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Page 22
My sister made a little pretended gesture of dismay.
"I should have been more careful; such things are of value."
Of value indeed! The certificates in Madame Barras' package,
that had lain about on the library table, were gold certificates
of the United States Treasury - ninety odd of them, each of a
value of one thousand dollars! My sister went:
"How oddly life has tossed her about . . . . She must have been
a mere infant at Miss Page's. The attachment of incoming tots to
the older girls was a custom . . . . I do not recall her . . . .
There was always a string of mites with shiny pigtails and
big-eyed wistful faces. The older girls never thought very much
about them. One has a swarm-memory, but individuals escape one.
The older girl, in these schools, fancied herself immensely. The
little satellite that attached itself, with its adoration, had no
identity. It had a nickname, I think, or a number . . . . I have
forgotten. We minimized these midges out of everything that
could distinguish them . . . . Fancy one of these turning up in
Madame Barras and coming to me on the memory of it."
"It was extremely lucky for her," I said. "Imagine arriving from
the interior of Brazil on the invitation of Mrs. Jordan to find
that lady dead and buried; with no friend, until, by chance, one
happened on your name in the social register, and ventured on a
school attachment of which there might remain, perhaps a memory
only on the infant's side."
My sister went on up the stair.
"I am glad we happened to be here, and, especially, Winthrop, if
you have been able to assist her . . . . She is charming."
Charming was the word descriptive of my sister, for it is a thing
of manner from a nature elevated and noble, but it was not the
word for Madame Barras. The woman was a lure. I mean the term
in its large and catholic sense. I mean the bait of a great
cosmic impulse - the most subtle and the most persistent of which
one has any sense.
The cunning intelligences of that impulse had decked her out with
every attractiveness as though they had taken thought to confound
all masculine resistance; to sweep into their service those
refractory units that withheld themselves from the common
purpose. She was lovely, as the aged Major Carrington had
uttered it - great violet eyes in a delicate skin sown with gold
flecks, a skin so delicate that one felt that a kiss would tear
it!
I do not know from what source I have that expression but it
attaches itself, out of my memory of descriptive phrases, to
Madame Barras. And it extends itself as wholly descriptive of
her. You will say that the long and short of this is that I was
in love with Madame Barras, but I point you a witness in Major
Carrington.
He had the same impressions, and he had but one passion in his
life, a distant worship of my sister that burned steadily even
here at the end of life. During the few evenings that Madame
Barras had been in to dinner with us, he sat in his chair beyond
my sister in the drawing-room, perfect in his early-Victorian
manner, while Madame Barras and I walked on the great terrace, or
sat outside.
One had a magnificent sweep of the world, at night, from that
terrace. It looked out over the forest of pines to the open sea.
Madame Barras confessed to the pull of this vista. She asked me
at what direction the Atlantic entered, and when she knew, she
kept it always in her sight.
It had a persisting fascination for her. At all times and in
nearly any position, she was somehow sensible of this vista; she
knew the lights almost immediately, and the common small craft
blinking about. To-night she had sat for a long time in nearly
utter silence here. There was a faint light on the open sea as
she got up to take her leave of us; what would it be she
wondered.
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