_ PART FOUR. IN WHICH THE STREAM WINDS THROUGH A SULLEN MARSH AND BECOMES A BROOK
CHAPTER XVI. MARGARITA COMES TO TOWN
[FROM SUE PAYNTER]
WASHINGTON SQUARE,
Oct. 16, 188--
JERRY DEAR:
First about the will--how splendid it was! Nothing could have pleased Roger more, I am sure--he told me with that queer, little whimsical grimace of his that it cleared his conscience to feel he was leaving you
something! What a personality he has, and how, in his quiet unassuming way, he impresses it on us!
I hear that Sarah made a great fuss about the will, but was advised by Mr. Sears to stop--and stopped! With Madame B. I am of course anathema--I have not heard from her since. The bank,
bien entendu, is of the past, and you, I hear, are in the far West. How you will revel in the freedom and how good it must have been to kick off the ball and chain! If anyone can be trusted not to abuse leisure, it is you, dear Jerry--you won't appear so culpable, as a poor American always does, somehow, under such circumstances. Even I feel unjustifiably idle now, so I have taken up some of Mr. Elder's fads--what a fine, manly sort of fellow he is!--and may be seen,
moi qui vous parle, teaching sight-reading to a boy's glee-club!
But of course you are impatiently waiting for me to turn to Margarita and leave this silly chatter about my egotistic self.
Eh bien, she is marvellous. For half an hour I hated her, but I couldn't hold out any longer. I have never even imagined such a person. What a pose that would be if any actress were clever enough to avail herself of the un-paralleled opportunities it would give her! Of course I thought it
was a pose, at first--I simply couldn't believe in her. But equally of course no woman could deceive another woman very long at that, and she is one to conquer both sexes. When she put her hand in mine and asked if I was going to buy her some dresses on Broadway, I had to kiss her.
I got very little, just enough for absolute necessity, and gave her a letter to my woman in Paris and another to one I could only afford occasionally, and told her to obey them and take what they gave her. She understood and promised not to buy what happened to strike her--this was necessary, for she begged piteously for a rose pink satin street dress and a yellow velvet opera cloak to wear on the boat! We had a terrible struggle over a corset--she screamed when the
corsetiere and I got her into one and slapped the poor woman in the face. It took all my diplomacy to cover the affair and I doubt if I could have done it, really, if Margarita herself had not suddenly begun to cry like a frightened baby and begged pardon so sincerely that the woman was melted and ended by offering her sister as a maid! The girl had the best of references, and as she must have someone and Elise has travelled extensively and seems very tactful, she is now (I trust) adjusting the elastic girdle her sister finally induced Margarita to wear.
I took her to my Sixth Avenue shoe place, and she was so ravished with a pair of pale blue satin
mules I got her that she actually leaned down and kissed the clerk who was kneeling before her! Fortunately we were in a private room and he was the cleverest possible young Irishman, who winked gravely at me and took it as naturally as possible--he thought she was not responsible, you see, and assured me that he had an aunt in the old country who was just that way!
What a beautiful voice she has--have you ever heard it drop a perfect minor third? But what a strange, strange wife for Roger, of all men! I suppose she is the first thoroughly unconventional person he was ever closely connected with--in one way
you would seem more natural with her--I suppose because you are more adaptable than Roger. With him, everybody must adapt. Will she!
Voila l'affaire! I should say that the young woman would be likely to have great influence over other people's lives, herself. If she and Roger ever clash--! Ah, well,
advienne que pourra, it's done.
I gave her for a wedding present that lovely little old daguerreotype of Roger at three years old. It was in an old leather frame, you know, and I had it taken out and put into a little band of steel pearls and hung on a small dark red velvet standard. No one could fail to know him from it--I think it is the most wonderful child portrait I ever saw. He seems to have always had that straight, steady look. There is a tiny curl of yellow baby hair in the back, which amused her very much. That is the only one of him at that age, you know--his mother gave it to me when we were engaged, and I always kept it.
