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Title: Jane--Our Stranger: A Novel

Author: Mary Borden

Release date: October 19, 2021 [eBook #66568]

Language: English

Credits: Tim Lindell, Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JANE--OUR STRANGER: A NOVEL ***

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JANE--OUR STRANGER




_RECENT FICTION_


     THE WHITE MONKEY
         By JOHN GALSWORTHY

     BALISAND
         By JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER

     THREE PILGRIMS AND A TINKER
         By MARY BORDEN

     THE LAW OF THE THRESHOLD
         By FLORA A. STEEL

     SANDOVAL (A Romance of Bad Manners)
         By THOMAS BEER

     THE _MAJESTIC_ MYSTERY
         By DENIS MACKAIL

     THE FLORENTINE DAGGER
         By BEN HECHT


_LONDON
WILLIAM HEINEMANN LTD._




JANE--OUR STRANGER

A NOVEL

BY
MARY BORDEN

AUTHOR OF “THE ROMANTIC WOMAN”

[Illustration: Logo]


LONDON

WILLIAM HEINEMANN LTD.




_First published, 1923_
_New Impressions January, February, March,
April, August, 1924_


_Printed in Great Britain by Woods & Sons, Ltd., London, N.1._




PART I




I


It is a pity we do not die when our lives are finished. Jane may live
another twenty years--a long time to wait, alone between two worlds.
Jane is forty-three, I am five years older, Philibert is fifty-six, my
mother nearly eighty, we are all alive, and strangely enough _Maman_
is the only one whose life is not yet ended. Hers will not end till
the moment of her death. She has been a wise artist. She is still
embroidering delicately the pattern of her days; she still holds the
many threads in her fingers. Quietly, exquisitely she will put in the
last stitches. They will be the most beautiful of all; they will be her
signature, the signature of a lady. Then she will close her eyes and
commend her soul to God and the perfect work of her worldly wisdom will
be finished.

As for me, I see no reason why I should not live on indefinitely just
as I have done, and on the whole I am more comfortable here than in
Purgatory, a place that I imagine to be like the suburbs of London. I
see myself there, tapping with my crutch, along endless tramway lines
between interminable rows of dingy perky villas. This little street
in the Faubourg Saint Germain is much nicer. It is old and proud and
secretive; a good street for a cripple to live in; it shelters and
protects him. Once he has entered it he has no distance to go to get
home. It is usually deserted and the great pale houses show discreet
shuttered windows with no one behind the shutters to stare at him. I am
Philibert’s crippled brother. Something went wrong with me before I was
born. Nothing else of importance has ever happened to me, except Jane’s
marrying my brother.

Jane loved this little street. She said that it told her the story of
France and conveyed to her all the charm of the Paris she loved best,
the proud gentle mysterious Paris of the 18th century that with all its
fine reserved grandeur assumes modestly the look of a small provincial
town.

I came to live here when Philibert sold our house in the Rue de Varenne
that is just round the corner, and my mother went to her new apartment
near the Étoile. That was twenty years ago, and very little has changed
in the street since I came to these rooms at the bottom of this little
courtyard between Constantine’s big white house and the Embassy. The
little man who peddled bird-seed has vanished long ago, his voice is
no more to be heard chanting, but other street vendors still come by
with their sing-song calls. What indeed was there that could change,
save perhaps old Madame Barbier’s grocery shop at the corner, tucked
up against Constantine’s stable wall? But even Madame Barbier has
remained the same. Her hair is as smooth and glossy black, her tight
corsage as neat, and her trim window with its glass jars of honey and
the nice bright boxes of groceries is as it always has been. A thrifty
respectable woman is Madame Barbier, with a pleasant word for her
neighbours. For the rest, on the opposite side of the street there is
the convent, with its pointed roof and the chapel belfry showing above
the wall, and there are the five big houses with their great gates that
make up the whole length of the street. Not a long street--often when
I turn into it at one end, I recognize a familiar figure going out of
it at the other, the good Abbé perhaps going home after confessing the
sisters in the convent, or old Madame d’Avrécourt in her shabby black
jacket, her fine little withered face under her bonnet, wearing its
habitual enigmatic smile. Monsieur l’Abbé says that her voluminous
petticoats are heavy with the sacred charms she has sewn into the
hems, and that may well be; I know that her devotion is very great and
her interest in the outside world very small, and the sight of her is
comforting to me.

It is so quiet here, and so confined. It is like a cloister--or a
prison--I am glad of that.

Tonight, Good Friday night, I can hear the good sisters in the chapel
singing. The mysticism of their haunting chant penetrates the walls
of this old house, and tonight because of their lamenting, because of
their dread disciplined agony of supplication, the street is immensely
deep and high, whereas yesterday it was just small and dim and worldly,
with its houses blinking over its walls, a proud battered deceiving old
street, hiding the rare beauty of its dwellings, guarding the secrets
of its families behind mute shutters, till the day it should crumble
to pieces or an insolent government should turn it upside down like an
ash-bin.

It never, of course, could get used to Jane. Who of us did get used
to Jane? Did I myself? Wasn’t she a big troubling problem to us all
till the very end? How could we not be afraid of her? Poor magnificent
Jane--fine timid innocent child--dangerous nature woman--dreadful
crying message from a new bellowing land--what was she? What was she
not? How could she fit in here? She was as strange here as a leopard
beautifully moving down the grey narrow pavement. How she used to
frighten the good Abbé. I have seen him scuttle into a neighbouring
doorway to let her pass, as if there were no room for him along the
stones she walked so grandly. It was true. There was no room for any
one but Jane when she came, and now that she is gone never to come back
again, the place is as dreary and empty as an abandoned cemetery and
the light is as insipidly pale as the half shadow in a sick room. She
has left a sickness in this place, because she came here sometimes to
see me--and won’t come any more.

And yet I stay on here. I shall stay here always. I have no reason
to go anywhere now that I have been to America to see Jane, and have
come back with the accurate awful knowledge of the great distance
between us. Ah, that wide sea, that New York, a high cold gate into
a strange over-powering country, those immense prairies, and those
tiny farm houses, with tiny women watching the train; Jane, a tiny
woman, Jane a speck, in a town that is a dot on the map. I will write
down Jane’s story. I will remember it all, everything that she told
me and everything that I saw, and will put it all down exactly with
perfect precision and accuracy, and then, perhaps I shall understand
her. Poor Jane--she wanted to understand life. She believed always
that there was a reason for things, an ultimate reason and a purpose.
She was no philosopher, she was a woman of faith. She should have been
the wife of a pioneer, the wife of such a man as Isak, who went into
the wilderness with a sack over his shoulder. Jane was made for such
a man. I can see them together going out under the sky, he, grave,
deep-chested, long-limbed, “a barge of a man,” and beside him a woman
like a ship, moving proudly. And she married Philibert. Could any
one who has ever seen her with Philibert miss the meaning of their
extraordinary contrast? Philibert with his clever jaunty little body,
his exaggerated elegance, his cold blue eyes and his impudent charm.
She made him look like a toy man. She could have broken him in two with
her hands. Why didn’t she? It is a long story. People say that American
women are very adaptable, very imitative. Jane wasn’t. She never became
the least like us, except in looks and that meant nothing. Paquin and
Chéruit and Philibert did that for her almost at once, but her looks,
even without their aid, were always a disguise, never a revelation of
her self. Some women are all of a piece with their charming exteriors,
Jane was a child cased in armour. As she grew older she learned to
use it, she made it answer, but she used it to become something she
was not. I call up her image as I write. I evoke Jane as she was that
last year in Paris, the most elegant woman in Europe, the most stared
at, and the most indifferent. I remember the cold hard nonchalance
that so frightened people she did not like, and the brilliant metallic
grace that rippled over her like gleaming light when she was pleased.
I remember her excessive hauteur in public, the disdainful carriage
of her strange head that was like a coin fashioned by some morose
craftsman of Benvenuto Cellini’s time. I recall the sidelong glitter of
her little green eyes. I remember her in public places, towering above
other women like an idol, mute, glittering, enigmatic, her curious
profile with its protruding lower lip, the tight close bands of jewels
round her forehead. What a figure of splendour she was in those days,
when Philibert had done breaking her heart; and when at the age of
forty she had ceased to care and had reached the perfection of her
physical type.

I think of her as she was when her mother brought her to Paris and
married her to Philibert; a great strapping girl with a beautiful body
and an ugly sullen face that deceived us all. How could one see behind
it? Can one blame them? I alone caught a glimpse. And she developed
slowly in our artificial soil. It took twenty years for her to become a
woman of the world, une grande dame. That was what they made of her. I
say they, but I suppose I mean primarily Philibert. It is horrible to
think of how much Philibert had to do with making her what she finally
was. And Bianca had a hand in it too. That is even worse.

We had realized the moment of Jane’s apotheosis. We had seen her
beautifully and gravely spread her wings. We held our breath, waited
entranced, and then, just then, she disappeared. Suddenly we lost her.

I refer, now, to our group, the little Bohemian group of kindred
spirits who loved Jane; Ludovic, Felix, Clémentine and the others.
Extraordinary that these friends of mine should have been the ones to
love Jane best. They were a gay lot of sinners, quite impossible judged
by any standard but their own. My mother only knew of their existence,
through Clémentine. She has always been in the habit of discussing
artists and writers as if they were dead. It was distressing to her
that Clémentine who was related to her by blood and had married a
Bourbon, should have held herself and her name so cheap as to consort
with men and women of obscure origin and problematical genius. As for
me, a man could do as he liked within measure, if he did not forget
to keep up appearances. She regarded my friendship for my wonderful
Ludovic and all the rest of them as a substitute for the more usual
and less troublesome clandestine affairs of the ordinary bachelor. As
I could never “_faire la noce_” like other men I was allowed these
dissipations of the mind, but _maman_ never forgave me for introducing
Ludovic to Jane. Dearest mother--it was no use telling her that Ludovic
was the greatest scholar of his day. I didn’t try to explain. After all
Ludovic needed no championing from me. I had wanted to do something
for Jane; I had wanted to relieve in some way the awful pressure of
her big bleak dazzling situation. Hemmed in by the complications of my
relationship to her, how many times had I not groaned over the fact
that she had been married by that awful mother of hers to the head of
our house and not to some one else’s devilish elder brother, instead
of to mine, I had pondered and tormented myself over a way of helping
her that would not give Philibert the chance of coming down on me and
shutting the big strong door of his house in my face, and at length
my opportunity had come. It had seemed to me that for her at last
the battle was over, and that she had achieved the desolate freedom
which we could turn into enjoyment. Fan Ivanoff was dead. Bianca had
disappeared. As for Philibert, he had grown tired of bothering her.
Her sufferings no longer amused him. Her loneliness was complete.
Although still to my eyes a figure of drama while we were essentially
merry prosy people, she appeared to me to have acquired that spiritual
mastery of events which made her one of us. I had reckoned without her
child, Geneviève.

How could I have understood then the fear with which she contemplated
her daughter’s future? And even supposing that I had understood
everything, and had the gift of seeing into that future and had beheld
the shadow of that lovely monster Bianca swooping down on Jane again to
drive her to extremity, even supposing I had known what was going to
happen and how that would take her away from us forever, I still could
have done nothing more than I did do. It had seemed to me that we could
provide her with a refuge, and so we did for a time. If Paris were to
offer her any reward, any consolation, any comfort, then such a reward
and such comfort was, I felt sure, to be found in the sympathy of
these people who had gravitated to one another, out of the heavy mass
of humanity that populated the earth, like sparks flying upwards to
meet above the smoke and heat of the crowd in a clear lighted space of
mental freedom. I gave her the best I had; I gave her my friends; and
if they thought she had come to them to stay, well then so did I. Our
mistake lay in thinking that because we were sufficient to each other
we must be sufficient to Jane as well. I do not believe it occurred
to any one of us how little we really counted for her; I, at least
never knew it until the other day. Actually I had never realized that
her soul was always craving something more, something like a heavenly
certitude or a divine revelation.

Conceited? I suppose we were; but then you see the world did knock at
our door for admittance. We had all literary and artistic Europe to
choose from, and we did realize the things we talked of. I mean that
we translated our thoughts into things people could see, ballets,
pictures, bits of music. We worked out our ideas for the mob to gape
at, and our success could be measured by the bitter hostility of such
people as Philibert, who fancied himself as a patron of the arts--a
kind of François I--and found us difficult to patronize.

Jane realized our worth of course. She had a touching reverence for our
ability. She saw clearly the distinct worlds represented by my mother,
and Ludovic; the one exquisite and sterile, beautifully still as a
sealed room with panelled walls inhabited by wax figures; the other
disordered and merry, convulsed by riotous fancies, where daring people
indulged their caprices, scoffed at facts and respected intellect.

What Jane did not realize was the humanity underlying this life of
ours. She thought us uncanny, but she could have trusted us in her
trouble. And we on our side did not know that we did not satisfy her.
After all, for the rest of us our deep feeling of well-being in one
another’s company was like a divine assurance, an absolute ultimate
promise. It was all the heavenly revelation we needed. When we gathered
round Clémentine’s dinner-table with the long windows opening out
of the high shabby room into the shadowy garden where we could hear
during the momentary hush of our voices the note of its flutey tinkling
fountain, or when we settled deep in those large worn friendly chairs
before Ludovic’s fire on a winter’s night, in the cosy gloom of his
overcharged bookshelves, it would come to us over and over again, like
the repeated sense of a divine conviction, that this exquisite essence
of human intercourse was nothing less than what we had been born for.

Jane could never have had that feeling, but we thought she shared it
with us. We did not know about that deep relentless urge in Jane that
was as inevitable as the rising tide. We never took seriously enough
her fear of God.

And so when she went away they thought--Ludovic and Clémentine and
the rest of them--“She will be here tomorrow, she will come back just
as she was, and she will find us just where she left us.” And they
continued to talk about her as if she had left them but an hour before
to go and show herself as she was often obliged to do in some great
bright hideous salon. Her chair was always there by Ludovic’s fireside,
and they took account in their discussions of her probable point of
view, as if she’d been there with them. There was something touching in
their expectancy. There was that in their manner to remind one of the
simple fidelity of peasants who lay the place of the absent one every
night at table. The truth did not occur to them, and I who wanted to be
deceived let their confidence communicate itself to me. I told myself
that they were right, that she was bound to come back, that they had
formed in her the habit of living humourously as they did, that they
had given her a taste for things she would not find elsewhere, and that
she would never be content to live now in that big blank new continent
across the Atlantic. The word Atlantic made me shiver. I must have had
a premonition; I must have known that I was going to cross it, urged
out upon that cold turbulent waste of horrid water by a forlorn hope
and an anguished desire to see her once more.

I hugged to myself during those days of suspense my feeling of the
irresistible appeal of my city. Had Jane not told me, one day on
returning from Como, that in spite of the problems her life held for
her here, she experienced nevertheless each time she went away such
a poignant home-sickness for Paris, its streets, its sounds, its
river-banks and its buildings, that she invariably came back in a
tremor of fear, positively “jumpy” at the thought that perhaps during
her absence it had changed or disappeared off the map altogether? If
she felt like this after a month’s sojourn in Italy, what had I now
to fear I asked myself? Had we not initiated her into the very secret
heart of Paris? Was there a remnant of an old and lovely building that
we had not shown her, or a fragment of sculpture or a picture worth
looking at to which we had not introduced her? Had she not come to feel
with us the difference of the temperature and tone of the streets, the
excitement of the jangling boulevards, the bland oblivion of the Place
de la Concorde, the ghostliness of the Place des Vosges, the intimate
provincial secretiveness of our own old peaceable quarter? Had not
Ludovic called into being for her out of the embers of his fire the
historic scenes that had been enacted in all these and a hundred other
places? Had he not made the whole rich fantastic past of our city
unroll itself before her eyes? Was it a little thing to be allowed to
drink at the source of so much humanized knowledge? Where in that new
country of hers would she find so fanciful and patient and tender a
friend as this great scholar?

So I piled up the evidence, and then when her letter came I knew that
I had foreseen the truth, and when I took them the news and they all
cried out to me--“Go and bring her back, and don’t come back without
her”--I knew while their high commanding voices were still sounding
in my ears that already I had made up my mind to go, and I knew too,
lastly and finally, that I would not be able to bring her back.

She had enclosed in her letter to me a note for them which I gave
to Clémentine, who read it and passed it on. One after another they
scanned its meagre lines in silence. I saw that Ludovic’s hand was
shaking. When he had finished he closed his eyes for a moment and his
head jerked forward. I noticed in the light of the lamp how white he
had grown in the last year, and how the yellow tint of his pallor had
deepened. Clémentine said looking at me--“It is not intelligible.
Perhaps you can explain.” And I was given the sheet of paper covered
with Jane’s large careless scrawl:


     “Dear Friends,” I read, “I am not coming back. I am here alone
     with the ghost of my Aunt Patty in the house where I lived as a
     child. It is a wooden house with a verandah at the back. There
     are snow-drifts on the verandah. I am trying to find out what it
     has all been about--my life, I mean. If I believed that I would
     understand over there on the other side of death, then perhaps
     I would not be bound to stay here now, but I know that Ludovic
     is right, and that the hope of eternal punishment like that of
     immortal bliss and satisfied knowledge is just the fiction of our
     vanity. My punishment is on me now, since among other things I
     have to give you up.

     “JANE.”


They had cried out at me when I told them, but after reading the letter
they were silent. It was as if they had been brushed by the wings of
some strange fearful messenger from another world, as if some departed
spirit were present. We might all have been sitting in the dark with
invisible clammy hands touching our hair, so nervous had we become. The
fall of a charred log in the fireplace made us jump.

Felix forced a laugh. “The ghost of her Aunt Patty,” he mocked
dismally. “Now what does she mean by that?”

“Her Aunt Patty was the person who took care of her as a child. Miss
Patience Forbes her name was. She seems to have been a remarkable
character. Jane often spoke of her.”

My words only added to their mystification. An old maid in America,
dead now, a remarkable character. What had she to do with them? What
power had she over their brilliant courageous Jane? Were they nothing
that they could be replaced by the wraith of an old puritan spinster?

The room seemed to grow chilly. Some one put a fresh log on the fire.
A little fitful wind was whimpering at the windows. Now and then a
gust of rain pattered against the glass with a light rapid sound like
finger-tips tapping. Felix had wandered away down the long dim room,
his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched as he stood with
his back to us, and his nose close to the packed shelves of books
against the farther wall. The tiny gilt letterings on the old bindings
glimmered faintly in the lamplight. He seemed to be searching among all
those little dim signs for an explanation. Far away beyond the network
of gardens and old muffling houses one heard from some distant street
the hoot of a motor. From the translucent depths of gleaming glass
cabinets the small mute mysterious figures of jewelled heathen gods and
little bronze Buddhas and curious carved jade monsters looked out at us
as if through sheets of water.

Under the aged shadowy eaves of that room, full of strange old symbols
and rare books and still rarer manuscripts, where so many ideas and
faiths and records had been sifted, examined and relegated to dusty
recesses, its occupants remained silent, staring at the new disturbing
object of their mystification. Clémentine, tucked into a corner of the
sofa, her boyish head that she dyed such a bad colour, on her hand,
scrutinized the tip of her foot that she held high as if for better
observation, in one of her characteristic angular attitudes. Her
slipper dangled loose from her toe; now and then she gave it a jerk of
annoyance.

They tried to take in the meaning of what they had read. The emotional
content of that scrawled page was so strange to them as to appear
almost shocking. They were rather frightened. Here indeed their
philosophy of laughter broke down, for they loved Jane and could not
make fun of her superstitions.

“We were never hard on her. We treated her gently.”

“Even when her seriousness bored us we were patient.”

“She can’t have loved us. We have never really known her then, after
all.”

Clémentine jerked about. “I was always wanting her to take lovers. She
wanted me to give up mine. Poor child--we were friends all the same.”

Felix’s falsetto came down to us in a shrill wail of exasperation.

“But we never attacked her religion. We left her alone. We were good to
her.”

Clémentine nodded. “Yes, we were good.”

I remembered the day I had first brought Jane to them, clothed in her
silks and sables, glittering with the garish light of her millions and
her high cold social activities. I had brought her straight from the
preposterous palace she had let Philibert build her to this deep dim
nook where we laughed and scoffed at the world she lived in. I had been
nervous then. I had been afraid they would find her impossible. But
they had seen through the barbarous trappings, intelligent souls that
they were. Hadn’t she realized how they had honoured her? Hadn’t she
known what dependable people they were?

I heard Clémentine say it again. “We were good, but she thought we
were wicked because we broke the ten commandments. She thought a lot of
the ten commandments.”

“It was the puritan spinster looking at us over her shoulder all the
time.”

And still they pondered and puzzled, bewildered, depressed, at a loss,
annoyed by their incapacity to picture to themselves even so much as
the place where she was, alone at that moment. “St. Mary’s Plains,
Mohican County, Michigan” was the address she gave. What an address to
expect any one to take seriously. If it had been a joke the mixture of
images would perhaps have conveyed something to them, but as a serious
geographic sign they could do nothing with it. It had the character
of a new glazed billboard, of a big glaring advertisement for some
parvenu’s patent. To think of Jane sitting down away off there in
the middle of a desert under it was too much for them. But the very
outrageousness of the enigma helped them.

“She couldn’t do it from inclination,” some one of them said at last.
“There must have been something terrible.”

Then it was that Ludovic startled us. He spoke slowly as if to himself.

“She was only beginning to learn how little conduct has to do with
life. For others she had come to understand that what one does has
little or no relation to what one is. I am convinced that she, poor
child, is persuaded that she has committed some dreadful crime.”

But it was Clémentine who said the last word that I carried away with
me.

“If she hadn’t married into your family,” she said, glaring out at me
from the door of her taxi, “she would have been all right. Why, she
should have chosen Philibert--”

“But, _chérie amie_, she didn’t. It was her mother who did it all.”

“Rubbish! She loved him. She loves him still.”




II


My mother was a Mirecourt. The family was of a prouder nobility than
my father’s. Her people were of the _Grand Chevaux de Lorraine_. They
fought with the English against the kings of France in the fourteenth
century. One reads about them as fighters during several hundreds of
years beginning with the Crusades. Sometimes they were on the right
side, sometimes on the wrong. Later generations were not proud of the
part they played in the siege of Orleans. But they were proud people
and acted on caprice or in self-interest with a sublime belief in
themselves. They did not like kings and were loth to give allegiance
to any one. When Louis XI took away their lands, they went over to the
king, but it is to be gathered from the letters of the time that they
considered no king their equal. Richelieu was too much for them. He
reduced them to poverty. To repair the damage the head of the family
made a bourgeois marriage. They were sure of themselves in those days.
Marrying money caused them no uneasiness nor fear of ridicule. My
mother said one day when talking of Philibert and Jane--“We have done
this sort of thing before but always with people of our own race who
had a proper attitude. With foreigners one never knows.”

