CHAPTER XLIX
If only Marise would go away, would go away and give her a chance, thought Eugenia despairingly, coming slowly into her sitting-room where Mlle. Vallet sat writing in her journal. Joséphine heard the door close and hurried in with her quick silent step to take off her mistress' wraps.
"Mademoiselle looks so tired after these long walks!" she said solicitously, scrutinizing with a professional expertness the color of the young face. "I don't think they agree with Mademoiselle at all. This climate is too soft to walk about so. Nobody does. Mademoiselle might—without presuming to advise—Mademoiselle might be wiser to go in cabs."
Eugenia held out her arms as Joséphine slipped off her pretty, fawn-colored silk coat and then let them fall at her sides. She was thinking, "Cabs! What would he say to some one who went everywhere in cabs!"
"Oh!" cried Joséphine. "Those abominable ruins! Mademoiselle's dear little bronze shoes! Cut to pieces! Oh, Mlle. Vallet, just look at our poor Mademoiselle's shoes, the beautiful bronze ones. And there's no replacing them in the shops of this country!"
Mlle. Vallet tipped her head forward to look seriously over her steel-rimmed spectacles, agreed seriously that there was certainly very little left of the pretty bronze shoes, and went seriously back to writing with her sharp steel pen a detailed description of her expedition to the Catacombs. Mlle. Vallet was a very happy woman in those days. To be in Rome, after years of grinding drudgery in the class-room, to be free to look and wander and observe at her leisure for so much of the day—she often told Eugenia that she had never in her wildest dreams supposed she would have such an opportunity! She studied and sight-saw with conscientious and absorbed exactitude, and wrote down voluminous accounts of every day's sights and the thoughts they aroused in her. "It will be the treasure-book of my old age!" she said. "I shall take it down from the shelf when I am old, and live myself back into this wonderful experience!"
"Her old age!" Eugenia wondered when she thought old age would begin. She looked a thousand years old already to Eugenia. Heavens! Think of ever being old like that, yourself. What use could there be in living if you were old and reduced for your amusement to writing down dates and things in a journal!
"If Mademoiselle will step into her own room," said Joséphine. Eugenia came to herself with a start. She had been standing in the middle of the room staring at Mlle. Vallet's back. But she had been thinking about Neale Crittenden, about those deep-set eyes of his, and how his face was lighted up when he smiled. When he smiled at her, Eugenia felt like moving from wherever she was and going to stand close beside him. What made her feel so? It was like a black-art. There was that girl at school who had been bewitched by the Breton mission-priest,—bewitched so that she fell into a fever if she could not see him every day.
"There! Sit there!" said Joséphine, pressing her competently into an easy chair, and beginning to undo her hooks and eyes. "I haven't much time. Mademoiselle is so late in coming in. Just a little cold-cream—this horrible southern sun burns so! Oh, I can feel this awful Roman dust thick on every hair! I do wish—without seeming to presume—I do wish that Mademoiselle would consent to wear a veil—everybody does."
Eugenia moved her head from one side to the other wearily. How Joséphine did chatter! She never had a quiet moment, never, and she was so tired. Feeling the supple, smooth professional fingers beginning to put on the cold cream, she held her head still and thought.