Rough-Hewn Part 38

The other with a rough, scrambling sprawl, got herself to her knees and sat up, rubbing the tears away from her eyes with the backs of her hands, and drawing long, quivering breaths. Her lips were swollen, her cheeks fiery and glazed.

Marise was touched, and putting out her arms drew the other into them.

"Here, you must let me help you get used to things. _I've_ been homesick, too."

The girl tried to speak, was on the point of bursting into tears again, struggled wildly to get the better of her excitement and emotion, and finally brought out in a strangled voice, "I'm not _homesick_! I _hate_ my home! I wouldn't go back theah for _any_thing!"

The words in themselves were sufficiently astonis.h.i.+ng to Marise, and the raging accent with which they were cast out made them even more disconcerting. She felt that the little quivering body in her arms was clinging desperately to her, and sat silent, holding the unhappy child close, because she did not know what else to do with her.

Presently, however, she ventured to ask, "Where is your home?"

"It _was_ in Arkansas," said the other, in a m.u.f.fled, defiant tone. "It isn't anywheah now. It's heah."

Marise not being very intimately acquainted with the shades and phases of certain American prejudices, saw nothing peculiar in having one's home in Arkansas. Why not?

Apparently some hint of this reached the other, for after a moment of silent, expectant tension, she lifted her face from Marise's shoulder and looked up searchingly into her face. How pretty she must be, thought Marise, when she hadn't been crying. She must look like a pink lily in the midst of the dark-skinned, dark-haired, city-sallow little girls of her cla.s.s.

"Have you any of your family here in Paris with you?" she asked now.

"I haven't any family left, only some lawyers and guardians and things,"

said the other. She spoke as though she were glad of it, Marise thought, so that she suppressed the "_oh!_" of sympathy which she was on the point of uttering. What a strange little thing!

The strange little thing now looked up at her. "Do you know what I was crying for just now?" she said. Marise could not understand why she asked this in an accusing tone of blame.

"No!" said Marise, as utterly at a loss as ever in her life. "How could I?"

"Because I hate myself so, because I hate my looks and my clothes and _every_thing!" the other burst out pa.s.sionately, "I feel like po' white trash. They had plenty of money! Why didn't they send me here befoah?"

"_Before!_" cried Marise. "Why, you're only a child now."

"I'm almost as old as you are," said the other. "I'm seventeen and you're eighteen."

She flung it out like a grievance.

"Eh _bien_!" cried Marise in great astonishment. She had not thought the other girl over fourteen.

She said now, sitting up straight and looking wistfully at Marise, "_Will_ you be friends? You came of your own accord to be nice to me.

Tell me about things. _Everything!_ I want so like sin to know! I'll do anything to learn."

"Know what?" asked Marise, bewildered, looking about her, as if she might catch a glimpse of the things the other wanted to know.

"What they all know oveh heah ... everything _you_ know."

Marise drew back with an abrupt gesture, "No, _indeed_!" she cried, her face darkening, the words leaping out before she could stop them.

"Oh, I don't mean your secrets. I don't care about that. And I don't mean the way you play the piano, although I know some of the girls are envious of that. And I'd despise to have to study as hard as you-all in the upper cla.s.ses do. I mean the right way to sit down and hold your hands and speak and weah clothes."

Marise began to laugh, "_I_ don't know how to wear clothes. What do you want anyhow? You're prettier than any girl in the school, and you are wearing a dress that cost more than anybody's else, and finer shoes than you could buy in all Paris."

"But they're not right," the girl said petulantly, "or else I don't _weah_ them right, or something! I hate them! I have lots of money, but I don't know how to buy what I want." She flung herself again on Marise, holding her closely, "Help me!" she begged, "help me buy what I want."

Marise was touched by the loneliness which underlay the other girl's appeal. She knew what it was to be lonely! It was the first time that any one had broken through into her loneliness as this quivering, pa.s.sionate, unhappy little thing had done; the first time anybody had asked her for help. From the very first word of their talk, the light chaffing manner which was her usual s.h.i.+eld had been torn into shreds by the other girl's driving directness. She looked deep into the other's eyes, fixed breathlessly on her, and said seriously, "Yes, Eugenie, I'll help you ... all I can."

"There!" said the other, "that's a specimen. My name's not Eugenie. It's Eugenia. Isn't that turrible?"

Marise did not follow this at all. "It's just the same thing, only in English, isn't it?"

"Yes, but it's horrid and common in English, and it's lovely in French.

Why can't I _have_ it Eugenie?" She looked up keenly and searchingly into Marise's face, and at what she caught there, she contradicted herself hastily, before Marise could open her lips.

