Rough-Hewn

by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

That morning when Marise stepped into the courtyard at school a group of older girls had their heads together over a newspaper, and when they saw her, they all started. Elise Fortier rolled the paper up rapidly and put it in her leather portfolio with her school-books. They looked at her very oddly. Four years ago, Marise would have run up to them, demanding, "What's the matter? What makes you look so funny? What is it in the paper?" That was before she became aware of any mire in the world, invisible, wide-spreading, into which almost any casual inquiry seemed likely to plunge you. Marise knew what it was to have some of that indelibly staining mire splashed upon her, from a look, an intonation or a phrase that meaningly expressed much more than it said. She walked with a desperate wariness now, trying to pick her way dry-shod, in the dark. So that morning she was only afraid that the girls would tell her what it was they had found in the paper that made them look so. She pretended that she had seen nothing, ran up to them with a funny story to tell, and went at once to hang up her wraps in the hall outside the class-room door. Sister Ste. Julie passed her and said, "Good-morning, my child." It seemed to Marise that she too looked queerly at her. She reached her hand over her shoulder to make sure her dress was hooked, and felt of the ribbon in her hair. No mirrors were allowed inside the school and convent walls, or she would have stepped to look in one to see what was wrong.

At eleven o'clock while the class in advanced geography was reciting, the street bell rang. Sister Ste. Marie went to answer, and came back to say that Mlle. Allen was wanted. Her maman was ill, and the bonne had come for her. All the girls turned instantly and looked at her without surprise, as though they had been expecting this. Marise started up, suddenly very pale, put on her wraps in a great hurry and ran to where Jeanne was waiting for her. Jeanne looked just as usual, although everything else seemed to have changed in an instant and to look threateningly upon Marise.

"Your maman is home from the baths," said Jeanne, as though she were saying something she had made up to say beforehand, "and she doesn't feel very well. Since Monsieur is not here, I thought we would better come and get you."

Marise seized Jeanne's arm and dug her fingers deep into it, "Jeanne ... Jeanne ... nothing's happened ... Maman's not...."

Jeanne said with the very accent of truth, "No, no, no. Madame is not dead—never fear, my darling. She is only very ... nervous." She said it with the very accent of truth, but Marise knew perfectly well that Jeanne could say anything she pleased with that accent. She never believed a thing Jeanne said unless she knew it already.

But in spite of herself she was relieved from her first wild panic. Nothing so very bad could have happened, with Jeanne standing there, carved out of brown wood, just as usual. They began to hurry up the narrow short-cut by the market, and Jeanne told her a little more. Maman had come back by the first train. She must have taken the afternoon train down from Saint Sauveur to Lourdes, and have waited hours in the station at Lourdes, till the west-bound train from Toulouse came along. And she had come in, perfectly worn out, staggering, and pushed right by Isabelle to go to her room. And she had locked the door, and wouldn't answer when they knocked, and wouldn't open when they brought a tray with some food, only called out to them in a queer hoarse voice to go get Sœur Ste. Lucie. And they could hear her crying and sobbing, so they had sent Anna Etchergary to get the nun, and she, Jeanne, had come of her own idea to get Marise.

Marise read into this Jeanne's dislike of the nun and her usual suspicious idea about poor Maman that it was all just some new notion of hers. But she also felt that the old woman had had a real fright and she walked faster and faster.

The door on the landing was ajar, and inside the hall they saw a tall old monk, his bare feet in sandals, his bald head bowed over his clasped hands, his lips moving in prayer. When he saw the girl and the old servant, he made way for them to pass, and without interrupting his prayers, motioned them to enter. His gesture was so imperious that without a word they tip-toed in past him. Isabelle, her eyes wide, and not as red-faced as usual, was standing uncertainly in the door of the salon, her apron up to her lips, looking scared, "Sœur Ste. Lucie has gone in to Madame," she said to Jeanne in a whisper. "She said you and Mademoiselle were to go to Mademoiselle's room and wait until she came."

Jeanne inquired wildly with a silent jerk of the head who in the world was the monk who stood praying before Madame's closed door; and Isabelle answered with a desperate rolling of her eyes that she had no more idea of that than Jeanne.

They all went down the corridor on tip-toes, to Marise's room, where automatically Marise took off her hat and coat. She saw to her amazement that Jeanne had dropped down on the crimson quilt on the bed. Nothing that had happened had startled Marise so much as to see this.