Rough-Hewn Part 39

Not even to know enough to pick out the right school!"

And then a curious expression of suspicion coming into her eyes, she said skeptically, "but _you_ go to that school! If it's good enough for you...!"

Here again was something in that baffling other dimension, and this time though she understood it as little as ever, Marise did not like it at all. She said stiffly, "I'm going because you can get serious instruction in some things I need to enter the cla.s.ses at the Sorbonne next year."

Eugenia sprang at her, remorsefully crying, "I won't again. I don't know what made me." She kissed her once more, rubbing her cheek against the other's shoulder.

Her bewildering alternations of mood, the reckless way in which she threw herself on Marise to embrace her; and the way, very startling to a girl brought up in France, in which Eugenia kissed her on the mouth like a lover, were very exciting to Marise. Not since Jeanne's big double kisses had she been so fondled and caressed, and never had she been kissed on the lips before. That was something closely a.s.sociated in her mind with secrecy and pa.s.sion. It made her feel very queer; partly stand-offish and startled, partly moved and responsive--altogether shaken up, more alive, but apprehensively uncertain of what was coming next.

"And what _is_ the Sorbonne?"

"It's the University," Marise explained, "I was half-way through a woman's college in America, when we came abroad again. So I wanted to go on and study some more here although I have to work so many hours a day on my music that I can't ever hope to have a degree."

"College? University?" Eugenia was horrified. "Mercy! What makes you want to do that? And music lessons, too. I should think you'd be working every minute."

"I do," said Marise.

"Just study, study, study, and practise, practise, practise?" asked the other, astonished.

"Mostly," said Marise.

"Why, that's _turrible_!" cried Eugenia, beginning to look alarmed.

"That's the way everybody does over here," said Marise.

"They _do_!" cried Eugenia, aghast and astounded. "Why, I thought they...."

Marise corrected herself, "Oh, of course not. What am I talking about? I mean the kind of folks I know. There are millions of others, I suppose, yes, of course, all the rue de la Paix clientele, who don't work at all."

Eugenia was relieved at this, and relapsed for a moment into silence, which she finally broke by asking, "Well, wheah _would_ you go to school, if you were me?"

Marise had been thinking of this, and was ready, "There's a very grand private school, I've heard about out at Auteuil, in what was somebody's country estate, when Auteuil was the country, with a chateau and a park.

It's fearfully expensive and so it must be very chic. The girls never go out by themselves, always have a maid, or a teacher with them; the old ideas, aristocratic, you know, that ordinary French people don't hold to any more. Mrs. Marbury could tell you all about it."

"Who?... Mrs. Mahbury?"

"Oh, she's an American, who's always lived over here, in the American colony. Her husband and my father are in the same sort of business. We know her. She'd be _sure_ to know what was chic."

"Well, I'll go to that school," announced Eugenia. "I just _knew_ there'd be a place like that, if I could only find out wheah. I bet you I won't have to study French history _theah_."

Marise laughed, "You'll probably have to work like a dog, for the teacher who teaches _la tenue_."

"What's that?"

"Oh, all I know about it is what the dancing teacher used to make us do in the convent-school I went to in Bayonne; walk into a room, pretend to greet somebody, step into a make-believe carriage and out of it, sit down with him for a talk; and first he'd pretend to be a girl like you, and then he'd pretend to be an older woman, and then he'd pretend to be a man (only of course he really was that), and you'd have to have the right manner for each one.... All that kind of foolishness, you know."

"No, I don't know!" cried Eugenia angrily.

The cab drew up and stopped. "I suppose we're theah," said Eugenia, "you tell him to wait till we come out."

She was cautiously silent during the introduction to Mme. de la Cueva, and during the hour of the lesson. But if she gave her tongue little employment, she kept her eyes busy, absorbing every detail of the long, bare room, with its four long windows opening on a balcony overlooking the little, dank, unkempt Jardin de Cluny. After the lesson, Mme. de la Cueva stepped into another room to get some music, and Marise, rather pale with fatigue, walked wearily out on the balcony for a breath of fresh air. Eugenia sprang to follow her, as if she had been wis.h.i.+ng to do this, and had not known if it were allowable. But before she looked down on the medieval building below them she said in a whisper to Marise, "You're dog-tired. Why, I wouldn't work that hard for _any_body!