My father was a Breton. Anne of Brittany was the liege lady of his
people. His _aieux_ were worthy gentlemen who played an obscure but
on the whole respectable part in history. An occasional spendthrift
appeared now and then among them to add gaiety to their monotonous
lives. The spendthrifts being few and the tenacity of the others very
great, they amassed a considerable fortune and were ennobled by Louis
XIV: a fact of which my aunt Clothilde used occasionally to remind us.
Aunt Clothilde was my father’s sister. She had made a great match in
marrying the first Duke of France, but she seemed to think nothing of
that nor to have any consciousness of the obligations of her class.
She made fun of the legitimists, scoffed at the idea of a restoration
and despised the Duc d’Orleans for the way he behaved in England. She
and my mother did not get on. My mother thought her vulgar. She was,
but it didn’t detract from her being a very great lady. She was always
enormously fat, a greedy, wicked old thing, with a ribald mind, but
with a tremendous _chic_. Philibert called her _La Gargantua_. She was
Rabelaisian somehow. I liked her. She never seemed conscious of my
being different from other men, and she was kinder to Jane than the
others.

There were a great many others. We made a large clan. It seemed strange
to Jane that half the people in Paris were our cousins or uncles or
aunts. But of course it is like that. One is related to everybody.

As a family we had the reputation of having very nice manners. It was
thought that we knew very well how to make ourselves agreeable and what
was more characteristic, how to be disagreeable without giving offense.
My mother was reputed to be the only woman in Paris who could refuse an
invitation to dinner in the same house six times running without making
an enemy of its mistress. My mother was perpetually penning little
plaintive notes of regret. She was greatly sought after and stayed
very much at home. After my father’s death it became more and more
difficult to get her to go anywhere, but she liked being asked so that
she could refuse. The result was that she became something precious,
inapproachable, a legend of good form and grace and she remained this
always. I have on my table a miniature of her painted when she was
married, at the age of eighteen. She was never a beauty. A slip of a
thing, gentle and pale, with dark ringlets and very bright intelligent
eyes. Her power of seduction was a thing that emanated from her like
a perfume, indefinable and elusive. Claire, my sister, has the same
quality.

One of my mother’s special pleasures as she grew older consisted in
having her dinner in bed on some grand gala evening, and telling
herself that she was the only lady of any importance in Paris who had
refused to be present. Sometimes on such evenings she would send for
me to come and sit with her for an hour. I would find her propped
up on her pillows, her eyes glowing with animation under the soft
old-fashioned frill of her voluminous boudoir cap, and presently I
would become aware that she was submitting me to all the play of her
wit and her charm, and I would know that out of a pure spirit of
contradiction she was giving me, her poor ugly duckling, the treat
that she had withheld from that brilliant gathering, whether to amuse
me most or herself it would be difficult to tell. We understand each
other. Her manner to me was always perfect. It was a beautiful and
elaborate denial of the fact that my deformity was unpleasant to
her. She went to a lot of trouble to pretend that she liked having
me about. If she wanted a cab called in the rain and there wasn’t a
servant handy--we didn’t have too many--it was a part of her delicacy
to ask me to do it rather than have me think that she had my infirmity
constantly on her mind. If she required an escort to some public place
she would choose me rather than Philibert, but she would not always
choose me, lest I should come to feel that she forced herself to do
so. She had the humblest way of asking my advice, and then when she
did not take it, went to the most childlike manœuvres to deceive me
and make me think she had. When I came back from school in England, I
remember wondering what she would do about me and her friends. She had
an evening a week and received on these occasions a number of stiff old
gentlemen and gossipy dowagers, a handful of priests and all the aunts
and uncles and cousins. The question for her was whether she should
inflict on me the penance of talking to these people in order to show
me that she liked to have me about, or whether she would let me off
attendance and trust to my superior understanding to assume that I was
in her eyes presentable. I believe she would have decided on the latter
bolder plan, had I not taken the matter out of her hands by asking her
to excuse me. Her answer was characteristic.

“But naturally, _mon enfant_. You don’t suppose that I think these
old people fit company for you. Only if it’s not indiscreet, tell me
sometimes about your doings. I, at least, am not too old nor yet too
young to be told.”

Dear mother. She would have gone to the length of imputing to me a
dozen mistresses if she had thought that would help me. And yet in
spite of it all, perhaps just because of it all, I knew that the sight
of me was intolerable to her. But this I feel sure was a thing that she
never knew that I knew. It was a part of my business in life never to
let her find it out.

My being sent to England to school had been to me a proof. Though
my father had taken the decision I knew it was to get me out of my
mother’s way. It was not the habit of our family to send its sons
abroad for their education. Philibert had had tutors at home. None
of my cousins had gone away. We were as a clan not at all given to
travelling. In the extreme sensitiveness that engulfed me like an
illness during a certain period of my youth, I had told myself bitterly
that I was banished because they could not abide the sight of me, but
my bitterness did not last, thank God; and when after my father’s death
I came home to live, I set myself to matching my mother’s delicacy with
my own. I arranged to convey to her the impression of being always at
hand and yet I managed to be actually in her presence a minimum of
time. I did things for her that I could do without being aggravatingly
near her; such things as running errands and visiting her lawyer and
looking after her meagre investments, accumulating these duties while
at the same time I withdrew more and more from sharing in her social
activities.

I had kept, for reasons of economy and in order to be near her, my
apartment in a wing of her house over the porter’s lodge, in that part
of the building that screened the house from the street. My windows
looked on the one side across the street into some gardens and on the
other side into our court yard. From my dressing-room I had a view of
my mother’s graceful front door with the wide shallow steps before it
and the gravel expanse of the inner carriage drive. Sometimes when I
came home in the evening, Madame Oui, the _concierge’s_ wife, would tap
on the glass in her door that was just opposite my own little entrance
behind the great double portals that barred us into our stronghold, and
would tell me that my mother had come in and would like to see me. Or I
would find a note bidding me come to her lying on my table. She wrote
me a great number of notes, sprightly amusing missives that reminded
one of the fact that Frenchwomen have been for centuries mistresses in
the art of letter-writing. They gave me the news, recounted the latest
family gossip, contained tips as to how to behave if I came across an
aunt who owed her money, or an uncle who had lent her some, warned me
against this or that person whom she did not want to see any more,
asked me to pay a call on one of her ancient followers who was in bed
with a cold, enclosed a tiresome bill that she hadn’t the money to pay
immediately, or implored me in witty phrases of complaint to use my
influence with Philibert and try to get him away from some woman: in
all of which matters I did my best to meet her wishes save as regarded
my brother. “My influence with Philibert” was one of my mother’s least
successful fictions. I wonder even now that she kept it up. I suppose
it would have seemed to her shocking to admit even tacitly that her
two sons never spoke to each other if they could help it. Yet she must
have known that although he lived nominally in my mother’s house up to
the time of his marriage I scarcely ever saw him unless at a distance
in some crowded salon. The few mutual friends we possessed never asked
us to dinner or lunch together, and strangely enough in the one place
where we might often have happened to come across one another, that
is in my mother’s own boudoir, we never did meet. My mother must have
managed this. She must have manœuvred to prevent such encounters. She
arranged to see us always separately and yet continued to talk to us,
each to the other, as if she supposed that beyond her door we were
amusing ourselves together, thick as thieves.

She would say--“I hear this latest friend of Philibert’s whom he has so
made the mode this year, is really quite pretty. Tell me what she looks
like,”--assuming me to be perfectly aware of this affair. Or--“Your
brother’s new tailor is not successful at all. He gives him the most
exaggerated shoulders. Fifi is not tall enough to stand it. I wish you
would get him to go back to the old one.” Or even--“Tell me what your
brother is up to. I never see him.” As if I knew what Philibert was up
to.

My rare meetings with him took place at my sister’s. She used sometimes
to have us at her house together. Her husband would bring him home to
lunch unexpectedly, or I would drop in unbidden and find him there.
Poor Claire had married the biggest automobile works in the country,
and had been taken to Neuilly and shut up there in a gigantic villa.
She was finding that it tasked her philosophical docility to the utmost
to meet the demands of the uxorious individual who paid all her bills
from his own cheque book and was generous only in the way of supplying
her with babies. She had had four in six years, and her health was a
source of anxiety to my mother, who was frankly exasperated by the turn
her daughter’s affairs had taken.

“My dear,” she said to me one night on her return from Neuilly, “I
supposed that that man had married Claire to get into society, and now
that I’ve given her to him he has taken her off to the wilderness.
I don’t know what to make of it. The poor child is wasting away. He
simply never leaves her alone. They go to bed together every night at
ten o’clock. It is horrible.”

Claire may have bemoaned her lot to my mother in those long
tête-à-têtes of theirs, but she never complained to me, nor did she,
I believe, to Philibert, who was in the habit of borrowing money from
her large, oily, sleek-headed husband. She had some of my mother’s
mannerisms, her little way of quickly moving her head backwards with
the slightest toss; the same light flexible utterance; the same sigh
and sudden droop of irrepressible languor. I believe her to be the
only person of whom Philibert was ever unselfishly fond. She pleased
him. Her physical frailty, appealed to his taste which was in reality
so fastidious, however vulgar some of his amusements might be, and her
mocking spirit was congenial to him. When one thought of Claire one
thought of her dark shadowed eyes with the deep circles under them
marking the tender cheeks, and her truly beautiful smile. She was
a collection of odd beauties combined in a way to make one’s heart
ache, but there was something sharp in her--something hurting. Lovely
Claire, cynical siren, how caressingly she spoke to me, how she drew
out of my heart its tenderness, and how often she disappointed me. Not
brave enough to be happy, far too intelligent not to know what she was
missing, she took refuge in self-mockery and when faced with a crisis
subsided into complete passivity.

One evening in the early summer, more than twenty years ago now, I
found a note from my mother tucked in the crack of my door asking me to
come to her at once as she had news for me of the utmost importance.
I found my sister with her, and something in the attitude of the two
women, who were so closely akin as to reproduce each one the same
physical pose under the stress of a deep preoccupation, conveyed to
me a suspicion that Philibert had that moment skipped out through the
long open window. They sat, each in a high brocaded chair, their heads
thrown back against their respective cushions, their hands limp in
their laps and their eyes half-closed. I thought for an instant that
both had fainted. My mother was the first to make a sign. She lifted an
arm and in silence pointed a finger at a chair for me.

“Your brother,” she said, when once I was seated, “has sold this house
over my head. He is going to be married.”

“To a little American girl,” breathed Claire.

“The fortune is immense,” added my mother.

“The daughter of that awful smart Mrs. Carpenter,” said Claire, opening
wide her eyes the better to take in the horror.

“She asked me three times to luncheon,” said my mother. “I have never
seen her.”

I looked from one to the other--“But if the fortune is immense--” I
ventured.

“It is all tied up,” wailed my mother. “Her trustees insist on his
debts being paid beforehand. I understand nothing--but nothing.” Her
head dropped forward. She pressed her thumb and forefinger against her
worn eyelids. She began to cry.

Claire, with a strange sidelong look at her expressive of compassion
and exasperation and wonder, got up and walked to the window and stood
with her back to us looking out into the garden.

“I should have thought my son-in-law would have saved me this
humiliation,” said my mother, fumbling with her left hand for her
handkerchief. “But Claire says he has already lent Philibert very
considerable sums.” I saw my sister’s slender figure stiffen. “What
curious people Americans are. It seems that the father made such a
will as passes belief. The child comes into the entire fortune but can
only dispose of the income. The mother has an annuity, Claire says
it must be a big one as she entertains a great deal. Why did you not
tell me your brother was getting so dreadfully into debt? The girl is
just eighteen. It appears that in America girls reach their majority
at eighteen. Her name is Jane. A most unpleasant name. Philibert says
she is not pretty. These _mésalliances_ are so tiresome. If only he
could have married that exquisite little Bianca. I shall be obliged to
receive the mother. I am sure she has a very strong accent.”

My poor mother stretched out her hand to me. “What is to become of
us?” she wailed gently. I felt very sorry for her. I understood that
she was afraid of the invasion of a horde of big noisy strangers. I
tried to comfort her. She seemed to me for the first time pitiful, and
I saw that her youthfulness was after all, just one of the illusions
she cast by the exercise of her will. It fell from her that evening as
if it had been some gossamer veil destroyed by her tears.

Claire remained silent. Only once during all my mother’s broken lament
did she speak, and then she said without turning--“I should have
thought one such marriage in a family was enough.”

It transpired that Philibert needed five hundred thousand francs to put
him straight, that the house was being sold for a million and that the
remaining half was my mother’s, since they owned the property between
them. He had brought her the deed of sale to sign that afternoon, and
had gone away with the signature in his pocket. She said--“Naturally I
could not refuse. It is not as if he could have sold half the building.”

I felt humiliated for my mother. It seemed to me that my brother had
injured her in a most offensive way. There was a kind of indecency
about the proceeding that made me ashamed. It was the kind of thing
I had hoped we were none of us capable of doing. He was taking away
from her not only her shelter and security, but a part of her own
personality. It was as outrageous as if he had forced her to cut off
her hair and had taken it round to a wigmaker to turn into a handful
of gold. I saw that without that fine old house, so like her own self
expressed in architecture, with its bland and graceful exterior and
delicate ornamented rooms, she would lose a vital part of her entity.
She was not one of those people whose public and private selves are
distinct. The proud little bright-eyed lady who drove out of those
stately doors in her brougham to dispense finely gradated smiles to the
meticulously selected people of her acquaintance, and the passionate
intriguing mother so given to subterfuges of kindness and ineffable
make-believe of disinterested affection, were one and the same
person. She had no special manner for the world. There was no homely
naturalness for her to subside into, no loose woolly dressing-gown of
conduct and no rough carpet slippers of laziness to don in the presence
of her family or by her lonely self. What she was when in attendance
on the Bourbons that she was in her own silent bedroom. Even about her
weeping there was a certain style. Her tears were pitiful but not ugly.
They had destroyed the illusion of her youthfulness, but they had not
marred her elegance. There was measure and appropriateness and dramatic
worth in her weeping. Her son had not broken her heart or her spirit;
he had merely dragged off some of her clothing. She stood denuded,
impoverished, a little shrunken in stature, that was all. It was that
that enraged me. I said--“What a brute.” My mother pulled me up sharply.

“My son,” she said to me, with more of haughtiness than I had ever
seen in her manner to any one of us. “I have consented to do what your
brother has asked. I have approved of his conduct. That is sufficient.”

I felt then the finality, the hopelessness. I believe I smiled. The
change was sudden. It had always been like that with mother. She might
complain of Philibert but no one could criticize him to her.

“Ah, well,” I said, “if you have made up your mind to accept her--”

Mother lifted her head quickly. “Whom?”

“Your new daughter-in-law.”

I am almost sure that she turned pale. I cannot have imagined it. Her
words too, gave me the same painful impression.

“I have accepted it, not her, as yet.”

And suddenly I thought of the girl, Jane Carpenter, whom I had not yet
laid eyes on, with an immense pity.

“Yes,” said Claire, coming back to us, and looking at us with her
least charming, most bitterly mocking air. “We prepare a nice welcome
for her. I wonder how she will like us.”

But my mother had the last word.

“We shall, I presume, know how to make ourselves agreeable,” she said,
putting away her handkerchief into her little silk bag. I saw that she
would shed no more tears over the girl, Jane Carpenter.




III


Mrs. Carpenter was an American who apologized for her own country. She
had found it incapable of providing a sufficient field of activity for
her social talents and called it crude. The phrase on her lips was
funny. There was much about her that was funny, since one could not in
the face of her bright brisk self-satisfaction call her pathetic.

The flattery of such migrations as hers is mystifying to Parisians
like myself, who know that our city is the most delightful place in
the world, but do not quite understand why so many foreigners like
Mrs. Carpenter should find it so. She seemed to derive an immense
satisfaction from the fact that she lived in Paris. But why? Where
lay the magic difference between her Paris and her New York? She had
established herself in a large bright apartment in the Avenue du Bois
de Bologne. Her rent was high, her furniture expensive, her table
lavish, her motor had pale grey cushions and silver trimmings. All
these things she could have had in New York. She might have paid a
little more for them over there, but that would only have added to her
pleasure. She liked to pay high prices for things. It may be that I
am doing her an injustice. There were moments when her indefatigable
pursuit of us all filled me with scornful pity and made me think that
she did hide under her breezy successful manner a wistful and romantic
admiration for things that were foreign and old, and a touching respect
for things she did not understand. She once told me that she had wanted
to take an old hotel in our quarter, something with atmosphere and a
history and old-world charm. But somehow she had not found what she
wanted. The houses she saw were dark and gloomy and insanitary. They
were wonderfully romantic but they had no bathrooms. She had wanted
one in particular, had wanted it awfully, but the owner had insisted
on staying on in little rooms under the roof, which meant his using
her front stairs, so at last she had given up the idea. Her apartment
was certainly not gloomy. It glittered with gold--golden walls, gold
plate, gilt chairs. She ended by liking it immensely, but was sometimes
a little ashamed of being so pleased with it. Perhaps, at odd moments,
she called it crude.

I used to go there sometimes, long before Jane came to Paris. I am
sorry now that I did. Had I known Mrs. Carpenter was going to be,
for me, Jane’s mother, I would not have gone. It is not nice to
remember that I used to make fun of Jane’s mother, and accept her
hospitality with amused contempt. We all did. She was to us an object
of good-humoured derision. Poor old Izzy. She fed us so well; she
begged us so continually to come. She seemed to derive such pleasure
from hearing the butler announce our names. I am sure she believed that
awful flat of hers to be the social centre of a very distinguished
society. The more of a mixture the better to her mind:--Austrians,
Hungarians, Poles,--she liked having princes about, and their dark
furtive eyes and beautifully manicured hands filled her with joy. It
was only after Philibert got hold of her that she began to understand
that perhaps, after all, too cosmopolitan a salon was not quite the
thing. Philibert took her in hand. He had learned somehow about Jane.
He already had his idea.

And now I come upon a curious problem. I find that two distinct Mrs.
Carpenters exist in my mind, and I cannot reconcile them. One was a
beautiful romantic creature whom Jane--far away in the Grey House in
St. Mary’s Plains--called mother and wrote to once a week and loved
with a pure flame of loyalty; the other was Izzy Carpenter, whose
loud voice and tall elastic fashionable figure was so well-known
in Paris: Busy Izzy, who was run by Philibert, and a group of young
ne’er-do-weels. I find it very difficult to realize that this jolly
slangy woman, with curly grey hair and a blue eye that could give a
broad wink on occasion, was identical with the figure of poetry Jane
dreamed about night after night in her little restless cot at the
foot of her Aunt Patty’s four-poster bed. It is disturbing to think
that even about this decided hard-edged vivacious woman there should
have been such a difference of opinion, such a contrast of received
impressions as to make one wonder whether she had any corporeal
existence at all. I think of that stern humorous spinster Patience
Forbes comforting the child who was always asking questions about her
mother; I think of her taking the aching young thing on her gaunt knees
in the old rocking chair with its knitted worsted cushion, and lulling
that troubled eager mind to rest with stories of her mother’s childhood.

I can see the grim face of Patience Forbes while she searches her
memory for pleasant things about her heartless prodigal sister. She
sits in a bay window looking out into the back garden where there is
a sleepy twittering of birds. The trams thunder past up Desmoine’s
Avenue. The milkman comes up the path; the white muslin curtains
billow into the peaceful room that smells of lavender and mint. There
is sunlight on the old mahogany. Jane’s great-grandmother, in an oval
frame, looks down insipidly, her eyes mildly shining between the low
bands of her parted hair. And Jane has her arms round her Aunt Patty,
and her face, so unlike the gentle portrait, is troubled and brooding,
a sullen ugly little face with something strange, half wild, that
recalls her father and frightens the good woman who holds her close and
goes on answering questions about her sister Isabel. And then I think
of Mrs. Carpenter not as Jane’s mother, but as the daughter of old Mrs.
Forbes of the Grey House, and I am again bewildered. Those people in
St. Mary’s Plains, Jane’s grandmother, her aunts and her uncle, were
people of sense and character and taste. Who that knew Izzy Carpenter
would have thought it? Who that knew Jane could deny it? I suspect Mrs.
Carpenter of having been ashamed of them. Jane’s loyalty saved her from
any such stupidity.

When I went to St. Mary’s Plains the other day, Jane showed me, on the
wall of her uncle’s study, an old print representing the first log
cabin of the French settler who had come there across the Canadian
border in 1780. In the picture a Red Indian carrying a tomahawk and
capped with feathers skulks behind the trees at the edge of the
clearing, and in the foreground a group of Noah’s Ark cattle are
guarded by a man with a gun. Under the print is written--“St. Marie
les Plaines,” and the signature “Gilbert de Chevigné.” It was a
Monsieur de Chevigné from Quebec, Jane told me, who built the Grey
House. The name had been corrupted to Cheney; the Cheneys were her
grandmother’s people. Many of the families in St. Mary’s Plains traced
a similar history. The town in growing had cherished the story of
its French foundation and its social element had grown to believe
that it had a special sympathy with our country. Its well-to-do
people were constantly coming from and going to France. With an
indifference bordering on contempt, and an ease that suggested the
consciousness of special claims and opportunities, they would cross
the really tremendous expanse of territory that lay between their
thresholds and the Atlantic sea-board, ignoring the existence of
Chicago, Buffalo, Boston, Philadelphia and New York, and set sail for
Cherbourg. It was considered a perfectly natural occurrence and one
scarcely worthy of self-congratulation for a girl from St. Mary’s
Plains to marry a foreigner of real or supposed distinction, but those
who neither married abroad nor at home, but were led astray by the
vulgar attraction of some rich man from the far west or east were
the subject of pitying criticism. Such had been the case with Jane’s
mother. Silas Carpenter had come bearing down on St. Mary’s Plains, a
wild man from the great west; like a bison or a moose breaking into a
mild and pleasant paddock. Isabel Forbes, headstrong, discontented,
covetous, had fallen to his savage charm, his millions and the peculiar
oppressive magnetism of his silence, that seemed filled with the
memories of unspeakable experiences. The first rush to the goldfields
of California loomed in the background of his untutored childhood.
Later he had gone to the Klondike. Gold--he had dug it out of the
earth with his own great hands. Then he had taught himself oddly from
books. A speculator, a gambler, he had a passion for music, and played
the flute. A strange mixture. To please Isabel’s family he gave up
poker, went to church, was married in a frock-coat. People said he had
Indian blood in his veins. It seems possible. He had the long head and
slanting profile and the mild voice characteristic of the race. Society
in St. Mary’s Plains was genuinely sorry for Isabel’s family when she
married him. But she went away to New York to live and was forgotten
until on Silas’ sensational death her departure for Paris revived
interest in her doings.

“The Grey House” as it was known in St. Mary’s Plains, had the
benevolent patriarchal air of a small provincial manor. Built sometime
in the seventies it had not had too many coats of paint during its
lifetime, and its calm exterior with the double row of comfortable
windows each flanked by a pair of shutters was weather-stained and worn
like the visage of some bland unconcerned person of distinction who
is not ashamed to look in his old age a little like a weather-beaten
peasant. It stood well back from the street in the centre of a wide
plot of ground not large enough to be called a park, though containing
a few nice trees. The lawn indeed merged in the most sociable way into
the grounds of other neighbouring houses and ran smoothly down in front
to the edge of the public side-walk where there was no wall or railing
of any kind. A scarcely noticeable sign beside the path that led from
the street to the front porch with its two wooden pillars said “Keep
off the grass.”

There were only two storeys to the Grey House and a garret with dormer
windows in the grey shingled roof, the rooms of the ground floor being
raised only a foot or two from the level of the street, so that Jane’s
grandmother, sitting in her armchair by the living-room window could
look up over the tops of her spectacles and see and recognize her
acquaintances who often even at that comfortable distance would bow or
lift their hats to the little old lady as they passed.

