what she had to say, and changed the form, "Your dear mother was in Saint Sauveur, and by chance a person from Bayonne passed through, whom your dear mother knew. And it seems they went out to walk together, as any one might, and descended the paths and steps, that lead visitors down the face of the Gavarnie Gorge, towards the place arranged so that tourists can look up at the arch of the great bridge. And then—nobody knows just what happened—the water was very high and violent, the other person must have slipped and fallen in, and was instantly killed by being flung by the current against a great rock. Your dear mothersaw it, and sensitive and high-strung as she is, it ... it slightly unhinged her. She said a great many wild things...." Sœur Ste. Lucie stopped, drew a long breath and began again. Nothing that she had said had made the slightest impression on Marise. It sounded far off, as though Sœur Ste. Lucie were reading something out of a book. Marise could not seem to put her mind on it, and when she did, she could not understand it.
Sœur Ste. Lucie went on, "But by the mercy of God, I had just written her that the holy Father Elie was once more here; and after they had got the body out of the water and carried it to the hotel they—your mother remembered about Father Elie and turning in her trouble to the only source of strength, she—your mother wishes to make a retreat for a few days at our convent, and I am sure that it is much the best thing for her to do. It is a shelter for her—Father Elie is with her now, I have sent for a carriage...."
"Oh, but can't I see her? Can't I kiss her good-by? How long will she be away?" cried Marise wildly, starting from the fascinated immobility in which she had gazed at the nun's face.
Sœur Ste. Lucie laid a quieting hand on her shoulder, her kind old face yearning over the child. "Dear little Marise, I think it will be better for your mother not to see you, or any one just now. She needs quiet, perfect quiet."
Marise looked at her hard. She had no idea whether she was being told the truth, or only some kind invention which they thought suitable for her to hear. "Can't I go to see her at the Convent?" she asked in a whisper, giving up the first point.
"Oh, yes, yes, my darling,anytime ... only a little later, when your mother is calmer." Sœur Ste. Lucie's face shone suddenly, radiantly, "God uses all means to His great ends," she said fervently. "This may be the means of giving your dear mother in the end, the holy peace of faith."
She looked so serenely trusting and hopeful that Marise felt comforted, "I'll do just as you say, dear Sœur," she said in a trembling voice.
Sœur Ste. Lucie drew a long breath, as though she had been steering a difficult course. She kissed Marise again, told her to stay in her room for the time being, to say her prayers, not to worry, her Maman would soon be all right, and probably happier than she had ever been in her life. All this might open the door to salvation for her.
She left Marise standing in the middle of the floor, and closed the door carefully behind her. But not so carefully that Marise could not, a moment later, hear Maman crying and crying and crying as she went down the hall and out of the door. Marise began to tremble and cry at the sound. She ran to her window, and saw down below, Maman, her hands over her face, with Sœur Ste. Lucie's arm around her, the tall old monk on the other side, cross the sidewalk and get into the carriage.
As the carriage rolled away the weeping child at the window remembered that Sœur Ste. Lucie had not mentioned who the person from Bayonne was who had been killed. Well, what did Marise care who it was!
It occurred to Marise, and the idea of a responsibility dried her tears with a start, that she ought to get word somehow to Papa. Her heart sprang up to think that perhaps if he knew Maman was so upset he would come back at once. She didwantsomebody so much, beside Jeanne and Isabelle.
But she never knew Papa's address when he was away on business. Perhaps there was something on Maman's writing-desk. She went quickly into the salon, drew aside the curtains which shut off the writing-desk's alcove from the salon, and began rather helplessly to fumble among Maman's papers and novels. There were very few letters of any sort. Maman didn't keep up her correspondence with America very much. Jeanne had heard Marise moving and through the alcove curtains Marise saw her now come into the salon with a basin of water in her hand, pretending that she needed to water a plant. Marise remembered that she must as usual arrange something to present to Jeanne that would not reflect on Maman's fancifulness. But perhaps Sœur Ste. Lucie had told her something. She inquired cautiously but Jeanne said stiffly, still outraged at having been shut out of the room, that she knew nothing. Everything about her except her words, said forcibly that she cared less, and that all this foolishness was a part of the usual nonsense.
"Oh, Jeanne, a terrible thing has happened to poor Maman—she saw somebody swept away in the Gavarnie and killed right before her eyes, and it's upset her fearfully."
Jeanne's sulkiness vanished in the delight of her kind at having any inside information about a violent death or a scandal. Marise remembered how absorbed and excited Jeanne had been when somebody in the apartment overhead had taken an over-dose of morphine and how proud she had been to have everybody in the market stop to ask her details.
"Killed?" said Jeanne with a greedy eagerness, her eyes shining, "how killed? Drowned? or knocked against the rocks? Man? or woman? Have they got the body out?"
Marise did not, as a rule, enjoy Jeanne's interest in murders and deaths and kidnappings, but this time she welcomed it and passed on to the old woman all she could remember of what Sœur Ste. Lucie had told her. Jeanne was much disappointed that Marise had not heard the name of the dead person, but Marise promised to tell her as soon as the paper was out, the next morning, since it would probably be printed. And with the mention, there came back to her, with one of those sickening lurches, the recollection of the girls putting their heads together over the newspaper at school, and then looking at her so oddly and hiding it away. "It was probably in this morning's paper," she said to Jeanne. "If you'll get it, I'll read it to you."
But Jeanne came back in a moment with an astonished face, saying that Isabelle reported that, of all queer things, Mlle. Hasparren, the music-teacher had stopped in that morning and asked to borrow the paper. Jeanne's astonishment never on any occasion remained more than an instant untinged with suspicion, and Marise, who knew the old face so well, saw the suspicious expression begin slowly to color the surprise. "What in the name of God did the Hasparren want with our newspaper?" she asked herself aloud, obviously snuffing around a new scent. Marise hated Jeanne's face when it looked like that,—crafty and zestful, as though she were licking her chops over a nasty smell.