And for that fat old dowd!"

Marise looked down at her astonished. "I'm not working for _her_!" she exclaimed. But this was, evidently, from the look of Eugenia's face a fourth dimensional remark for her, for she made no answer, turning instead to look at the gray-black old ma.s.s of Cluny.

"What is it?" Eugenia asked.

Marise had not yet wholly emerged from a struggle with an exercise which she had not been able to execute with the inhuman, neat-fingered velocity demanded by Mme. de la Cueva. The hour in that other world to which music always transported her had broken the continuity of her impressions of her new friend. She stared rather blankly at Eugenia's question, and looked from her to the well-known medieval pile below them. It did not for the instant occur to her, that the other girl did not recognize what the building was. The turn of her phrase suggested an inquiry about the architecture, and though she had never thought about Cluny before, the look of it stirred recollections of a certain fierce history teacher, whose specialty had been the transitions of the reign of Louis XII. She looked down on the stone lacework opposite, and said doubtfully, "What is it? Domestic Gothic, shouldn't you think? But some of it pretty late. Those square dormer-windows are Louis Douze, aren't they?"

She looked away from the Cluny and down at Eugenia as she finished, and had once more a shock of astonishment. The other's eyes were flaming.

"Theah, that's it," she said fiercely, showing her white teeth as she spoke, but not in a smile. "That's it. That's _just_ it! _Wheah did you learn that?_"

She dashed the question in Marise's face as though it had been her fist.

Marise positively drew back from her. Too startled to be anything but literal, she answered, "Why, why, I don't know where I did. Oh, yes, in my French history cla.s.s, I suppose. They make you learn everything so hard, you know. You yourself were saying what a grind it is."

Eugenia breathed hard and said, "History again, darn it! But I didn't dream you'd learn _that_ sort of thing in it." She added defiantly, and for Marise quite cryptically, "Well, _I'm_ going to learn it without!"

Mme. de la Cueva came back with the music in her hand. "Voila, mon enfant," she said, shaking Marise's hand heartily. She reached for Eugenia's hand too, which was hanging at her side, till Eugenia, seeing the meaning of the other's gesture, brought it up with an awkward haste, a painful red burning in her cheeks.

Some one came in as they went out, another student evidently, for he had a roll of music in his hand. He stopped and stood aside with a deep bow to let the two girls pa.s.s.

"Good-day, Mlle. Allen," he said, looking at her intently.

"Good-day, M. Boudoin," she answered. Neither girl spoke as they went down the endless, winding stairs and pa.s.sed out to the street.

As they turned into the Boulevard, and jogged past the Jardin de Cluny, Eugenia asked tensely, "What are those queer-looking broken-down walls?"

Marise answered circ.u.mspectly, fearing another out-burst, "I think they're Roman ruins ... what's left of the baths the Romans had here."

Eugenia made no answer, but looked at them hard.

Marise went on, "Awfully interesting, isn't it, to see Roman ruins right in Paris, across the street from a cafe. But I suppose they'd look like small potatoes to anybody who's seen Rome. Mme. Vallery says they look comically small, after Rome."

Eugenia put her arm around her neck, and kissed her once more, fervently, disturbingly, on the lips, "Would you like to go to Rome?

I'll _take_ you to Rome. I'll hire a private car for the two of us."

And before Marise could answer, before she could even bring out the laugh which rose to her lips, Eugenia said with another of her abrupt leaps, "That young man is in love with you. The one who came in afterwards. He's awfully good-looking, too." She looked into Marise's face with her avid, penetrating gaze, and said, "But you don't like him!"

"I never thought about him in my life," cried Marise, exasperated. She was beginning to feel desperately tired of the mental gymnastics of such talk.

"But there was something you didn't like as I spoke about him. Don't you _like_ men? Don't you like men to be in love with you? I do, I love it."

She made another flying leap, and asked, "Are many French women like your music-teacher--so fat--no style?"

"She's not French, Madame de la Cueva."

"What, then?"

"A Levantine."