She looked now at her watch and remembered an engagement at her dressmaker's to try on a new house-dress. It suddenly made her sick to think of bothering with it. What was the use of a new house-dress? Who would see it except Horace, who never saw anything, or perhaps some one like Madame Fortier or Madame Garnier, who would think it unbecoming for a married woman to wear pretty, frilly things, or to think of anything but how to shove their husbands and sons and daughters ruthlessly ahead of other women's. Heavens above! How tiresome they were about their families! They never saw another thing in the world! Except scandalous suppositions about other people's actions.
She discovered that she did not feel at all well, not nearly well enough to go to have the dress tried on. She was always tired. The enervating climate certainly did not agree with her. The doctor paid no real attention to her case, and the sulphur baths at Saint Sauveur had done her no good, for all they cost so much. How she had hated the dreary little village, full of sick women, perched on the narrow ledge, from which the sanitarium and the bathing establishment looked dizzily down into the frightful gorge where the gave of Gavarnie boiled among its rocks. It had given her materials for many a nightmare, that long black cleft in the earth, so full of the wild haste of the waters that the ear was never for an instant, asleep or awake, freed from their plunging roar. It had given her nightmare; and the sulphur baths had not helped her worn feeling of prostrated weakness in the least. And now she feared there was something else—her heart was certainly not quite normal. There were times as now (she put her fingers to her wrist) when sitting perfectly still, she felt her pulse drop almost to nothing. A muffled, listless beat, like a clock that is running down....
"Running down?"—the chance phrase caught her attention. Was she running down to middle-age, without once having...? She started up, stung by the thought, frightened, angry—a way out into life—a way to escape from the stagnant pools where Fate always cast her—a way to find some vibrant stirring aim—if it were only for an hour—something to care about intensely! Other people did—women in books.
Jeanne, passing the door on her way out saw her mistress standing in the alcove, and paused to ask a question. "... if Madame wished Mademoiselle Marise to wear a white ribbon in her hair that afternoon? Because if so, a fresh one was needed." Her old voice thrilled as she pronounced the child's name.
Madame brought her thoughts back from their wanderings with an effort. "A white ribbon?" she said vaguely.
Jeanne reminded her, "The annual competition for the prize in music at Mademoiselle's school. The young ladies are to dress in white." Madame remembered, "Oh, yes, yes, yes." A pause, while she seemed to begin to drift away again, and then, with a perception that Jeanne still stood before her, waiting, "Why, yes, of course, buy a white ribbon if she needs it."
Jeanne took her tall, black-clad body off into the hall and thence into the street, her mistress instantly gone from her mind. She had no time or strength that momentous day for anything beyond her passionate absorption in her dear girl's ordeal, Marise's first step into the battle of life. Her little Marise almost a young lady, her fifteenth birthday so near, contending with rival young ladies! Jeanne ground her strong yellow teeth and prayed furiously that the other competitors might all have cramps in their fingers, that a fog might come before their eyes, that they might have blinding headaches or at least that their petticoats might hang below their skirts and disgrace them as they walked across on the platform.
She went to the best shop in town for the ribbon, the only detail lacking in the spotless costume which had been ready for days, pressed by Isabelle and pressed over again by herself. Jeanne had all the possible shades brought down; dead white—ivory white—pearl white—cream, she took them to the door to see how they looked in full daylight, and withdrawing herself by a swoop of her will power, from the clattering confusion of the street, she held up the rolls of ribbon one by one, imagining, as though Marise were there before her, each one against the gleaming dark head. Not the dead white—no, that looked like nun's stuff, and there was nothing of the nun in Marise, thank God! Not the pearl white—that bluish tinge—oh, no! that was only fit for a corpse—The cream? No, the white organdie of the dress would make it look dirty. The ivory—yes, the ivory.
She carried the others back and looked hard at the ivory on both sides, making a deft fold or two with her stiff old fingers, to see how it would tie into a bow. She held it out at arm's length, her tightly-coifed, gargoyle-head on one side. She drew a long breath, having been so absorbed in the ribbon that she had forgotten to breathe for some time. "Well, give me a mètre and a half," she said finally to the clerk, adding scornfully, "if that's the best you have!" Cloth-of-gold embroidered with pearls would not have satisfied her.