Every one in St. Mary’s Plains knew the Grey House. When one of the
Misses Forbes went shopping, she would say “Send it to the Grey
House, please,” and the young man in the dry goods’ store would
answer--“Certainly, Miss Forbes, it’ll be right along. Mrs. Forbes is
keeping well, I hope? Let me see, it’s ten years since I was in her
Sunday-school class.” And Miss Minnie--it was usually Minnie who did
the shopping--would smile kindly at the chatty young man who certainly
did not mean any harm.

The occupants of that house were people content to stay at home, who
did not always know what day of the month it was, and who found a
deep source of well-being in the realization that tomorrow would be
like today. I imagine those gentlewomen doing the same thing in the
same way year after year, wearing the same clothes made by the same
family dressmaker, and opposing to the disturbing menace of events the
quiet obstinacy of their contentment. I watch them at night go up the
stairs together at ten o’clock, kiss one another at the door of their
mother’s room and go down the dim corridor, Patty staying behind like
a sentinel under the gas-jet, her bony arm lifted, waiting to turn the
light still lower once they were safe behind their own closed doors.
Jane in her bed used to hear their voices saying, “Good-night, mother
dear, pleasant dreams. Good-night, Minnie. Good-night.” And if the man
of the house, Jane’s Uncle Bradford, were at his club playing whist,
Beth, from the rosy interior of her cretonne chamber would be sure to
call out--“I left the front door on the latch for Brad. I suppose it’s
all right.” And Patience would say--“Who would burgle this house?” And
Minnie would add--“I put his glass of milk in his room.” And then there
would be silence disturbed only by the sound of footsteps moving to and
fro behind closed doors. And Jane would wait drowsily for Aunt Patty to
come in and say “Good gracious, child, not asleep yet? It’s past ten
o’clock.”

To the Forbes family the doings of the outer world were a pleasant
distant spectacle that interested and amused but made them feel all the
happier to be where they were. When a letter arrived from Izzy bearing
its Paris postmark, they would read it together, become pleasantly
animated over the news and then settle down with relief at the thought
that they didn’t have to go over there and do all those things. The
letter would then be added to a package bound with an elastic band and
put away in the secretary until some one came to call and asked how
Isabel was getting on.

I seem to see them all, on these occasions, sitting there in their
habitual attitudes. I imagine the little grandmother, with the letter
open in her black silk lap, adjusting her spectacles on the slender
bridge of her arched nose, and Jane on a footstool beside her, waiting
to listen once more with absorbing interest to the extracts from her
mother’s letter that she already knew by heart, and the two or three
friends sitting round rather primly on the old mahogany chairs, and
Aunt Beth with her embroidery on the horsehair sofa, and Aunt Minnie
making the tea, and Aunt Patty teaching one of her birds to eat from
her lips at the window, and perhaps Uncle Bradford, who has come home
from his office, visible across the hall through the door in his
study with some weighty volume on his knees, and a good cigar between
his lips. I seem to hear the purring song of the tea kettle and the
pleasant sound of voices calling one another intimate names. I see
the faded carpet with its dimmed white pattern and the stiff green
brocaded curtains in their high gilt cornices, and the pleasant mixture
of heterogeneous objects selected for use and comfort. I have in my
nostrils the perfume of roses opening out in the warmth of the room,
and of the newly baked cakes made for tea by Aunt Minnie, and still
another finer perfume, the faint fresh fragrance of the spirit of that
little old lady who ruled the house in gentleness and was beloved in
the town. A humourous little old lady who was not afraid of death, and
believed in the clemency of a Divine Father. She liked Jane to read
aloud to her while she knitted,--Trollope, Charles Lamb, Robert Burns,
were her favourites, and she enjoyed a good tune on the piano, and
would beat time with her knitting needles when Beth played a waltz. But
on Sundays Beth played hymns and the servants came in after supper to
sing with the family “Rock of Ages,” “Jesus Lover of my Soul,” “Abide
with Me.” Jane liked those Sunday evenings. They made her feel so safe,
was the way she put it.

All the inmates of the Grey House were God-fearing but Minnie was
the most religious. She had a talent for cooking and a craving for
emotional religious experience. The kitchen of the Grey House was a
very pleasant place with a window that gave onto the back verandah, and
often on summer mornings Aunt Beth who was young and pretty, would take
her sewing out onto this back porch while Aunt Minnie in the kitchen
was making cakes, and they would talk through the open window with
Jane curled up in the hammock beside Beth’s work-table. Beth, would
call out in her very high small voice that expressed her plaintive
dependence and blissful confidence in the protected life she so utterly
loved--“Minnie, Minnie!” and the sound of the egg-beater in the kitchen
would cease, and Aunt Minnie would call through the open window in her
lower, deeper tone--

“Yes, what do you say?”

“I forgot to tell you that Mrs. Blatchford asked me if I’d ask you to
make six cakes for the Woman’s Exchange Fourth of July Sale.”

And Aunt Minnie would exclaim--

“Good gracious. Six angel cakes, that makes thirty-six eggs.” While
beating up the whites of eggs for her famous cakes Minnie would ponder
on the power of mind over matter, the healing of physical pain by
faith, and the ultimate purifying grace of the Divine Spirit. One day
she announced that she had joined the Christian Science Church. The
family took the news seriously. Jane’s grandmother turned very white.
She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes and whispered--“Oh,
Minnie dear, I’m so sorry.” Uncle Bradford brought his fist down on
a table with a crash and shouted--“Don’t you do it, Minnie. These
newfangled religions are no good.” Beth wept. Patience said “Hmph.”

Jane didn’t like the new look on her Aunt Minnie’s face, but the
religious mystery behind it had a worrying fascination. She listened
to the talk of her elders hoping to learn about this new faith, but it
was characteristic of them not to argue or discuss things that affected
them deeply, so she learned little, and she was afraid to ask her Aunt
Patience who seemed somehow not at all patient with Minnie just now. So
she was reduced to talking it all over with Fan, her friend, who lived
next door. They would sit astride the fence that divided the two back
gardens and talk about God and their elders.

“Aunt Minnie has got a new religion,” Jane announced. “Religions are
funny things. I don’t think I like them but they do do things to you.”

“Pooh! I know. It’s not half so queer as Mormons and Theosophites and
Dowyites.”

“What’s all that?”

“The Mormons have lots of wives. They live in Salt Lake City and
practice bigamy. The Dowyites are in Chicago. There’s a big church
there full of crutches of all the lame people Dowy has cured by
miracle.”

“Well, Aunt Minnie says there’s no such thing as being lame or sick,
and everything is a miracle.”

“He-he! I’m not a miracle”

“Yes, you are.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Who made you?”

“My mother.”

“How?”

“I dunno.”

“Well, that’s a miracle.”

“Oh, Jane, you are a silly.”

“I’m not silly. I know you’ve got to have a religion or you can’t be
good, but I don’t like it all the same.”

“Who wants to be good?”

“I do.”

“Why?”

“Because I’d be afraid to die.”

Fan had a complete worldly wisdom that could cover most things, but she
was obliged to admit, though with her nose in the air, that she, too,
would be afraid to die if she went on being very bad up to the last
minute.

Fan Hazeltine was an orphan. She lived with a stepfather who hated
her and sometimes didn’t speak to her for a week. She and Jane had
met on the back fence the day after Jane’s arrival in St. Mary’s
Plains. Jane was six years old then, Fan eight, but I imagine that Fan
was very much the same at that time, as when I met her twenty years
later. She was always a wisp of a thing no bigger than an elf with a
wizened face. Life gave her no leisure for expansion. She was one of
those people who never had a chance to blossom out, but could just
achieve the phenomenal business of continuing to exist by grit and
the determination not to be downed. What she was in her stepfather’s
inimical house that she remained in the larger inimical world, a
small under-nourished undaunted creature, consumed with a thirst for
happiness, hiding her hurts under an obstinate gaiety, a minute lonely
thing steering her bark cleverly through stormy waters, keeping afloat
somehow, sinking and struggling, her grim little heart hardening, her
laughter growing shriller and louder as the years went by. There is no
difficulty about understanding Fan. I can see her astride that fence,
screwing up her face while she told Jane what she was going to do in
the world, and I can see her set about doing it.

“I’m going to have a good time. You wait. You just wait. I tell you I’m
going to have a good time--fun, fun, fun. That’s what I want.”

But Jane did not say what she wanted from life.




IV


Patience Forbes was a woman of science, an ornithologist. When she
died years ago she was recognized in America as one of the foremost
authorities on birds. I remember her death. Jane got the news in Paris.
It was at the time of the final struggle over Geneviève’s marriage. She
showed me her Aunt Patience’s will. It read:--“To my beloved niece Jane
Carpenter now known by the name of the Marquise de Joigny, I leave the
Grey House and everything in it except my collections and manuscripts.
These I leave to the Museum of St. Mary’s Plains. But the house and all
the furniture I leave to Jane in case she may some day want some place
to go.”

Jane looked at me with strange eyes that day.

“Isn’t it queer,” she said. “How could she have known?”

But I understand now that Patience Forbes was the only one who did
know. She must have been a shrewd woman. She must have followed Jane in
her mind all those years, with extraordinary accuracy considering the
little she had to go on. But she never betrayed her misgivings. There
is only that sentence in her will to indicate what she thought.

She was an imposing woman, plain of face, careless of her appearance
and masculine in build. Her nose was crooked, her neck scrawny and her
hands large and bony. But she had an air of grandeur. When she tramped
through the woods or across the open country that surrounded St. Mary’s
Plains, her field glasses and her camera slung across her shoulder, she
had in spite of her quaint bonnet and long black clothes the look of a
grizzled amazon. She would walk twenty miles in a day and frequently
did so. Many of the farmers round about knew her. They called her “the
bird lady” and asked her in to their kitchens for a glass of milk and
a slice of apple-pie, and often while sitting there with her bonnet
strings untied and her dusty skirt turned up on her knees, she would
receive gifts from sun-burned urchins who, knowing the object of her
pilgrimages would bring to her in the battered straw crowns of their
hats, rare birds’ eggs that they had discovered in the high branches of
trees or the secret fastnesses of tangled thickets.

She was the dominating personality in her own home. Her mother and
sisters were a little afraid of her. When her brother Bradford married
and she announced that she was going to hold classes in the parlour of
the Grey House and charge for them, they dared not object, although
they would have preferred going without the comforts that Bradford’s
shared income had provided rather than have a lot of strange people
invading the house.

It was characteristic of the family that they never spoke to Jane of
money and never gave her any idea that she was or ever would be an
heiress. She made her own bed in the morning, and sometimes if she were
not in too much of a hurry to get off to school she helped Aunt Minnie
with the others. On Saturday mornings she darned her own stockings,
or tried to, sitting on a low chair beside her grandmother, but this
was by way of a lesson in keeping quiet. I am afraid she took it as a
matter of course that Aunt Beth and her grandmother should mend her
clothes for her.

She gave a great deal of trouble. Not only was she always getting
into scrapes, but she was subject as well to storms of passion that
sometimes, as she realized later, seriously frightened her grandmother.
Her accidents--she had a great many little ones and one at least that
was serious--were episodes marked in her memory as rather pleasant
occasions that procured for her an extra amount of petting. There was a
high bookcase at the top of the stairs in a dark corner of the upper
hall, full of old and faded volumes. Here she spent hours together on
Sunday afternoons, sitting on the top of a step-ladder that she dragged
out of the housemaids’ cupboard. One day, finding among those dusty
little books a copy of Dante’s “Vita Nuova,” she became so absorbed
in the lovely poem, though it was only a lame translation in English
verse, that she began chanting the lines to herself, unconsciously
swaying backwards and forwards on her perch, until all at once the
ladder gave way beneath her, and she fell to the floor, breaking her
arm. The days that followed were among the happiest of her life. She
was installed in her Uncle Bradford’s room that gave out onto the
sunny back garden where a pear tree was in bloom. There, propped up in
the middle of the great white bed, her arm in a sling and not hurting
too much to spoil her voluptuous sense of her own importance, she
seemed to herself a romantic figure, and received Fan with benevolent
superiority, while deeply and deliciously she drank in with every
feverish throb of her passionate little heart the tender devotion
of the patient women who loved her. Her Aunt Patty slept on a cot
beside her at night; her Aunt Minnie brought her meals to her on the
daintiest of trays; her grandmother and her Aunt Beth came with their
sewing to sit with her in the afternoon. Often when she felt herself
dropping into a doze after lunch, before finally closing her eyes to
give herself up to the sleep that was creeping over her so softly, she
would for the pleasure of it open them again to look through her heavy
eyelids at her grandmother’s head that she could see above the foot
of the great bed outlined against the sunny light of the window; and
she would see the little old lady lift a finger to her pursed lips and
nod mysteriously smiling at Beth and glance towards the bed as much as
to say--“The child is dropping off, we mustn’t make a sound.” And the
child, with such a sense of security and peace as to convey to her in
after years the memory of a heavenly instant, would let herself float
blissfully out into the still waters of oblivion, knowing that she
would surely find them there when she awoke.

She was given the book, “La Vita Nuova” for her own, and lay in bed
dreaming of a poet who would one day love her as Dante had loved his
Beatrice.

It was about this time that Mrs. Carpenter began working out her
schemes with Philibert.

Jane was according to her own testimony subject to fits of such violent
temper that she scarcely knew what she was doing. At such moments she
frightened every one round her and herself as well. One evening stands
out in her memory as peculiarly dreadful. The family were gathered in
the drawing room before supper waiting for her, when she burst in on
them, her face as white as a sheet, and flung herself on her Aunt Patty
with the words--“I’ve killed a boy. Come quick. He was torturing a
beast. He’s out in the garden lying quite still.” And shuddering from
head to foot she dragged her aunt out after her. The boy was not dead,
but lay as a matter-of-fact unconscious on the path near the back gate.
Jane had knocked him down and half throttled him. There had been three
boys shooting with sling shots at a lame cat to whose leg they had
tied a tin can so that the wretched beast could not get out of range.
Jane had seen them from the window and had rushed to the rescue. The
affair made something of a stir in the town. It got into the papers.
The boy had to be taken to a hospital. Jane’s Uncle Bradford needed all
his influence to avert a public scandal. Unfortunately it was not the
first case of Jane’s violence that had come to the knowledge of the
neighbours. People talked of her as “that savage girl of Izzy’s” and
told their children they were not to play with her any more. She was
taken out of school for a time.

It is difficult to get at the exact meaning of this story. All that I
know is what Jane has told me herself, and she may have exaggerated
its social importance. At any rate, to her own mind it was an immense
and horrible disgrace. She felt herself a monstrosity, and for weeks
could not bear to go into the street. Her Aunt Patience too, had taken
a very serious view of the affair. She sent for Jane to come to her in
her study the next morning; the child was, I suppose, too nervous and
shaken that night to listen to anything in the way of reprimand, and
Aunt Patience showed her a riding whip on a peg in the corner against
the wall. It was a cowboy quirt, a braided leather thing with a long
lash.

“Jane,” said her Aunt Patty, “that quirt belonged to your father.
He left it here once long ago. It is yours. I have put it there on
that peg for you. I am giving it to you for a special purpose. When
a dreadful act is committed against a human being, some one has to
suffer, to make things equal. Usually the one who does the evil deed
is punished, but I can’t, Jane, punish you like that.” And here Aunt
Patty’s stern voice quavered. “I can’t because I can’t bear to. You are
my child. I love you too much. I have lain awake all night thinking
about it. When God is angry he punishes people he loves. He has the
right. He is wise and perfect. But I am not in the place of God to you,
and I can’t do it. I am going to do something quite different. I am
going to do it because something has got to be done, some one has got
to suffer for what you have done. You are to take that whip down now
from that peg and give me three lashes with it across my shoulders. I
am going to take your punishment on me because I think that will make
you understand. Do as I say.”

The child was terrified. In a kind of trance she took the leather
weapon in her shaking hands. Her aunt stood straight and still in the
middle of the room. “Do what I say, Jane,” she commanded again. Her
voice was awful. Jane advanced a step towards her as if hypnotized,
looked a long moment at the stern face, then suddenly collapsed in a
heap at those large plain feet in their worn flat slippers.

“I can’t, Aunt Patty,” she whispered. “I can’t! It’s enough. It’s
enough.”

After this Jane spent more and more time in her aunt’s company. The
dreadful experience drew them even closer together. Jane would almost
always accompany her aunt on her long tramps into the country, and
although as Patience so often said she never took any real interest
in the science of birds, she nevertheless became an adept at climbing
trees and going through thickets, and learned to imitate the songs of
birds in an astonishing way. This accomplishment indeed, she never
lost; even when she had long since forgotten all she learned about
Baltimore Orioles and Brown Thrushes and Scarlet Tanagers and the
migrations of birds in the spring time, and their marvellous intricate
manner of fabricating their nests, she could throw back her head and
fill the room wherever she might be with the most bewildering joyous
riot of warblings and twitterings and liquid trills. She became so
expert at this that sometimes she would play pranks on her aunt, and
climbing into the tree outside the study window, she would imitate
the song of some little feathered creature so perfectly that her Aunt
Patty would leave her work and tip-toe softly to the window only to be
greeted with a squeal of triumphant laughter.

The classes in bird lore that were held in the parlour were for Jane
little more than a chance of giggling with Fan in a corner. The
lectures indoors went on during the winter, but in the spring and
early summer Miss Forbes took her followers by train to a village on
the edge of the forest, and there, in the leafy fastnesses of those
sunny enclosed spaces would give her pupils demonstrated lectures.
Jane has told me that when following the sound of a bird’s note heard
overhead at a distance, her aunt’s face would become transfigured; a
little mystic smile would come over her plain features; she would sign
to her throng to make not the slightest noise, and silently her head
bent sideways and upwards, she would lead the way, stopping now and
then, her finger on her lips, to listen for the clear note that guided
her, until at last she would catch sight of her beauty, high up on a
swaying leafy bough, and all her being would strain upward towards that
tiny creature, and her face would light up with even a brighter joy,
and she would point a gaunt finger mutely at the object of her worship
as if calling attention to some lovely little celestial being. Then
if some one, as was always the case, made a sound and the bird flew
away, a shadow would fall on her face, her pose would relax and she
would turn to the heavy human beings about her, a dull disappointed
glance, looking at them all for a moment in deep reproach before she
recollected what she was there for, and began to tell them of the
habits and customs of the songster who had just disappeared over the
treetops.

On one occasion Fan went so far as to say these rambles were
ridiculous, and Jane flared up at once.

“My Aunt Patty ridiculous?” she cried out. “How dare you? She’s the
greatest ornithologist in the world, and I love her, I love her more
than all the outside world together and everything in it.”

When Jane was fifteen her grandmother died, and a year later her Aunt
Beth was married, and Jane, who was sixteen, had a white organdie
bridesmaid’s dress and carried a bouquet of pink roses, and after that
Aunt Minnie went away to be a Christian Science healer in New York, and
Jane was left alone in the Grey House with her Aunt Patty.

Her grandmother’s death left her with no impression of horror. The
little old lady had gone to sleep one day quietly in her accustomed
place by the window and had not wakened again, that was all. Aunt
Patty at the funeral in a long black veil, looked like some grand and
austere monument of grief, reminding her vaguely of a statue she had
seen somewhere of emblematic and national importance, but she made no
fuss over her sorrow, and told the child that night of her own mother’s
imminent arrival from Paris.

This was a piece of news sufficiently wonderful to offset completely
the effect of death in the house. Jane said to herself, “She is coming
to take me away to be with her at last.” And she went up and hid in her
room so that her Aunt Patty should not see how excited she was.

But Jane was mistaken. Such was not Mrs. Carpenter’s intention. She
had come to America on receiving her sister’s telegram partly out
of deference to her mother’s memory, partly to consult her lawyers,
and partly for the purpose of putting Jane in a fashionable American
boarding school. The sadness in Jane’s memory long connected with
those days has little to do with her grandmother’s funeral, but is the
lasting indelible impression of the discovery she made then, that her
mother did not like her.

Mrs. Carpenter came out with her ideas for her daughter abruptly on
the evening of her arrival. She had no idea that her daughter adored
her. Jane’s letters beginning “My darling Mummy” and ending “Your
loving daughter” had conveyed to her nothing of the writer’s emotion.
No doubt they bored her, and no doubt she supposed that they bored the
child who was obliged to write them. It would probably have seemed to
her incredible that a little girl who scarcely ever saw her should go
on wanting her for ten years from a distance of a couple of thousand
miles. If she justified herself to herself at all, I suppose she made
use of this argument: “Well, if I don’t care for her because she is
so dreadfully her father’s daughter, then that proves that I am too
different for her ever to care for me. The best thing for us both is
to leave her with people who won’t let her get on their nerves as she
would on mine.”

Mrs. Carpenter was not subtle, and she hated wasting time, so she
opened the subject at once sitting with Patience in the back parlour,
her slim silk-stockinged legs crossed easily, one smart foot dangling,
her modish head tilted back above the trim cravat of black crêpe and
white tulle that her French maid had fabricated for her during the
crossing, and a jewelled hand playing with Jane’s long pigtail. Her
sister Patience sat opposite her at her table, her head in her hands,
her bony fingers poked up among her meagre locks, and Jane took in that
evening with a kind of anguish of loyalty the contrast between the
two women. It seemed to her somehow very pitiful that her Aunt Patty
should be so ugly when her mother was so beautiful. With a childish
absence of any vestige of a sense of humour, she felt at one moment
ashamed for her aunt and almost angry with her mother, and then ashamed
for her mother and angry with her aunt.

“I wanted to tell you, Patty, that I think it would be a good thing now
for this big gawk of a girl to go to a finishing school in New York.
You’ll probably be giving up this house soon, and I don’t want her with
me yet awhile.”

Jane in talking to me of this moment said that she felt as if her
mother’s hand that was playing affectionately with her hair an instant
before had suddenly picked up a hammer and hit her on the head. For an
interval everything was blurred and dark in the room, with sparks that
seemed to be shooting out of her brain. It was her Aunt Patty’s face
that brought her back to her senses. It was a suffering, angry face,
and presently she heard Patience say--“I am not going to give up this
house, but I think you ought to take Jane to live with you. She wants
to go, and she’s right. You are her mother.”

But Izzy paid no attention to her older sister.

“That’s nonsense! Paris is no place for a girl of her age. What in the
world should I do with her? She’d be dreadfully in the way. Besides
she must learn how to walk and manage her hands before I show her to
people.”

The thing was done. Jane knew. She knew that her mother did not like
her and never had liked her, and she knew somehow that her mother did
not like her because she was ugly and reminded her of her father Silas
Carpenter. She knew too that her Aunt Patty had always known this,
and that her aunt loved her as her mother never would love her, and
that the mottled flush on her grim face was due in part to anger and
in part to the fear of losing her. She understood that her aunt had
determined to help her to attain her heart’s desire, even at the price
of losing herself the one thing more precious to her than anything in
the world. She dared not look at her mother and she could not speak,
and still she waited though incapable now of taking in the meaning of
their voices. She heard vaguely her aunt saying something about making
enough money by her lectures and publications to keep the house going,
but paid no attention. A question addressed directly to herself by her
mother at last roused her.

“Well, Jane, what do you say? Would you rather stay here alone with
your Aunt Patty than go to boarding school with a lot of jolly girls of
your own age?”

She did not hesitate then for an answer.