They were still standing in the alcove, beside the writing-desk when the door-bell rang. Jeanne turned to go, heard Isabelle open, and standing between the half-open curtains turned her head to listen. Marise heard nothing but a man's voice, and Isabelle answering, "Oui Monsieur, oui Monsieur, oui Monsieur." But Jeanne started, stiffened, and darting on tip-toe to the door, looked around the corner. The door shut, steps were heard at the other end of the long hallway. Isabelle was evidently bringing the visitor to the salon. Jeanne looked around wildly at Marise, her face suddenly the color oflead, her eyes panic-struck. The steps were nearer, there seemed to be more than one man. Jeanne ran back, pushed Marise into the chair in the corner of the alcove, motioning her violently but without a sound, to keep perfect silence, and noiselessly drew the curtains together before the alcove. Marise heard her step quickly back to the stand where the plant stood and the click of her tin basin against the earthen-ware of the pot. And then she heard her say in exactly her usual voice, only with a little surprise, "Good-day, Messieurs, what can I do for you?"
"We have been sent," said a man's deep voice and not a "monsieur" but a common sort of man, Marise could tell by his accent and intonation, "to see and question Madame Allen." Jeanne evidently went through some pantomime of astonishment for he explained, "a part of the inquest over the death of M. Jean-Pierre Garnier, but the maid tells me she is already not here."
Jeanne answered, and if she caught her breath or flinched, there was not the smallest external sign of it, "No, M. l'Inspecteur, our poor lady was so terribly upset over seeing such an awful thing, that the doctor has just sent her for a few quiet days' retreat at the Holy Ghost Convent. What a terrible thing, to be sure, M. l'Inspecteur."
The man answered wearily, "Eh bien, we shall have to see her, retreat or no retreat. We have the blanks to fill out by all witnesses, and she is the only witness. This is the inspecteur from St. Sauveur."
"Oh, the poor lady is in no state to be questioned," said Jeanne with an affectionate warmth in her voice. "She is as tender-hearted as a child, and besides had been a great invalid. She took the whole course of baths at Saint Sauveur last season, and was starting in again."
"Oh," said the man as if surprised, "she had been at Saint Sauveur before? For the baths?" and then as if speaking to some one else, "it would be harder then, to establish that she was there to meet the young Garnier."
Jeanne seemed so astounded at this idea, that she could scarcely get her breath to protest. "Oh, M. l'Inspecteur, oh!Who ever heard of anything so wild! Isthatwhat people are saying? Oh, why!" she laughed out in her amazement, "she hardly knew him by sight."
"Why," said the man evidently not speaking to Jeanne, "didn't you say that she ran down along the bank of the river, screaming that he had killed himself for her sake?"
"Yes, I said that," answered another man's voice, astonished and on the defense, "and shedidtoo! and when the body was pulled out she flung herself down on it, and shrieked that she wanted to die with him."
Jeanne broke in now, at the top of her voice, calling Heaven and earth and all the saints to witness that she never heard of anything so preposterous in her life, and that anybody in Bayonne could tell them so, and what crazy stories would people be making up next out of whole cloth? "Some one is trying to play a joke on M. l'Inspecteur from Saint Sauveur. Nobodycouldhave heard our Madame say such things, because she couldn't possibly have said them, any more than she could about a clerk who sold her a yard of cloth over the counter. For she didn't know any more about the young man than that! Why, sheneverknew him except as the son of one of her friends. He never came to the house, and more than that she hadn't even laid eyes on him for more than two years. He had been in America and is only just returned, day before yesterday.Anybody you ask here can tell you that."
"Nom de Dieu!" said the first man's voice in extreme surprise. "Hadn't seen him for two years!"
"No, he hasn't even been in France since he was a little young boy!" The first man laughed as though the joke were on his comrade.
The second man's voice said, still defending himself, but now uncertainly, "Very queer his following her right up there, if he scarcely knew her—what washedoing in Saint Sauveur at this season, I'd like to know, if not...."
"Oh, as to that," said Jeanne carelessly, "I happen to know why he was there. I saw the young monsieur day before yesterday, just as he was about to take the seven o'clock train,valise in hand, and I had a talk with him, our young mademoiselle and I."
"Why, I thought you hardly knew him by sight in this house and he never came here," broke in the second policeman suspiciously.
"I didn't say it was here we saw him," said Jeanne, "and I said it was Madame who hardly knew him. But he is the brother of a little girl classmate of our mademoiselle. They are all children together. Well, every evening at six, except the days when Mademoiselle takes her music lesson, I go to the school to fetch her home, and that afternoon, as we were coming up the rue Port Neuf, we met the young man going towards the station, and when he saw our mademoiselle, he stopped for a moment for a chat, as young folks will. He was in high good spirits and said he was off for a fine business trip to the mountains and expected to have a good time as well as do business, and would be in Cauterets the next morning. Well, you know Cauterets is just over a ridge of the Pyrenees from Saint Sauveur and Mlle. Marise said, 'Why, is not that queer, my maman is at Saint Sauveur just now! Why don't you take the other train at Pierrefitte-Nestalos and run up to Saint Sauveur for half a day and take Maman a message from me, something I forgot to ask her before she left,' and the young man said he had been half planning to go to Saint Sauveur on business anyhow, and to tell him the message and if he saw her maman, he'd repeat it. Only he said, 'I don't believe your maman knows me,' and Mlle. Marise said, 'Well, you tell her you are Danielle's big brother, and she'll know. She knows all about my school-mates,' and the young man asked which sanitarium it was in Luz and Mlle. Marise reminded him, 'No, it's at Saint Sauveur where Maman is,' and told him the name of the sanitarium, and then he said he hoped he'd get a little fishing in the Gavarnie, and I said the water would be too high, and he said he'd go and have a look at it anyway. And then he went along with his valise. Mlle. Marise is at school or you could ask her all about this too."
"Ehbien, my friend from Saint Sauveur!" said the firstman's voice, in a rallying tone of jocularity. "This sounds as though some of you country-people must have lost your heads a bit. Come now. Did you yourselfhearher, saying all that?"
"No, of course I didn't," said the other man stiffly, "I was in the office at Luz. How could I know anything was happening? But the men who got the body out said she was awful to hear."
"Oh, I don't doubt," agreed Jeanne, "that she was. Any woman would have been driven half crazy by such an awful thing, the only son of a friend, killed before your eyes. And she is terribly nervous into the bargain, the least little thing sends her off into hysteria. Some nights I have to rub her back until eleven o'clock to quiet her. And the doctor has warned her against the least excitement. Why, two days ago there was an important prize-contest at our mademoiselle's school and the poor woman, although she would have given anything to go, was forbidden by the doctor. He said the excitement would be too much for her, and she would feel it so if her daughter were defeated. You can ask any one whether she was there! And that evening, although Mlle. Marise had won the prize, she was so worked up, I had to give her a sleeping draught to get her a little rest, poor thing...."
