A week afterwards Ox Eye came to the kitchen. She told me to get ready to go the same day. In the hollow of her hand she held two gold pieces, which she put side by side on the corner of the oven, and, touching one after the other with her finger, she said, "Our Mother Superior sends you forty francs." I did not want to go away without saying good-bye to Colette and to Ismérie, whom I had often seen at the other side of the lawn; but Mélanie assured me that they didn't care for me any more. Colette could not understand why I was not married yet, and Ismérie could not forgive me for being so fond of Sister Marie-Aimée.
Mélanie went to the gate with me. As we passed the old bench, I saw that one of its legs was broken, and that one end of it had fallen into the grass. At the gate I found a woman waiting. Her eyes were hard. She said, "I am your sister." I didn't recognize her. It was twelve years since I had seen her. Directly we got outside she caught hold of my arm, and in a voice as hard as her eyes, she asked me how much money I had. I showed her the two gold pieces which I had just received. Then she said, "You will do better to remain in the town, where you will find it easier to get something to do." As we walked on she told me she was married to a gardener in the neighbourhood, and that she didn't intend to give herself any particular trouble over me. We got to the railway station. She took me on to the platform because she wanted me to help her carry some parcels. She said "good-bye" when her train went off, and I remained there and watched it go. Almost immediately another train stopped. The railway men ran up and down the platform calling to the passengers for Paris to cross over. In that one moment I saw Paris with its great houses like palaces, with roofs so high that they were lost in the clouds. A young man bumped into me. He stopped and said, "Are you going to Paris, mademoiselle?" I scarcely hesitated, and said, "Yes; but I have no ticket." He held out his hand. "Give me the money," he said, "and I will go and get it for you." I gave him one of my two gold coins, and he ran off. I put the ticket and the change in copper which he had brought me into my pocket, went across the line with him, and climbed into the train.
The young man stood at the carriage door for a minute, and went off, turning back once as he went. His eyes were full of gentleness, like those of Henri Deslois.
The train whistled once, as though to warn me, and as it moved off it whistled a second time, a long whistle like a scream.
THE END
AFTERWORD
And now may I tell you what I know about Marguerite Audoux, the author of the book you have just read? I know very little more of her than you do, for you have read the book, and Marguerite Audoux is Marie Claire. If Marie Claire in English does not please you, the fault is mine. I have tried hard to translate into English the uneducated, unspoilt purity of language, the purity of thought which are the characteristics of the French; but the task was no easy one, much as I loved it in the doing.
Marguerite Audoux herself is a plump and placid little woman, of about thirty-five. She lives in a sixth-floor garret in the Rue Leopold Robert, in Paris. From her window she has a view of roof-tops and the Montparnasse cemetery. When she learned of the success of her book, with which she had lived for six years, she cried. "I felt dreadfully frightened at first," she said, "I felt very uneasy. I felt as though I had become known too quickly, as though I were a criminal of note. Now my one wish is to work again." She reads a good deal. Her favourite authors are Chateaubriand and Maeterlinck. In Maeterlinck she loves the mystery. "We never know people properly," she says. "They are just as difficult to understand as things that happen are. We never know whose fault it is when good or bad things happen, and we don't really know whether we ought to be angry or to be sorry with people who do harm. Wicked people are like a thunderstorm, don't you think? And a lazy woman is like a hot room. Both are unhealthy, but they cannot help it."
Marguerite Audoux does not say these things to be clever. She says them quite simply, and they express her natural way of thought, which is simplicity and purity itself.