Rough-Hewn Part 40

"A what? What's a Levantine?"

Marise considered, "What _is_ a Levantine, anyhow? A little of everything, I should say, and all more or less oriental and southern.

She's part Spanish, part Jewish from Asia Minor, brought up in Cairo and Paris."

Eugenia sheered off on another tack, "And who is Madame Va... Va...

something?"

"Madame Vallery? She's a ... she's a sort of friend of mine. Yes, she's a friend. My old music-teacher, when I was a little girl, got us together. She's the wife of a Deputy, you know, like our Congressmen."

"Is she chic, too," asked Eugenia, "like Mrs. Marbury? Is she young? Is she pretty?"

Marise laughed, "No, she's not pretty or young. She must be fifty years old."

Eugenia was shocked. "And a friend of _youah's_!"

Marise explained, "She has more brains than you and I and forty other girls rolled into one. And I've met more interesting people at her house than...."

"Will you take me sometime--will you take me?" asked Eugenia.

"Yes, if you like," said Marise.

Eugenia looked around her wildly, as if to find some way of saying her thanks. Something in the street caught her eye. They were pa.s.sing a florist's shop. She slammed the door open, curved her flexible little body around the frame, and caught at the driver's coat-tails. "Stop a minute!" she cried to him and dashed into the shop. When she came out she had a huge bunch of mauve-colored orchids in her arms.

"For you, for you," she cried, elated at her idea, thrusting them into Marise's hands, and kissing her again. And then, suddenly downcast, "Oh, it oughtn't to have been orchids! What? Roses? Lilies? Violets?... Yes, violets."

This time Marise protested energetically against this a.s.sumption of meanings in her face.

"I don't know what makes you _say_ such things," she cried out helplessly, half-angrily. "Orchids are lovely--_beautiful_. How could anything be better? I never had any before in my life."

But the other was not to be comforted. "Yes, it ought to have been violets," she murmured, and then squaring her jaw, "And it _will_ be violets, the next time. You just see!"

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII

May, 1906.

As Marise started up the front stairway she saw Biron emerging on the run from the foot of the servants' stairway, his ap.r.o.n half-off, a net marketing-bag in his hand. His broad, red face looked cross and anxious.

Something must have gone wrong. She turned back, meeting him in front of the concierge's door.

"Oh, Mademoiselle, G.o.d be praised you're back in time. Desolation and ruin! The sole has turned--it has been so hot to-day. I swear on my soul as a Christian it was fresh when I got it--unless that blackguard Gagnan changed...."

When Biron turned his torrent of objurgation on the tradespeople who sold him eatables there was no stopping him. Marise cut in now.

"Were you going out for another? Do you want me to go?"

"Yes, yes--only not for a sole--there wouldn't be one left--and the dinner was _planned_ for sole!"

He ground his teeth, white and sound as a wolf's, "I could send Melanie if she had the intelligence of an angle-worm--and yet to leave her with my sauce till I get back--I was right in the midst of a _sauce piquante_ for the...."

He turned as if to rush back upstairs, distractedly, and turned again as if to rush distractedly out into the street.

Marise put out her hand for the market-bag and spoke with the peremptory decision that was always necessary to unloosen Biron from his temperamental tangles.

"Go right back to your sauce, Biron. I'll have the fish here in five minutes. And have plenty of onion in that sauce. My father thought the last not well-balanced, too much vinegar. He likes his sauces suave."

"But not a sole, Mademoiselle, not a sole! Any sole that is left on the market at six of the evening is left because n.o.body would buy it. But the dinner was _planned_ for sole!" He stamped his huge, felt-slippered feet in exasperation.

"A mackerel," suggested Marise, "they're good at this time of the year."

He flung his arms over his head. "A _mackerel_! A gross, fat, dark monster like a mackerel to replace a _sole_!"

"Oh, no, of course not." Marise saw his point. "I didn't think. Nor salmon, of course."

He shuddered away from the idea of salmon.

They stood staring at each other, thinking hard, the cook's big, parboiled fist clenched on his mouth, his brows knit together, like those of the _Penseur_.

"Some merlans?" suggested Marise. "You can cook them _au gratin_ just _like_ a sole."

"But will I have time!" he groaned. "Who knows whether the oven is hot enough?"

"Well, hurry back and brighten the fire, while I rush out and get the fish."

He fled back up the stairs, his slippers flapping. She left her roll of music in the concierge's care and darted out into the street, market-bag in hand. Twenty minutes later the fish were being disposed with a religious care on a bed of chopped parsley, shallots, mushrooms and b.u.t.ter. Biron shoved the baking-pan tenderly into the oven, wiped the sweat from his face, and stopped storming at his wife.

"You were not to blame, after all, Melanie," he told her magnanimously, and with a long breath, "But it was a close call, by G.o.d, a close call."

In the salon Marise was pouring an aperitif for her father, brightly dishing up the news of the day with the sauce of lively comment, and saying nothing about culinary close calls. Her father listened to her, sipping his Dubonnet with an air of intense satisfaction. He took plenty of time for it, allowing each mouthful to deliver all its complicated burden of tang and bitterness and heat before he took another one into his mouth.

"Excellent stuff, Dubonnet," he said appreciatively.

"I'm glad you like it," said Marise. She envied her father his enjoyments. They were, comparatively speaking, so easy to get.

Looking at her seemed to remind him of something. He reached into a vest pocket (with some difficulty, for his vests were more and more tightly packed with each year of good living), and took out a little jeweller's box.

"It's your birthday to-day," he remarked, taking another careful sip of his aperitif.

Marise looked at the present, a little wrist-watch, from a very good house.

"Oh, that's awfully good of you, Father," she said, trying it on.

"You can have one if that funny little friend of yours can," he advanced.

"Oh, if you start giving me everything Eugenia has...!" protested Marise.