"Were theysureof what she said?" asked the first man of the other. "Would they swear to it?"
"I don't see how anybody could hear anything!" put in Jeanne. "In ordinary weather the gave of Gavarnie makes such a noise down there in that gorge, you can't hear your own voice even if you yell. I remember last summer when Madame was taking the cure, when we went to see her ... and now in flood...."
"They'd certainly swear to her being in a terrible state of agitation," said the other in a rather nettled tone. He went on, "You saw for yourself what was put in the paper about it this morning, how they had met there by design and spent the night together at the hotel and all."
"You won't get far in an inquest, my young friend, if youtake what a newspaper says. Newspapers are always wrong," said the first man pityingly, in a tone of experienced scepticism. "If this happened at ten in the morning, they can't have been together more than an hour. If he was seen here in Bayonne at six o'clock the evening before, he couldn't possibly have reached Saint Sauveur before nine the next morning. You know you wait three or four hours for the connection at Lourdes. To my mind there's nothing in it. I will take you to the convent to see her, if you insist, but I have no liking for scenes with hysteric women."
"Oh, messieurs!" said Jeanne shocked at the idea, "you couldn't possibly expect to see hernow! Not for a week, at least, the doctor said."
"Aweek!" cried the second voice, dismayed, "sacrebleu, I can't kick my heels for a week, waiting."
"Well, suppose we go through the usual routine?" suggested the other. "Go to see the family of the young man, and if they confirm all this ... there's no use going further. There is plenty of time for you to get all the facts you need for your report, and catch the one o'clock train back to Saint Sauveur."
Jeanne said now jocularly, with a change of manner to the intimate knowing tone of a servant-girl speaking to a policeman, "If you're not in a hurry, you must stay to have a glass in honor of the house. We have an excellent white wine, and the patron never counts the bottles."
Marise heard her lead them down the hall and across the landing to the dining-room, and then in an instant heard her come back and run on tip-toe up the hall. She thrust her head through the curtains, showing a haggard gray face, glistening with sweat, and whispered, "Don't move, don't speak to a soul till I get back. I must see the Garniers before they do."
Even without this, Marise would have been incapable of moving hand or foot. Half an hour later, she was sitting in exactly the same position frozen and deathly sick, when Jeanne let herself in cautiously. From the gust of sounds that came in from across the landing, as the door was opened,the two policemen seemed to be greatly enjoying both Isabelle and the white wine.
Then Jeanne shut the door on the loud voices and laughter; and in their place Marise heard the sound of dreadful hoarse gasps as Jeanne tried to get her breath after running. It did not sound like the breathing of a human being, but like that of some large animal, like a horse or cow, exhausted and panting.
Jeanne came up the hall, fighting thus for her breath, and dragging her feet. She shuffled heavily into the salon, and across to the closed curtains, where locked in her nightmare, the child waited for some one to come to the rescue.
The old woman drew the curtain a little aside. Marise caught one glimpse of her face, now swollen and darkly congested. She saw that Jeanne was nodding reassuringly at her; she heard Jeanne say in a whisper, "They understood, it's all right, they...." Then, without the slightest warning, she turned to one side and fell headlong inside the curtains.
For an instant she lay as if dead, her ghastly face at Marise's feet. But almost at once she opened her eyes and tried to smile and to speak. Only a guttural sound came from her lips. A look of terrible anxiety came into her face. She motioned with one hand passionately, that the curtain should be drawn shut to conceal her.
Marise, frightened out of her palsy, was kneeling by her sobbing, "Jeanne, Jeanne."
She thought of what Jeanne had done for her mother, and flinging her arms around her as she lay, she kissed her furiously, the tears coming in a flood and pouring down on the dreadful face, now strangely twisted to one side. Jeanne put one arm around her, and tried again to say something. But her tongue moved senselessly in her distorted mouth; the sweat stood out on her forehead as she struggled to speak.
Finally she gave up her desperate attempt, and put her finger to her lips, exhorting Marise to silence. Such a wildness of apprehension was in her eyes, that the girl muffled her sobs, hiding her face on the inert breast, clinging with all her might to the half-dead body.
She thought that Jeanne was dying. She thought that she herself was dying. She longed to die, there, that instant, and escape the shame and sorrow and misery that buried her so deep, so much deeper even than Jeanne knew.
The sound of laughter and voices chimed out merrily again. Isabelle had opened the other door. Marise held her breath, her face buried on Jeanne's breast. The old woman tightened the clasp of her arm. They strained their ears.
Then they heard the men's feet clatter down the stairs.
I
It was Mlle. Hasparren who found them so, Mlle. Hasparren with her shabby coat buttoned crookedly, who ran up the stairs as the sergents de ville went down, who came in without a word of explanation to take charge of things.
She expressed no surprise at finding Marise where she was, nor at Jeanne's condition. She acted as if nothing she found could have surprised her. She lifted Marise up with strong loving arms, led her into her own room and made her lie down with a handkerchief soaked in smelling salts under her nose, and a cold bandage across her forehead, while Isabelle stayed with Jeanne. She did not pet Marise or kiss her, but from all her quiet presence breathed an assurance that she was there to take care of her, and when she said, "I'll stay right here, dear, till your father comes," Marise fell into a fit of quiet thankful weeping that washed away the nervous trembling of her hands and lips. She lay, turned on her side, sobbing, the tears running fast from her eyes, and thought of nothing, except the steady look on Mlle. Hasparren's face. "Now I must leave you here, dear child. I will send Isabelle for the doctor, and I will stay with Jeanne."
Presently Mlle. Hasparren came back and sat down again by the bed. She looked perfectly self-possessed and exactly as usual, which gave Marise the most inexpressible comfort. She said that the doctor was there, had seen Jeanne and that she was not dying at all, not likely to, but had simply had a partial stroke of paralysis, such as often happened to people of her age—nothing in the least unusual about it. Jeanne was so old, that any little thing might bring on a stroke of this sort and she had worked so valiantly all her life, she was really older than her age. She and Isabelle and the doctor had got Jeanne undressed and in her own bed, and now she wouldbe all right, only she had made them understand that she wanted to see Marise. The doctor had told her that she mustn't see any one, but she had become so agitated that he thought it best to humor her. "Only, of course, poor thing, she can't say a word that any one can understand. It's just an old woman's whim." Marise thought to herself that it might be more than an old woman's whim, and getting up at once went with Mlle. Hasparren into the room where Jeanne lay on the bed. The doctor was on one side; on the other was Isabelle, half frightened and half delighted with the excitement; a visit from gallant sergents de ville, and from the doctor all in one day!
