Cosette! She knew that name! As Cosette guided Eponine into her room, Eponine took a good, long look at her. But... it had been so long ago... Eponine thought of the old man, Cosette's (she tried to accustom herself to thinking that name again) father, and of the man with the doll nearly ten years ago... and stared with scarce hidden wonder and something else.
"Could it be?" She whispered aloud, "That it's the Lark?" Cosette, who had made a beeline for the closet after depositing Eponine on the bed, caught that last and was held by it, for some unfathomable reason.
"What did you say?" She asked, regarding this girl once again with the most intense curiosity. Eponine felt herself blushing again, and stammered,
'I wondered... I mean, I thought..." She cut herself off; picked at the hem of her tattered skirt, "You remind me of someone who used to live with my family years ago. They called her the Lark."
"Lark...?" Cosette's face became unreadable; her expression resembled the one, if only
Eponine had seen it, worn by Jean Valjean in the Jondrette lair, when faced with much
the same revelation. Something ugly had begun to creep up in Cosette's thoughts;
Eponine, absorbed in her skirt, did not notice and continued,
"She was a girl that lived in our house," Repeated Eponine, "Mother didn't like her. But
she did chores and fetched water and made our socks. And Mother and Father got paid to
keep her. Then one day this man comes to us, in an ugly yellow jacket, and he's brought
this doll... the most beautiful doll in the world. My sister 'Zelma and I had longed for that
doll for ages... and this man, he comes and he brings that doll, and he gives it to the Lark.
And the next day they left." Eponine chanced a glance at Cosette, who still wore her
father's expression. She had mouthed
'Catherine,' when Eponine mentioned the Doll, but Eponine had not seen. "When you said
your name was Cosette- well, that was the Lark's name too, so I thought..." She looked
again at Cosette's face, which, as the young lady was not, in fact, Jean Valjean, had begun
to waver, and all doubt left her. "So I guess I thought right. Lucky chance, that, then?"
Cosette leaned against the wall for a minute, to support herself, then carefully placed
herself on the bed next to the blushing waif.
"Then you are not Fabantou? You are Eponine..." The next name came up, filled with fear and whispered like that of a demon one might perhaps summon with a careless pronunciation, "Thénardier?" Eponine nodded.
"It really is you then. Well." Most of her composure returned, Eponine's look was as curious as Cosette's had been, and level. "You're come up in the world, then."
No small amount of anger, envy, and contempt lay in those words, but Cosette heard none of it. What was evident to her was the pain and bitter sadness, and a little bit of something else... the new-feathered lark was moved to tears.
"Oh 'Ponine!" She cried, throwing her arms around the startled creature, "I'm so sorry! I know that it wasn't your fault... and now look! Oh, how often have I wished damnation on the Thénardiers, and now that I know that my wish has come true, I feel all the worse for it." She sobbed into the bewildered Eponine's shoulder, the latter found her arms full and her brain reeling. Cosette raised her tear-streaked face and blubbered on, "Oh! And Azelma! That was her with the cut hand! Oh my goodness, I do remember! Oh..." And again with the sobbing. Eponine did not know how to respond to that, but her instinct was to stroke the girl's hair and coo softly to her, as to a child. All hate was gone, all fear and all contempt- but Something prevented her. She felt lightheaded, and murmured instead,
"Please, you'll get your dress dirty." Having gone a little crazy. Cosette pulled away, her red eyes took on a determined cast as they tried to stem their tide.
"Now Eponine," She said firmly, wiping her wet eyes on her sleeve, "we must draw you a proper bath." Eponine blinked.
"A bath?" She echoed dumbly. Her thoughts flew like so many larks just out of cages, and each time she looked on Cosette was like seeing her anew.
"Yes!" Cosette was resolute, "I said that we were going to clean you up and I meant it. Come."
Dazedly, Eponine took her hostesses hand again and followed her to the toilette. She had the peculiar sensation of being disembodied; watching her entire experience from a few feet above her head, while her body was dealt with below. Her rags, having been held on with luck and a few threads, disintegrated beneath Cosette's fingers. Eponine wore no underthings, which seemed to scandalize the other girl.
"We-well..." She stammered a little awkwardly at Eponine's sudden nudity, but quickly recovered, "we shall just have to remedy that as well." For Eponine's part, it still seemed as if she was watching her naked self standing in this sumptuous bathroom, surrounded by frills and lace, watching Cosette draw the tub of water (oh, what past-echoes!, and watching herself immersed in it. As she was relatively useless, (and hopelessly overwhelmed) Cosette was responsible for bathing her. The touch of the cloth and sponge beneath Cosette's fingers drew Eponine at the same time closer and further from herself. For now, while she felt perhaps ten feet above her body, she could feel eerie sensation amplified, from the tiniest movement of the sponge, to the thousand gentle eddies of water about her skin. She blushed deeply when Cosette's fingertip grazed her bare stomach, but the latter, intent upon her work, did not notice.
"Um, Cosette," Said Eponine suddenly, starling Cosette so that she jumped, a little. She paused in her scrubbing, and, a little giddily, Eponine noticed that her hands shook.