“Oh yes, if you can’t have me let me stay here,” and turning she cried,
“Keep me, Aunt Patty, keep me,” and flung herself into those long
trembling arms.

Mrs. Carpenter seems to have been mildly amused by this display of
affection. With her face buried in the black woollen stuff of her
aunt’s blouse, Jane heard her say--

“Well then, I leave it to you two. You can carry on as you like for the
next two or three years. When you are eighteen, Jane, you will make
your début in Paris society. You’ll want to bring Patty with you, I
suppose, when the time comes.”

Mrs. Carpenter left three days later. The subject of Jane’s future was
not broached again in her presence, but she heard the two women talking
about professors of French and Italian and dancing classes, and the
advantages of a saddle-horse and a pony cart. Her mother’s last words
to her were--

“Now make the most of your time and don’t run about all over the
country in the sun. Your complexion is the best thing about you.” And
yet she didn’t hate her mother. Her idea of her mother had not even
undergone for her any fundamental change. It was all the other way
round. It was her opinion of herself that had suffered. With the dogged
loyalty that seemed at times positively a sign of stupidity and was
to influence every important decision of her life, she defended her
mother to her own heart. If her mother did not like her it was because
she was not likeable, because her father had been a dreadful man and
had handed down to her some secret dangerous element of his own nature
that made her antagonistic and unpleasant to brilliant happy people.
Her Aunt Patty loved her because she was sorry for her. Her Aunt Patty
was different from her mother. She, too, was ugly and a little queer;
that was the bond between them. Poor Patience Forbes! Jane was to do
her justice later, but for the moment she almost hated the sympathy
between them, while her mother’s image like some magic adamant statue
possessing a supernatural inviolability remained for her persistently
and brilliantly the same. And when she was gone the question Jane put
her aunt represented the result of hours of heart-broken weeping in
which no whisper of a reproach had mingled.

“Aunt Patty,” she said, “how can I make my mother love me?” and her
Aunt Patty had replied rather grimly--

“By trying to be what she wants you to be, I suppose.”

It was after this that Jane began sleeping at night with a strip of
adhesive plaster across her mouth from her chin to her upper lip. Her
aunt must have known but she did not interfere. I can imagine her
standing over her niece’s bed when she came up from her protracted
studies in the library, with a lamp in her hand, a tall grizzled
figure in long ungainly black clothes, looking down at that sleeping
face with the court-plaster pasted across the mouth, and I can see her
weather-beaten face twist and tears well up in those shrewd intelligent
eyes, and I seem to hear her utter--“Poor Jane, my poor lamb. If you
could only take some interest in science. I don’t know what is to
become of you.”




V


I begin to feel uncertain in telling this story. I am not at all sure
that I have a just feeling for that American life of Jane’s. I have put
down the facts as she told them to me and have described the people
there as they came into being for me, from her talk, but how am I to
know that they were really like that? Perhaps had I seen them with my
own eyes I should have found them quite different: narrow, dull people
with shrill twanging voices and queer American mannerisms. It may be
that they would have bored me as they bored Mrs. Carpenter. St. Mary’s
Plains I have seen for myself, but what did I see? A railway station,
a few streets, a deep wide muddy river flowing by full of ships and
barges. The town expressed nothing to me. It remained enigmatic. Of
the hidden life going on in all those houses I knew nothing. I did not
even understand what I saw. There were billboards all about the railway
station advertising American products. Enormous nigger babies three
times life-size stared from wooden fences. The Gold Dust Twins? Why
gold dust, why twins, why nigger babies? How should I know? There were
other garish things: I seem to remember flags and red, white and blue
streamers festooning telegraph poles, in celebration I suppose of some
national holiday. It was all too foreign. I could not translate it to
myself. It made me feel very tired, and now this effort to recreate the
atmosphere makes me weary. It is such a strain for the imagination. I
know that my picture is incomplete and therefore false. I have touched
on the gentleness and good breeding of Jane’s people, on the quiet of
their God-fearing lives, but that word God-fearing: it is strange;
it suggests something stern and uncompromising that is very different
from anything we know in Paris. It suggests a great seriousness, a
bare nakedness before the mystery of the unknown, a challenge of fate
and an exaltation, of virtue. It affects me like a bleak wind. I turn
away from it with relief. I look out of my window with a sigh. There
is the good Abbé coming out of the convent gate. He has been hearing
confessions; he has been taking away the sins from burdened hearts and
tying them up into neat little bundles to be dropped into the Seine.
God bless him, and thank God for our wise old priesthood and our
wonderful beautiful old compromises, and thank God again for the jaunty
swing of that black cassock. Ugh! I feel better. The little street is
dim this morning. It has been raining. Dear, weary little old street--

There is no room here for American Puritanism. Paris is too old,
too wise to harbour such things. Was it that that haunted Jane? Did
she always see herself measured up to a fixed fine standard like a
flagpole, the flagpole of American idealism, with a banner floating
over her head, casting a shadow, purity, honesty, fear of God,
written on it in shining letters? Payment, atonement, the wages of
sin is death--old Mrs. Forbes reading out the words, believing but
not worrying, but Jane making them terribly personal, questioning,
puzzling, burying them in her mind. Heaven and hell; realities!
Our actions leading us toward one or the other. Patience Forbes
saying one had to suffer for a bad deed. The mystery about Jane’s
father--something curious about his death. He was an unhappy man, his
silence, she remembered it, she remembered him. She knew she was like
him in some inexplicable way that frightened her. A world of stern
simple values, all smoothed over for her by the gentleness and kindness
of those people, the Forbes. Of course they were gentle and kind. They
loved her. It was all right as long as she had them, but it was a
curious preparation for life with Izzy in Paris.

Izzy sent for Philibert on her return from America. She must have
talked to him about Jane. They must have had a curious conversation.
I am certain that it was then that they elaborated their plan. The
scheme was one of grand proportions. They became partners in a great
enterprise. Mrs. Carpenter was to supply her daughter, who had enough
money to realize even Philibert’s dreams, and he was to supply the
required knowledge, as well as the _billet d’entrée_ into the social
arena of Europe. These two suited each other perfectly. They knew what
they wanted and each saw in the other the means of getting it. Broadly
speaking they wanted the same thing, and if Philibert’s conception of
their common destiny was utterly beyond her that was just what made her
faith in him perfect. Audacious in her way, his audacity far outdid
hers: whatever her idea his was always much grander; he made her feel
beautifully humble by brushing away some of her most cherished hopes as
unworthy of their attention.

“A palace in Venice?” I seem to hear him say, perched on one of her
little straight gilt chairs, nursing his foot that was tucked under his
knee. “But every one has palaces in Venice. Why not a Venetian palace
in Paris, the Doge’s Palace itself, reproduced stone for stone, if that
takes your fancy?”

And she would catch her breath with the beauty of the idea. Not that
Philibert ever intended to do anything so silly as spoil a site in
Paris by such a freak of humour. He was a _farceur_ if you like, but
he had too much taste for that. He intended having his palace, and it
was to be of such supreme beauty as to draw pilgrims from all over
the world, but it was to be in harmony with its surroundings. The
allusion to the House of the Doges was just his little happy joke.
He was very cheerful in those days. People used to say--“Fifi does
have luck. Look at him. Who is it now that adores him? Was ever a man
so blatantly successful in his love affairs?” I must say he did have
the look of being happily in love. His smooth cheeks were pink, his
eyes, usually as expressionless as bits of blue enamel, were suffused
with light, and the soft flaxen fuzz that grew round the bald spot
on his head like the down on a little yellow gosling, seemed to
send off electricity. Never in all his immaculate dandyism had he
been so immaculate, his linen was superlative and the shine on his
little pointed boots was visible halfway down the street. There was a
giddy swing to his hurrying coat-tails, and he carried his shoulders
superbly. Almost, but not quite, he achieved the look of being taller.
And his contempt for the rest of us was of course greater than ever.
Born with a gnawing consciousness of his own genius, he had for years
been as exasperated as a Michael Angelo or a Paul Veronese forced by
lack of space and a sufficiency of paints to spend his time doing
little water-colour sketches: but he now saw himself on the way to
realizing his inspirations in all their splendid amplitude, and of
displaying before the eyes of men the finished gigantic masterpiece
of his art. For Philibert was an artist: even Ludovic and Felix and
Clémentine recognized that. He was an artist in life on a grand scale.
He dealt with men and women and clothes and string orchestras and food
and polished floors and marble staircases as a painter deals with the
colours on his palette, or perhaps more exactly as the theatrical
producer deals with stage properties. His stage was the world itself;
he produced his plays and his pageants and his _tableaux vivants_ in
the midst of the activities of society, and his actors, reversing the
method of our modern stage where the players come down across the
footlights to mingle with the audience, were selected by him from the
general public without their knowing it, and found themselves playing
a part in a scene he had created round them and for them as if by
magic. Audacious? Ah, but who could be more so? Who but Fifi would
have had the impertinence to take a real live king and make him, all
unconscious, play the principal part in a pantomime before a handful of
spectators? Mrs. Carpenter had dreamed of entertaining kings. Philibert
entertained them, but he did something much more extraordinary; he put
them into his play and made them entertain him.

Who in Paris will ever forget the night he threw open his door for the
Czar of all the Russias? Who does not remember how he stage-managed
the crowd outside, how troops of singers from the Opera mingled with
the mob far down the street and sang hymns of acclamation as the royal
guest approached his fairy palace, so illumined as to shine like a
single rosy jewel? And the golden carpet thrown down on the marble
stairs, and Jane standing alone at the top of that fantastic staircase,
like an emerald column, her train arranged by Philibert’s own clever
hands sweeping down the steps beneath her to add supernaturally to her
height, her strange face under its diadem of jewels looking as small
in the distance as the carved image cut out of a coin. Do people not
talk even now of that night, and allude to Philibert as the last of the
benevolent despots? “He was unique,” you can still hear them say it,
“there will never be any one like him. No one can amuse the world as he
did.” And no one ever will. The War has changed all that. François I.
was his father; the Medici were his forerunners; he was the last of his
kind.

But he refined on this sensational achievement. He went farther. Only
a few realized quite how far he did go. In his most brilliant days,
I was on the point of saying during the most brilliant period of his
reign, he played plays at which he himself was the sole spectator.
I remember the occasion when a certain popular Prince, heir at that
time to one of the most solid thrones in Europe, expressed a desire to
come and shoot at the Château de Ste. Clothilde. Mrs. Carpenter had
been all of a tremble with pleasure. It was the first royal visitor
to sleep under his roof. Philibert had restored our old place in the
country, and had in five years managed by a miracle to have there the
best partridge shooting in France. “You will have a large party for His
Royal Highness, I suppose?” Mrs. Carpenter had ventured timidly. How
humble and self-effacing she had grown by that time, poor thing. “Not
at all,” replied Philibert. “There will be no women and not more than
six guns.” And he added then with a sublime simplicity unequalled, I
believe, by any monarch or any court jester in history, “When royalty
comes to Ste. Clothilde for the shooting, there is another place laid
at table, that is all.”

Poor Izzy, she was completely at a loss. No longer could she attempt
to follow him. It was Jane who understood. She looked at him curiously
through her gleaming half-closed eyes; I remember the look, while she
breathed in a whisper--“Take care, you will have nothing left to live
for.” I remember the tone of that remark.

But I am anticipating too much. I meant to speak here merely of his
matrimonial expectations. These hopes gave his person an added lustre
and his fine family nose an accentuated sneer. Nevertheless he kept
them secret: no one knew that Mrs. Carpenter even had a daughter. She
never mentioned her to any of us. On the other hand she never mentioned
Philibert in her letters to Jane. It was part of the scheme. They had
worked it out completely between them to its smallest details. Jane
would be dangerously independent. She would be in no way answerable to
her mother for all that immense lot of money. It was best then that she
should suspect nothing. She would arrive, the Marquis de Joigny would
be presented to her and would fall in love with her at first sight.
Her mother would leave her free to choose for herself. Philibert made
himself responsible for the rest.

And, in the meantime, while these two master minds were at work, Jane
still waited in the Grey House for her mother to come and fetch her,
waited as the appointed time drew near with little of the old exultant
expectancy, but instead with nervous misgiving. She was afraid of not
pleasing her mother, she was in an agony at the thought of leaving her
Aunt Patience.

And I find myself now, as I sit here, painfully counting with suspended
breath the last days of Jane’s girlhood in St. Mary’s Plains. I see
them silently slipping by over her unconscious head as she sat in the
back garden among her Aunt Patty’s hollyhocks, or walked with her
French governess along the homely streets, swinging her school books
by a strap, humming a tune under her breath, her neat modest clothes
swinging to the rhythm of her beautiful young body, her strange little
ugly ardent face lifted to the sweet air in frank animal enjoyment.
Patience Forbes stands on the front stoop between the two wooden
pillars waiting for her to come running up the path, waiting for the
generous clasp of those strong young arms, waiting to feel once more
the contact of all that pure vital youthfulness, and I hear as they sit
down to supper opposite each other, with the tall candles lighted on
the old mahogany table and the hot muffins steaming under the folded
white napkin, the sound of the grandfather clock in the hall, ticking
out the last precious fleeting moments of their time together.

This is very painful, I will not linger over it. I bring myself back,
I falter, what then am I to think of? Where turn my attention? So much
is ugly. Ah, but Jane, why go any further? Is it not enough? Is it not
clear to you as it is to me? Is there any need to say more? Was it
not all just as I say? Now that you are back there at last alone, now
that we have lost you for ever, now that you have gone, irresistibly
drawn out of your splendour to the little shabby place you loved, what
is there to torment you? Philibert, Bianca? What have they to do with
you now? They hated you. How can you be beholden to people who did you
nothing but harm? But Jane, there were some of us who adored you, and
if you had told us everything, as you at last told me, we would have
loved you only the more.

   *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *

I sometimes wonder whether Mrs. Carpenter ever suspected what a narrow
shave she had towards the end, and how all her plans very nearly came
to nothing at the moment of their fruition because of Bianca. It is
probable that she had little more idea of the danger than a vague
uneasy suspicion that Philibert for a time was distraught by some
influence whose source she ignored. She had met Bianca but did not
connect her with Philibert; knowing almost nothing in those days of
what she would have called Philibert’s family life. There was no one to
tell her that Philibert had once wanted to marry Bianca and that old
François had refused him as a suitor for his daughter’s hand because
of his lack of fortune. Izzy knew nothing about the strange intimacy
of these two. How should she? Philibert was not likely to tell her and
certainly none of the rest of us were in the habit of discussing with
her the private affairs of our families. My mother knew of course; she
doted on Bianca, and Claire, and all the family. They had all desired
the match. Bianca was a pearl that they collectively coveted, and when
things went wrong they had all been annoyed with the old rake her
father. Aunt Clothilde had gone so far as to rap him over the knuckles
with her fan one day when he took her out to dinner, and to say in
her best rude manner--“You’ve done a pretty thing, spoiling the lives
of those two children. And what’s Bianca got from her mother? Five
hundred thousand francs a year. Just so, and you will leave her the
same when you die, which will be before long at the pace you are going.
And Philibert has nothing but his debts, but then, who knows, I might
have given him something. I’m not so in love with him as some, but
still he’s my nephew, and the two of them were made for each other. Now
you’ll see, they’ll both turn out badly.” But François only laughed as
if he were enjoying a wicked joke that he was not going to share with
her. He was always like that, chuckling to himself in a sly sort of way
that made you creep and roused the curiosity of women. Sometimes he
would stare at me with his pale, red-rimmed, half-closed eyes and that
smile on his face as if my deformity was very amusing. I hated him. I
could have told them what kind of a father he was to Bianca.

In any case she was married a year later to her well-to-do nonentity,
and we all went to the wedding, and Aunt Clo, being a near relative,
walked in the _cortège_ with François and made faces behind her prayer
book. But Philibert was white as a sheet and kicked a wretched dog out
of the way as he came down the church steps with such violence that he
broke its paw. Bianca was, I remember, as lovely and serene as a lily.
She didn’t speak to Philibert at all the day she was married. She just
kept him standing there near her, not too near, during the reception,
as if he belonged to her, as if he were a flunkey of some sort, and
never once so much as looked at him. But she spoke to me. She asked
me why I had not proposed for her hand. “I might have accepted you,
you know” she said in that small reedy penetratingly sweet voice of
hers--“just to spite them all,”--and there wasn’t a trace of a smile on
her clear curving lips. Devil--she meant it for Philibert, of course,
and of course he heard.

My mother used to say that Bianca reminded her of a very young Sir
Galahad. Claire suggested half-mockingly St. Sebastian. I thought she
was like a fox, quick and cruel with a poisonous bite. As a matter
of fact, in those days she looked a harmless little thing. Her small
snow-white square face was sweetly modelled and framed as it was by a
cap of short black hair that was cut _à la Jeanne d’Arc_, it had the
look of a mediaeval Italian angel. Only her enormous eyes very blue and
deep and her voice gave her away. If one watched closely one caught
glimpses in those eyes of the invisible monster locked up in that light
smooth body; if one listened to her voice one heard it. She seemed to
know this, and much of the time she kept her eyes lowered. Cool and
aloof and monosyllabic she hid herself, her real self, calculating her
power and economical of it, deceptive, waiting till it should be worth
her while to disengage the magic that lurked in the smooth complexity
of her little person. Her voice was not a pure single note, but a
double reedy sound that had a penetrating harmony. One remembered it
with a haunting exasperation. It was rather high in pitch, and the
words it carried did not punctuate the sound of it, but seemed to be
strung like beads on a sustained vibrating chord as if on some double
coppery wire. Each word was distinct and beautifully enunciated by
her lips without interfering with the sound that flowed through them.
There was nothing guttural or emotional about Bianca’s voice, but it
was disturbing; it irritated and seemed to correspond to some secret
nerve-centre of pleasure in the listener’s brain.

I have watched her sometimes using her voice for special purposes of
her own, but for the most part in company she tried to subdue it, and
would often stop herself in the middle of one of her rapid speeches
with a little annoyed laugh. She would then look down and move away,
but even her floating stiffly off like a rigid little broomstick with a
pair of wings or wheels on the end of it had a strange charm.

Her gestures were very restrained. She had a way of holding attention
so closely when apparently doing nothing, that when she did make the
slightest movement it conveyed exactly what she intended it to convey.

Philibert was a connoisseur fit to appreciate her, and she knew it.
They had in their precocious youth recognized each in the other a
rare complementary quality, but even in the days when Bianca with
abbreviated skirts had let me make love to her, the affinity between
Philibert and herself had made her hate him. It was a curious
attraction I thought that made them constantly want to hurt each
other. I knew well enough that Bianca was only sweet to me in order to
make Philibert angry. Sometimes in the garden of our house, where we
played while François paid his respects of my mother, she would kiss
me, looking sideways at Philibert all the time, and he would pirouette
on one toe and pretend not to care, and would yell with laughter at
me and call out--“Don’t think she loves you. You’re crooked. You will
never be any better. You can’t do this. Look at me. She loves me.” And
Bianca would turn away from us and look at him as he told her to, and
say to him--“I don’t like you at all,” and then stalk away into the
drawing room where she would wheedle from her father a succession of
lumps of sugar soaked in cognac, and if we followed we would find her
rubbing her smooth little cheek up and down against François’ whiskers
and making little gurgling noises of pleasure. François was certainly
a queer kind of father. Philibert and I could have told tales about
that.--If it had only been lumps of sugar dipped in brandy--. We took
note with a kind of shocked envy. Once she took us down to the pantry
and showed us a bottle of “Triple Sec.” “That’s the nicest,” she said,
“it’s like honey fire.”

When she was ten he turned her loose in his library, or at any rate
finding her there with some dreadful book in her lap, only laughed.
Every one knows what that library contained. Rare editions, old
bindings, a priceless collection; bibliophiles came from far to finger
those volumes. François was a discriminating collector. But for
Bianca--no one discriminated for her. One can see her like a little
greedy white lamb browsing in the poisonous herbage of that field of
knowledge. She began with the memoirs of Casanova. She had picked it
out because it was by an Italian. She was always dreaming about Italy,
her mother’s country. Her mother had died while she was a baby, but
Bianca seemed to remember her. She often spoke about her, and every
Friday went with her governess to light a candle in St. Sulpice for
the repose of her spirit. As for her literary discoveries, Philibert
alone was aware of what she was up to, and even he didn’t know much
about it. Occasionally she would drop a hint, or lend a book. She would
never have admitted even to him that she read all the books she did
read. She understood Philibert perfectly. As she grew older she allowed
him to suspect that she was wise, but not too wise. She was willing to
be for him an object of mystification, but never of vulgar curiosity.
Gradually she grew conscious of a purpose in regard to Philibert, and
I believe that this purpose had something to do with her refusing to
marry him. For, after all, she could have brought her father round had
she tried to. No, it was not her idea to marry the man she liked. Her
idea was far more amusing than that.

What happened just before Jane’s arrival in Paris was simple enough.
Bianca had been married two years. She had been to Italy and had come
back to find Philibert thick as thieves with a great grey-headed
American, and she had asked herself what this meant. It didn’t take her
long to find out. She had a way of knowing what he was up to. Probably
he told her outright, and she was not pleased. For the moment she
did not like the idea of Philibert’s marrying any one, least of all
a colossal American fortune. She was far too clever to make a scene.
She had other means of getting her own way, and now out of caprice she
exerted them. I imagine her opening her monstrous eyes just a little
wider than usual and allowing Philibert to look into them. I can see
her move ever so slightly with a small jerk of the hips and upward
undulation of her slim body, and I watch her lean forward to allow the
faint suggestion of that magic essence of hers to disengage itself from
her person, through her lifted eyelids, through her sweet parted lips,
through the tips of her long delicate fingers, and I see Philibert
falter in his talk about the American girl, and silently watch her, and
get to his feet like a man in a dream and come close but not too close.
For a fortnight she kept him like that, in a trance; everywhere he
followed her.

Mrs. Carpenter lost him. It was during the month of May. Bianca went
about a good deal that Spring and was very much admired. It was at a
big afternoon affair that I saw her, standing with Philibert looking
out at the crowded gardens. She was very young still; she was nothing
more than a very thin slip of a thing with pretty little sticks of
legs and a pair of long delicate arms hanging close to her sides, the
fingers pressed against the folds of her slinky muslin frock. She
stood very still and rather stiff, her heels together and her lovely
head just tilted very slightly away from Philibert as if she had
drawn it back quickly and gently at the sound of a disturbing murmur,
or as if perhaps she were enticing that murmur, as yet unuttered,
from his lips. I watched them. They did not look at each other. Their
eyes traced parallel lines of vision before them over the heads of
the crowd. Nothing betrayed their deep communion save this common
stillness. I did not hear them speak or see their lips move, but I know
that Philibert was speaking; I learnt afterwards what it was he was
saying.

He was asking her to bolt with him.

It was the moment of supreme danger for Izzy Carpenter. The marvellous
edifice she had so carefully fashioned with Philibert hung suspended
by a thread. Like some great gorgeous glittering chandelier with a
thousand candles hoisted into the air by Bianca’s little finger, it
hung there swaying in space, held up to the ceiling of heaven by the
thread of her hesitation. Philibert, his hands behind him holding his
top hat and gloves against the neat back of his morning coat, watched
it. Through closed teeth he had spoken without looking at his companion
and now he waited in silence. If she assented the whole thing would be
dashed to the ground in a million pieces. He took in all that it meant
for him. Like one of those drunkards whose faculties are most keen
when they are under the influence of liquor, he saw with excruciating
clearness, through the superlative excitation of Bianca’s fascination
that was working upon him, the beauty and magnitude of the thing he was
sacrificing. And yet if she had said it, the word he awaited, he would
have turned away from all that débris with a sneer, so perfectly had
Bianca made him feel that she was worth it, worth anything, worth more
than even he, with his formidable imagination could conceive of.

