Woman Part 22

She was wearing a large red straw hat turned up at one side and weighted down on the other side by a nodding ma.s.s of huge black plumes, two tall elastic antennae, the sort worn by horses drawing hea.r.s.es. Under the chalky enamel you couldn't see her freckles, but her eyes, her lovely eyes of purest aquamarine, with glints of indigo from her blackened lashes, still retained their dewy look of astonishment.

Here was Marie. At last I was going to know why she was so mute and why she ran away one evening without taking along her bundle of clothes or her prayer-book. I was going to find out how a poor little servant girl rebelling against kindness could become a poor little swaggering over-dressed prost.i.tute.

"I have come for my things."

"They are still here, Marie; I'll go and get them."

But I couldn't budge. This phenomenon coming so close to me was appalling. I looked at her. She had the soft, awkward charm of a little astonished beast. Seated there in my presence she made an ingenuous, piteous sight, like a ladybird you're afraid of crus.h.i.+ng, or a wilful timid lamb withdrawing from your caress.

I noticed all sorts of minutiae--that she carried a cloth hand-bag, an exact copy of a bag of mine, and tied her shoe-latchets the very same way I did mine; was very neat, her shoes polished, her hands clean, her neck fairly waxed with soap. Her gaze, once aimless and imprisoned, harpooned the things in my room and withdrew freighted with discoveries.... And she gave me acid, persistent looks like the looks one woman gives another. "Has she aged?" her looks questioned, "has she changed, is she prettier?" Her eyes roved around the room. "Ah, that little etagere was not there in my time, nor that engraving.... Who's doing her work? The place looks well kept." She parted the collar of her jacket at the opening to show off her imitation brooch. The child had become feminized, she seemed older than ever.

"Why, Marie? Why?"

I couldn't restrain myself any longer. She leaned her elbow on the table. When she raised her eyes, they were underlined with red and two slow tears cut little pathways down the powder on her cheeks. I jumped up and took her hands.

"I didn't like--I didn't know what to do with myself. It wasn't my fault. No one cared about me...."

The great answer to the riddle. They all have this devouring need. What they ask of love and look for in love is "someone to care about them."

"And then my hair, my Breton dress ... everybody stared at me. 'Aren't you ashamed?' I used to think."

Another need--to be like other people, to be just as good as anyone else--why not?--to have a bag like madam and hats like the hats you see on the street....

"That's all," she added.

It was all. When women sell themselves, it is not poverty necessarily that drives them to it. You don't know the h.e.l.l of jealousy that burns in all of us. There are some women who make themselves beautiful less for the sake of pleasing men than for annoying other women.

"You must be unhappy."

"Yes, ma'am."

Is a poor little thing like Marie sensual? Women are rarely sensual. If they are, they have not been so from the start; they have become so.

Her Breton accent came back. "Madam," she said in her singsong of four years ago and in the same servile tone. Now she felt like relieving herself and telling me everything. There was one man who really didn't disgust her, but he was at the front, and if only he could come back! In the meantime she practiced economies and perhaps they could fix up a home and perhaps he would marry her. But if he did not come back, then--

I had been to blame, I alone. I had been satisfied to deplore her grim silence and do nothing. But I ought to have humiliated myself so as to earn her smile. I ought by talking to her to have driven out of her heart the longing to equal and surpa.s.s which prevents us all from being human sisters. I should have....

We are all to blame for the prost.i.tutes, we are the ones at whom the stones should be cast. Nearly all of them are little Maries with the craving for just one man, the peaceful healthy desire for a secure hearth, but we tolerate poverty, and we don't know how to talk to each other.

She put her package under her arm. I did not know what to do. I went up to her, humble of heart, and rather awkwardly kissed her cheek streaked by tears and sullied by paint.

She started, shaken by a revulsion. The liquid blue of her eyes turned sharp and aggressive, her lips narrowed; she held her little bag close like booty. Then she departed, leaving the door open for the smoky darkness of the landing to creep into my rooms. She had the untamable, sullen expression of a hunted beast.

VIII

Twenty days pa.s.sed without news.

When I woke up, the early sunlight had a rea.s.suring effect, the morning chattered familiarly, my terror of the night before took wings like a fancy. Hope swelled within me.

The postman's ring, sharp, strident, unbearable, reopened the wound. I rushed to the door. Nothing. A circular, an ordinary letter which I didn't have the will to open.

It was exactly twenty-two days. I forced myself to sit down at the table, but my courage was completely gone, and the alarms of the night which haunted the room gripped me by the throat. Well, there would be something to-morrow. It was impossible....

Anxiety, from the moment it began, made me neglect myself--no prinking, no housework, dust powdering my furniture. The most I did was to turn back my bedclothes. What did all these things matter? I wanted to sleep, sleep....

Coming back from work I slipped into my flannel dressing gown and slippers and let down my hair. I did not even take the time to warm up my dinner prepared beforehand in the morning. The plate was on the table, an orange, a piece of bread.... I'd eat.

I couldn't. The mouthfuls choked me. I couldn't do one thing. I was overwhelmed, almost paralyzed, by an unconquerable weakness. I threw myself in my armchair. I would put the room in order the next day. I would work twice as hard, but not to-night....

Sleep....

Torpor gained complete possession of me. The darkness gathered, and when the last streak of twilight came through the window fluttering on my eyelids, a little hope returned.

After all, twenty-two days was not so terrible. Many people had had to wait longer. Hadn't I had to wait sixteen days once? Letters get lost on the way.

I visualized a scene--a hospital ward, a row of beds, white coverings, nurses. How was it I had not thought of it before? Wounded!... A slight wound which kept him from writing.... I welcomed the certainty. It was so comforting that I tried to hold on to it by jumping right up and shaking off anxiety and being happy. Anxiety is an insult to love.

I groped for the lamp, turned on the light, and laid some reading matter on the table. The disorder was dismal but--to-morrow was another day. I sat down to read.

The lines leapt at my eyes. You'd have thought them an army of ants running over the page, running, yet always remaining at the same place.

Should I try to work? Should I try to make up a package for him? That would be two packages this week, but two are not a whole lot.

My heart gave a great leap. The door-bell rang. Who could it be at this hour? My very life went round in a whirlwind, I flew to the door.

Some one in black shrinking in the dark doorway in the humble att.i.tude of a sister of charity requesting alms for the poor. My aunt Finot!

I murmured a few little hypocrisies and put up my hair. I was fuming inwardly, although actually a little relieved at the prospect of a visit, which even if tedious would mean a human presence, a tangible certainty. I was so upset I came near saying "Tante Finot" and giving away the nickname by which she had been called in the family for twenty years.

"Come in, aunt...."

She stepped in ahead of me, hunching up her body. The disorder struck me ... my home was usually so neat ... and my dressing gown ... my run-down slippers--

"An awkward hour for a visit, I know," said Aunt Finot, sitting down.

"Are you feeling quite well, dear?"

"Dear" in that mouth with lips like two tight-drawn catguts! It stabbed like a dagger.... She sat perched on the edge of the chair twisting the straps of her hand-bag. The lamplight threw dusky shadows on her skeleton frame and turned her eyes into the sharp-gleaming eyes of an executioner. My G.o.d!

"Has anything happened," I asked, "anything dreadful?"

"You see, dear ... don't get excited ... listen...."

"Dead!"

An abyss yawned at my feet, something flashed and grazed my eyelids.

I...