Jeanne motioned them all out with her one arm, and only when the door had closed after them, did she beckon Marise to her. She did not try to speak now. She only looked at the girl, with a terrible concentration, and put her finger to her lips.
"Do you mean, Jeanne?" whispered Marise, her lips trembling, "that I am not to tell any one?"
Jeanne closed her eyes rapidly in assent.
"Oh, no, no,no," cried the poor child. "Of course not, never, never, never!"
But the old woman was not satisfied. She reached out for Marise's hand and drew her close, her eyes burning in her disfigured face. She struck her lips repeatedly with her fingers, as though, try as she might, she could not express the urgency of her command.
"No one—no one at all?" asked Marise, and then with a gasp, "Not even Papa?"
At this Jeanne's eyes leaped up to a hotter flame of intensity.
"No! no! no!" they cried to Marise. "No!"
Marise thought she understood, and hanging her head she said in a low shamed voice, "Oh, no, of course, I see."
With the words and the acceptance of their meaning which Jeanne's passionate eyes thrust upon her, Marise sank for many years into another plane of feeling and saw all the world in another perspective, very ugly and grim. That wasthe way Jeanne saw things. With all her immature personality, with the pitiably insufficient weapons of a little girl, Marise had fought not to accept Jeanne's way of seeing things. That had been the real cause of their quarrels. But now the weapons were struck from her hands. Jeanne had been right all the time it seemed. That was the way things really were. Now she knew. With a long breath she admitted her defeat.
"No,speciallynot Papa," she whispered.
II
It was four o'clock that afternoon. They had had something to eat, talking quietly about indifferent things, and they had found Papa's address in Bordeaux and sent a telegram to him, before Marise thought to ask, "But, Mademoiselle, how is it you can be out of your class-room to-day?" She had often known the teacher to drag herself to work when she was scarcely able to stand, and knew how the stern discipline of her profession frowned on an absence from duty.
"Oh, I arranged this morning to have a substitute come. I heard—I heard your maman was not well, and I knew your papa was not here, and I wasn't sure that any of your maman's friends might be able to come to look out for you."
As a matter of fact, Marise never saw one of her mother's callers again.
That evening, Anna brought up a blue telegram from Papa, which since it had been sent in English, as Papa always insisted on doing, was perfectly unintelligible, reading:
"Com inga nmorninjtrain ta kigo adca rof Maman."Papa.
"Com inga nmorninjtrain ta kigo adca rof Maman."
Papa.
Marise who had with Maman puzzled over many other similar telegrams from Papa, made out "morning-train" and that was enough.
The doctor had sent in a nursing sister to take care of Jeanne during the night, and Isabelle had gone off to a tenement near the Porte d'Espagne where some relations of hers lived and had brought back an old cousin to help her withthe work and marketing and to sleep with her in the other apartment.
Mlle. Hasparren slept in the folding-bed beside Marise's so that every time Marise, with a great scared start, realized anew that what had happened was not a bad dream, she felt the other's hand reaching for hers in the dark, and holding firm. She said very little and Marise was glad of that, but the clasp of her muscular musician's hand pulled Marise out of the black pit many times that night.
Later on Marise fell into a real sleep, deep and unbroken, and when she woke up, much later than usual, to find Mlle. Hasparren all dressed, the folding-bed put away, the window open and the sunshine coming in, she found that she seemed to have grown stronger since yesterday, that the black pit was not so fathomless. She felt infinitely older and as though she would never laugh again. She lay in bed, looking up at the ceiling, thinking fixedly about what had happened, and found that she could endure it now without crying out or bursting into tears as she had done yesterday. She could stand up under her burden, because there was no other way. But she felt her shoulders bowed and aching with the weight.
Mlle. Hasparren heard her stir in bed, and sensed the awakened quality of the movement. She came to look anxiously down at her. Marise looked back and remembering that, so far as she knew, Mlle. Hasparren knew nothing beyond the surface of the happenings of yesterday and so might expect her to be able to smile, she produced a faint smile.
"I overslept," she said, in order to say something. "Has somebody brought your breakfast?"
"No, I waited for you," answered Mlle. Hasparren. "I'll ring for Isabelle now."
When Isabelle came, very self-important at taking Jeanne's place, she reported that the Sister said Jeanne had passed a very good night and was perfectly comfortable, with no complications. "She says Jeanne may get all over it and be as good as ever. All old people have these seizures, she says," chattered Isabelle, setting down the tray and pouring out Marise's café-au-lait. She was full of her new dignity, and bustled offto give orders to her assistant, leaving Marise and Mlle. Hasparren to eat their breakfast. Mlle. Hasparren did not seem to feel like talking much, and neither did Marise. She was trying to think what it was she was to tell Papa. She must remember now just what it was that everybody was to be told.
An hour later, as they went down the hall, on their way to the station to meet the morning train, they saw the salon as usual at that hour, the chairs pushed about, the rugs hanging over the window-sills, the fresh, clean, new morning sun streaming in through the wide-open windows on the familiar spectacle of Isabelle on her knees, a brush-broom in her hand reaching under the piano for dust. The alcove curtains were drawn back, the cheerful sunshine poured in, glittering on the dark polished wood of the desk, on the yellow-covered books, on the pretty little inlaid chair which stood beside the desk.
Was it only yesterday that Jeanne had flung her into that chair? She stood in the door, as she put on her hat, looking steadily at the alcove. No, that had been somebody else ... a little girl, a lucky, lucky little girl, who had no idea what things were like.
"Come, dear," said Mlle. Hasparren, looking at her watch.
