“Josette,” she said mildly, when she had come the whole way home from St. Leonard’s, “this must never happen again.”
Mlle. Cormon was far from suspecting that it was a very fortunate thing for her that she could vent her spleen in petty squabbles. The mind, like the body, requires exercise; these quarrels were a sort of mental gymnastics. Josette and Jacquelin took such unevennesses of temper as the agricultural laborer takes the changes of the weather. The three good souls could say among themselves that “It is a fine day,” or “It rains,” without murmuring against the powers above. Sometimes in the kitchen of a morning they would wonder in what humor mademoiselle would wake, much as a farmer studies the morning mists. And of necessity Mlle. Cormon ended by seeing herself in all the infinitely small details which made up her life. Herself and God, her confessor and her washing-days, the preserves to be made, the services of the church to attend, and the uncle to take care of—all these things absorbed faculties that were none of the strongest. For her the atoms of life were magnified by virtue of an optical process peculiar to the selfish or the self-absorbed. To so perfectly healthy a woman, the slightest symptom of indigestion was a positively alarming portent. She lived, moreover, under the ferule of the system of medicine practised by our grandsires; a drastic dose fit to kill Penelope, taken four times a year, merely gave Mlle. Cormon a fillip.
What tremendous ransackings of the week’s dietary if Josette, assisting her mistress to dress, discovered a scarcely visible pimple on shoulders that still boasted a satin skin! What triumph if the maid could bring a certain hare to her mistress’ recollection, and trace the accursed pimple to its origin in that too heating article of food! With what joy the two women would cry, “It is the hare beyond a doubt!”
“Mariette overseasoned it,” mademoiselle would add; “I always tell her not to overdo it for my uncle and me, but Mariette has no more memory than—”
“Than the hare,” suggested Josette.
“It is the truth,” returned mademoiselle; “she has no more memory than the hare; you have just hit it.”
Four times in a year, at the beginning of each season, Mlle. Cormon went to spend a certain number of days at the Prébaudet. It was now the middle of May, when she liked to sec how her apple-trees had “snowed,” as they say in the cider country, an allusion to the white blossoms strewn in the orchards in the spring. When the circles of fallen petals look like snowdrifts under the trees, the proprietor may hope to have abundance of cider in the autumn. Mlle. Cormon estimated her barrels, and at the same time superintended any necessary after-winter repairs, planning out work in the garden and orchard, from which she drew no inconsiderable supplies. Each time of year had its special business.
Mademoiselle used to give a farewell dinner to her faithful inner circle before leaving, albeit she would see them again at the end of three weeks. All Alençon knew when the journey was to be undertaken. Anyone that had fallen behindhand immediately paid a call, her drawing-room was filled; everybody wished her a prosperous journey, as if she had been starting for Calcutta. Then, in the morning, all the tradespeople were standing in their doorways; everyone, great and small, watched the cariole go past, and it seemed as if everybody learned a piece of fresh news when one repeated after another, “So Mlle. Cormon is going to the Prébaudet.”
One would remark, “She has bread ready baked, she has!”
And his neighbor would return, “Eh! my lads, she is a good woman; if property always fell into such hands as hers, there would not be a beggar to be seen in the countryside.”
Or another would exclaim, “Hullo! I should not wonder if our oldest vines are in flower, for there is Mlle. Cormon setting out for the Prébaudet. How comes it that she is so little given to marrying?”
“I should be quite ready to marry her, all the same,” a wag would answer. “The marriage is half made—one side is willing, but the other isn’t. Pooh! the oven is heating for M. du Bousquier.”
“M. du Bousquier? She has refused him.”
At every house that evening people remarked solemnly, “Mlle. Cormon has gone.”
Or perhaps, “So you have let Mlle. Cormon go!”
The Wednesday selected by Suzanne for making a scandal chanced to be this very day of leave-taking, when Mlle. Cormon nearly drove Josette to distraction over the packing of the parcels which she meant to take with her. A good deal that was done and said in the town that morning was like to lend additional interest to the farewell gathering at night. While the old maid was busily making preparations for her journey; while the astute Chevalier was playing his game of piquet in the house of Mlle. Armande de Gordes, sister of the aged Marquis de Gordes, and queen of the aristocratic salon, Mme. Granson had sounded the alarm bell in half a score of houses. There was not a soul but felt some curiosity to see what sort of figure the seducer would cut that evening; and to Mme. Granson and the Chevalier de Valois it was an important matter to know how Mlle. Cormon would take the news, in her double quality of marriageable spinster and lady president of the Maternity Fund. As for the unsuspecting du Bousquier, he was taking the air on the Parade. He was just beginning to think that Suzanne had made a fool of him; and this suspicion only confirmed
