The Tapestry Room Part 11

And as Hugh, for all his fancifulness, was a good deal of a philosopher, he made up his mind to amuse himself happily with little Jeanne as she was. The feast was a great success. The dolls behaved irreproachably, with which their owner was rather inclined to twit Hugh, when, just at the end of the banquet, greatly to his satisfaction, a certain Mademoiselle Zephyrine, a blonde with flaxen ringlets and turquoise blue eyes, suddenly toppled over, something having no doubt upset her equilibrium, and fell flat on her nose on the table.

"Ah!" cried Jeanne, greatly concerned, "my poor Zephyrine has fainted,"

and, rus.h.i.+ng forward to her a.s.sistance, worse results followed. Mesdames Lili and Josephine, two middle-aged ladies somewhat the worse for wear, overcome by the distressing spectacle, _or_ by the sleeve of Jeanne's dress as she leant across them, fell off their chairs too--one, like Zephyrine, on to the table, the other on to the floor, dragging down with her the plateful of ragout in front of her, while her friend's sudden descent upon the table completed the general knockings over and spillings which Zephyrine had begun.

"Oh dear! oh dear!" cried Jeanne; "all the chocolate ragout is spilt, and the whipped-up egg is mixed with the orange-juice soup. Oh dear! oh dear! and I thought we should have had the whole feast to eat up ourselves after the dolls had had enough."

"Yes," said Hugh, "that's what comes of having stupid sticks of dolls at your feasts. The _animals_ wouldn't have behaved like that."

But, seeing that poor Jeanne was really in tears at this unfortunate termination of her entertainment, he left off teasing her, and having succeeded in rescuing some remains of the good things, they sat down on the floor together and ate them up very amicably.

"I don't think I _do_ care much for dolls," said Jeanne meditatively, when she had munched the last crumbs of the snipped-up almonds, which were supposed to represent some very marvellous dish. ("I like almonds terribly--don't you, Cheri?") she added, as a parenthesis. "No, I don't care for dolls. You are quite right about them; they _are_ stupid, and you can't make fancies about them, because their faces always have the same silly look. I don't know what I like playing at best. O Marcelline!" she exclaimed, as the old nurse just then came into the room, "O Marcelline! _do_ tell us a story; we are tired of playing."

"Does Monsieur Cheri, too, wish me tell him a story?" asked Marcelline, looking curiously at Hugh.

"Yes, of course," said Hugh. "Why do you look at me that funny way, Marcelline?"

"Why," said Marcelline, smiling, "I was thinking only that perhaps Monsieur finds so many stories in the tapestry that he would no longer care for my stupid little old tales."

Hugh did not answer. He was wondering to himself what Marcelline really meant; whether she knew of the wonders concealed behind the tapestry, or was only teasing him a little in the kind but queer way she sometimes did.

"Marcelline," he said suddenly at last, "I don't understand you."

"Do you understand yourself, my little Monsieur?" said Marcelline. "Do any of us understand ourselves? all the different selves that each of us is?"

"No," said Hugh, "I daresay we don't. It is very puzzling; it's all very puzzling."

"In the country where I lived when I was a little girl," began Marcelline, but Jeanne interrupted her.

"Have you never been there since, Marcelline?" she asked.

Marcelline smiled again her funny smile.

"Oh dear, yes," she said; "often, very often. I should not have been near so happy as I am if I had not often visited that country."

"Dear me," exclaimed Jeanne, "how very queer! I had no idea of that. You haven't been there for a great many years any way, Marcelline. I heard mamma telling a lady the other day that she never remembered your going away, not even for a day--never since she was born."

"Ah!" said Marcelline, "but, Mademoiselle, we don't always know what even those nearest us do. I might have gone to that country without your mamma knowing. Sometimes we are far away when those beside us think us close to them."

"Yes," said Hugh, looking up suddenly, "that is true, Marcelline."

What she said made him remember Dudu's remark about Jeanne the night before, that she was far, far away, and he began to feel that Marcelline understood much that she seldom alluded to.

But Jeanne took it up differently. She jumped on to Marcelline's knee and pretended to beat her.

"You naughty little old woman," she said; "you very naughty little old woman, to say things like that to puzzle me--just what you know I don't like. Go back to your own country, naughty old Marcelline; go back to your fairyland, or wherever it was you came from, if you are going to tease poor little Jeanne so."