She didn’t say it. She didn’t say anything. She merely lowered her
head after an instant’s utter stillness and floated away from him. I
wonder if there was the slightest of smiles on her lovely averted lips.
Perhaps not. Her smile was deep down in the well of her abysmal being.
She had had an inspiration. She had thought of something much more
amusing than what he proposed. She would reveal it to him later; there
was plenty of time. Or perhaps she would never reveal it to him at all,
but just make him do as she wished without letting him know that she
had thought of it long before. In any case she would leave him alone
now.

And so Mrs. Carpenter was saved and went to America to fetch Jane.




VI


Philibert had given himself a month in which to win Jane’s hand, and it
took him five. I don’t know why I find any comfort in this fact, but
I do. I am glad she kept him waiting. I am glad the two conspirators
were uncomfortable, even for so short a time, and there is no doubt
that they were uncomfortable. Jane paid no attention to her mother’s
funny little friend, who wore corsets and high heels and used scent.
She sized him up in a long grave glance that covered him from tip to
toe and then seemed to forget about him. The truth was that she was
absorbed in her mother. To her great delight she had found in that
quarter an unexpected cordiality. It almost seemed as if her mother had
decided to like her. She had never been half so nice.

And she fell in love with Paris.

Wonderful enchantress city, queen woman of cities! It had assumed
to greet her its most charming and gentle aspect. She arrived one
evening in June. She held her breath as she drove across the Place de
la Concorde, where the light was silver and blue, and up the Champs
Elysées towards the Arc de Triomphe that stood out against the sunset
glow like a great and lovely gate into Heaven. She thought, so she told
me afterwards, of the magic city under the sea in the poem by Edgar
Allen Poe. The following morning she was up with the milkman and had
slipped out of the house alone before any one was awake, and had walked
from the Avenue du Bois down to the Tuileries Gardens and back again
as the newsvenders were taking down the shutters of their kiosks. They
smiled at her and nodded. A little morning breeze laughed in the trees.
A woman came by wheeling a cart full of flowers. She filled her arms
and arrived at her mother’s doorway breathless with pleasure. Mrs.
Carpenter had the sense not to scold her, but she was obliged during
the days that followed to engage a special duenna who could walk far
enough and fast enough to keep up with her daughter. It appeared that
Jane had read a good deal of French history. She visited churches,
monuments and museums and made excursions to Versailles, la Malmaison,
Fontainebleau. The Rue de la Paix amused her, she liked the clothes
her mother bought her; but after a long morning at the dressmaker’s,
standing to let little kneeling women drape silks on her young body,
she would gulp down her lunch and start out again to explore, on foot,
refusing to take the motor.

One day she turned into this little street. I saw her. I thought at
first that she was a Russian, some young Cossack princess perhaps. Her
dog, a Great Dane, walked beside her, his head close to her splendidly
moving limbs. I had never seen any one walk like that. She came on, her
head up, her arms down along her sides, and the wind, or was it the
force of her own swift movement, made her garments flow back from her.
It was the _Victoire de Samothrace_ walking through the sunlit streets
of Paris. I watched her approach with a strange excitement. Behind
her trotted her valiant duenna, a hurrying little woman in black.
And as the radiant white figure came nearer I saw that she was very
young, scarcely more than a great glorious child, and her strange ugly
face under her close white hat shaped like a helmet seemed to me, all
glowing though it was with health, to be half asleep. When she was gone
I turned back to my rooms and sat with my head in my hands thinking of
how curious it was, the regal carriage of that fine free controlled
body, and that face that did not know itself. I felt oppressed and
exhilarated and somehow full of pity. It was dangerous to be like that,
so young, so brave, so unknowing. Yes, an ugly face, but her walk was
the most beautiful I had ever seen.

Through July Philibert made no progress with his suit. It was a
puzzling problem for him and for Izzy. Mrs. Carpenter found herself the
all too successful rival of the man she had selected for her daughter.
Jane’s attitude was simple enough. She enjoyed everything immensely
and felt that this was just what she had hoped to find. Her wonderful
mother who had appeared at one time not to care for her was now giving
her daily proofs of affection. And so she was happy. Mrs. Carpenter
must have been nonplussed. The connection was obvious, for the more
contented Jane was the less sign did she make of wanting anything else.
She was delighted at being with her mother: how could it occur to her
to want to get married?

And Philibert’s artfulness with women was of no use to him here. His
professional tricks were wasted. He could only hold her attention by
telling her about the things she looked at; histories, anecdotes,
dissertations on art and architecture she would listen to with profound
interest. She kept him for hours in the galleries of the Louvre
discoursing on the great masters, and occasionally she would say with
a sigh while he mopped his exhausted head--“How much you know.” It was
the only tribute he got from her.

For August they went to Trouville. Monsieur Cornuché had not yet
invented Deauville. The trip was very nearly Philibert’s undoing.
He was very hard put to it, was our Philibert, during that month of
August. And how he must have hated it. Nothing but sheer grit kept him
going, nothing less than the most enormous prize would have induced him
to put up with so much misery.

She rode, she swam, she played tennis, she hired a yacht and sailed
it. He was most of the time quite literally out of breath with running
after tennis balls, carrying golf clubs, galloping down the sands
after her vanishing figure; and to add to his discomfiture some of his
friends, those whom he could not be seen with under the circumstances,
saw him all too often and laughed behind the screen of the little red
and white bathing tents. I enjoy in retrospect his discomfiture. Such
as it was it constituted for Jane an unconscious revenge. For a month
she kept her mother and Philibert on pins and needles, and I believe
that if her mother had not been constantly at hand to dress him up
again and again in all the trappings of romance, that Jane would have
found him finally and irretrievably ridiculous, just a poor exasperated
absurd little man who was no good at games and got blue with cold in
the water. For of course what saved Philibert in the end was Jane’s
desire to please her mother.

Mrs. Carpenter was obliged to take a definite line. It had not been her
intention to do so, but she found that she must if the plan were to
come off at all. I don’t truly believe the woman was more double-faced
than most. She would if one hauled her out of the grave to make her
defence, put up, I suppose, a respectable argument. She would say that
she had done what thousands of mothers do every day, and what all
of them should do. She had picked out a husband whom she considered
a brilliant match for her daughter and had married her to him. The
only reason that obliged her to resort to subterfuge, and hers, she
would say, was of the vaguest and slightest, was the girl’s complete
financial independence. Her own extraordinary husband had given her
no hold over her daughter, but had put everything into the hands of
a trio of bumptious bigoted American citizens. What she really was
doing when she had made her plans for Jane and then got her to fulfil
them without knowing it, was not bamboozling the child, but getting
the best of those horrid trustees. If it had not been for them and the
grotesque will they kept waving in her face, she would have said to
Jane simply, “Here, my darling, is the man I have chosen for you. You
will be married in a month’s time.” But she couldn’t do that. She was
forced to make her daughter take him of her own free choice, and so she
would go on, briskly explaining that she had done it all for the best.
Was it not a creditable desire on her part to see her child the leader
of French society? And had not Jane subsequently become even more
than that? Was there a town in America that did not read with envy the
newspaper accounts of her triumphs? Did it not all come out quite as
she had foreseen? If the two were not happy what did that prove? Just
nothing at all beyond the tiresome truism that marriages always ended
in making people hate each other.

Mrs. Carpenter had adopted a jocular easy manner with her daughter on
bringing the girl to Europe that seemed to express her happy sense of
their being comrades and equals. The rôle she assumed was that of an
elder sister who was ready to give any amount of good-natured advice
when asked for, but would in no way interfere with the freedom of the
fortunate youngster. This was Izzy’s way of being careful and of making
it impossible for Jane ever to turn round and say--“It was my mother
who urged me to do it.” Fortunately for her peace of mind Jane hid
nothing from her and was constantly asking for guidance.

It was Mrs. Carpenter’s habit to have her morning coffee in bed at
nine o’clock after an hour’s massage, and to let Jane come and talk to
her while she sipped it and ran through her letters. The girl would
come in from an early ride, plunge into a cold bath, and all aglow and
smelling of soap and youth would run to her mother’s wonderful scented
bedroom where, draped in her dressing-gown, she would stretch herself
out on a chaise-longue; and Izzy, under her lace coverlet, enjoying
the sensation of her willowy figure rubbed down once more to smooth
well-being, would encourage Jane to talk. It was her hour for getting
together the data that she would hand on later in the day to Philibert.

Jane would say--“Our little Marquis was riding this morning. He joined
me. His eyes looked puffy. They had funny little pouches under them.”
And Mrs. Carpenter, who, with a languid finger turning the page of a
letter, had pricked up her ears, would sigh inwardly and say aloud--

“The poor man must be tired. He has so many demands on him.” And then
secretly irritated but maintaining a bland countenance, she would
listen to the girl telling how she had given her would-be suitor a
lesson in riding.

“You know, Mummy, he was really hurting that horse’s mouth dreadfully,
and he didn’t seem to be sorry when I showed him. Do you think he is
just a tiny bit cruel?”

And again Izzy would reply mildly, in defense of the absent one--“My
darling, I know him to be the kindest man in the world.”

But Jane did not always by any means show interest in the Marquis de
Joigny, and much as it annoyed Mrs. Carpenter to hear him criticized,
it disturbed her even more when he was not mentioned at all for days
together. Jane would bring with her a letter from her Aunt Patty and
read aloud long extracts about St. Mary’s Plains and its tiresome
doings, about Patience’s rheumatism and Patience’s bird lectures, and
Uncle Bradford’s last new case, and the Mohican bank’s new building on
Pawamak Street, and Aunt Beth’s housekeeping adventures in Seattle,
until poor Izzy was bored to tears; or she would be full of the
problems of Fan’s life with her Polish husband. She saw Fan much more
often than her mother could have wished. One day she said--“I don’t
think Fan is happy. I suppose it’s because she has married a Roman
Catholic. It doesn’t seem to work very well, changing your religion.”
And Izzy in alarm scribbled a note of warning and sent it to Philibert
by a special messenger. She usually wrote to him on the days she
couldn’t manage to see him. Somehow or other he must be kept every day,
_au courant_. I can imagine these messages.

“The child’s head is full of Fan and her wretched Pole, and the effect
of religion on marriage. Don’t for anything touch on the subject in
talk. You had better keep away from churches when you take her out. She
is disturbed by Fan’s money troubles and Ivanoff’s gambling. Don’t for
heaven’s sake go near the Casino while we are here.”

It would be comic if it were not something else. I see my elder
brother perusing these missives with fervour and tossing them away with
exasperated petulance.

Go near the Casino? Had he done so? Was he not the perfect nursemaid?

It was Fan who told me about all this afterwards. She had been in Paris
three years before Jane, had got herself brought over by some chance
acquaintances who had paid her passage across the Atlantic, and had
allowed her to benefit by their loose indifferent chaperonage once
she got here. It was all she needed. In six months she had married
Ivanoff and knew everybody in Paris who from her point of view was
worth knowing. Mrs. Carpenter had been civil to her, but not friendly.
Nevertheless it was in Izzy’s drawing room that she had met Ivanoff.

Ivanoff was one of Izzy’s satellites. She was one of the people he
lived on. He could expect to win twenty thousand francs from her
at Bridge during a winter. Besides that she gave him many meals
and introduced him to other people who could be fleeced for more
substantial sums. We all knew Ivanoff. His title was supposed not
to bear too much looking into, and his estates in Poland were not,
I believe, to be found on the map of that country, but he was very
presentable and was renowned for his success with women. Fan fell in
love with him promptly. He was big, he was dark, his brown face with
its mongolian cast of feature, slanting eyes and thick sleek black hair
seemed to her beautiful, and she believed that he had a deep romantic
soul. Moreover he was a prince and he was like wax in her hands. She
could not and did not resist him. Her stepfather made her an allowance
of twenty-five thousand francs a year and showed no interest in what
she did with it. There was no one to enquire into Ivanoff’s affairs
or habits on Fan’s behalf. She was alone in the world and must make
her own way. Life with Ivanoff would be a continual stream of parties;
Monte Carlo, Paris, Biarritz, Deauville. The prospect glittered before
her. Where could she have a good time if not in these gay haunts of
pleasure? The thought of going back to St. Mary’s Plains made her feel
sick.

She had been married a year or so when Jane joined her mother. Ivanoff
was her slave. She could do anything with him except keep him from
the gaming table. Her one worry was money, but she did not allow this
to worry her much. Jane exasperated her that first summer. Fan felt
herself much the wiser and years the older. Jane’s lamblike devotion
to her mother “gave her fits.” And Jane seemed utterly indifferent
to the enormous power of her money, she was too stupid, the way she
let her mother and Philibert manage her. But Fan thought Philibert
a great catch. She knew her Paris well enough to know that if Jane
became Philibert’s wife her position would be immense. So she didn’t
interfere, merely watched and laughed and thought Jane a fool not to
see what Philibert was after.

October saw them all in Paris and Philibert not appreciably nearer
his goal. Jane no longer ignored him, she now took him for granted,
which was almost worse. He determined to be personal. It was not easy
with Jane, but he must risk being thought impudent. One day he asked
her what kind of a man she wanted to marry. She hesitated, thinking a
moment. “A hero or a friend,” she answered. But when he said that he
hoped he was her friend she smiled, refusing to take him seriously.
The word hero however, gave him his cue. He had too much sense to try
and pose as one himself, but the thought occurred to him that perhaps
by telling her of other heroes who had belonged to his family and
his country, some of the glamour of the past would touch him with a
reflected brilliance for those candid romantic eyes. And the task was
not uncongenial to him. He had a gift for story-telling and could
gossip endlessly about historic personages. Where history was meagre
he could rely upon his imagination. He began with the lovely story
of Bayard and Du Guesclin and she listened with glowing eyes as he
talked of those chivalrous knights. He had found the key. It was
easy now to hold her attention. There followed hours and days filled
with legend and anecdote, tales of brave chivalry and quaint custom.
_Philippe le Beau_ and _Jeanne la Folle_, _Saint Louis_, _Henri IV_,
_Clothilde de Joigny_, the saintly lady whose name was still honoured
in the family, _Monseigneur de B----_ who had had his tongue cut out
during the _Massacres de Septembre_; it was a rich field, and one where
he knew his way about, and to supplement his talk he gave her little
books of folklore and poetry, and songs of the Troubadours, the poems
of Ronsard, and found for her an old parchment copy in script of that
charming anonymous ballad that begins “Gentils Galants de France.”

And Jane, delighted, treated him with a new attentive kindness. He
had gained her confidence and had touched her imagination, but there
again his success seemed to end. He could get no further. It did not
occur to her to ask why he took such pains to supply her eager mind
with lovely legends. And so he fretted and fumed once more. I can
imagine him wracking his brains for a solution. The problem would have
presented itself to him with simple brutality. How rouse the girl’s
emotions without frightening her? He hit on a plan. Mrs. Carpenter took
a box at the Opera. There under cover of the music Philibert whispered
adroitly to romantic youth, told her on every note of the scale that
she was young and wonderful, that life was full of magic mystery, that
the throbbing of her heart was its response to the summons of love, and
that some day a man would come to her and beg her to allow him to carry
her up and out on the surging torrent of that inspiration into a heaven
of pure delight.

It worked. Under the hypnotic influence of the orchestra with its
disturbing rhythm and moving harmonies, ravished by the seeming beauty
of those sentimental voices, soaring, floating, dropping deep to caress
and moan and shiver, all unconscious of the mediocrity, the coarseness,
the bold sensuality, her little being stirred, and her senses, waking
slowly in their chaste prison responded to the appeal of the man
behind her in the shadow, who took on a little the romantic look of
the hero on the stage. She did not know what was happening to her. She
would come out of the theatre in a daze and walk silently between her
mother and Philibert to the carriage and sink back into her corner,
her head throbbing, and through half-closed eyelids would gaze with
confusion and fear and vague painful pleasure at the tall hat and white
shirt-bosom of the man facing her in the intimate gloom, and as though
the smoothly moving carriage were just another box for the continuation
of the performance she would hear the same voice speaking to her that
had mingled with all that music, and she would find it impossible to
distinguish between her companion’s reality and the magic charm of the
glorious fiction.

One night when he left them at their door after an evening of
this kind, she heard him say to her mother who had lingered
behind--“_C’était très réussi ce soir_,” and give a little dry laugh.
She did not ask herself what he meant, but his tone struck her ear as
discordant and she remembered it afterwards. It was one of the things
that flashed up out of her memory when Philibert, some years later,
wanting once and for all to answer her questions as to why he had
married her, told her with his incomparable lucidity all about the
way he and her mother had used her. He put it to her completely then,
explaining to her the details of their method and summing it all up
with the words--“At least half the credit was your Mamma’s. Though
she did not seem to be doing much she was working all the same like a
galley-slave. Of course it was not her duty to make love to you, but
it was she who prepared your mind for the seed I sowed in it, and it
was she who kept me informed of your mental progress. I say mental;
you know what I mean. Call it anything you like, but give full credit
to your charming mother for what she did for you. She showed signs of
positive genius.”

Thus it was that they put their heads together, and after the
successful experiment of the Opera evenings had run its course for a
month, Jane’s manner began to change. She no longer came rollicking
into the room of a morning like a great roystering puppy. She no longer
talked so much or so freely, and sometimes, heavy-eyed and pale, as
if she had not slept well, she would lie silently on her back staring
at the ceiling, and blush crimson when asked what her thoughts were.
These facts were reported faithfully to Philibert of course, also the
incidents of the morning, when Jane got up with a bound and placed
herself abruptly before her mother’s long mirror and cried with the
accent of despair--“Am I always to be so ugly?”

But I imagine Mrs. Carpenter in telling Philibert did not finish the
story. She had said to Jane--“No, my child, you can be considered a
beauty if you want to. With that body your face doesn’t matter. Men
will admire you, never fear; in fact I know one that does already.”

Jane at that had turned away from the glass and had come to the foot
of her mother’s bed and had said earnestly, with a flood of crimson
mantling her face and throat--“But it’s not a man’s admiration I’m
thinking of, mother dear, it’s yours.” The child had then become
speechless and had gulped strangely with the effort not to break down
and had given it up and gone quickly out of the room.

If Mrs. Carpenter was touched she did not say so, and she never
referred to the incident in her subsequent talks with Jane, limiting
her remarks on the girl’s appearance to a voluble flow of worldly
advice.

“Never go in for curls or ribbons or fluffiness. That’s not your style.
If you must look like a Chinese mummy then look it even more than you
do. Make the most of your queerness. People won’t know whether you
are ugly or handsome, but they’ll be bound to look at you. That’s all
that’s necessary. Anything is better than being unnoticed. That you
never will be. Nonsense, you must get used to being stared at. Most
girls like it. Wear your hair straight back and close to your head.
Never mind your lower lip. Don’t make faces trying to draw it in. Stick
it out rather. Carry your head high. Look as if you were proud of your
profile. Your dresses should always be straight and stiff like an
oblong box. That one you’ve got on is too soft, and there’s too much
trimming. You will be able to wear any amount of jewellery later, but
never let yourself be tempted by lace. You walk well, and your back,
thank God, is as flat as a board. You’ll never need to wear corsets if
you’re careful, but you must learn what to do with your hands. You’re
always clenching your fists as if you were going to hit somebody. And I
don’t like those boys’ pumps you wear; they’re too round at the toe.”
And so on and so on. And Jane, rather bewildered, would try to make
out from all this whether her mother herself liked the person she was
giving advice to or not.

But in the end, in spite of all her cautiousness, Izzy was obliged
to commit herself. Jane didn’t let her off. On the contrary she went
straight to her one evening with the proposal Philibert had made her.
It was late and Mrs. Carpenter was sitting in front of her fire,
wondering whether she had been right in leaving the two alone together
for so long in the drawing room. She had never left them alone before.
It had been Philibert’s suggestion and she had agreed with some slight
misgiving. It had occurred to her of a sudden that perhaps he would
not have dared to make such a proposal to one of his own people, and
she felt a flush of annoyance. Strange inconsistency on the part of a
woman who had so thrown to the winds the spiritual decencies, but there
you are; she was worried and mortified, and when Jane entered, turned
to her with a warmer gesture than was her habit. The girl responded
by kneeling at her side and winding her arms round the slim waist and
saying--

“Do you really want me to do it, Mother dear?”

The question put in that way, suggesting as it did a keener insight on
Jane’s part into her mother’s heart than had even been imagined by the
latter, must have been startling. Mrs. Carpenter hesitated, hedged, was
at a loss.

“What do you mean, child?”

But Jane was not to be put off.

“You know what I mean, Mummy darling. The question is, do you really
want it? I told him that I would do what you said, and I mean it.”
And then rather quaintly she added--“I don’t suppose Aunt Patty would
approve of me. She likes independence. But I have made up my mind to do
as you wish.”

There it was. Mrs. Carpenter was forced into it. Jane, all unknowingly,
had her. It was no use asking the girl if she liked him: she only said
she felt she undoubtedly would if she made up her mind to, and so at
last after some more hesitating Izzy was obliged to say--

“Well, darling, since you will have it so, I must tell you that your
acceptance of this distinguished man would make me very happy.” And
Jane, still uncommunicative and by some marvellous instinct of profound
youth hiding at last the tumultuous feelings of her heart, accepted her
mother’s decision sweetly and calmly and went away to her room.

If she saw there in her mirror, as we are told girls do on such
occasions, a new strange creature, the difference was in her case less
fictitious than most. A very rapid transformation does seem to have
come over her after this. It was as if in accepting Philibert she had
walked bravely up to him and had given him the secret key to her soul,
and as if in turn he had thrown a handful of dust in her eyes. The
effect of the interchange was instantaneous. Philibert had seemed to
her in the beginning, an old man, excessively foreign and occasionally
ridiculous; he was now a hero. I cannot explain the change. I only know
that it was so. The mystery of her girlhood remains to me a mystery.
Who am I to understand her love for my detestable brother? Who am I to
understand the love of any innocent girl for any man? I only know that
Jane’s passion was derived from her own romantic nature and not from
him. I have a feeling that had she once made up her mind to love an
iron poker, she would have loved it with the same fire and the same
ecstasy. At that period of her life the object of her affection was
scarcely more real than a symbol. Philibert represented for her not
himself but her dreams. It may be so with most young people. I do not
know. But what Jane meant when she said to her mother that she was
sure she would come to like him if she made up her mind to, was really
that she knew she would adore him if with her mother’s approval, she
let herself go, i. e., let her imagination control her feelings. What
she wanted from her mother was not only an indication but a guarantee.
Her mother’s consent to her marriage she took as a sign that she could
gloriously give her heart its freedom.

And Jane’s heart now that he had won it was a surprise to Philibert.
He had gone a-hunting for a dove or some timid sparrow, and he found
himself with an eagle on his hands. He was expected to soar with this
young companion that he had captured. There was no hesitation about
Jane. Spreading wide the wings of her beautiful belief, she flew, she
was making for heaven.

