Marise could resent such intimations, although Jeanne was too adroit to give her grounds for open reproach. She had her own gamut of expression and attitudes, with which to punish the old woman. She immediately stopped chattering, looked coldly offended, and walked beside Jeanne, her face averted from her, out towards the street, now crowded with two-wheeled ox-wagons, and donkeys, and men with push-carts starting back into the country after market day. She could feel that she was making Jeanne suffer and she was glad of it.
As she kept her eyes steadily turned through the tangle of traffic across to the sidewalk on the other side, not more than ten feet away, so narrow was the street, she caught sight of Mme. Garnier's son. He had a small valise in his hand, and was idling along as though he were waiting for something. As she looked, their eyes met. He looked at her hard, and crossed the street towards her. He came swiftly now, as if, all of a sudden, he were in a great hurry. How oddly he was staring at her! Not as though he recognized her, as though he took her for somebody else. Oh, perhaps he wasn't looking at her at all! Perhaps there was somebody behind them, at whom he was staring so hard. The tall school-girl jerked her head around for a quick glance over her shoulder. But there was nobody else on the sidewalk!
The young man had come up to them now, had taken off his hat and stood there, bowing. How white that bluish light made people look! Marise and Jeanne slackened their pace for an instant, thinking that he wished to speak to them, but all that he brought out was, "Good evening, Mademoiselle," in a low voice.
They stood for an instant, Marise feeling very awkward, as though she had misunderstood something. Then he put his hat back on, and stooping forward as though he were tired and his valise heavy, hurried on. Marise looked over her shoulder again and saw that he was almost running. But he had plenty of time to catch that train to Lourdes, which was the only one due to leave Bayonne that evening.
Jeanne's turn had come, in the little guerilla skirmish between Marise and herself. "Don't turn around in the street that way!" she cried in a shocked tone. "Haven't you any sense of what is proper? Don't you know if you turn around like that, just after a young man has passed you, he is likely to think that you are looking after him!" She had no idea that Marise was really guilty of such a heinous misdemeanor, and had only snatched the phrase up as a weapon.
II
That night Jeanne rolled the little fold-up cot-bed in across the landing and setting it up in Marise's room, slept there beside her. This was what they had done before, when Maman was at Saint Sauveur, on the nights when Father had to be away too. Isabelle hadn't the slightest intention of sleeping over on the other side by herself, and she always came too, bringing her own sheets to put on Maman's bed. She remarked that she couldn't afford to have it said of her that she had spent the night in the apartment without another woman with her. Marise did not see in the least why any one should object to having this said of her, but the tone of Isabelle's voice as she spoke, and the fact that it had something to do with passing the night warned her off from asking any explanation. She had already gleaned from many sources, in and out of books, that there was something about accounting for where you were at night, about which she didn't want to have Jeanne and Isabelle talk. So she began to sing a new satirical verse to the air of "Maman, les petits bateaux" which one of the girls had made up that day.
Everything went exactly as usual the next morning, the absence of the mistress of the house not making the faintest difference. Jeanne and Isabelle went through their usual domestic ritual in exactly the same order, whether Madame told them or not. Indeed, whatever she might tell them, they changed no slightest tittle of what they did, as she had long ago found out. Jeanne brought in the breakfast tray, and did Marise's hair as usual, and although not a soul had stepped into the salon since the day before, Isabelle was skating back and forth on the waxed floor, woolen cloths on her feet, when Marise passed the door. Outside it was a breathless still day, with a hazy sun, very hot for so early in the spring.
As they crossed the Adour, Marise caught the first whiff of its summer smell, compounded of decaying sea-weed, tar and stale fish. She and Jeanne said little, although they had wordlessly made up their tiff the evening before, and had gone to sleep after exchanging their usual hearty good-night kisses. Their quarrels although frequent never lasted long.
Everybody at school was dull, too, from the first heat. The hours seemed very long, with little in them. Marise felt listless and rather cross, and dreaded the exertion of taking her music lesson, although she usually looked forward eagerly to those hours with Mlle. Hasparren, the best and happiest of her days.