It had been agreed since there were so few trains in and out of Bayonne and since as yet no news had been sent to Jeanne's family, that if Marise's father did come on the train from the north, Mlle. Hasparren would board it as he left it, and go on down to Midassoa to tell the Amigorenas about their mother's illness. "But do tell them, Mademoiselle," Marise said over and over, anxiously, "that we will take care of Jeanne, that we will do everything for her that anybody could, that they needn't worry. I know Papa will see that she's taken care of. Iknowhe will, if I ask him." But really she was not as sure as she said. She did not know Papa so very well, after all. She had very little idea what he would feel or say about anything. And then everything depended on the way things turned out...!
They stood there in the smoky dusk of the station, a long ray of sunshine thick with golden motes striking the groundat their feet. They still said very little, Marise not daring to talk for fear of making a mistake, for fear that she would not remember just what and how much Mlle. Hasparren knew. The music-teacher held the girl's slim fingers close. Marise answered their pressure with a nervous fervor, inexpressibly grateful to the other, loving everything about her from her steady face and kind, shadowed eyes, to her heavy, badly-cut shoes, dusty now, which would be dustier later after they had trudged along the hot white road at Midassoa. Never, so long as she lived, was she able to forget how Mlle. Hasparren had looked to her, when she came quietly into the salon and lifted her up from Jeanne and said in a plain matter-of-fact way as though nothing were the matter but Jeanne's sickness, that they must get a doctor and probably Jeanne wasn't as sick as she looked. She had just taken Marise by the hand and showed her how to go on living ... when it seemed to Marise that she had come to the end.
They heard the train whistle shriekingly in the distance, and the somnolent porters roused themselves. Marise tightened her hold on the strong fingers which held hers. Her heart ached with longing, with confusion. Suppose Papa did not come ... whatwouldshe do? But suppose he did ... wouldn't it be impossible not to make mistakes, not to forget what you were to say and what you weren't?
But when the train came in, and Marise saw at the other end of the long platform her father's massive bulk heavily descending from a compartment, and saw his eyes begin to search the crowd for her face, all her confusion melted away in a great burst of relief.... Papa was there, something of her very own in the midst of all those strangers! Her heart almost broke with its release from tension.
And yet before she ran to meet him, she put her arms around the music-teacher and kissed her hard on both swarthy cheeks.
III
Then she ran with all the speed of her long legs, and flung herself upon Papa's broad chest and tried to put her armsaround him, as she had around Mile. Hasparren, and began to cry on Papa's great shoulder. How good it was to feel him, to feel him so entirely as Papa always felt! It would not have seemed like Papa if there were not more of him than she could get her arms around.
Her tears, her agitation gave Papa such a turn that he set his satchels down hastily and looking alarmed, shook her a little, and asked what had happened to Maman.
In the hurry and noise and bustle of the crowd it was easier than Marise had feared to get over that first moment when Papa must be told. It all came out straight, just what she had planned to tell him, that nothing had really happened to Maman, she wasn't sick or anything only she had had a terrible nervous shock, had seen somebody killed right before her eyes, and it had pretty nearly driven her wild.
"Oh!" said Papa, evidently relieved, and caring as little as Marise had about the person who had been killed. He picked up his satchels again (by this time the porters at the Bayonne station were resigned to his strange mania for carrying his own hand-baggage), and said, "Well, yes, that's too bad! I remember I saw a brakeman killed once, and it made me pretty sick, too."
They walked out of the station together. Not two minutes had passed since his arrival, and already Marise's joy that he had come, had faded to a frightened sense that he had not come at all, that he was still very far away, that he would never really come, as he used to.
And yet Jeanne had been right of course; whatever else she did, she must not tell Papa.
"When did it happen?" asked Papa now, as they turned the corner and were finally escaped from the last of the clamorous cab-drivers, who had not yet accepted, as the porters had, the eccentricities of the American gentleman.
As they crossed the bridge, Marise told him the version she had prepared, the version Jeanne had presented. She had had a good deal of practice in saying something different from what she thought, and she got through this without any hesitation or mistake. But every word of it set herfurther away from Papa, raised a wall between them, the wall of things she knew and Papa must never know.
"Well, to be sure," said Papa, when she finished, "you certainly have had goings-on, for sure."
"Oh, Papa," went on Marise earnestly, "youwillhave Jeanne taken care of! It was when she was working for us, she got her paralysis.Don'tyou feel we ought to—for always, for always? It was for us...."
"Oh, as to that," said Papa, "anybody of Jeanne's age, who rustles around as Jeanne does, is apt to get a stroke, whether she was working for us or not. It might have happened just as easily in her own home."
Marise's heart went down.
Papa added, with a change of tone, "I don't like her lying very well, but the old woman has been awfully good to you, Molly, awfully good, more like your grandmother than the cook, and I guess we'll see that she's taken care of, all right."
Marise squeezed his arm hard, and said nothing. After all, wall or no wall, Papa was there, good old Papa, so broad and solid, her very own Papa; somebody who, even if he didn't understand much of what went on, would look out for them all, Maman, Jeanne, herself.
IV
Papa went in at once to see Jeanne and told her through Marise—for Jeanne had never learned to understand his brand of French—that he would see that she was well taken care of till she recovered. Jeanne contrived with her one living hand and her eyes, to convey her respectful thanks, and to conceal everything else which Marise knew she must be thinking.
Then Papa wanted to go at once to the convent, and bring Maman home. What had he come back for, if not for that? As a matter of fact, Marise was not very sure why he had come back, or why she had felt it so necessary to get word to him at once. Now that she had had time to think about it, she realized that she dreaded very much having Maman seePapa just now, right after ... after all that. It would have been better for her to have had a little time to get over it, and like Marise, to think what to say.
But, of course, this was one of the things she could not speak to Papa about. All she could do was to find out that lunch was nearly ready and they would better eat that before they went to the convent.
Isabelle, her head turned with the sudden removal of Jeanne's heavy-handed authority, had prepared a gala luncheon with the best silver and linen, and "What a pretty bunch of flowers," remarked Papa.
Marise looked silently at the white rose-buds, now opening into roses. Was it only yesterday morning that Jeanne had given her those? Was it only two days before, that she had been walking along with the Garniers, with nothing in her head but mockery of Madame Garnier's shoes and hat? No, that must have been somebody else, some one she had distantly known, that girl who had laughed with the others so, over their foolishness behind the scenes.
"Let me see," remarked Papa, "you must be almost fifteen, aren't you, Molly?"
"Yesterday was my birthday."
"Funny kind of celebration."