Poor, wonderful, ignorant Jane. It was to her of a simplicity. Since
she knew now, because her mother had said so, that he was worth
marrying, then he was worthy of all her confidence. Shyly but bravely
she told him so. She spoke to him of God, of life with him after death,
of sharing with him all her thoughts. She unbared to him her ideals,
confessed her dreams, faltered out her fear of her own wild impulses,
recounting to him simply the affair of the boy in St. Mary’s Plains
she had almost killed. She told him all about the Grey House and her
Aunt Patty and her grandmother’s death and her Aunt Minnie’s religious
fanaticism. It is dreadful to think of. He has said that he was never
so bored in his life. I have heard him say so, and of course he would
have been. After a rubber or two at the Jockey, he would turn up at
Izzy’s flat for tea and find Jane waiting for him, her face charged
with grave confident sweetness. She would put a hand on each of his
shoulders and kiss his lips, and then drawing him to a sofa beside her
would hold his hand in both of hers and pour out to him the secrets of
her heart, and he, beside himself with boredom, would listen and make
his responses to the clear chant of her young voice singing its joy.

“We will be everything to each other, Philibert.”

“Yes, dear.”

“We will share each other’s thoughts.”

“Of course.”

“You will teach me how to love you.”

“I will.”

“And be worthy of you.”

“My darling.”

“Love is very wonderful, Philibert.”

“Yes, dear.”

“I feel one should be very much alone to understand. You and I alone.
We must keep ourselves free to be alone together.”

“Yes.”

“Sometimes I am sorry that we have so much money.”

“Why, my darling?”

“It will create obligations. We shall be expected to see so many people
and do so many things. But I am glad to have it if you like it. I
am proud to bring you something. I would give you everything in the
world if I could. I am yours, and what I have is yours, to do with
as you like. But you must never feel indebted to me, for there is no
indebtedness. I can’t quite explain what I mean, but it humiliates me
even to think of giving between you and me. The money is ours, that is
all, and therefore yours. You will control it and give me an allowance
for dresses. I say this now because I don’t want to speak of it again.
You understand, don’t you, Philibert? Let’s not talk of it any more,
ever.”

Such was her attitude, such was her idea, and all he had to do was to
let himself be loved.

But I don’t like to think about Philibert in his relation to Jane. I
wish I could leave him out of the story altogether.

In the meantime Mrs. Carpenter, while highly gratified that her plans
had worked out so well, was nevertheless a little taken aback at the
extravagant turn they were taking. She may well have been more then
a little worried at Jane’s going ahead at such a pace. There was no
comfort for Izzy now in conferring with Philibert. The shape of the
triangle had changed. The coveted man had drawn away from her and was
as close now to her daughter as he had once been to her. She found
herself no longer the strong base that held them together. They could
exist now without her. And Philibert began very delicately to make her
feel this. His manner conveyed--“You have done your part, and very well
on the whole, but still you know it’s finished. You’re really no use to
me now. I shan’t of course go back on my bargain. You shall have your
share of the fun. Only don’t bother me by continually making mysterious
signs. You will only succeed in awakening her suspicions and wearing
out my patience.”

Poor Jane, it would have taken more than her mother’s irritable gaiety
to rouse her suspicions. If any one in those days had come to her with
a full recital of the truth, she would not have believed a word of it.
And when her Uncle Bradford did come in his capacity of trustee to have
a look at the fiancé, she flew into a rage with the good man at the
first sign of his disapproval. I did not see Bradford Forbes. I never
saw him. Jane tells me that he was a large heavy man with a strong
American accent, a rosy face and a pince-nez. I should like to have
seen him. I should like to have seen the image of Philibert reflected
in those eyeglasses. The sight would have been edifying.

Mr. Forbes had said to Jane--“Well, I don’t think much of your little
Dude. I’d rather you had taken some one more your own size. I guess he
can’t come much higher than your shoulder.” And Jane had flown at him
like a wild cat and had told him that he had no business to make fun
of her lover, who was the most important man in Paris and a million
times cleverer than anybody from their home town. If her Uncle Bradford
had had any hope of dissuading her from the step she was about to take
he seems to have abandoned it then and there. He could find out nothing
positively wrong with the head of the house of Joigny. The little
Marquis proved satisfactorily that though his income was pitiful he
had no debts. And when Mr. Forbes pointed out to him that there could
be nothing in the way of a marriage settlement, Silas Carpenter’s
will making such an alienation of property impossible, Philibert had
taken his breath away by the graceful ease with which he accepted
the situation. How was the kind shrewd American citizen to know that
Philibert already had the will by heart, and long ago had accepted
the inconvenience and risk of hanging on to his wife’s property by
hanging on to her? He made a better impression in their hour’s talk
than Jane’s uncle wanted to admit to himself. The good man was obliged
to fade away as he had come, and float off like some wistful porpoise
across the Atlantic leaving behind him only light ephemeral bubbles of
amused disapproval. All the same he had done enough to make Jane very
angry and obstinate and produce from her hand a long letter to her Aunt
Patty in which she inveighed against the obtuse narrow-mindedness of
the entire American nation. Patience Forbes seems not to have answered
this letter. She had sent Jane a note by her uncle of terse affection
and grim good wishes, but her correspondence with her niece during the
months preceding and following the marriage almost entirely ceased.
I imagine that after listening to her brother’s account of the man
in Paris who was to claim her Jane, she was filled with foreboding,
and being powerless chose to remain silent. And Jane was too happy to
wonder why her aunt did not write to her. She did not often think of
the Grey House during those days.




VII


My family, as I think I have already mentioned, had a way of doing
disagreeable things gracefully. They could even when necessary carry
off affairs disagreeable to themselves with every appearance of
special pleasure. When Philibert asked my mother to gather together
the clan, all the uncles and aunts and cousins on my mother’s side and
my father’s, so that he might present to them his fiancée, my mother
apparently felt obliged to meet his wishes, not quite understanding the
need for so much fuss, suspecting perhaps the truth that the ceremony
was a concession to that tiresome Mrs. Carpenter, yet determining once
she had decided to do it, to do it nicely. Our relations in their turn
recognized with the best possible grace the obligation she gently
laid upon them in a series of little plaintive invitations to tea,
and turned up smiling. Their smiles were various, there was plenty of
variety in the family: we went in for cultivating our personalities;
but there was nevertheless in the light of their expressive
countenances a pleasant family resemblance, the stamp of a kinship that
was cherished and valued. They all conveyed that it was for them at
any time and without ulterior purpose an honour and a pleasure to be
received by my mother, and that, however important the present occasion
might be, the agreeable importance lay for them much more in finding
her well than in meeting a stranger, her prospective daughter-in-law.

My mother, in marrying my father, had married a second cousin, so
that the two sides of the family were representative of but one after
all, and if within our own circle we admitted that the Joignys had in
the last half century shown a more progressive spirit, had taken a
more active interest in the affairs of the Republic, and had rubbed
shoulders more freely with industrials and politicians than had the
Mirecourts, the resulting difference felt was so slight, the nuance of
manner and bearing so delicate, as to pass unperceived by the outer
circle of society. We did not criticize each other. Some of the Joignys
had made money, and one or two had married it. My father had been a
royalist deputy, my Uncle Bertrand had been a Senator; on the other
hand the Mirecourts had had an occasional relapse into the army and
numbered even now a couple of cavalry officers. If there was among
us a tacit understanding that the only thing worthy of us was to do
nothing for the government we detested, we never said so, and never
blamed any one of our members for succumbing to the temptation of
seeking an occupation. We were privileged people who could afford to
amuse ourselves with modern affairs if it so pleased us, and at the
expense of society if this took our fancy. Our philosophy was vaguely
speaking to live as we had always lived under the Kings of France, and
yet to keep intellectually very much abreast of the times. We had an
abundance of ideas about everything. Modernism in art did not displease
the younger members. On the contrary it was one of our characteristics
to keep our old customs and discover at the same time new movements
in music, painting and literature. We considered ourselves not in
the least musty or moth-eaten. On the afternoon that I speak of we
produced an effect the reverse of dingy or dreary, an effect of subdued
brightness, of sprightly gentleness of unmodish elegance. We looked
and were sure of ourselves. Republican France beyond our doors did not
disturb us. We knew that we were clever enough to get the best of it
for another generation or two anyway. We had clung to our lands, our
forests and our meadows. We would cling to them still. We trusted to
our wits to preserve us from the clumsy clutch of democracy. In the
pleasant sanctuary of our family mansion we made fun of the outside
world.

My mother, looking very nice with a black lace scarf round her
shoulders and her dark hair arranged in an elaborate pattern of close
little waves and puffs, received the homage of my aunts, uncles and
cousins with wistful vivacity, asking them all with little gusts of
enthusiasm about their affairs, and then tenderly sighing as if to
convey to them how sympathetic was her appreciation of all their
rich activities, in which she asked their indulgence for playing so
passive a part. It was the last occasion in which she was to receive
in the house that had been already sold to allow Philibert to marry
the girl who was to be on view that day, but my mother gave no sign of
appreciating any irony or any sadness in the situation. If the little
gathering represented for her a trial of some cruelty, she kept her
sense of this perfectly disguised. With her boxes actually packed and
her new modest apartment already cleansed and garnished preparatory
to her arrival, she sat calmly and sweetly by the little wood fire
at the end of the long suite of drearily august salons where she had
known so many seasons of secluded temperate grandeur, holding a small
embroidered screen between her face and the modest blaze of crackling
birch logs. It was a cold November day. The rooms that had been thrown
open were chilly. Not magnificent in size or in richness, but sparsely
furnished, they were sufficiently vast to seem with their fifty odd
occupants comparatively empty, and presented to the eye polished vistas
of waxed parquet, bland expanses of delicate panelling and high, dimly
gilded cornices that were multiplied in numerous long mirrors. The
rooms, as I say, were cold, and they looked cold. The dull day was
darkening rapidly beyond the long windows. The lighted candles on the
chimney-pieces left about them wide vague pools of shadow and made
pockets of gloom behind important pieces of furniture.

I remember feeling, while we waited for Jane, how beautifully all
my relatives were behaving. There was in their modulated gaiety an
absolute denial of discomfort or curiosity or suspense. Their gestures,
their chatter, their light laughter, expressed a perfect oblivion
of the lowness of the temperature round them, or the imminence of an
ordeal for my mother, or the general consciousness that Philibert
had done something unusual and was about to ask for their approval.
They had put on frock-coats, some of them, and others had put on silk
dresses, but their way of greeting each other signified that any little
extra effort of toilet was made simply out of courtesy to the family. I
remember thinking, as I observed them, that there was perhaps no other
family in France that took so much pains to be pleasant within its own
circle, and that really on the whole we succeeded very well. It came to
me too, looking at _Tante_ Clothilde, _Tante_ Belle and _Tante_ Alice,
and _Oncle_ Louis and old Stanislas and Jean and Paul and Sigismond,
that it was comparatively easy for us because we were gifted. Yes, I
admitted, we were certainly gifted. We understood music and some of
us were very passable musicians ourselves; and then there was _Tante_
Suze who had translated Keats into French, and saintly _Tante_ Alice
who restored Cathedrals and Jean who wrote plays and Sigismond who did
bacteriological research. Our gifts and our occupations, quite apart
from our amusements, gave us plenty to talk about. Actually it was not
a charming make-believe; we did enjoy meeting. And of all this give
and take of affectionate recognition, Claire my sister was the centre.
The aunts and uncles and cousins adored Claire. She was the perfect
product of their blood, and they understood her, and loving her they
appreciated themselves and were conscious of the solidarity of their
indestructible social unity. She meant even more to them than my mother
because she was young, and since her unfortunate marriage she had for
them the added charm of a martyr. If they had ever been willing to
criticize my mother they would have blamed her for giving her daughter
to such a man as my brother-in-law. There was not a man in the room who
did not dislike him and who would not have taken up the cudgels for
Claire at the slightest sign of her finger. The unpopular outsider was
not there. He had perhaps understood that he was expected to stay away.
Even an automobile merchant can be made to feel when he is not wanted.
The poor brute’s skin was perhaps not as thick as they thought. No one,
however, remarked on his absence. No one asked after him or mentioned
his name. Had he behaved as he had been expected to behave, and had
Claire wished it, they would have been kind to him, but he had made one
or two mistakes, and Claire had shown no signs of wanting them to take
him into their circle. He had taken her away to Neuilly, had almost
literally locked her up there, and had offered to lend several of them
money, at a high rate of interest. Also he had asked Bianca’s father,
(who was there by the way that day, though Bianca was not), to get him
into the Jockey Club. It had been impossible not to snub him. They all
felt very sorry for Claire.

Philibert’s affairs were different. A man need never be the slave of
his _ménage_. Philibert they knew could quite well look after himself.
They had heard that the fortune of the young American was gigantic.
Philibert would know beautifully how to spend millions, they said to
themselves. That was one of the things that we, as a family, had always
known how to do. They admitted willingly that Philibert was in his way
eminently worthy of themselves. His faults were in keeping with their
traditions; he had never made any of them blush. They trusted he was
not about to do so now. They hoped the young American girl would not be
too impossible. Some Americans whom they knew were charming, but it was
not always the richest who were the nicest. Alas, one could not have
everything. They would be kind to the child, however awful she might
be. It was always worth while being kind, and besides did one really
know how to be anything else to a woman? Had one, as a matter of fact,
any bad manners tucked away anywhere to bring out on any occasion?

But of course, none of this appeared in their conversation, and as I
say, no one could have detected in their manner any sign of curiosity
or nervousness. And when at last the butler announced at the far end
of the _Grand Salon_ “Madame Carpenter et Mademoiselle Carpenter,” it
was with a scarcely perceptible shifting of positions and straightening
of attention that they made a kind of circle extending out on either
side of my mother, who rose from her chair by the fire in the inner
apartment and advanced two steps towards the distant figures that
appeared in the far doorway of the outer room.

I recognized Jane at once as the girl who has walked down my street, my
cossack princess, my wild crowned creature of the steppes. She had a
long way to go and she came on slowly and smoothly, with a lightness in
her gait that had about it a certain grandeur and a dignity that seemed
at the same time somehow rather shy and timid. She reminded me of some
nervous creature who was accustomed to traversing vast tracks of open
country and who might be frightened away by the stir of a twig. I saw
in another moment that she was not frightened. She gave my mother the
slightest and most correct of courtseys, and then stood quite still
while her own mother talked to the lady who had so persistently and
gently snubbed her. It was, however, to strike me very soon as one of
the interesting things about Jane that, although she was not frightened
when she first came in, she was beginning to feel so ten minutes later.
I put this down as the first proof she gave me of being intelligent.

Mrs. Carpenter may have drained from that hour in our paternal mansion
some deep draught of pleasure; I do not know. It is possible that she
regarded her entry into our chilly drawing room as a social triumph; if
so she betrayed no such feeling. She, too, as well as my mother, was
capable of elegant dissimulation. Her rich black figure, marvellously
moulded into its lustrous garment, was of a dignity that surpassed
everything that quite put my gentle mother in the shade. I can imagine
her full, bright consciousness of this. There was something in the
poise of her high modish grey head that expressed astonishment as she
shook hands with her little hostess. It was as if she marvelled that so
unimpressive a woman, with really no pretensions at all to a figure,
should hold such sway in the world. A good many of the others she knew.
Some had eaten from her golden plates, others had left cards but not
eaten, a few had invited her to “evenings.” She greeted them with an
easy security of manner that was quite sufficiently a match for their
own shriller effusiveness. If they were not inordinately pleased, well
they seemed so, and if she was, then she did not show it. The comedy
was well played by both sides.

She had dressed her daughter rather cleverly for the occasion. Jane had
on a straight close-fitting costume of some mouse-grey material that
had the texture of a suede glove. As I remember it, it was cut like a
Russian jacket, trimmed with bands of grey fur, and topped by a close
grey fur hat with a green cockade that matched her eyes. That was all;
the dress was warm and plain, well adapted to the weather and to the
girl’s age, and gave her no look of wealth. The most it did was to set
off with severe modesty the splendid proportions of her strong young
body.

What I think we all felt when Jane entered was the warmth and vitality
of her youth. She was so very much more alive than all the rest of us
that we could not help noticing it. We felt cold and dry beside her,
and rather small. We were literally, almost all of us, smaller than
she was. This was disconcerting: I caught actually on my mother’s
face after the first presentation had taken place an almost comic
expression, and could not make out what she was after as she looked
quickly from one to the other, until I discovered that she was simply
looking for some one to put next the girl who was tall enough to look
well beside her. My mother had an eye for _tableaux vivants_; she did
not like to see a woman towering above men. Not finding any one she was
reduced to sitting down herself, and motioning the great long child
to a stool at her knee. It was then that I realized Jane was growing
frightened, and was struck by the keenness of her perceptions. There
was nothing obvious to frighten her, and yet there was something in the
air for a fine sensitive nostril to sniff at in alarm if it were fine
enough; just the faintest whiff of antagonism, an antagonism tempered
and mingled with curiosity, surprise and humour.

My family saw possibilities in Jane. Of that I became growingly
conscious. It was evident in the way they eyed her with rapid sidelong
glances, appraising tilts of the head, steps to the side to get a
closer or different view, and in their murmured undertones. They did
not discuss her then and there, they did not whisper, they were not
rude, God forbid, but they showed that they were struck. She engaged
their attention and was more of a person than they had bargained for.
They looked from her to her mother and back again with lifted eyebrows.
They were surprised to find that Mrs. Carpenter had such a daughter. It
was clear to them that something could be made out of Jane.

The girl sat on her low seat quite still, one hand in her lap, the
other hanging down by her side, and while she answered my mother’s
questions, shot an occasional clear glance from under her eyebrows at
the people around her. I saw that she was nervous, but not too nervous
to take in a great deal. I was impressed by the amount she did seem to
take in.

Philibert all this time hung off in a corner and watched her. She
never once looked at him. She seemed determined not to do so. If
he were putting her to some sort of a test she was obviously going
to go through the ordeal without an appeal for aid. It was a fine
performance; unfortunately no one but myself appeared to appreciate it.

Her nervousness evidently had something to do with her deep desire
to please, and her increasing realization that these relations of
Philibert’s were not people easily pleased with anything or any one.
She felt that she was the object of a finer scrutiny than she had ever
before undergone. Her eyes searched rapidly one face then another, and
veiled themselves again under lowered lids. The one thing that might
have consoled her in her sense of their superlative fastidiousness was,
however, just the thing that she could not divine. She didn’t know that
they none of them cared a fig for pretty doll faces and found her ugly
strangeness a very good substitute. It had not yet dawned on her, in
spite of her mother’s preaching, that her countenance was just the sort
of thing that would have worth for sophisticated people.

I don’t remember just how long this part of the show lasted, or just
how Philibert suddenly changed its character and made the whole thing
seem like a circus performance with himself as ringmaster and his
fiancée as the high-stepper whom he was showing off to the spectators,
but that is nevertheless what happened.

I had taken a long look at my brother that day. It had come to me,
watching the attention and respect with which my august uncles treated
him, that perhaps I had never done him justice. It was obvious that
they liked him and that he not only amused them vastly, but imposed
himself on them. He had talked to them with even more than his usual
brilliance, and all Paris knows what that means, and I had listened
to his talk marvelling at the power of words. Paris can never resist
words; France succumbs inevitably to talk. No one, I was forced to
admit, was such a talker as Philibert. Like a consummate juggler
keeping half a dozen ivory balls in the air, he played with ideas
and phrases. Gaily he tossed up epigrams and paradoxes, let fly a
challenge, caught it with a counter-challenge, argued two sides of a
question, flung wide a generality, chopped it into bits in a second,
was serious for two minutes, mimicked a public character, gave a sketch
of the political situation, recounted a recent scandal. The faces of
his auditors were a study. They were the faces of delighted spectators
at a play. Positively I expected them now and then to applaud. My
Aunt Suze was wiping her eyes, weeping with laughter. Uncle Louis
was waving his handkerchief excitedly and ejaculating “_Parfaitement,
parfaitement. Je vois cela d’ici._” Bianca’s father, his rubicund face
wrinkled into a masque of comedy, was watching out of the corner of
his sporting eye and muttering affectionately--“_Ah, le coquin, ah
quel comédien._” And my dear little mother from her place by the fire
was smiling shyly over her fire screen, her eyes filled with gentle
adoration.

I have heard women rave about the fineness of Philibert’s features, the
nobility of his nose, which was certainly a good and generous example
of our high type, signs of the race in the drawing of his head. I
suppose it is true that he had something special about his head. It was
the same head after all that had hung on our walls for generations,
capped by Cardinals’ bonnets and courtiers’ wigs. Nevertheless, when
he called to Jane he looked suddenly like a ringmaster in a circus.
With his little waxed moustache and his little perky coat-tails and
his lightly gesturing hand positively creating in space the image and
sound of a delicate long-lashed whip, he put Jane through her paces.
He had her beautifully trained. He had done it all in a month. She was
perfectly in hand.

At the sound of his voice she had sprung to her feet. Yes, it was a
spring, quite sufficiently quick to startle my mother. Ha, but that
was a mistake at the very beginning. She was made to turn and mutely
apologize. Whist! she obeyed the sign and crossed to the venerable
and monstrous Aunt Clothilde who sat like a large brown Buddha by the
window. “A lower curtsey this time and kiss the plump old hand. Step
backward now and smile at these gentlemen. Hold up your head. Right
about turn, straight across the ring. Not too fast--proudly do it--show
them how you can walk. Aha, what made you do that? No stumbling, mind
you. High-steppers don’t look at their feet. Flip--just a flick of the
lash to put more life into you.”

I watched fascinated. I watched till I could bear it no longer. I said
to Claire--“Lead the way into the dining-room. Tea’s been ready this
hour.” And Claire went forward gracefully and put an arm through the
trembling creature’s and led her away from her master; but I saw the
girl’s eyes ask for leave, and I saw him condescendingly grant it. By
the tea-table I joined her, and heard the rattle of the cup in her hand
against the saucer. She greeted me with a smile of extreme youthfulness
that tried to conceal nothing. Looking down at me timidly from her
splendid height, her pale countenance made me the frankest fullest
confession and asked wistfully for help, and seemed presently to find
relief.

“Philibert did not tell me there were so many of you,” she said
quaintly in French.

“We are all here, every one of us,” I rejoined. “We rushed to welcome
you.”

She accepted this in silence, and I saw her gaze travel across to my
sister who stood in the window, and rest there with vivid interest.

“You admire my sister?” I asked in English.

“Immensely. I hope she will like me. If only she did I wouldn’t mind.”

“The others? But they all will.”

“Do you think so?”

“I am sure of it.”

She sighed and looked at me gravely. She seemed to be thinking deeply,
and she seemed very very young.

“There are so many differences,” she said after a moment’s hesitation.

“Not so many as you imagine,” I protested.

“I don’t always understand what they mean,” and then with a quick
lighting up of her expression--“You will interpret.”

“But you speak very excellent French,” I again objected.

“Ah, it wasn’t the language I meant,” was the reply that came from
those grave parted lips.

Philibert at that moment approached and laid a finger on my shoulder.
His words, however, were not addressed to me.

“Don’t you think,” he said lightly, “that such an absorbing tête-à-tête
might be postponed to another day? It’s not very polite to your elders.”

I saw the poor girl quiver. I saw the slow flood of crimson mantle her
face and forehead and flush to the tips of her ears. I saw her stare at
my brother humbly, and then I watched her slink off at his side, like a
great dog that he led by a chain and to whom he had given a whipping.
The sight filled me with disgusting pain. I turned on my heel and
joined Claire in her window.