I am forgetting to tell you about our visit to the Convent, and you must hear it. I love the old place and often go up there to see Mary, when things grow a little too unbearable. She is wonderful--so placid and bright, so somehow just like herself, when you expect something different! Why did she do it, I wonder? I was one of her best friends, and I never knew. Her great executive ability is having its reward, they tell me, and she is likely to be Mother Superior some day.
I had told her about Margarita and she was deeply interested in her, though the terrible state of the child's soul naturally alarmed her. When I told her that her sister-in-law had never been in a church, nor seen one, unless she had noticed those we passed in New York, she crossed herself hastily and such a look of real, heartfelt pain passed over her face!
Well, I got my charge safely up there, and everything interested her tremendously from the very beginning. It was the intermission
demi-heure of the morning and the girls were all munching their
gouter and playing about on the grass. I explained to her why they all wore the same black uniform, and why the honour girls, "
les tres-biens," wore the broad blue sashes under their arms, and why the Sisters kept on their white headdresses in the house, and why the girls all made their little
reverence when Mother Bradley came out to meet us. She kissed Margarita so sweetly and held her in her arms a moment--I don't think Roger quite realised how his attitude hurts her: it is the only almost unjust thing I ever knew him to do. In the halls there is a great statue of Christ blessing the children, and Margarita stopped and stared at it several minutes, while we watched her. She seemed so rapt that Mary took my hand excitedly and whispered to me not to disturb her for the world, but wait for what she would say. After a while she turned to me.
"Why has that woman a beard, Sue?" she asked cheerfully. Imagine my feelings! I did not dare look at Mary.
We went all through the school-rooms and she was most curious about the globes and blackboards and pianos. We stopped at the door of a tiny music room, and I smiled, as I always do, at the pretty little picture. The young girl with her Gretchen braids of yellow hair, straight-backed in front of the piano, the nervous, grey-haired little music master watchfully posted behind her, beating time, and in the corner the calm-faced Sister, pink-cheeked under her spreading cap, knitting, with constantly moving lips. The music rooms are so wee that the group seemed like a gracefully posed
genre picture. Before we knew what she was about, Margarita had slipped in behind the music master and brought both hands down with a crash on the keys, so that the Chopin Prelude ended abruptly in an hysterical wail and the young lady half fell off the stool--only half, for Margarita pushed her the rest of the way, I regret to say. Fortunately Mary was able to get us out of it, but I fear there was no more Prelude that day! Why will women play Chopin, by the way? I never heard one who could--Aus der Ohe is masculine enough, heaven knows, but even that amount of talent doesn't seem to accomplish it. Do you remember Frederick's diatribes on the subject? He used to say that Congress should forbid Chopin to women, on pain of life imprisonment.
But you must hear the end of the visit. We went into Mary's room--perfectly bare, you know, with a great crucifix on the wall and below it, part of the woodwork, a little cup for holy water. As soon as she entered the room Margarita paused, and gave a sort of gasp--her hand, which I held tight in mine, grew cold as ice. She moved over slowly to the crucifix, with her eyes glued to it--she seemed utterly unconscious of us, or where she was; she stood directly under the crucifix, with Mary and me on either side of her shaking with excitement, and then she put out her hand in a wavering, unsteady way, like a blind person, dipped her fingers in the empty bowl and began to cross herself! She touched her forehead quickly, then moved her hand slowly down her chest, fumbled toward one side, then drew a long breath and stared at us, winking like a baby.
"I wish I had some food, Sue," she said, and actually yawned and stretched her arms, like a plow-boy, in our faces. "I think this room makes me hungry. Are you not hungry, Mary?"
Now, Jerry, what do you make of that? She cannot have seen a crucifix, can she? Nor anyone crossing themselves? She acted like a woman walking in her sleep. If I lived in Boston and were interested in that sort of thing I could swear that she had been a nun in her last incarnation!
Mary is, of course, much wrought up, and is going to set the whole convent praying for her, I believe. I told Roger about it, but you know what he is--it sounded rather silly as soon as I had it begun. He pointed out that there were plenty of chances for her to have seen the Sisters crossing themselves before crucifixes, and other sensible explanations. But really and truly, Jerry, I was with her every minute, and she did what she had not seen done.
What do you think of it?
Yours always,
SUE PAYNTER. _