"No, no, I see. It would be silly to change it--to pretend. I'd better make the best of it. There! There's one fool mistake you kept me from making, you see!"

Marise felt that the talk was on a plane different from hers, so that she did not get its meaning, although the words were clear enough. What was all that about Eugenia and Eugenie? She hadn't caught the point of that, at all.

Being only eighteen, she found her bewilderment rather comic, and began to laugh. "I still don't see that Eugenia isn't just as good as Eugenie!" she said, "I honestly don't know what you're talking about, Eugenia, but if _you_ do, it's all right."

"Oh, _I_ do," said the other with conviction.

Marise was relieved to see that her small, pretty face, although still flushed from her fit of tears no longer looked distraught.

"How strange!" thought Marise. They had never spoken a word to each other ten minutes before, and now they were sitting side by side, hand in hand, like sisters.

"I'm awfully glad I came in," she said.

"So am I," said Eugenia, "I'd been just crazy to talk to you, but you're so many cla.s.ses higher than me. Oh, how I _hate_ my cla.s.s--to be put back with all those young ones! And study such _turribly_ stupid things!

And the teacher! Such an old frump. And I'm not having _any_thing of what I want. I'm not getting on a bit. What do I care what France did in India before the English got there? I didn't come to France to learn those sort of things! Marise--please can I call you Marise? Do you suppose I'll _ever, ever_ speak French as you do?"

"Why, of course," Marise answered her reasonably, "everybody does, who lives here. Why shouldn't you?" The echo of the famished, burning accent of the other struck now oddly on her ear. She repeated, "Of course you will, if you care to," and went on, "but why should you bother to care so much? What difference does it make? They don't bother themselves to learn English."

Eugenia flashed a look of quick astonishment at her. Apparently this was an entirely new idea to her. After an instant's silent consideration of it, she flung it away with the aggrieved cry, "Oh, but you _do_! You _do_!" as though, thought Marise, that incapacitated her from having a valid opinion about it. But this too, like the Eugenie-Eugenia discussion had somehow taken place in another dimension than the one she knew. She was not allowed to ponder the question, however, receiving at this point another impa.s.sioned embrace from Eugenia, who cried, "You don't _know_ how glad I am you came! Now it'll be all right. And I've been so miserable. Let's talk! Let's talk!"

"I must soon be going to a music-lesson," said Marise, glancing at the little jewel-crusted watch, which hung on a black ribbon around the other girl's neck.

Eugenia caught at her despairingly. "Oh, don't go away. I haven't _begun_ yet! I haven't said a _word_!" Then struck by another possibility, "Can't I go with you? We could talk in the cab, and I wouldn't say a word at your lesson. Yes, _do_ let me."

"I wasn't going to take a cab," protested Marise, "I don't go round in cabs except when I'm dressed up in the evenings. It would be pretty expensive, ma foi! to take a cab everywhere I went in the daytime.

Mostly I walk."

"Oh, I hate to walk, let _me_ take the cab," the other girl begged, beginning hastily to arrange her hair. "I've got plenty of money. It's the only thing I have got." She paused, the brush in her hand. "Haven't you?" she asked, addressing herself to Marise's reflection in the gla.s.s.

Marise was pa.s.sably astonished at the unceremonious question, but answered it simply, "I haven't any of my own. I live with my father. And he hasn't any either, but he makes a good deal, gets a good salary, I mean. He lets me have all I need."

Eugenia's comment on this was to say bitterly, "Think of not knowing more than to ask such a question! I told you I don't know anything. But I can learn. I can learn in a minute if only I get the chance. I learned then ... from the way you looked. I'll never make _that_ fool mistake again."

She pinned on a very pretty, costly hat, and Marise saw that she really did not look like a child, after all. She ran her arm under Marise's now, and gave it an ecstatic squeeze. "Oh, I'm so happy!" she cried, "I wish I could buy you a diamond necklace!"

The talk in the cab as they clattered over the big paving-stones of the quiet, half-deserted left-bank streets turned on the school, and very soon Marise was led to say, "But, see here, I don't believe, Eugenia, you've got into the right school at _all_. It's not a bit chic, you know, to go to a girl's lycee, and ours is one of the plainest of them all. The teachers are terrible grinds, the girls are fearfully serious-minded. They don't care a thing about their looks. All they want is to pa.s.s the compet.i.tive exams for the Ecole Normale at Sevres, and get in there for four more years of grind, lots and lots worse than at the lycee. You'd better believe there's nothing _but_ what France did in India before the English got there, et ainsi de suite."

Eugenia made a gesture of despair. "_There!_" she lamented, "that's it!