“A pretty sight, isn’t it?” I spluttered.

“But, _mon cher_, she adores him.”

“Just so.”

My sister eyed me a little strangely.

“You don’t like that?” she asked.

“Do you?” I retorted.

She shrugged her shoulders and gave a little laugh. “Of course it would
be still nicer,” she mocked lightly, “if he adored her as well. But
what will you? Such is life?”

I felt how hopeless it was. I had a foretaste of how my sympathy for
Jane was to isolate me.

“She admires you any way extravagantly,” I persisted with petulance.
Claire only laughed.

“I should think she would do everything extravagantly,” was her reply
as she floated away.

“Do be a little kind to the child,” I cried out after her, and she just
nodded at me over her shoulder. How charming her face was seen thus,
framed in her dark drooping hat and black furs, the slender glowing
olive oval, the sombre eyes, the lovely teeth, how charming, how
teasing, how elusive; and her slim figure with its trailing draperies,
how easily it slipped away from all effort, all responsibility.

Jane was gone when I re-entered the drawing room. I gathered that she
had made a favourable impression. Aunts and uncles and cousins were
taking leave of my mother with phrases of congratulation.

“_Elle est charmante._”

“_Une taille superbe._”

“Philibert will dress her beautifully.”

“So young, so healthy.”

“Such nice manners.”

“And how she adores him, it’s quite touching.”

“Fifi always was lucky.”

The masculine element was almost vociferous.

“_Sapristi_, an enormous fortune, and a fine young creature like that.”

One by one they bowed over my mother’s hand, and went away. My mother
looked very tired. She motioned me to remain. Claire hung over her
tenderly.

“_Pauvre petite mère_,” she said, kissing the top of her head. “You
must go straight to bed. All these emotions have been too much for you.
I will come in the morning to see to the packing of the last things.
Don’t stir. Just stay quiet. All the same, it’s too bad, her turning
you out of your own house.”

I said nothing. Something warned me not to take up Jane’s defence
just then, and I, too, felt sorry for my mother. When we were alone,
she laid her head against the back of the chair and closed her eyes.
Presently, however, without opening them she spoke with surprising
energy.

“I have had to promise to dine with that woman,” was what she said.




VIII


Jane had made no impression on my mother. Mrs. Carpenter had made
too much of one. She had deflected my mother’s attention from Jane
to herself and this, with unfortunate consequences. Mrs. Carpenter
affected my mother like a loud and unpleasant noise, and my mother
hated noises more than anything in the world. I am not trying to be
witty. I mean this literally. I have seen my mother grow pale with a
sort of nervous nausea and close her eyes in a desperate effort to
control the faintness that came over her at the sound of a harsh ugly
voice raised in anger. There was something about Mrs. Carpenter that
set her nerves on edge in the same way. Her metallic jingling clothes,
her loose easy swagger, her wiry grey curls, her humorous rolling eye,
made up an _ensemble_ that though to most people not seemingly at all
“loud” gave my mother sensations of clashing and clanging. When she
was about it was impossible for _Maman_ to think of or listen to any
one else. All the effort of her hypersensitive nervous organism was
concentrated on just simply bearing her, and she was obliged now to
bear her often and for hours at a time. Mrs. Carpenter didn’t let her
off. She had wanted to know my mother; she knew her now and she made
the most of her.

During the weeks that preceded the wedding, Izzy was incessantly
with my mother. She was in the highest of gay good humours. A big
fashionable wedding to prepare for, she was in her element. Having
achieved her ambition she professed to take it all as a joke. She
treated the approaching marriage of her daughter as a great lark and
wanted my mother to have her share of the fun. She consulted her about
everything, submitted lists and samples of engraved invitations,
dragged her to dressmakers who were preparing the trousseau and
made her come and help open presents. I have a picture of my mother
in a corner of Mrs. Carpenter’s drawing room, limp and pale in her
black clothes, submerged in cardboard and tissue paper, while the
indefatigable Izzy on her knees in the middle of the floor held up
one object after another and gave vent to shouts of indiscriminate
rapture or groans of unenlightened contempt. Poor, dreadful Izzy. She
had such definite ideas about things. Her ignorance was confident
and documented. She had priced every marble and bronze in Paris. No
jeweller’s shop held any secrets for her. She was a connoisseur in
lace. But the little tarnished faded treasures sent by some of our
relatives to Philibert’s bride belonged to no such category, and were
viewed with bewildered disdain. Antique furniture had never been seen
in her own apartment, but she knew that cracked lacquer and tarnished
gilding was respectable in tables and chairs. Beyond that she could not
go. Her instinct had stood in the way of her desire to learn. She clung
irresistibly to baubles and coveted with passion the massive silver tea
service sent by Aunt Clo. I know that Aunt Clo hesitated between this
and an exquisite Ingres drawing. I remember Izzy weighing the monstrous
kettle in her hands, her face a study of shrewd gloating apprisal and
her knee planted firmly on the face of a poor little Louis XV doll that
had come from Aunt Marianne’s cabinet of XVIII century toys.

It was unfortunate that my mother was forced to assist at these
séances, and that Jane herself was so often absent trying on clothes.
The absence of the one and the ignorance of the other were proofs to my
mother that neither knew how to behave. She judged Izzy as if she were
a Frenchwoman and supposed that because the noisy creature did not know
a treasure of art when she saw it that she most probably put her knife
in her mouth. And so during those days that would have exhausted a much
more robust woman than my mother, Izzy did, I believe, at the very
beginning of Jane’s life with us, use up all the vitality that _Maman_
could dispose of on behalf of Philibert’s American family.

The dinner she was obliged to attend for which Mrs. Carpenter had
collected two ambassadors and a slangy Duchess was the last straw. My
mother had never been to such a dinner in her life, and I confess to
a complete sympathy with her when she gasped out afterwards that it
was incredible that she should have been preserved from such ordeals
throughout her youth when she had enough energy to bear them, only
to be subjected to them in her old age when she hadn’t. That dinner,
with its ten courses, was the funeral feast of a relationship not
yet born, but that might truly have come into being and flowered to
full sweetness between the grave awkward girl in the straight white
frock, and the little quivering lady whose twitching eyebrows and
frightened hurried glances alone testified to her acute agony of soul.
Poor _Maman_, poor Jane, poor Izzy. I was there. I saw, and I did not
realize the full meaning. I did not realize how lasting the effect
would be. I was on the contrary absurdly reassured because of Jane
herself. I saw in her silence, her gravity, her perfect timid deference
to my mother, a promise of future felicity. I gathered that she would
never be guilty of publicly blushing for her own parent, but that she
would and did appreciate mine. I was right in this, but I was wrong
in believing that my mother would appreciate in her turn the tender
tribute. I reckoned without her nerves, her weariness, her discouraged
sense of being victimized and exposed, all the accumulations of her
years of abhorrence of the thing that was now thrust upon her. She
had complained so little that I had failed to understand how deeply
humiliating to her were the circumstances of her son’s marriage. She
considered it indisputably a _mésalliance_, and yet she was forced to
appear to rejoice in it with indecent exhibitions of familiarity. Mrs.
Carpenter not only had disregarded her request for a little family
gathering but had evidently succumbed to the desire to show her to just
those people who, not having yet seen her, would especially relish the
sight. “Just as if, _mon cher_,” my mother wailed afterwards, “I were
anything to look at. Fancy wanting to show me, a skimpy bundle of black
clothes.” She had done violence to herself in going to that dreadful
apartment in the Avenue du Bois, and the effort was too much for her.
The place was too much for her. She never forgot it and, I believe she
never looked at Jane without remembering those golden plates, those
loud nasal voices, those large glasses full of crushed ice and green
peppermint, those horrid scraping fiddles. To my mother such an evening
was a souvenir to last her the rest of her days. The most she could
do after that was not actively to dislike her daughter-in-law, and
she seemed to achieve this by cultivating in all that concerned that
young person a consistent vagueness. When people talked of Jane she
only half listened and answered irrelevantly. Her phrase was always the
same--“_Mais oui, elle est si gentille._” When Jane herself was there
she would look absent-mindedly beyond her and put her phrase in another
form and murmur--“_Comme vous êtes gentille._” Jane could never get
any further than that. It constituted a barrier, graceful and light as
gossamer, impenetrable as steel armour. All the girl’s longing to be
loved and to please, all her naïve attentions, all her thoughtful plans
for the older woman’s comfort, were met with the same sweet gentle
vagueness. When she brought flowers, when she asked advice, when she
put her motor at the other’s disposal, when she asked her to come to
her, it was always--“_Comme vous êtes gentille_,” followed by a little
plaintive sigh that the girl gradually came to understand. Even when
she worked out and carried through all on her own, a scheme for adding
considerably to my mother’s material ease, the formula was merely
changed to “_Vous êtes vraiment trop gentille_” and finally when Jane’s
baby was born, and she believed that at last her mother-in-law would
show some warmth of feeling, the words that greeted her when she opened
her eyes and saw the latter leaning over the bassinet, were--“Comme
elle est gentille,” this time addressed to the slumbering infant.

I know that my mother tried to be kind to Jane, and I believe that she
was never positively unkind, never at least during those first years
of her marriage, but aside from the unpleasant pressure Mrs. Carpenter
had brought upon her and that had given her a kind of chronic nervous
depression in all that concerned Jane, there was also the fact that
Jane was not the sort of person who would ever have appealed to her.
My mother liked Bianca and had wanted her for a daughter-in-law; how
then could she love Jane who was the antithesis of Bianca, and who
by usurping Bianca’s place, so my mother put it to herself, brought
the contrast constantly to her mind? I have heard my mother say that
she liked people to be more interesting than they looked, and found
it amusing to be with people whom she was led on by some subtle
provocative charm to discover. She recognized this charm in Bianca
without ever discovering the sinister meaning of it, and she felt that
Jane showed too much and therefore promised too little. Jane was too
big and too striking to please her. She made, to my mother’s eyes, too
much of a display. My mother liked above everything “_mesure_.” Her
favourite form of condemnation was to call a thing “_exagéré_.” What
at bottom she cared most for in a person was their being “_comme il
faut_.” I don’t believe that she ever went so far as to consider her
daughter-in-law vulgar, but there were things about her that she would
have called “_outré_.” If she had ever allowed herself to depart from
the vague affectionate affability that she preserved so consistently
and so bafflingly, she would have said, (perhaps she did say something
of the kind to Claire, I know they discussed Jane between them) that
there was something almost shocking in a young woman with such an ugly
face having such a beautiful figure. They, Claire and _Maman_, would
have liked the ugliness of the face better if it had not been held so
high on such splendid shoulders. They would have forgiven Jane her
profile if it had not been for her really marvellous hands and feet. In
the same way they would have known better how to deal with the whole
striking physical being if it had not gone with such shyness and such
humility. What they could not make out, and found it hard to put up
with, were her incongruities. Such looks should aesthetically have been
combined with audacity and hardness. Instead they found on their hands
a poor quaking creature of a pathetic docility who seemed to present to
them on her lovely palms an exposed and visibly pulsating heart, that
they didn’t know what to do with, didn’t want to touch, were positively
afraid of. It seems strange, but it was nevertheless true that Jane
frightened them. Her need of them exposed there quite simply to their
gaze, her simple, inarticulate but all too visible desire to love them
and be loved, made them turn away in a kind of flurry that was partly
delicacy and partly fear. There was an intensity about her that opened
dangerous and wearying vistas of emotion which they wished at all costs
to avoid. Claire said to me one day--

“Mother is afraid Jane will crush her, throw herself on her, I mean,
literally, and hug and squeeze her, and she doesn’t like physical
contact of that sort, you know that.”

Of course I knew. We all knew. From our earliest years we had always
approached _Maman_ as it were on tiptoe, delicately, as if she were
made of some precious perishable stuff that would be broken at a rude
touch. Our sense of this had been for us one of her subtlest charms.
When she allowed us to kiss her we did so lightly and quietly. The
touch of our lips on her hair or her soft worn cheek, was the fleeting
pleasure of a winged instant, yet it was a pleasure; she had a way of
conveying to it a quality, a fine quick elusive meaning. We never felt
that we had been cheated, on the contrary, her kisses were rare and
might have been deemed meagre, but they were beautiful. There was a
grace in the way she laid her hand on one’s arm and drew one down that
was more than artistry; it conveyed a sense of something precious that
had never been vulgarized by handling and mauling. I do not remember
her ever folding any of us in her arms, and if my memory of her
demonstrations is particularly acute because they were more often for
Claire or for Philibert than for me, that only proves that I know what
I mean and in no way diminished the beauty of what I was so often able
to observe from my distance. The act of opening wide her arms would
have been extraordinary in my mother. I never saw it. With Claire who
was the person in the world to whom she was closest, I often noticed
how delicate and restrained was her manner, and yet somehow with
scarce any demonstrations of affection, they conveyed to each other
an infinite tenderness. They were constantly together, they talked
everything over. Claire had, I believe, no secrets from _Maman_. They
depended on each other. Together they tasted the ineffable sweetness
of almost perfect communion. And yet I never saw them cling together,
I never surprised them in each other’s arms. So strangely alike, so
perfectly in harmony, they reminded me sometimes of characters on the
stage, two figures in some graceful pantomime who had been drilled to
make the same gestures in time to the same music and who moved always
through the close articulate measure of their parts in perfect unison,
tracing parallel patterns in the space round them, mysteriously united
yet never touching and scarcely ever looking at each other.

Such an impression I sometimes had in the old days when I still lived
in the bosom of the family, and now, as a kind of moral outcast,
looking back I find even more in it than I did then. I see them not
so much as actors who had learned a part, but almost as hypnotized
beings who, whether they wished it or not, were bound to move and
act and speak in a certain way. What it all comes to, I suppose, is
that they were the fine perfect products of a system that held their
individualities chained. So perfectly representative of their class, of
their race, of the discriminative intolerant idea of their forebears,
as to have been born with a complete set of gestures and prejudices
and preferences and vocal intonations all ready for them, existing in
them regardless of their own volition. I see them as the slaves of a
hyper-sensitive, super-subtle inheritance, and I understand that with
them many things were more truly impossible than with most people. It
was impossible for them to make an ugly abrupt movement. The strong
occult force of their breeding controlled their limbs and gave them a
kind of grace that if one watched carefully was reminiscent of heavy
powdered wigs and unwieldy panniers. It was impossible for them to
mingle in crowds or walk along the street or take an interest in public
affairs. It was impossible for them to look at the public without scorn
or subject themselves to the physical contact of poor people in crowded
trains. Instinctively they manœuvred to hide themselves from the eyes
of the public. It was really as if they had lived under another régime
and could not quite realize this one.

How could I not understand what Claire meant when she said that _Maman_
was afraid that Jane would crush her? Jane was no reincarnation of some
spoiled beauty of another century. If she represented any one but her
glorious healthy self, it was more likely a Red Indian princess or a
blond Norse amazon. Jane had not learned in a previous existence how
to conceal one set of feelings and delicately convey another. She did
not even know that such feats were expected of her. She would learn,
but it would take time. For the moment she was just obviously what she
seemed, a brave ardent young thing, capable of all sorts of mistakes.
She would come in with her long beautiful stride and tower over my
mother and sweep down to her; to Claire it seemed like swooping not
sweeping, and my mother would huddle in her chair and struggle against
the inclination to shut her eyes, and then the confused, intimidated,
glowing creature in the marvellous clothes of Philibert’s designing,
would sit dumbly, wistfully, waiting and wanting something, anything in
the way of a crumb of comfort; would watch for any sign of unstudied
natural joy at her presence and would accept in its place the pleasant
flow of my mother’s vague affability, and would go away humbly, to
come back the next day with an offering, flowers or a book or some
precious little gift, and always my mother would say--“_Comme vous êtes
gentille._”

And besides all this the things that Jane and Philibert did were not
calculated to amuse my mother in the least. She had never cared about
public shows, and had always considered the fine art of entertaining
to exist in the number of people one eliminated. Philibert’s enormous
parties, his balls, his dinners of a hundred couples, his fantastic
“_Fêtes Champêtres_,” dismayed her. She thought they were Jane’s
parties. It was Jane whom she held responsible for all that was
spectacular in the brilliant existence of her son; it was Jane she
blamed for the phenomenal marble Paris mansion. It would have been
impossible to have explained to her that Jane had scarcely glanced
at the plans of the house when Philibert presented them to her. She
refused to go to any of their parties. Her dislike of magnificence
was a part of her deep absolute view of what was “_comme il faut_.”
Magnificence was suitable to crowned heads, and though she would not
have admitted that anything was too good for her son, she did not
like to see him playing at being a king, and perhaps because all her
life she had cherished a loyal personal sentiment for the destitute
Orleans family, taking their political mourning for her own, it filled
her with horror to find her son surrounded by all the trappings of
an actor monarch and scattering largesse to the rabble, in a way her
impoverished, unrecognized, exiled sovereign could not do. His enormous
house, which she persisted in believing to be Jane’s, depressed her.
The really phenomenal harmony of its richness escaped her. The regal
vistas of its apartments, all warmed and glowing and made by her son’s
consummate artistry habitable left her cold. The fine tapestries, the
riot of blended colour, the audacious effects of light and shadow, the
profusion of precious lustrous silks and gleaming brocades, wearied
her gaze. Knowing well enough, who better, good things when she saw
them, there were here too many to look at. I have pathetic memories of
her shrunken black figure tripping through those immense chambers on
Philibert’s arm. I see her pass with little pattering steps across the
endless expanse of polished floor, her lorgnon to her eyes, her head
turning this way and that with quick bird-like movements, pretending to
look at everything while refusing to see anything at all. The size of
the place oppressed her and made her suspicious. She could not believe
that such enormous rooms could be full of fine little treasures. Her
experience told her that fine pieces were rare and were kept under
glass, and were not to be bought, save at a price. Even Jane’s fortune,
which she had been so often made to feel was too much for good taste,
could not in her opinion have filled that house with genuine things.
Her son had been led astray. He was guilty of imitation. If he took her
straight up to a gem of a cabinet and made her scrutinize it, well, she
admitted its existence, but what was one cabinet in a room where there
were twenty? She was in her way incorrigible. She did not believe in
miracles, and while the rest of Paris was gaping it only made her feel
dreadfully tired to be so put upon. That was her real feeling about the
gigantic mansion. It made her feel tired. She was obliged to take the
grand staircase slowly and stop on each landing. With her hand on the
polished marble balustrade she toiled up it panting, gently catching
her breath in the presence of mocking marble fauns and disdainful
goddesses. Dear little fragile figure, growing smaller and more bent
with time in her unmodish garments and simple black bonnet, fine proud
gentle lady, I believe in the bottom of her heart she was sometimes
afraid one of the army of constantly changing footmen would mistake her
identity and show her to the housekeeper’s room. It was the sort of
thing she would have taken as a horrid joke with a dreadful moral.

I find that I am taking a vast deal of trouble and time in explaining
my own family, and seem to be getting absolutely no nearer my goal,
that is the heart of Jane’s own problem. And yet I am sure it was all a
part of it. In going into my mother’s feelings in such detail, I do so
because of what happened later, and I sometimes wonder whether perhaps
my mother foresaw what was going to happen and knowing whichever way
it turned out that she was going to take Philibert’s part, made up
her mind at the outset that it would all be much simpler if she never
gave Jane any encouragement to expect anything else. Her attitude of
increasing aloofness as time went on becomes more explicable if one
interprets it as an anticipation of trouble. Heaven knows trouble
was obvious enough to anybody who was interested. Weren’t there bets
on at the club as to how long Philibert would stand it, that is, his
enforced conjugal felicity? And other bets as to how long it would
take his wife to find out certain things that every one else knew? It
required no special prophetic gift to foresee that some day something
was bound to happen, and I am sure my mother foresaw it. But I am a
little puzzled as to why Philibert himself chose to make matters worse
by keeping his wife and mother estranged, for I am perfectly sure that
if Philibert had wanted my mother to love Jane, she would have done it,
simply because she always did what he asked her. And again, if _Maman_
had brought herself to care for Jane, she would have influenced her
and guided her; she might even have prevented her from precipitating a
crisis. One would have thought Philibert would have availed himself of
such aid. But no, that was not his idea. His idea was quite other. He
wanted his mother to dislike his wife for reasons of his own, or, at
any rate, he did not want any understanding intimacy to exist between
the two. On the other hand he asked Claire to make friends with her and
help him with her education. And he seemed content that Jane and Bianca
should be friends. Was this because he knew Claire would never care for
Jane, however much she saw of her, and was afraid my mother might? I
don’t know, I am not sure. There are aspects of the case that grow more
obscure the more I think of them.

As for Bianca--and Jane--that I learned about afterwards.




IX


Claire was a person who attracted people to her in spite of herself,
even those people whom she did not like. It had been so in the case
of Jane. My sister charmed more often than not without wanting to do
so. People in general were to her uninteresting and indiscriminate
admiration annoyed her. She was constantly worried by having to
snub would-be admirers who bored her. It was generally accepted in
the family that she was the victim of her own charm, and we often
half-laughingly commiserated with her. My mother once quite seriously
said, “_Cette pauvre_ Claire, with whom every one is in love and who
cares for no one, it is really very tiring for her.”

Jane’s devotion was to her from the first unwelcome, though for a year
or two she put up with it kindly enough. When Philibert asked her to
help him with Jane’s education, she replied that she already had four
children of her own to bring up, but she nevertheless let Jane go
about with her, gave her advice about people and clothes, let her do
errands for her; and in a mild way returned the girl’s demonstrations
of affection, but it all bored and worried her. There was for her no
pleasure in being adored by a young woman whom she found to be stupid.
She did not on the whole care much for women, and often said she did
not believe in their friendship. Her need of affection was abundantly
supplied to her in her own family. Between her mother and her children
she found all the tenderness she required; in society she asked merely
to be amused. At bottom she was a confirmed cynic. Human nature
appeared to her unsympathetic and pitiable. Her family represented for
her a refuge from a world that disgusted her more than it interested.
There was for her something ultimate and absolute in the ties of blood
that gave to the members of a family, all of them mere ordinary human
beings, a special precious significance for each other. If she had ever
analyzed it she would have said--“But of course I know that _Maman_
and Philibert and Blaise and _Tante_ Marianne are no different from
other people, but that does not matter, they are different for me.
It’s not that I believe in my brothers as men, it’s that I believe in
their relationship to me, and that, is the only thing I do believe in.
Philibert may be the most selfish man in Paris; nevertheless he would
not be selfish to me. That’s all, and that is enough. I don’t believe
in men. I don’t believe in women. I don’t believe in myself or in love
or happiness, but I believe in my family.” But of course she never did
so express herself. She was not given to talking about herself.

