But after the meal she quite suddenly blushed. “Oh, Stévenne, I have never inquired for your parents! What must you think of such great impoliteness? I lose my head the moment I see you and grow selfish—I want you to know about me and my Maman; I babble about my affairs. What must you think of such great impoliteness? How is that kind and handsome Sir Philip? And your mother, my dear, how is Lady Anna?”
And now it was Stephen’s turn to grow red. “My father died. …” She hesitated, then finished abruptly, “I don’t live with my mother any more, I don’t live at Morton.”
Mademoiselle gasped. “You no longer live …” she began, then something in Stephen’s face warned her kind but bewildered guest not to question. “I am deeply grieved to hear of your father’s death, my dear,” she said very gently.
Stephen answered: “Yes—I shall always miss him.”
There ensued a long, rather painful silence, during which Mademoiselle Duphot felt awkward. What had happened between the mother and daughter? It was all very strange, very disconcerting. And Stephen, why was she exiled from Morton? But Mademoiselle could not cope with these problems, she knew only that she wanted Stephen to be happy, and her kind brown eyes grew anxious, for she did not feel certain that Stephen was happy. Yet she dared not ask for an explanation, so instead she clumsily changed the subject.
“When will you both come to tea with me, Stévenne?”
“We’ll come tomorrow if you like.” Stephen told her.
Mademoiselle Duphot left rather early; and all the way home to her apartment her mind felt exercised about Stephen.
She thought: “She was always a strange little child, but so dear. I remember her when she was little, riding her pony astride like a boy; and how proud he would seem, that handsome Sir Philip—they would look more like father and son, those two. And now—is she not still a little bit strange?”
But these thoughts led her nowhere, for Mademoiselle Duphot was quite unacquainted with the bypaths of nature. Her innocent mind was untutored and trustful; she believed in the legend of Adam and Eve, and no careless mistakes had been made in their garden!
IV
The apartment in the Avenue de la Grande Armée was as tidy as Valérie’s had been untidy. From the miniature kitchen to the miniature salon, everything shone as though recently polished, for here in spite of restricted finances, no dust was allowed to harbour.
Mademoiselle Duphot beamed on her guests as she herself opened the door to admit them. “For me this is very real joy,” she declared. Then she introduced them to her sister Julie, whose eyes were hidden behind dark glasses.
The salon was literally stuffed with what Mademoiselle had described as her “treasures.” On its tables were innumerable useless objects which appeared for the most part, to be mementoes. Coloured prints of Bouguereaus hung on the walls, while the chairs were upholstered in a species of velvet so hard as to be rather slippery to sit on, yet that when it was touched felt rough to the fingers. The woodwork of these inhospitable chairs had been coated with varnish until it looked sticky. Over the little inadequate fireplace smiled a portrait of Maman when she was quite young. Maman, dressed in tartan for some strange reason, but in tartan that had never hobnobbed with the Highlands—a present this portrait had been from a cousin who had wished to become an artist.
Julie extended a white, groping hand. She was like her sister only very much thinner, and her face had the closed rather blank expression that is sometimes associated with blindness.
“Which is Stévenne?” she inquired in an anxious voice; “I have heard so much about Stévenne!”
Stephen said: “Here I am,” and she grasped the hand, pitiful of this woman’s affliction.
But Julie smiled broadly. “Yes, I know it is you from the feel,”—she had started to stroke Stephen’s coat-sleeve—“my eyes have gone into my fingers these days. It is strange, but I seem to see through my fingers.” Then she turned and found Puddle whom she also stroked. “And now I know both of you,” declared Julie.
The tea when it came was that straw-coloured liquid which may even now be met with in Paris.
“English tea bought especially for you, my Stévenne,” remarked Mademoiselle proudly. “We drink only coffee, but I said to my sister, Stévenne likes the good tea, and so, no doubt, does Mademoiselle Puddle. At four o’clock they will not want coffee—you observe how well I remember your England!”
However, the cakes proved worthy of France, and Mademoiselle ate them as though she enjoyed them. Julie ate very little and did not talk much. She just sat there and listened, quietly smiling; and while she listened she crocheted lace as though, as she said, she could see through her fingers. Then Mademoiselle Duphot explained how it was that those delicate hands had become so skilful, replacing the eyes which their ceaseless labour had robbed of the blessed privilege of sight—explained so simply yet with such conviction, that Stephen must marvel to hear her.
“It is all our little Thérèse,” she told Stephen. “You have heard of her? No? Ah, but what a pity! Our Thérèse was a nun at the Carmel at Lisieux, and she said: ‘I will let fall a shower of roses when I die.’ She died not so long ago, but already her Cause has been presented at Rome by the Very Reverend Father Rodrigo! That is very wonderful, is it not, Stévenne? But she does not wait to become a saint; ah, but no, she is young and therefore impatient. She cannot wait, she has started already to do miracles for all those who ask her. I asked that Julie should not be unhappy through the loss of her