Marise looked at him across an immense chasm, and said nothing. She couldn't ever remember having a meal at a table alone with Papa before.
"Don't you want to go with me?" he asked later, as the dessert was served. "I don't know how to find my way around a convent—of all places! Whatever possessed your Mama to go there anyhow?"
"She and Sœur Ste. Lucie are such good friends," explained Marise. She decided not to say anything about the old monk, because she didn't know whether Papa knew about Maman's going to see him before; but after thinking for an instant she decided that it would do no harm to add, "Sœur Ste. Lucie wants Mama to be a Catholic, you know."
Papa said quickly, "What's that?"
Marise was surprised at his tone. Perhaps thatwasoneof the things she oughtn't to tell about. "Why, would you mind if she did?" she asked.
Papa thought for a moment, and dropped back into his usual slow casual comment, "Oh, no, I guess not, if she wants to." There was a silence broken by Papa's saying something else, in an earnest tone as though this time he really wanted Marise to listen to him. "All Ieverwant, Molly, is for Mama to have things the way she wants them."
Marise's heart was nervously sensitive that day, in a sick responsiveness to the faintest indication of what was in other people's hearts.
She could not put another morsel of food to her lips. She sat looking down at her plate, trying to master or at least understand the surge of feeling within her. "All I ever want is for Mama to have things the way she wants them." There was so much to think of in that, that she was still lost in thinking, when Papa pushed back his chair and got up, pulling down his vest, with his usual after-dinner gesture.
"I'll have a look at the mail while you get your things on," he suggested. Evidently he was still set on going at once to see Maman. Perhaps more than he admitted, he really didn't like her being in a convent.
Marise went to get her hat, and with it in her hand, went to join her father, standing by her mother's writing-desk in the alcove. He had an American newspaper in his hand, his fore-finger inserted in the wrapper.
He tore it open and stood looking at the headlines, while Marise put on her broad-brimmed sailor-hat and, tilting her head forward, slipped the rubber under her hair behind.
"All ready?" said Papa, and they set out.
How much lessexcitingeverything was, now that Papa was home. But would it be—if he—but he never would! Who would tell him? Not Maman certainly, although Marise wished that poor Maman could have had a few days more without seeing Papa, to get over being excited so she could be surer of what she was saying. Not Jeanne. Not herself. Nobody else knew him well enough to tell him anything. If Maman could only get through to-day all right....
V
At the convent they waited in the usual bare, white-washed convent parlor with the shutters drawn, with the usual little rush-bottomed chairs, so light that the one Papa sat down on, groaned and creaked under his great weight. The usual black-walnut book-case displayed the usual Lives of the Saints. Through an open door they could look down a long, long, gray stone corridor, very empty, till they saw Sœur Ste. Lucie hurrying noiselessly down it towards them.
As she came near, Marise saw that her sweet face looked anxious and worried. She told them at once that Madame Allen had been taken very ill, that they had been up all night with her and had sent for the doctor early that morning.
Papa was startled by this unexpected news, and apparently never dreamed of what occurred to Marise at once, that this was just something they had made up to prevent anybody's talking to her. Marise thought it a good idea. She had hoped something like that could be arranged ... in case those horrible sergents de ville came back again. She was not alarmed by Sœur Ste. Lucie's worried face, because this was by no means the first time that she had observed how easy it was for people's faces to look anything they wished to have them.
Papa was asking rather sharply, "What is the matter? What did the doctor say? Is it the effect of nervous shock?"
All the same, it was too bad, thought Marise to have Papa worried for nothing.
Sœur Ste. Lucie shook her head hurriedly, "Oh, no, something much more acute than that, a terrible, terrible chill which has gone to her lungs. The poor lady must have been in soaking wet clothes, for nobody knows how long. Monsieur has been told of the...." She hesitated and paused.
"Yes, yes, I know she was with some one who fell into a river somewhere and was drowned. But did she fall in, too? How did she get wet? Whyweren'ther clothes changed?" His voice rose as he asked the questions.
Sœur Ste. Lucie explained in a low, hurried, agitated voice."Nobody knows of course just what happened. Perhaps she tried to save the poor fellow. Perhaps she slipped as he did. In any case she was too distraught to think of herself or to realize the danger of going so long in wet clothes. And every one there was so absorbed in the tragedy...! She was all alone among strangers, the poor lady. She must have sat in her dripping garments in the cold train all the way to Lourdes, and then half the night in the unheated station there, waiting for the train. It was terrible. The doctor said it was terrible to think of—weakened with the shock, as she was, and no food!"
Papa now said ungently and impatiently, yet as though he were restraining himself, "Well, we must get her home at once, where we can take care of her!" Marise could see that he believed every word that Sœur Ste. Lucie said.
But of course Sœur Ste. Lucie hadn't the least intention of letting Papa take Maman away. "I'm afraid that is impossible," she said, "the doctor came back this afternoon, is here now in fact, and says"—her voice broke—"he says she is much too ill to be moved."
At this Papa burst out angrily, his face very red, "Why under the heavens didn't you send word of this to her own home? Here I have been there, ever since the morning train, eating my lunch ... with noideathat...."
The nun defended herself reasonably, sadly, showing no resentment at his anger, "No one knew you were come back, Monsieur, and I was just starting to fetch our dear little Marie."
Marise saw over the nun's shoulder a gentleman with a bald head, a great brown beard and very white hands coming down the corridor, "Here is the doctor, now," said Sœur Ste. Lucie, drawing in her breath quickly. Taking Papa and motioning Marise to stay where she was, she stepped down the corridor. Marise watched them, her eyes on the doctor's serious, spectacled eyes. Something about the way he looked at Papa made Marise for the first time wonder if Maman really were a little sick after all.
They all came back to where Marise stood. Papa's face was no longer red. He said to Marise in a queer voice, "The doctor says that Maman must not be disturbed, but we may go in to see her for a moment if we will be quiet and not talk."
They turned, all of them, and started down the long, gray stone corridor. Marise tip-toed along beside her father. She was a little frightened in spite of herself, at a loss to know what to think or feel or believe. The emptiness of the corridor echoed around them. Marise's ears rang with the emptiness of it! And how long it was. It took them forever to walk through it. Marise looked up at the small windows set high in the wall, and wondered when they would ever come to a door that opened out.
But the only door was at the very end, and that opened into the white-washed room where Maman lay in a narrow bed.
