Smoke
Suddenly, as the motor was passing the Place de la Concorde, Valérie said, "Would you mind if we just went home? I should like to go home."
Of course Nanette could only say that she did not mind.
Valérie had invited her to drive in the Bois and have tea at the little chalet of gaufres, by the gate of the Pré Catelan; she had her mother's motor car for the afternoon, and they need not take anybody with them. Nanette had thought it would be such fun, just the two of them, without governesses or maids. She had been looking forward to it for days.
Nanette was still in the schoolroom, whereas Valérie, nearly two years older, had escaped from all that. The younger girl admired Valérie immensely. They had seen a good deal of one another three years before in a summer at Dinard. Then the difference between their ages had mattered less; but now, dividing the schoolroom girl with her hair just tied back from the girl who would have been going out if war had not ended the world, it invested Valérie with a glamour of romance for the little Nanette. The romance, moreover, was heightened by the fact that people talked rather much of the older girl and coupled her name most unhappily with that of a man she never could marry, who was proving himself to be one of the heroes of the war.
Nanette would have been very proud to have had tea in the Bois with her beautiful friend. She said she did not mind turning back, but she did mind rather. She thought it odd indeed of Valérie to change like that. And Valérie's way of saying it was so odd, as if she had been all the time trying to keep it back and could not.
Valérie spoke through the tube to the chauffeur, and he turned the car.
She, Valérie, talked much and fast as they went back to the rue de Varennes, but she did not tell why she had changed her mind so suddenly.
The court of the old hôtel seemed more than usually boring and solemn to Nanette, and also the dim grave stairway. She would rather have had tea in the salon of the peacock tapestries, but Valérie told the old man-servant to bring it up to her little sitting-room.
She went in at her own door ahead of Nanette, and looked about her as if for something she expected to find in the room. She seemed so odd that Nanette just stood back against the door watching her.
After quite a minute Valérie turned to her and said, "Tell me, does it not seem to you that there is smoke in the room?"
The room was full of the afternoon July sunshine. The window that gave on to the garden was open. There were some arum lilies in a vase, and their fragrance was heavy in the sunshine.
"Why, no," said Nanette, "there is no smoke here."
Valérie began moving about the room aimlessly. As she moved here and there she was taking off her long suède gloves that Nanette admired.
"It is very queer," she said, never looking at Nanette, "but for days, three days, it has seemed to me all the time that my room was full of smoke. I see it and smell it. At first I thought something must be burning somewhere. But there was nothing. Besides, it is not that sort of smoke. It is the smoke of gunpowder."
She had thrown her gloves down on a chair, and was taking off her hat. She pulled the pins out of it, one after the other, and took it off, and thrust the pins back into it. "It is quite different from other smoke," she said, "there is no doubting what it is."
"Gunpowder smoke! Oh, but Valérie——"
Valérie went on, "Sometimes the smoke is so thick in the room that I cannot make my way about; it burns my eyes most dreadfully, it gets into my throat and chokes me, it makes me cry." She tossed her hat into the chair with her gloves, and turned to the mirror over the mantelpiece, and stood with her hands up, fluffing out her lovely gold hair. "It is not only that I cry because I am frightened," she said, "it is also that the smoke actually hurts my throat and eyes."
Nanette, standing behind her, could see her face in the mirror and thought it was become curiously stiff and dull. Valérie's lovely face, usually so full of expression, had become quite blank.
It was dreadful. The younger girl was afraid of—she did not know what. She could think of nothing that would have been of any use to say. She knew the older girl was telling her this thing only because she had to tell it to some one.
"You see," Valérie continued, "that is why I wanted to come home. I cannot bear to be long away from my room, because I am so afraid of missing the moment." She had turned back from the mirror, and stood looking past Nanette.
"The moment?" Nanette repeated, as she did not go on.
"Yes, the moment when the smoke will lift. It is every time more dense. There will be a time when it quite, quite blinds me, and then I shall see." She sat down in the chair that was nearest her. She sat limply, leaning back against the cushions, her hands lying loosely together in her lap.
Nanette had been standing all the time just inside the door. Now she came nearer, but not quite close, and she did not sit down. It was as if there were something encircling Valérie and keeping every one and everything apart from her. Nanette thought of the spells cast about fairy-tale princesses, a circle of magic drawn around, that no one could step across.
Valérie sat rigid, her eyes staring. The clock on the chimney began to strike five.
Nanette sprang forward. "Valérie, Valérie, what is the matter?" But Valérie did not hear her.
Nanette caught her hand. It was icy cold. "Valérie, Valérie!" She let the cold hand go, and touched her cheek.
But Valérie did not feel the touch.
Nanette flew to the door and opened it and called into the passage, "Jeanne-Marie, Jeanne-Marie!"
The old Bretonne nurse came instantly out from her door down the passage.
"Jeanne-Marie, quick, something has happened to mademoiselle."
The old woman passed her, and was beside Valérie. "God and the saints! It has came again!" she cried. She put her arms about Valérie and the girl fell stiffly against her shoulder. "Oh, my lamb, my little lamb!"
"Is she dead?" implored Nanette. "Jeanne-Marie, is she dead?"
"No, no, it has happened before. Go call Francine, quick."
The maid was already at the door; she must have heard the excited voices.
The old nurse said to the maid, "Help me get her to the sofa." To Nanette she said, "Go away, mademoiselle; you must go away."
Nanette besought, "No, oh, no!"
But the maid said, "Please, mademoiselle, Jeanne-Marie knows," and pushed her out of the room as if she had been a child.
