Chapter V: Part 5

On the fifth morning, as I came out from Mass, Madame Rayburn's eye lighted by chance upon the marks. She was not near-sighted, and she never mistook one thing for another. A single glance told her the story. A single instant decided her course of action. "Agnes," she said, and I stepped from the ranks, and stood by her side. I knew what she had seen; but I did not know what she proposed doing, and my heart beat uneasily. We waited until the First Cours filed out of the chapel. Last, because tallest, came Ella Holrook and Julia Reynolds. "Julia," said Madame Rayburn, and she, too, left the ranks and joined us. No word was spoken until the long line of girls--burning with futile curiosity, but too well trained even to turn their heads--had passed through the corridor. Then Madame Rayburn took my hand in her firm grasp and held it up to view. "Look at this, Julia," she said.

I had supposed it impossible to move Julia Reynolds to wrath, to arouse in her any other sentiment than the cold contempt, "la fierté honorable et digne," which she cultivated with so much care. But I had not calculated on this last straw of provocation following upon all she had previously endured. When she saw her number on my hand, she crimsoned, and her eyes grew dark. She was simply and unaffectedly angry,--what we in unguarded conversation called "mad."

"I won't have it," she said passionately. "I won't! It's too much to be borne. I won't put up with it another hour. Why should I be tormented all my life by these idiotic children? Look at my shawl,--how they have torn off half the fringe. It isn't fit to be worn. Look at my desk! I never open it without finding it littered with their trash. Do I want their old flannel penwipers? Do I want their stupid pincushions and needle-cases? Can I possibly want book-markers of perforated cardboard, with 'Julia' worked on them in blue sewing silk? I've had three this week. Do they think I don't know my own name, and that I have to be reminded of it by them? They have no business to go near my desk. They have no business to put anything in it. And I don't want their candy. And I don't want them to darn my stockings in hard lumps. I've never encouraged one of them in my life." (Alas! Julia, this was your undoing.) "I've never spoken to one of them. I did let her" (a scornful nod at me) "sharpen my crayons in drawing class, and I suppose this impertinence is the result. I suppose she thinks she is a favourite. Well, she isn't. And this is going a good deal too far. My number belongs to me personally, just as much as my name does. I won't have it paraded around the Second Cours. It stands for me in the school, it's mine, and she has no right to cut it on her horrid little hand."

There was a moment's silence. Julia's breath was spent, and Madame Rayburn said nothing. She only looked at me.

Now I possessed one peculiarity which had always to be reckoned with. Timid, easily abashed, and reduced to nothingness by a word that hurt, I was sure, if pushed too far, to stand at bay. Nor had nature left me altogether defenceless in a hard world. Julia's first glance had opened my eyes to the extravagance of my behaviour (Oh, that I had followed Elizabeth's counsel!), her first reproaches had overwhelmed me with shame. But the concentrated scorn with which she flung her taunts in my face, and that final word about my horrid hand, stiffened me into resistance. My anger matched her own. "All right," I said shortly; "I'll scratch it out."

Madame Rayburn laughed softly. She had brought upon me this dire humiliation because she thought my folly merited the punishment; but she was not ill-pleased to find me undismayed. As for Julia, she bent her keen eyes on my face (the first time she had ever really looked at me), and something that was almost a smile softened the corners of her mouth. It was evident that the idea of scratching out what was already so deeply scratched in pleased her wayward fancy. When she spoke again, it was in a different voice, and though her words were unflattering, her manner was almost kind. "If you are not altogether a fool," she said, "and that sounds as if you were not, why do you behave like one?"

To this query I naturally made no reply. It was not easy to answer, and besides, at the first softening of her mood, my wrath had melted away, carrying my courage with it. I was perilously near tears. Madame Rayburn dropped my hand, and gave me a little nod. It meant that I was free, and I scudded like a hare through the corridor, through the First Cours classroom, and down into the refectory. There the familiar aspect of breakfast, the familiar murmur of "Pain, s'il vous plait," restored my equanimity. I met the curious glances cast at me with that studied unconcern, that blankness of expression which we had learned from Elizabeth, and which was to us what the turtle shell is to the turtle,--a refuge from inquisitors. I had no mind that any one should know the exact nature of my experience.

That night I made good my word, and erased the twenty-one after a thorough-going fashion I hardly like to recall. But when the operation was over, and I curled up in my bed, I said to myself that although I should never again wear this beloved number upon hand or arm, it would be engraved forever on my heart. As long as I lived, I should feel for Julia Reynolds the same passionate and unalterable devotion. Perhaps, some time in the future, I should have the happiness of dying for her. I was arranging the details of this charming possibility, and balancing in my mind the respective delights of being bitten--while defending her--by a mad dog, or being drowned in mid-ocean, having given her my place in the life-boat, and was waving her a last farewell from the decks of the sinking ship, when I finally fell asleep.

The next morning was Sunday, the never-to-be-forgotten Sunday, when Marianus for the first time served Mass. And as I watched him, breathless with delight, Julia's image grew pale, as pale as that of Isabel Summers, and faded quietly away. I looked at Elizabeth and Tony. They, too, were parting with illusions. Their sore little arms might now be permitted to heal, for their faithless hearts no longer bore a scar. The reign of our lost loves was over. The sovereignty of Marianus had begun.

The Riverside Press
_Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.
Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:

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Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in spelling, punctuation, and hyphenation have been
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