As soon as she saw her mother, Marise was sure again that she was not really sick because she looked even better than usual, with a deep shell-pink in her cheeks. She did seem a little tired and sleepy, however, for her eyelids looked heavy and kept dropping down over her eyes. They stood there for a moment, looking at her, till she should open them again.
When she did, and saw Papa there, she flung out her arms towards him. As he stooped over her she clung to him with all her might just as Marise had at the station.
She did not look at Marise at all, only at Papa. He patted her shoulder, and smiled at her, and Marise saw the tears run out of Maman's eyes in a gush.
Papa sat down on the little chair by the bed which creaked under his weight, and leaned forward, his arms around Maman, his cheek against hers. She said to him in a hurried, frightened whisper, "Horace, I want to go home. I want to go home."
He answered steadily, "It's all right, Flora ... we'll have you home in a few days."
She closed her eyes again, all the expression dropping out of her face. The doctor stepped to the other side of the bed, and his fingers on her wrist, his eyes on his watch, motioned them silently to leave, with a sideways jerk of his head.
They tip-toed out and down the long, gray, empty corridor.
Marise's mother died that night, without seeing them again.
September, 1900.
The first weeks of Freshman year were like a return to the formless impersonality of little boyhood. Just as Neale had felt himself an amœba-like cell among the finished, many-membered adults of his parents' circle, so he was now again only one more wriggle in the mass of Freshmen. Nobody could tell him apart from any other Freshman. He could scarcely tell himself apart from the other Freshmen.
This did not afflict him as it might a more sensitive, self-conscious boy. Indeed he rather enjoyed the anonymity of his condition, the space and vacuum about him which it created, where he floated free from any threat of the handling or pawing-over which was his especial fear when he entered into relations with other people. There was so much that was new to him in college life that it was occupation enough to look on without taking any part. He enjoyed the variety of his experiences, from the Greek-and-Roman feeling that came with walking up the Library steps, to the fairy-cave enchantment of floating on the shimmering water of the electric-lighted, marble-lined swimming pool. And he enjoyed most of all his aloof spectator's scorn of footless classes like Rhetoric A, or class-meetings where a few loud-mouthed blow-hards ran the show, while the real scouts like himself preserved a cautious, sardonic silence. He discovered the perilous secret, always a temptation to natures like his, that if you attempt nothing, share in no effort, you are automatically freed from any blame for the inevitable foolishness and blunders; you can stand on your safe little hillock and scorn the poor fools who try to do things and fail. The lone-wolf motive sang seductively in his seventeen-year-old ears. Nothing in any of his classes, nothing in the Library or in any of the booksin it gave the seventeen-year-old a hint of any valid, compelling reason for his assuming the heavy, distasteful burden of responsibility.
Then one day, word was passed around that the Flag Rush would be held that afternoon; the Flag Rush unanimously deplored by the directing forces of the University; the Flag Rush, that out-burst of meaningless brutality so shocking to all the European members of the Faculty, secretly contemptuous of the prosperous, illiterate, childish country where they taught.
Neale never dreamed of staying out of the Flag Rush. There was a row on, and his class needed his muscles and his head. He went to the Gym. at the appointed hour, where all the Freshmen were assembled. Gathering confidence at being all together for once, they marched in a body over to South Field. There they found the Sophs. gathered about a tree, from a branch of which fluttered a 1903 flag. Juniors took charge of the affair, coaching and urging on the Freshmen. Still buoyed up by their mass, by being together, they advanced to the charge. They were uncertain, and for the most part, amiable big little boys, who really cared nothing about that flag, who really cared only about doing what was expected of them. As they advanced, they began to hurry, to rush forward nervously. Several detached Sophs. dived in at the leaders' feet and broke up the formation, but there was mass impetus enough to carry the rush forward. The Freshmen crashed into the defenders of the flag, pushed them back, circled them round ... at the first physical contact with the enemy they were no longer big little boys doing what was expected of them, they were young Berserk fighters, blind and furious with the delight of battle. A roar went up, a roar from their very hearts, like the yell which had burst up from their little-boy game-centers. Except for a few rare and artistic natures, who were suffering horribly from shock, every one of them was twice what he had been two minutes before. A Freshman somehow shot up through the crowd, hoisted on his classmates' shoulders, and laid his hands on the sacred branch; but defenders spouted up around him, grabbed his legs andpulled him down. With this, all semblance of organized purpose left the rush. It broke up into a disorganized mêlée, rolling and tumbling, panting and struggling in a hundred separate encounters.
Neale rolled and tumbled, panted and struggled with the rest, far, far from any cool Olympian detachment. He was one of the biggest and strongest of the Freshmen and felt his responsibility. He did what he could. But that was not much. The Freshmen did not know one another, and had no plan. Sometimes Neale collared his own classmates by mistake; sometimes a couple of Sophs. tackled him together, ran him back and dropped him on the grass.
A half-hour later the flag was still in the tree, and the furious boiling over of insensate young life had cooled to a simmer. The Juniors called the rush off, the Freshmen began to stream back to the Gym. Neale was surprised to find one sleeve to his jersey missing and innumerable rips and tears all over his other garments. He was bruised from head to foot and spat blood from a cut lip. Calmed, appeased, exhausted, he made limping for the gate.
As he passed through it, he passed through another and invisible gate, opening into quite a different path from the solitary, self-satisfied way of aloofness which he had been following. He did not, as a matter of fact, pass through the invisible gate. He was shoved through by a vigorous hand that slapped him on the shoulder. Turning, Neale looked into the masterful face of the Varsity Coach. "Report for football practice to-morrow!" was the order. "I'm Andrews!"
The information was unnecessary. Neale would not at this date have recognized President Low or Dean Van Amringe, but he knew the football coach. The next twenty hours were beatific. His mind refused to grasp facts. It wandered off into gorgeous day-dreams. He was on the Varsity ... no, he was a sub, called in at the last minute ... a long run! ... better, a recovered fumble ... then down the field, shaking off one tackler after another.
He would wake up to real life, blushing, swearing at himself for a condemned fool. And yet a few minutes later, infancy he was the last defender between the goal line and a rushing Yale back...!