"What?" She replied, not looking at her patient's face. Ah... she was still crying, silently. Eponine licked her lips and spoke,
"Do you remember," Began Eponine slowly, "the game that we used to play in those days?"
"What? Game? I don't remember ever being allowed to play with you." She squeezed the cloth tightly, her knuckles white. Eponine, afraid that she might burst into sobs again, put a wet hand on her arm, then drew it away quickly when she realized the water would ruin the fine silk.
"Oh! Your dress!" She exclaimed, Cosette, who had given those sorts of practical concerns no thought, stood again, and, with a sort of distracted gravity, removed her dress, put it in the other room, and resumed crouching in her slip.
The presence of a slip was a mild shock to Eponine; less so than her lack of one had been to Cosette. Eponine felt dreadfully bare and awkward, more so than if Cosette had been actually nude. Nevertheless, she attempted to resume the pattern of her previous thought.
"Only one game, and we didn't play it often- we might have gotten caught." She managed a little bit of a smile, "A silly thing- funny that I should recall it now. I would get my hands on one of mother's romances, and 'Zelma, you and I would all act them out... do you remember that? We had to include you, because we needed you to be the hero. 'Zelma and I would trade off between the girl and the villain, because our brother was too little. Do you remember that? How funny!" And Eponine laughed a little, hoarsely. Cosette, wringing her cloth, remained silent, the tears on her face beginning to dry but her expression still a bit pained. She had forgiven this girl out loud, but her heart was in turmoil. And other questions assaulted her- what was this girl doing outside her gate? Why the panic at the thought of meeting her father? When had she become such a woman? That last thought arose perhaps because Cosette did indeed remember the game of which Eponine had spoken; the memory burst in her mind like grapeshot and gave birth to a new, strange expression. Tears completely gone, she regarded very carefully the dripping Eponine, half-clean and dressed in only soap and perfumed water. "Almost Pretty." Cosette's eyes told her. But she was not thinking with just her eyes. Eponine stared at her, unable to fathom the meaning of that strange look. It was particularly disconcerting on Cosette's angelic face; discordant, almost. But she saw quite clearly the face of the girl she had so ignored and abused all throughout their childhoods, and wondered that she had not recognized her before.
"I remember that." Said Cosette finally, and her voice sounded just not quite as deep as Eponine's, "It was..." she hesitated over a word she was loath to associate with her time at the Waterloo inn, "fun. I cannot believe that there was ever fun..."
"I'm sorry..."
"It's OK." Continued Cosette, "I remember. I was included. It was..." And she trailed off, blushing suddenly "Do you remember..."
"The Rouge and the Wedding?" Eponine blushed too, for the same memory had occurred to her simultaneously. Cosette was a semi-permanent pink; one hand rested lightly on the edge of the basin, the other at her throat. Suddenly Eponine, in an exaggerated voice, cried out,
"Oh alas! I fear my love is too late! Oh hurry, sweet prince and carry me away on your noble steed, lest I be forced to marry the hideous old Baron! Ah- he is old and decrepit, his fingers chill like ice and his breath smells of onions! Oh wilt thou come, my lord, on thy brave white steed with wings of flame and rescue me from this dismal fate?" Cosette laughed and continued the dialogue,
"Gallop, gallop!" She imitated a galloping horse, "I am here, O Lady, O love! Come, to my stirrup! O thou art light as a feather and as comely as a dove! I will carry thee from this vile place, and thou shalt be my bride, if you can love a highwayman!?" Eponine, too, laughed at Cosette's affected drawl and dramatic sweeps of her arms. in response, Eponine batted her eyelashes and made her voice as simpering as she could,
"Oh my hero! Oh my brave and gallant knight! Thou are the son of a king, and no highwayman to my heart, but that thou hast stolen it. Oh how I have looked for thee, in whom I see all sweetness and light! But Alors! here is that foul baron! he will not let me go! Oh my Love, my Prince, save me!" Eponine gasped elegantly and clasped her hands over her heart- "And then Azelma would come in with a fake sword for the fight scene, and complain because she didn't see why the bad guy had to lose..."
"And then you would stamp your foot and protest that Lisette was NOT going to marry the old Baron, and in the end we'd have to kill each other at the same time and do a dual death scene!" Cosette laughed merrily, "How well do I remember!" She struck a dramatic pose, hand pressed against he forhead in mock swoon, "Oh! My light fades! Come to me my beautiful Lisette, that I may look on thee once more; that the last thing I should see in mortal life be thy shining face." Eponine exclaimed in mock-sob, and seized Cosette's hand from the rim of the tub,
"Oh Armand! Please do not go! Oh woe, oh fie, I shall be lost if thou diest! Oh my soul, oh my prince, kiss me now, kiss me thy last, and we shall not be parted long, I swear it!"
"Oh that the last thing I feel on this earth be thy lips! What bliss! I would go to hell a happy man, my sweet, splendid dove!"
"And I with thee, But kiss me now!" Eponine closed her eyes and puckered her lips. And Cosette, entirely caught up in the act, pulled Eponine to her and complied with Lisette's request.