We become oblivious of these deficiencies in the uniform routine of daily drudgery, but they will force upon us their unwelcome blank on those bright occasions when beauty should shine.
However, in this same gown of shadow, I felt at home and at ease; an advantage I should not have enjoyed in anything more brilliant or striking. Madame Beck, too, kept me in countenance; her dress was almost as quiet as mine, except that she wore a bracelet, and a large brooch bright with gold and fine stones. We chanced to meet on the stairs, and she gave me a nod and smile of approbation. Not that she thought I was looking well—a point unlikely to engage her interest—but she considered me dressed convenablement, décemment, and la Convenance et la Décence were the two calm deities of Madame’s worship. She even paused, laid on my shoulder her gloved hand, holding an embroidered and perfumed handkerchief, and confided to my ear a sarcasm on the other teachers (whom she had just been complimenting to their faces). “Nothing so absurd,” she said, “as for des femmes mûres ‘to dress themselves like girls of fifteen’—quant à la. St. Pierre, elle a l’air d’une vieille coquette qui fait l’ingénue.”
Being dressed at least a couple of hours before anybody else, I felt a pleasure in betaking myself—not to the garden, where servants were busy propping up long tables, placing seats, and spreading cloths in readiness for the collation but to the schoolrooms, now empty, quiet, cool, and clean; their walls fresh stained, their planked floors fresh scoured and scarce dry; flowers fresh gathered adorning the recesses in pots, and draperies, fresh hung, beautifying the great windows.
Withdrawing to the first classe, a smaller and neater room than the others, and taking from the glazed bookcase, of which I kept the key, a volume whose title promised some interest, I sat down to read. The glass-door of this classe, or schoolroom, opened into the large berceau; acacia-boughs caressed its panes, as they stretched across to meet a rosebush blooming by the opposite lintel: in this rosebush bees murmured busy and happy. I commenced reading. Just as the stilly hum, the embowering shade, the warm, lonely calm of my retreat were beginning to steal meaning from the page, vision from my eyes, and to lure me along the track of reverie, down into some deep dell of dreamland—just then, the sharpest ring of the street-door bell to which that much-tried instrument had ever thrilled, snatched me back to consciousness.
Now the bell had been ringing all the morning, as workmen, or servants, or coiffeurs, or tailleuses, went and came on their several errands. Moreover, there was good reason to expect it would ring all the afternoon, since about one hundred externes were yet to arrive in carriages or fiacres: nor could it be expected to rest during the evening, when parents and friends would gather thronging to the play. Under these circumstances, a ring—even a sharp ring—was a matter of course: yet this particular peal had an accent of its own, which chased my dream, and startled my book from my knee.
I was stooping to pick up this last, when—firm, fast, straight—right on through vestibule—along corridor, across carré, through first division, second division, grand salle—strode a step, quick, regular, intent. The closed door of the first classe—my sanctuary—offered no obstacle; it burst open, and a paletôt and a bonnet grec filled the void; also two eyes first vaguely struck upon, and then hungrily dived into me.
“C’est cela!” said a voice. “Je la connais: c’est l’Anglaise. Tant pis. Toute Anglaise, et, par conséquent, toute bégueule qu’elle soit—elle fera mon affaire, ou je saurai pourquoi.”
Then, with a certain stern politeness (I suppose he thought I had not caught the drift of his previous uncivil mutterings), and in a jargon the most execrable that ever was heard, “Meess—, play you must: I am planted there.”
“What can I do for you, M. Paul Emanuel?” I inquired: for M. Paul Emanuel it was, and in a state of no little excitement.
“Play you must. I will not have you shrink, or frown, or make the prude. I read your skull that night you came; I see your moyens: play you can; play you must.”
“But how, M. Paul? What do you mean?”
“There is no time to be lost,” he went on, now speaking in French; “and let us thrust to the wall all reluctance, all excuses, all minauderies. You must take a part.”
“In the vaudeville?”
“In the vaudeville. You have said it.”
I gasped, horror-struck. What did the little man mean?
“Listen!” he said. “The case shall be stated, and you shall then answer me Yes, or No; and according to your answer shall I ever after estimate you.”
The scarce-suppressed impetus of a most irritable nature glowed in his cheek, fed with sharp shafts his glances, a nature—the injudicious, the mawkish, the hesitating, the sullen, the affected, above all, the unyielding, might quickly render violent and implacable. Silence and attention was the best balm to apply: I listened.
“The whole matter is going to fail,” he began. “Louise Vanderkelkov has fallen ill—at least so her ridiculous mother asserts; for my part, I feel sure she might play if she would: it is only goodwill that lacks. She was charged with a role, as you know, or do not know—it is equal: without that role the play is stopped. There are now but a few hours in which to learn it: not a girl in this school would hear reason, and accept the task. Forsooth, it is not an interesting, not an amiable, part; their vile amour-propre—that base quality of which women have so much—would revolt from it. Englishwomen are