Not the faintest hint of any of this appeared on the surface. At home he preserved his normal appetite which was his mother's gauge for his health and spirits, and although he told them, not unwillingly, about the Flag Rush, he preserved the sacred secret of his summons from Andrews, as though it had been his first sentimental rendezvous. The next day dragged endlessly, filled with the paper-like silhouettes of talking professors. But three o'clock was finally there, and he was at the Gym., silent, his face composed, his heart given to sudden swelling bulges, which made it hard for him to hear what was being said.
They gave him a suit. He trotted with the squad,with the Squadover to South Field!
"Ever played?" asked the scrub quarter.
"Yes," said Neale. He did not feel obliged to tell how little.
"What position?"
"Half-back," he lied brazenly, having made up his mind that he hadn't the weight to aspire to the Varsity line.
They ran through signals. Then a scrimmage started but Neale was not in the line-up. A scrub back had his wind knocked out and didn't get up quickly enough for the coach. "Put in that Freshman bean-pole. Jump in, what's your name?"
Neale jumped and floundered for five minutes, then the peppery scrub quarter consigned him profanely to the side-lines. For two days after that he moped without a job, although still in a suit, out in the field. Then he had another trial.
Gradually he made sure of his place as right-half on the scrub—not that he was any good, as they told him plainly: but because in those days the whole squad, including hopeless dubs, seldom numbered over thirty men, and thanks to the work in the mill at West Adams, Neale was physically fit.
With this place, minor though it was, came the great privilege of dinner, after practice, at the football house. There he picked up a little of the theory of the game from the blackboard talks; there after the Pennsylvania's guards-back had battered through for thirty points, he heard the coach, white and shaking with emotion, pour out his biting post-mortem. "You, Jackson," shaking his fore-finger at the left-guard, "did you shoot your body in low and spill them in their own territory? No, youStood Up!"
Neale's flesh crept, he was almost glad that he had escaped the fearful responsibility of being on the Varsity. It was terrible, such a weight on your shoulders. He shrank from it, and with all his being, aspired to it.
He made no impression on the football world, but his own interior world was transformed. He was no longer an isolated, formless Freshman, dumped down into the midst of the most callously laissez-faire of Universities, he was no more a forgotten molecule with no share in, or responsibility for the ultimate reaction. He had a shelter for his personality against the vast, daunting indifference of the universe. He was on the football squad.
He had feared he might have some trouble in explaining his absence from the supper-table at home, but that proved unexpectedly easy. The second evening after he began to play on the scrub, he found Father in the library at home, reading the sporting sheet of the Evening Telegram.
"Any other Crittendens in college, Neale?" he asked.
"Not that I know about."
"That's you on the football team, then?"
"Only on the scrub, yes, I'm trying. We have dinner together after practice. You don't mind, do you?"
"Me? Of course not," said Father.
Mother heard all this, apparently had known it before, and did not ask him to take care of himself and not get hurt. Neale looked over at her gratefully. Mother was all right.
The football season slid along, the Varsity improving every week. Neale glowed with caste-loyalty as Saturday after Saturday he watched the prowess of his big brothers. Every day he felt himself stretching up, broadening out, nearer to their stature, though nobody else gave him a thought. Life was full of big and generous and absorbing matter.
Then came Thanksgiving Day, the climax ... and oh, after that, what a vacuum! Nothing in life but classes! Holy smoke! It was fierce! What did the fellows do who hadn't had anything but classes! How could they stand it? But of course, it wasn't such a come-down for them.
Going home as Neale did every afternoon, he had none of the scanty, ill-organized college social life. Sliding into college as he had, with no introduction from the right kind of Prep. school, and with a noticeably colorless personality, he was not thought of as a possibility for any fraternity. Time hung heavy on his hands. Lectures took up but three hours a day, on the busiest days. To fill in the rest of the time there was the swimming pool, the Gymnasium and the Library. He swam, practised the overhand racing stroke, dived; in the Gym. he fooled awkwardly on the parallel bars and side-horse; he tossed medicine balls with any pick-up acquaintance; what he really enjoyed was the line of traveling rings which hung in front of the visitors' gallery—but one day he heard an upper classman refer to these as "Freshmen's Delight," and thereafter he avoided them.
The Library, the first one to which he had had access, wasn't so bad. Neale went there first to look up a reference for Comp. Lit. A. Of course you ran the risk of being thought a grind if you spent too much time there, but you could kill the hours very pleasantly with the bound volumes of the magazines in the shelves about the general reading-room. Neale and most of his friends wasted an unconscionable number of hours on those magazines: but little by little the library habit began to form itself, by slow, infinitesimal accretions. He found it a good place to study, wrote English A. themes there, finally even got into the way of running through the card catalogue, and drawing books with titles that sounded good.
Christmas came. Father, recognizing manhood achieved, gave him a box of a hundred Milo cigarettes. Mother—poor, dear, ignorant Mother!—gave him a white sweater decorated with a light blue C! Even more than by smoking Father's cigarettes, Neale proved that he had begun to outgrow thecruel egotism of adolescence, by kissing Mother and thanking her, without telling her that almost any fool finally gets his diploma, but only the chosen few—and these as Juniors or Seniors—win the right to adorn themselves with the proud insignia of their Varsity letter.
After Christmas came the mid-year exams. Neale went into them confidently enough—and to his astonishment emerged with passing marks, but with no great credit. D in German was the worst, and he'd studied German since he was a little boy! Greek, English and Latin marked him as mediocre with a C. Comparative Literature alone rated him B—and every one knew that Comp. Lit. was a snap course. Neale had never thought of himself as a grind, but he had been used to high marks at school, and the low grades nettled him. He began to see that there was more to this college work than he had understood. The studies themselves were not unlike those of high school; indeed they were easier than the science and mathematics that had been hammered into him at Hadley. But the point of view was different, and that had fooled him. There was a "take it or leave it" attitude about everything at college; the professors did not, as at Hadley, hold their jobs only because they were able to drive the bright, the dull, the scatter-brained, the sluggish, all through passing grades for the next year's work. No, these college professors and instructors gave themselves no such trouble. They set out their wares. If the students helped themselves, so much the better: if they didn't, so much the worse—for the students. Neale mis-called the professors for lazy time-servers: but he wasn't going to let them put it over on him that way another time. He would read everything they suggested and more! They would be astonished by the brilliance of his finals. But just then baseball practice started in the cage and Neale forgot all about his vendetta against the professors.