One by one they bowed over my mother’s hand, and went away. My mother looked very tired. She motioned me to remain. Claire hung over her tenderly.
“Pauvre petite mère,” she said, kissing the top of her head. “You must go straight to bed. All these emotions have been too much for you. I will come in the morning to see to the packing of the last things. Don’t stir. Just stay quiet. All the same, it’s too bad, her turning you out of your own house.”
I said nothing. Something warned me not to take up Jane’s defence just then, and I, too, felt sorry for my mother. When we were alone, she laid her head against the back of the chair and closed her eyes. Presently, however, without opening them she spoke with surprising energy.
“I have had to promise to dine with that woman,” was what she said.
VIII
Jane had made no impression on my mother. Mrs. Carpenter had made too much of one. She had deflected my mother’s attention from Jane to herself and this, with unfortunate consequences. Mrs. Carpenter affected my mother like a loud and unpleasant noise, and my mother hated noises more than anything in the world. I am not trying to be witty. I mean this literally. I have seen my mother grow pale with a sort of nervous nausea and close her eyes in a desperate effort to control the faintness that came over her at the sound of a harsh ugly voice raised in anger. There was something about Mrs. Carpenter that set her nerves on edge in the same way. Her metallic jingling clothes, her loose easy swagger, her wiry grey curls, her humorous rolling eye, made up an ensemble that though to most people not seemingly at all “loud” gave my mother sensations of clashing and clanging. When she was about it was impossible for Maman to think of or listen to any one else. All the effort of her hypersensitive nervous organism was concentrated on just simply bearing her, and she was obliged now to bear her often and for hours at a time. Mrs. Carpenter didn’t let her off. She had wanted to know my mother; she knew her now and she made the most of her.
During the weeks that preceded the wedding, Izzy was incessantly with my mother. She was in the highest of gay good humours. A big fashionable wedding to prepare for, she was in her element. Having achieved her ambition she professed to take it all as a joke. She treated the approaching marriage of her daughter as a great lark and wanted my mother to have her share of the fun. She consulted her about everything, submitted lists and samples of engraved invitations, dragged her to dressmakers who were preparing the trousseau and made her come and help open presents. I have a picture of my mother in a corner of Mrs. Carpenter’s drawing room, limp and pale in her black clothes, submerged in cardboard and tissue paper, while the indefatigable Izzy on her knees in the middle of the floor held up one object after another and gave vent to shouts of indiscriminate rapture or groans of unenlightened contempt. Poor, dreadful Izzy. She had such definite ideas about things. Her ignorance was confident and documented. She had priced every marble and bronze in Paris. No jeweller’s shop held any secrets for her. She was a connoisseur in lace. But the little tarnished faded treasures sent by some of our relatives to Philibert’s bride belonged to no such category, and were viewed with bewildered disdain. Antique furniture had never been seen in her own apartment, but she knew that cracked lacquer and tarnished gilding was respectable in tables and chairs. Beyond that she could not go. Her instinct had stood in the way of her desire to learn. She clung irresistibly to baubles and coveted with passion the massive silver tea service sent by Aunt Clo. I know that Aunt Clo hesitated between this and an exquisite Ingres drawing. I remember Izzy weighing the monstrous kettle in her hands, her face a study of shrewd gloating apprisal and her knee planted firmly on the face of a poor little Louis XV doll that had come from Aunt Marianne’s cabinet of XVIII century toys.
It was unfortunate that my mother was forced to assist at these séances, and that Jane herself was so often absent trying on clothes. The absence of the one and the ignorance of the other were proofs to my mother that neither knew how to behave. She judged Izzy as if she were a Frenchwoman and supposed that because the noisy creature did not know a treasure of art when she saw it that she most probably put her knife in her mouth. And so during those days that would have exhausted a much more robust woman than my mother, Izzy did, I believe, at the very beginning of Jane’s life with us, use up all the vitality that Maman could dispose of on behalf of Philibert’s American family.