THE OUTRAGE
ANNIE VIVANTI CHARTRES
NEW YORK : ALFRED A. KNOPF : 1918
COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY
A. VIVANTI CHARTRES
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
THE OUTRAGE
BOOK I
CHAPTER I
Chérie was ready first. She flung her striped bath-robe over hershoulders and picked up Amour who was wriggling and barking at her pinkheels.
"Au revoir dans l'eau," she said to little Mireille and to the Germannursery governess, Frieda.
"Oh, Frieda, vite, vite, dégrafez-moi," cried Mireille, backingtowards the hard-faced young woman and indicating a jumble of knottedtapes hanging down behind her.
"Speak English, please, both. This is our English day," said Frieda,standing in her petticoat-bodice in front of the mirror and removingwhat the girls called her "Wurst" from the top of her head. In the glassshe caught sight of Chérie making for the door and called her backsharply. "Mademoiselle Chérie, you go not in the street without yourstockings and your hat."
"Nonsense, Frieda! In Westende every one goes to bathe like this," andChérie waved a bare shapely limb and flicked her pink toes at Amour, whobarked wildly at them.
"I do not care how every one goes. You go not," said Frieda Rothenstein,hanging her sleek brown Wurst carefully on the mirror-stand.
"Then what have we come here for?" sulked Chérie, dropping Amour andgiving him a soft kick with her bare foot.
"We have come here," quoth Frieda, "not for marching our undressed legsabout the streets, but for the enjoyment both of the summer-freshnessand of the out-view." Whereupon Mireille gave a sudden shriek oflaughter and Amour bounded round her and barked.
Chérie crossed the room to the chair on which her walking clothes hadbeen hastily flung. "Won't sand-shoes do?"
"No. Sand-shoes and stockings," said Frieda. "And hat," she added,glancing down at the comely bent head with its cascade of wavingred-brown locks.
Chérie hurriedly drew on her black stockings, glancing up occasionallyto smile at Mireille; and nothing could be sweeter than those shiningeyes seen through the veil of falling hair. Now she was ready, herflapping bergère hat crushed down on her careless curls, Amour hoistedunder her arm again, and with a nod of commiseration to Mireille she randown the narrow wooden staircase of Villa Esther, Madame Guillaume'sappartements meublés and was down in the rue des Moulins with hersmiling face to the sea.
The street was a short one, half of it not yet built over, leading froma new aeroplane-shed at the back to the wide asphalted promenade on thesea-front. Chérie met some other bathers—a couple of men striding alongin their bathing suits, their bronzed limbs bare, a damp towel roundtheir necks, their wet hair plastered to their cheeks. They barelyglanced at the picturesque little figure in the brief red bathing-skirtand flapping hat, for all along the sands—from Nieuport, twenty minutesto the right, to Ostend half an hour to the left—there were hundreds ofjust such charming school-girl figures darting about in the sunlight,while all the fast and loose "daughters of joy" from Brussels, Namur,and Spa, added their more poignant note of provocativeness to the blueand gold beauty of the summer scene.
Chérie passed the bicycle shop and waved a friendly hand to CyrilleWibon, who was kneeling before his racing Petrolette and washing itsshining nose with the tenderness of a nurse and the pride