Nanette, terribly frightened, waited outside in the passage, walking up and down.
After a long while Francine came and told her that mademoiselle was herself again, but very tired and must rest.
From her own home, an hour later, Nanette telephoned, and was told that mademoiselle was asleep.
The next day Valérie sent asking her to come about five o'clock.
Nanette was taken first to Valérie's mother, in the drawing-room.
The marquise was as stately and frigid as usual, dressed for the street, rather hurried and most difficult to talk to.
She told Nanette that she was troubled about the fright she must have had yesterday, and asked her not to speak to any one of what had occurred. She looked at Nanette through her tortoiseshell lorgnon, and asked if Valérie had been talking to her of anything in particular before she fainted. "Had she been agitating herself with any special confidences?" she asked.
"No," faltered Nanette, wondering.
The marquise went on to explain that Valérie was very much run down just now and nervous, and, in these last days, had had one or two fainting spells, such as that of yesterday, but less grave. She again asked Nanette not to speak of it. She appeared more concerned about people knowing of it, and about something she evidently feared Nanette might have imagined, than about what had happened to Valérie.
Nanette was anxious only to get to Valérie, who wanted her.
She found a little white Valérie snuggled down in the pillows of the big rose-hung bed. She seemed very quiet and rested, not strange as she had been yesterday, only tired. Her brown eyes looked bigger than ever, dark-circled, and her golden hair was very soft and curly about her face, like a child's hair.
She made Nanette sit close to her, and held her hand while she told her strange things, as if they were not strange at all.
When she spoke of yesterday it was as if she were speaking of something that happened very long ago. "I ought not to have brought you home with me," she said, "but you see I was afraid then. I was afraid to be alone. I knew the smoke was going to lift, I knew I was going to be shown something, and I was afraid to go through it alone. Old Jeanne-Marie is a darling, but she is different, of course. And mother would have been so annoyed if I had spoken of him. Mother has known all the time how unhappy we were, you see, and was always awfully annoyed about it."
Nanette, half understanding, could only say, as Valérie paused, "I am so frightened about you."
"Poor Nanette! You must not be frightened, for I am not frightened any more. It is all going to be well, very soon. Only I have got to tell you about it, because I am so lonely. I must tell some one. I am not a bit unhappy any more, but just to-day lonely. I have got to tell you, though it is selfish of me."
"I love you to tell me, please, Valérie."
"I was terribly unhappy," Valérie went on, "when I thought it was only he who would die. I knew, the moment I realized it was gunpowder smoke, that he was going to be killed. I knew that the smoke would lift for me when the moment came, and that then I should see him die."
"Valérie, oh, Valérie!"
"But you need not be sad for me, Nanette, because there is a thing I know that makes it all quite beautiful and right." She lifted herself up from the pillows, still holding Nanette's hand; the two heavy gold braids of her hair fell over her shoulders. "You see, we never could have been happy together, he and I," she said, "there would have been nothing but unhappiness for us both, always. I must tell you what I saw. I must have some one know, and you seem to understand things. You will not speak of it, till afterwards. And now, as I am telling you, you will not interrupt me, will you? You will not say any of the things most people would say, to break into my peace?" She stopped and waited, looking at Nanette intensely.
Nanette could not speak at all.
But Valérie must have understood, for she told it. She told it always quietly, as if she had passed beyond any shock or grief or sense of its strangeness: "The smoke was all about him, and about them; he and they had to fight blindly. They fought with bayonets. It was in the street of a village; I saw the cobbles under his feet, and a broken doorstep. He fought and fought. It seemed very long; he was quite alone to fight against so many of them. There were blue heaps behind him on the cobbles; I could make out just vaguely through the smoke. I think they were his comrades, wounded and dead. The others, the grey ones, were too many. I saw their grey shapes and their bayonets, and his wounds. I saw his face, just as he went down. His face was all alight, as it was the last time I saw him." Her own eyes were shining when she stopped, and her voice was like a singing.
In the quiet of the room Nanette waited, as if there were some spell she was afraid to break.
Valérie told her: "The last time I saw him was when he went out, nearly two years ago. I knew the station he would be passing through, with just some minutes there; and I went, and waited for him. I did not care if people knew. I ran to him in the crowd, and he saw me, and he said, 'Why, my Valérie, it is you!' as if there were a miracle. In my vision, his face was just as it had been then. There was no sound at all in my vision, but from his face, as he died, I knew he was saying, 'Why, my Valérie, it is you!'" Her warm, live hand held Nanette's hand steadily. "I know that I shall go to meet him, that I shall be waiting for him when he dies; I know, Nanette. I know because of the look there was in his face. I shall be waiting there, and he shall see me. And so I have no grief or fear." She was patting Nanette's hand to comfort her. "Is not it strange, Nanette; to-day I have a letter from him, a sad letter. And I have written him a happy one, and he will not understand why at all. He does not know how soon we will be together. I cannot tell him. And I am lonely waiting, now I know. Nanette, I am so glad that it is I who will go first."
Perhaps, when she is older, Nanette will have to wonder if there was something she might have done.
But nothing would have made any difference.
In the next days they had many doctors. But none of the doctors knew what it was, or could do anything.
A week from the day when the smoke had lifted, Nanette sent arum lilies for old Jeanne-Marie to put into Valérie's hands.
And three days after that, the man Valérie never could have married was killed.
He had gone down, it was known afterwards, in house-to-house fighting, in a street of the village of X——.