“Mon Dieu! This is getting terrible!” said Mme. Popea, one evening.
Dinner was over, and some of the ladies were passing the usual dreary evening in the salon.
“It is enough to drive you mad. It would be livelier in a convent. One would have Matins and Vespers and Compline—a heap of little duties. One could go to one's bed tired, and sleep. Here one sleeps all day, so that when night comes, one can't shut an eye.”
“Why don't you go to the convent, Mme. Popea?” asked Mrs. Stapleton, mildly, looking up from her needlework.
“Ah! one cannot always choose,” replied Mme. Popea, with a sigh. “Besides,” she added, “one would have to be so good!”
“Yes; there is some truth in that,” said Mrs. Stapleton. “It is better to be a serene sinner than a depressed saint! And sometimes we sinners have our hours of serenity.”
“Not after such a dinner as we had tonight,” remarked Frau Schultz, in German, with strident irritability. “The food is getting dreadful—and the wine! It is not good for the health. My stomach—”
“You should drink water, as Miss Graves and I do,” said Mrs. Stapleton.
“Ah, you American and English women can drink water. We are not accustomed to it. In my home I never drank wine that cost less than four marks a bottle. I am not used to this. I shall complain to Mme. Boccard.”
“It is bad,” said Mme. Popea, “but it isn't as bad as it might be. At the Pension Schmidt we couldn't drink it without sugar.” She was a plump little woman, with a predisposition to cheerfulness. Besides, as she owed Mme. Boccard some two months' board and lodging, she could afford a little magnanimity. But Frau Schultz, who was conscious of scrupulous payment up to date, had no such delicacy of feeling. She pursued the subject from her own standpoint, that of her own physiological peculiarities. By the time her tirade was ended, she had worked herself up into a fit state to give battle to Mme. Boccard, on which errand she incontinently proceeded.
“What a dreadful woman!” said Mrs. Stapleton, as the door slammed behind her.
“Ah, yes. Those Germans,” said Mme. Popea, “they are always so unrefined. They think of nothing but eating and drinking. Herr Schleiermacher came to see me this afternoon. He has been to Hanover to see his fiancée, whom he can't marry. He was telling me about it. 'Ach!' he said, 'the last evening it was so grievous. She did hang round my neck for dree hours, so that I could not go out to drink beer with my vriendts!' Animal! All men are bad. But I think German men—ugh!”
She gave her shoulders' an expressive shrug, and resumed her reading of an old copy of Le Journal Amusant, which she had brought down from her room.
“Where are the others?” asked Felicia, dropping her book wearily on to her lap. It was a much-thumbed French translation of “The Chaplet of Pearls,” which Mme. Boccard had procured for her from the circulating library in the Rue du Rhone. Felicia found it languid reading.
“Miss Bunter is tending her canary, which is moulting, or else she is writing to her fiance in Burmah,” replied Mrs. Stapleton.
“Is she engaged?”
Miss Bunter was some seven and thirty, thin and faded, the last person in the world, according to Felicia's ideas, to have a lover. Both ladies laughed at her astonishment.
“Yes. Hasn't she told you?” cried Mme. Popea. “She tells everyone—in confidence. They have been engaged for fifteen years. And they write each other letters—such fat packages—thick as that—every mail. Ah, mon Dieu! If a man treated me in that way—kept me waiting, waiting—”
She threw up her plump little hands with a half-threatening gesture.
“What would you have done?” asked Mrs. Stapleton.
“I should have consoled myself—en attendant. Oh, yes, I should have gone on writing; but I would not have let myself become a poor old maid for any man in the world. That is one thing I admire about Frâulein Klinkhardt. You were asking where she was to-night. I know, but I won't be indiscreet. She is fiancee too. She is not getting less young—mais elle s'amuse, elle—en attendant.”
Felicia did not grasp the full significance of Mme. Popea's insinuations, but she caught enough to set her cheeks burning, and she cast an appealing glance at Mrs. Stapleton.
“Won't you play us something?” said the latter, kindly, in response to the appeal.
“Ah, do!” said Mme. Popea, serenely. “You play so charmingly.”
Felicia went to the piano, and ran her fingers over the keys. She did not feel in a mood for playing; music with her was an accomplishment, not an art to which she could instinctively bring bruised and quivering fibres to be soothed. She played mechanically, thinking of other things.
Once she struck a false note, and her ear caught a little indrawn hiss from Madame Popea, which brought her wandering attention sharply back. But her heart was not in it. She was thinking of poor little Miss Bunter, and the weary years of waiting, and how sad she must have been as, year by year, she had seen the youth dying out of her eyes and the bloom fading from her cheek. Frâulein Klinkhardt, too, who was amusing herself—en attendant; she felt as if something impure had touched her.
At the next false note, Mme. Popea rose softly, and went to Mrs. Stapleton.
“I am going to bed,” she whispered. “These English girls are charming; but they should have dumb pianos made for them, that would speak only to their own souls.”
When Felicia heard the click of the closing door, she started round on the music-stool.
“I hope I haven't driven Mme. Popea away with my strumming,” she said, guiltily.
“Oh, no, dear,” replied Mrs. Stapleton, with cheerful assurance. “She is a lazy little body that always goes to bed early.”
Felicia rose, took up Le Journal Amusant, which Mme. Popea had left behind, and sitting down, began to look through it. A few seconds later, however, she crumpled it fiercely, and threw it on the ground with a cry of disgust.
“How can ladies read such things?” she exclaimed.
She had never seen such a picture before, never conceived that the like could even have been visualized by the imagination. Its cynical immodesty, its obscene suggestion, gave her a sickening sensation of loathing.
Mrs. Stapleton picked up the offending journal, and skimmed over its pages with calm eyes and a contemptuous curl of the lip.
“Oh, how can you?” cried Felicia, writhing.
The other smiled, and, opening the door of the great porcelain stove, thrust the paper in amongst the glowing coals, and closed the door again. Then she came quickly up to the couch where Felicia was, and sitting down by her side, took her hand.
“My poor child,” she said, “I hope you are not too unhappy here.”
The elder woman's voice was so soft, her manner was so gentle and feminine, that the girl's heart, that had been longing for six weeks, with a greater hunger day after day, for womanly sympathy, leapt towards her, and her eyes filled with tears.
“It is so strange here,” she said, piteously, “and I feel so lost, without my friends and occupations, and—and—”
“Well? Tell me. Perhaps I may be able to help you.”
The girl turned away her head.
“Other things. Sometimes I feel frightened. To-night—that newspaper—what Mme. Popea was saying—it seemed to scorch me.”
Mrs. Stapleton registered a mental resolution to talk pointedly to Mme.