"_Tease_ you, Mademoiselle?" Marcelline repeated.

"Yes, tease me," insisted Jeanne. "You know I hate people to go on about things I don't understand. Now you're to tell us a story at once, do you hear, Marcelline?"

Hugh said nothing, but he looked up in Marcelline's face with his grave blue eyes, and the old woman smiled again. She seemed as if she was going to speak, when just then a servant came upstairs to say that Jeanne's mother wished the children to go downstairs to her for a little. Jeanne jumped up, delighted to welcome any change.

"You must keep the story for another day, Marcelline," she said, as she ran out of the room.

"I am getting too old to tell stories," said Marcelline, half to herself, half to Hugh, who was following his cousin more slowly. He stopped for a moment.

"Too old?" he repeated.

"Yes, Monsieur Cheri, too old," the nurse replied. "The thoughts do not come so quickly as they once did, and the words, too, hobble along like lamesters on crutches."

"But," said Hugh, half timidly, "it is never--you would never, I mean, be too old to visit that country, where there are so many stories to be found?"

"Perhaps not," said Marcelline, "but even if I found them, I might not be able to tell them. Go and look for them for yourself, Monsieur Cheri; you have not half seen the tapestry castle yet."

But when Hugh would have asked her more she would not reply, only smiled and shook her head. So the boy went slowly downstairs after Jeanne, wondering what old Marcelline could mean, half puzzled and half pleased.

"Only," he said to himself, "if I get into the castle, Jeanne really must come with me, especially if it is to hear stories."

CHAPTER VII

WINGS AND CATS.

"And all their cattish gestures plainly spoke They thought the affair they'd come upon no joke."

CHARLES LAMB.

Some days went on, and nothing more was said by the children about the adventures which had so puzzled poor Hugh. After a while he seemed to lose the wish to talk about them to little Jeanne; or rather, he began to feel as if he could not, that the words would not come, or that if they did, they would not tell what he wanted. He thought about the strange things he had seen very often, but it was as if he had read of them rather than as if he had seen and heard them, or as if they had happened to some one else. Whenever he saw Dudu and Houpet and the rest of the pets, he looked at them at first in a half dreamy way, wondering if they too were puzzled about it all, or if, being really fairies, they did not find anything to puzzle them! The only person (for, after all, he could often not prevent himself from looking upon all the animals as persons)--the only person who he somehow felt sure _did_ understand him, was Marcelline, and this was a great satisfaction. She said nothing; she almost never even smiled in what Jeanne called her "funny" way; but there was just a very tiny little undersound in the tone of her voice sometimes, a little wee smile in her eyes more than on her lips, that told Hugh that, fairy or no fairy, old Marcelline knew all about it, and it pleased him to think so.

One night when Hugh was warmly tucked up in bed Marcelline came in as usual before he went to sleep to put out his light.

"There's been no moonlight for a good while Marcelline, has there?" he said.

"No, Monsieur, there has not," said Marcelline.

"Will it be coming back soon?" asked Hugh.

"Do you like it so much, my child?" said the old nurse. She had a funny way of sometimes answering a question by asking another.

"Yes," said Hugh. "At least, of course when I'm fast asleep it doesn't matter to me if it's moonlight or not. But you know what I like it for, Marcelline, and you said the other day that I hadn't half seen the tapestry castle, and I want very much to see it, Marcelline, only I'd like Jeanne to be with me; for I don't think I could tell her well about the fairy things if she hadn't been with me. She didn't seem to understand the words, and I don't think I could get the right ones to tell, do you know, Marcelline?"

He half sat up in bed, resting his head on his elbow, which was leaning on the pillow, and looking up in the old woman's face with his earnest blue eyes. Marcelline shook her head slowly.

"No," she said, "you're right. The words wouldn't come, and if they did, it would be no use. You're older than Mademoiselle Jeanne, Monsieur Hugh, and it's different for her. But it doesn't matter--the days bring their own pleasures and interests, which the moonlight wouldn't suit.

You wouldn't have cared for a dinner like what you have every day when you were listening to the song of the swan?"

"No, certainly not," said Hugh. "I see you do understand, Marcelline, better than anybody. It must be as I said; there must be two of me, and two of Jeanne, and two of you, and----"