Philibert realized from the first that Claire was necessary to his
scheme, and somehow or other he prevailed upon her to exert herself
on his behalf. She was constantly at his house and became its chief
ornament, and one of its most potent attractions. Jane had her place,
usually at the top of the staircase, but Claire’s corner was the
corner people looked for. Always more quietly dressed than any one
else, (and I believe that Philibert planned the contrast of Jane’s
gorgeous brocades with an eye to the dramatic effect of the two
women) my sister created about her an atmosphere, a hush, a kind of
breathless attention. I have seen her often appear in one of those
great doorways, a slim, shadowy figure, in trailing grey draperies,
and stand there silently while gradually her presence made itself
felt, drew all eyes to her and created a feeling among the assembled
people that a new charm, a finer quality, had been conveyed to the
atmosphere by her being there. Wonderful Claire, clever Philibert;
they played beautifully into each other’s hands. I do not mean that
they were coldly calculating in regard to each other. On the contrary,
their mutual admiration gave them, each one, the warmest affectionate
glow. They rejoiced each in the rare qualities of the other, and
Claire, knowing that in Philibert’s house she would find men worthy
of appreciating her, knowing too, that no artist could so set off her
full value as her brother, seemed unlike my mother to derive a certain
amount of half-cynical amusement from what went on in that mansion.
It is, of course, possible that at bottom she was no more averse to
lunching “_dans l’intimité_” with royalties than was Mrs. Carpenter.
In any event, princes of royal blood paid court to her in Philibert’s
salons. And Philibert was right when he placed her beside him in
that house. She made it _comme il faut_. Her presence was to it a
benediction.

It had taken three years to build Philibert’s palace, and by the time
it was finished, Claire had prevailed upon her husband to move into
Paris and buy there a very nice house of his own. On the whole, things
had turned out for her better than any of us had expected. Six years
of what he would have called I suppose conjugal bliss had tempered the
ardour of my brother-in-law, who had to his wife’s immense relief begun
to look elsewhere than in his home for his pleasures. Though she had
never complained of her slavery and now never spoke of her freedom, we
all knew what had happened and were relieved. My mother was delighted.
“_Enfin_, he hasn’t killed her,” was her way of expressing it to me.
“The poor child is prettier than ever, and she manages so as not to be
talked about.” What it was that she managed I had no reason for asking.
If Claire was happy, if at last she had selected some one from among
her numerous admirers whom she could love and who was beautifying her
life for her, then all was well. I had no fault to find with her there.
My mother’s reading of the case seemed to me the true one. My mother
had suffered over her daughter’s marriage, and was glad to have some
one make up to her child some part of the joy of life she deserved.

All this was quite satisfactory. It never occurred to any one of us
to disapprove of Claire. How could we? Why should we? Had she done
anything preposterous like running away with a footman we should still
have stood by her. As it was she remained one of the most admired women
in Paris, and the least talked about, and her sentimental life was
for us a vague rather romantic secret realm which we took for granted
and respected. We never pryed into her affairs, and when one day
Philibert, in my mother’s drawing room, twitted Claire with the fact
that her beauty increased in proportion to her husband’s infidelities,
she merely laughed shyly and said nothing, knowing well enough that
we expected no explanation. The episode would certainly have passed
unnoticed, if Jane’s face had not shown it to be for her a moment of
quite terrible revelation. It was, I remember, on a Sunday afternoon.
We had all been lunching with my mother, Philibert, Jane, Claire and
I, and were sitting by the fire with our coffee cups. Philibert, with
his coat-tails over his arms, standing on the hearthrug, had been
quizzing me. He was in excellent spirits, having just brought off some
one of his social coups--I think it was the Prince of Wales that week
who had dined with him, and Philibert was particularly pleased with
Claire. His little sally had been meant and received as a token of
affection. Unfortunately he had forgotten Jane; or it may be that he
had not forgotten her and had spoken deliberately. It is possible that
he thought the time had come to carry her education a step further.
He probably felt it tiresome to be always on his guard as to what he
said in her presence for all the world as if she were a _jeune fille_.
She had heard and continued to hear in the houses she frequented,
enough talk of all kinds, heaven knows, to enlighten her as to the
habits of our world, but for all that we had instinctively all of us
in her presence been careful of what we said to each other. It was,
I suppose, our tribute to her innocence, or perhaps even to our fear
of her judgments. More than once I, for one, had stammered under the
gaze of her candid eyes and had swallowed the words that were on the
tip of my tongue. On this occasion the phrase spoken would not have
struck me as dangerous. I did not look at Jane to see how she took
it. I merely happened to be facing her on the sofa and couldn’t help
seeing the pallor that mantelled her face like a coating of wax. It
was like that, not as if she had grown pale because of the ebbing of
blood from her face, but as if a kind of coating of misery and fear had
visibly enveloped her in whiteness. For a moment I did not understand,
and failed to connect Philibert’s words with her aspect. “But, Jane,”
I exclaimed, “what is it? Are you ill?” Fiercely she motioned me to
be silent, gripping my arm with her strong hand so as to hurt me, and
conveying somehow without speaking, for she could not speak, that she
wanted me not to attract the attention of the others. Unfortunately
Philibert had taken it all in. He may have been watching for the effect
of his speech. His next words and his general behaviour give colour to
such a theory. He literally jumped forward toward her across the carpet.

“But, my poor child,” he cried out derisively, “don’t make up a face
like that. It’s most unpleasant. _Voyons_, what a way to behave in your
mother-in-law’s drawing-room. If I had known you were so stupid, I
should have left you at home.”

Those were his words. They were uttered with animation, with an almost
ferocious gaiety, and to accompany them he tweaked her playfully but
not gently by the ear. I got up from my place beside her, feeling
myself flush to my hair. I turned my back to get away from the sight of
that cowering creature huddling back from the hand that held her.

Exaggerated? Certainly she was exaggerated. Idiotic? Perhaps so.
Understand her? Of course I didn’t. It was not until long after that
I began to understand her. It was enough for me at that moment to
understand Philibert and perceive that never, even if she lived with
him for twenty years and maintained intact the dignity of her honesty,
would he respect her.

Claire had been a passive spectator of this little passage between
husband and wife. A slight flush had mounted to her cheek, a flush I
took to be of annoyance, for she rose a moment later with more than
usual abruptness and kissed my mother good-bye, ignoring completely the
other two, not so much as looking at them as she made for the door.
Jane, however, was too quick for her, and wrenching herself free from
Philibert, was upon her before she turned the door knob.

“Don’t go like that,” she cried, “don’t be annoyed. I know he was
joking. I know he did not mean it.” She seemed to be trying to grasp
Claire in her arms, to get hold of her, to cling to her. I had a
confused impression of something almost like a scuffle taking place
between the two women, and of Claire actually throwing her off. I may
be wrong. It may have been merely the expression on Claire’s face and
the tone of her voice that sent Jane backwards. I don’t know, but it
was quite pitifully horrid, and again I turned away my eyes, and with
my back to them heard Claire say in her coldest tone, and God knows how
cold her lovely voice can be--

“Ne soyez pas grotesque, je vous en prie. Laissez-moi partir.”

I do not mean to suggest that I sympathized with Jane that afternoon,
for I did not. It was all too absurdly out of proportion. She had
created out of nothing, out of the blue, a scene in my mother’s
drawing-room, and one had only to look at the little delicate crowded
place to know that scenes were abhorrent there. I believe actually that
a small table full of trinkets had been overturned in Jane’s rush for
the door, and I know that a coffee-cup was broken. It was the sort of
thing one simply never had conceived of. My mother’s nerves were very
much upset, and when Jane turned to her after Claire had shut the door
in her face, wanting to beg her pardon, _Maman_ could only wave her
hands before a twitching face and say, “No, no, my child. Don’t say any
more, it is enough for today.”

After that I did not see Jane for some weeks. Neither she nor Philibert
came to lunch with my mother the following Sunday, nor the Sunday
after. On the third Sunday Philibert came alone and explained briefly
that Jane was indisposed. He seemed preoccupied. He talked little,
ate nothing, and drank a number of glasses of wine as if he were very
thirsty. His lips twitched constantly, forming themselves into a kind
of snarl, and he was continually jerking the ends of his moustaches.
I remember thinking that he looked for all the world as if he wanted
to bite some one. He had never appeared more cruel. I began to have a
sickening foreboding. Claire eyed him strangely. I wondered if she had
something of my feeling. How I wished she had!

It all came out after luncheon. He could not contain himself. He was
beside himself with exasperation. Jane’s stupidity was too colossal.
He could not put up with being loved like that any longer. She had
made him a scene after the absurd affair of the other day and had
asked him to swear that he would never be unfaithful to her. Here he
raised his eyebrows, hunched his shoulders and threw out his hands.
It was incredible how she had gone on. She had said that she had been
thinking over his remark to Claire and was frightened by it, that when
he had spoken so lightly of his brother-in-law’s infidelities it had
come to her as a tremendous shock that such a thing was possible. An
abyss had opened before her--that was her word. How could Claire go on
living with a man who was unfaithful? She could not understand. What
did he mean by her sister’s growing more beautiful in proportion to her
husband’s infidelities? Had he meant anything, or was it only a joke?
Did Claire know her husband made love to other women? She loved Claire,
she thought her wonderful, but she didn’t understand. And so on and so
on.

Philibert recited it all to us. His voice grew shriller and shriller.
He piled up phrase after phrase in a crescendo of exasperation until he
burst into a loud laugh with the words--“She talks, she talks of our
marriage being made in Heaven.” He grasped his head in his hands.

Claire’s face wore a sneer.

“She professes not to know then, how it was her mother made it?” she
asked.

Philibert came as it were to a halt. He looked at us all one after
another. His face was of a sudden impudent, cool, smooth. He began to
explain lucidly.

“Imagine to yourself, she really did not know it. She believed it was
a love match. She believed it till yesterday, I mean last night, or
it may be it was this morning, I don’t remember looking at the time.
Anyhow, as she wouldn’t let me sleep I told her. I told her all about
it.”

“I don’t believe she didn’t know,” said Claire.

He took her up quickly. “There, my dear, you are wrong, and you miss
the whole meaning of her boring character.” He was enjoying himself
now, was my brother, dissecting a human being was one of his favourite
pastimes. In the pleasure it now afforded him to analyze Jane, he
forgot for the moment his personal annoyance.

“One must remember,” he mused, “that she is a savage, with the
mentality of a Huguenot minister. If you could hear her talk of the
sacrament of marriage! She is of a solemnity, and her ideals, _Mon
Dieu!_ what ideals! She once said to me that her grandfather loved her
grandmother at the day of his death just in the same way that he loved
her on the day of her wedding. When I replied ‘How very disgusting’ she
merely stared and left the room. She is always quoting her grandmother
and her Aunt Patty. What a background--I ask you? St. Mary’s Plains!
It would appear that in St. Mary’s Plains they always marry for love
and live together in endless monotony. Faithfulness--she is in love
with faithfulness; purity too, she thinks a great deal of purity. In
fact she has a most unpleasant set of theories. They fill up her
brain. There is no room for reality. What goes on before her eyes means
nothing to her. No, Claire, you are wrong. She knew nothing of her
mother’s bargaining with me for her little life. Believe it or not, it
is true. She married me for myself and believed the good God sent me
to her, and my revelations were a shock. Impossible she should have
simulated the emotion they caused her. The finest actress in the world
could not have done it. I admit that as a piece of acting it would have
been a fine performance. On the stage I would have enjoyed it, but in
one’s own bedroom, the conjugal bedroom--ugh! no.”

“What did she do?” asked Claire.

“She leaned up against the wall, face to the wall, I mean, flattened
against it, her hands high above her head, palms on the wall, too, as
if she were reaching up to the ceiling.”

“I don’t see anything wonderful in that.”

“It was a fine picture,” said Philibert. “But she stayed there too
long. She stayed like that some minutes. In fact I went on talking for
a long time to that image, that long back and those outstretched arms.
It reminded one of a crucifixion, modern interpretation. I was not sure
that she was not dying and expected her to fall backwards.”

My mother had been fussing nervously with her shawl, her sleeves, her
hair, giving herself little pats and tugs and looking this way and
that. Her face was drawn and working. She kept moistening her lips and
saying--“Is it possible? Is it possible?” She now broke in and cried
plaintively--

“But, my son, all this is terrible. I do not understand. What was it
you told her?”

“I told her quite simply, mother dear, that I had married her for her
money, that I had managed it all with Mrs. Carpenter before I had ever
seen her; (Old Izzy is done for with Jane now, I am afraid, but that
can’t be helped) that I was tired of making love to her and would be
grateful if she would become less exacting.”

“_Mon Dieu, Mon Dieu!_” wailed my mother. “Was it necessary to do
anything so definite? Couldn’t you have gradually--_enfin_, does one
say such things?”

“No, one does not, not in a civilized world, but Jane isn’t civilized.
You’ve no idea what it is with her.”

Claire had risen and wandered away to the window with her usual
drifting nonchalance.

“_Et après?_” she asked over her shoulder. “What did she say
afterwards, when you had finished?”

“She said nothing, she fell down in a swoon.”

“Backwards?”

“No, she had turned and was standing with her back to the wall and her
hands against it, leaning forward and glaring, rather like a tiger,
ready to spring when I had finished. But she didn’t spring. When I
mentioned a certain evening before our marriage on which I had taken
her to the Opera, the queer light went out of her eyes. It was like
snuffing out a candle. Then she fainted. I had to call her maid. It
was two hours before she came round. She faints as she does everything
else, too much, too much. _Quel tempérament, tout de même._ You have no
idea what it is to live with her--and at the same time so fastidious.
Certain things she won’t put up with. Professes a horror of--of the
refinements of sentiment. A prude and a _passionnée_. Ah, it is all too
difficult. Anyhow, it is finished, thank God for that.”

At this _Maman_ wailed out--“Finished? What do you mean, finished?”

Philibert laughed. “I only mean that she won’t bother me any more; not
that she’ll leave me. Ah, no, she won’t leave me.” He ruminated; after
a moment he sighed. “And I may be wrong, she may bother me after all,
in a new way, in a new way. She is very obstinate. She may try to make
me love her, now that she knows I don’t. It all depends on whether
she hates me or not. One never can tell. And, of course, she knows
nothing but what I have told you. It never occurs to her that I could
be like other men. Even now she doesn’t suppose that her husband is
unfaithful, and even now I imagine that fact will be of some importance
to her. It is all very curious. I have told you in order to warn you.
It is quite possible that she will come to you for help.”

He pulled down his cuffs, twisted his moustaches into place, looked at
himself in the glass over the chimney piece, and bent over my mother,
kissing the top of her head.

“_Au revoir, Maman chérie._ Don’t let her worry you. Just quiet her
down a little. But if it tires you to see her, of course you needn’t. I
only suggest it for her sake, and for us all. She will settle down. Au
revoir.”

He went to Claire and spoke to her in an undertone. I saw her shake her
head. “_Non_,” I heard her say. “_Je ne peux pas. Tout cela mécœure._
Elle est vraiment trop bête.” He shrugged his shoulders. For me he had
no word of instruction, nor any of good-bye. From the window I watched
him cross the pavement to his limousine. For a moment he stood, one
patent leather foot on the step of the car, talking to his footman and
arranging as he did so the white camelia in his buttonhole. His face
was bland. His top-hat had a wonderful sheen. We all knew where he was
going. Bianca had returned to Paris after a six months sojourn in Italy
and had refused to go back to her husband. The connection for us was
obvious. We had been aware for some time of the renewed intimacy of
these two.

Philibert waved his gloves at me through the window of his limousine
and grinned. A new light dawned on me. It had all been a comedy. He
had done it on purpose. Bianca had put him up to it. If it had not
been for Bianca, he would never have precipitated a crisis with Jane.
All that about her affection being insufferable was nonsense. It was
in his interest that his wife should adore him, and no one when left
to himself could look after his own interests so well as Philibert.
In quarelling with Jane he had done something from his own point of
view incredibly foolish. Had Bianca not interfered he would never have
done it. But what was she up to? That was the question. How should I
know? Who on earth could ever tell what Bianca had hidden away in that
intriguing Italian mind of hers? That she meant no good to any one, of
that I was certain.

When I turned away from the window, Claire was stroking my mother’s
hand. She looked at me inimically. Something in my face must have
betrayed me, though I said nothing. “Don’t ask me to sympathize with
Jane,” she brought out, “for I can’t. I wash my hands of the whole
affair.”

My mother’s look was kinder than Claire’s. Her eyes held that proud
plaintive sweetness that denied all passion, either of anger, reproach,
or pity. Her face was very white and her eyelids reddened, but her
remark was characteristic.

“She has her own mother to go to, and her own mother to thank if she is
unhappy.”

And with that she drew me down to her with one of her beautiful
gestures, and kissed me. I must have been in a highly excited and
unnatural state of mind by this time, for the rare caress, so often
awaited in vain, aroused in me at that moment a vague suspicion. Was
she too, I remember asking myself, afraid I would try to get her to
help poor Jane? If so her fears were unnecessary. Jane did not go to
them. Philibert had been mistaken in thinking that she would rush to
them for help. The time was to come when they would go to her, but of
that later. She spoke to no one of her trouble, and neither Claire nor
my mother laid eyes on her for months. We heard later that she had gone
to Joigny with Geneviève, her little girl. She stayed at the Château
de _Sainte Clothilde_ all summer alone. Long afterwards I found out
that she had not even so much as spoken to her own mother. Jane never
reproached Mrs. Carpenter, never opened her lips on the subject to any
one, until the other day when she told me everything. Poor old Izzy
died the following winter, in ignorance of what her daughter thought
about it all.




X


I am no fatalist. I do not believe that the good God has ordered
to be written down in a book what all the millions of little souls
on the earth are to be doing this day a year hence. He, no doubt,
in his wisdom has a general idea of such coming events as famines,
earthquakes, wars and pestilences, but man must remain full of
surprises for his Maker; his activities are incalculable, and tiny
circumstances, the effect of his minute will, have a way of spoiling
the fine large trend of the great cumulative power of the past that
we call fate. It is true that such characters as Bianca and Philibert
have about them the quality of the inevitable. Certainly, as compared
to Jane, they were not free people. They were the children of an old
and elaborate civilization, and impelled by obscure impulses that they
themselves never recognized and that had their source in some dim dark
poisonous pocket of the past.

Bianca, more than any women I have ever known, seemed fated to be what
she was and to do as she did. She appears to me now as I remember her
as the little white slave of the powers of darkness. But she liked her
darkness. She dipped into it deeper and deeper. She sank of her own
will and because of her own morbid and insatiable curiosity.

But Jane was free. One had only to be in her presence to feel it. No
morbid complexes in her, one would have said. Compared to her we were
like so many pigmies in chains, and Bianca beside Jane was like a
ghost or a woman walking in her sleep. Of course Bianca hated Jane. I
don’t believe in their friendship. As it was, I found it disgusting
of Philibert to let Jane go about with Bianca. And Bianca must have
been pretending to care for Jane out of perversity. Their natures were
as antipathetic as their looks were opposed. Bianca with her little
snow-white vicious face, so white that it showed pale bluish lights and
shadows, her eccentric emaciated elegance of body, her enormous blue
eyes fringed by their thick eyelashes that were like bushes and that
she plastered with black till they stuck together: Jane, magnificent
young animal, strong child amazon, towering shyly above us, looking
down on us with her serious wistful gaze, holding out her marvellous
hands to Bianca, suspicious of nothing, wanting to be friends--Jane
insists that they cared for each other--I can’t admit it. Of course
Bianca hated her, and the fact that until she saw Jane’s hands she had
seen no others so beautiful as her own made it no easier for Jane, for
Bianca may have been a priestess of the occult powers of darkness, she
was as well a vain and envious young woman. A cat, Fan Ivanoff called
her simply.

On the other hand I believe that if Paris had not mixed itself up
in the long duel between these two women it might have ended less
tragically, at any rate less tragically for Jane. Had they lived in
London or Moscow or New York it would have been different. They would
not have been so conspicuous. The vast and impersonal life of a great
community would have absorbed them. But Paris held them close and
watched them. It held them for twenty years. If they went away for a
time they always came back and met face to face and could not get away
from each other, for Paris is small and Paris is more personal than
any city in the world. It is a spoiled beauty, excessively interested
in personalities. I speak now of Paris, the lovely capricious
creature that has existed for centuries, that has kept the special
quality of its bland sparkling beauty through invasions, revolutions
and massacres, and is still elegant under the dominion of the most
bourgeois of governments. I speak of the Paris that seems to me to
possess a soul, the soul of an immortal yet mortal woman, seductive
pliable, submissive and indestructible. Do I sound fantastic? I have
communed with my city for years, at night and in the morning and at
mid-day. I have been a lonely man wandering through its streets and
it has confided to me its secrets. Most often at night, when all the
little people that inhabit its houses are asleep, I have listened,
and like a sigh breathing up from its silvery bosom, I have heard its
voice and understood its whispered confidences that carry a lament
for days that are gone and are full of the tales of its many amours.
Ah, my worldly-wise beauty, mistress of a hemisphere, what you do
not know of men is indeed not worth knowing. And still they come,
covetous, lustful, enamoured. What crimes have they not committed, what
birthrights not denied, what fortunes not wasted, what fatherlands not
repudiated, to win your favour?

It was this Paris that took part in the affair of Jane and Bianca. Why
not? How could it have done otherwise? It has always been attracted by
intrigue. It has a taste for drama. I repeat it dotes on personality;
any personality that is striking, that catches its attention. The type
matters little. Having long ago substituted taste for morals it has no
ethical prejudices. It does not dislike a bandit; it adores a _farceur_
such as Philibert. It delights in demagogues and artists and men of
intelligence whether they are criminals or saints. Once in a hundred
years, like a woman surfeited with pleasure and sensation, it will
respect a person of character.

Bianca and Philibert were true children of Paris. They were its spoiled
and petted darlings and they knew this and laid store by it. At bottom
it was Paris that Philibert was continually making love to. He had a
quite inordinate liking for his city, a jealous proprietory affection.
I believe that had he been exiled from it, he would have died, and I
believe that his desire to curry favour with it was the motive of most
of his actions. It was for Paris that he gave his wonderful parties and
concocted his fanciful amusements. He treated it literally as if it
were his mistress. He cajoled, he flattered, he bullied, he caressed,
and he spent on it millions, Jane’s millions. It was not merely an
ordinary vanity that impelled him. He saw himself as the benevolent
despot of Paris, its favourite lover and its protector. To add to its
brilliance he enticed to it princes and celebrities from every country
of Europe. Europe was to him nothing more than a field to be exploited
for the amusement of Paris. He would have beheld every city in Germany,
Austria, Russia or Italy razed to the ground without a twinge of regret
or horror, but when in 1914 the Germans were marching on Paris, then
he was like a man possessed. I can remember him, white to the lips,
rushing in from Army Headquarters to see the Archbishop. He had had
long before any one else the idea of piling sandbags round Notre Dame
to protect the stained glass windows. He was like a maniac.

As for Bianca, she was unique and Paris wore her like a jewel. The
fact that she was half Italian seemed strangely enough not to mitigate
against her, though her mother, the wonderful bacchante who had become
in memory a legendary figure, had found it at first none too easy to
please, according to Aunt Clothilde. The Venetian had been a woman of
quick passions and child-like humours. She was remembered for her many
love affairs, the garlands of bright flowers she wore in her hair, and
the habit she had of sticking pins into little wax effigies of people
she wished would die. An impulsive, playful, improvident creature, with
the beauty of a peasant and the naïveté of a child. She had died when
Bianca was a child of six, died of home-sickness so they said, for her
beloved Italy. I don’t know, I imagine that François her husband had
something to answer for there. It was said that he had found a wax
effigy of himself in her room, containing no less than three hundred
pins, and had laughed delightedly. He was a cynical devil. Aunt Clo
says that he used to lock up his wife in their dismal château in
Provence and keep her on bread and water for days at a time. In any
case he did not lock up Bianca, nor did Bianca seem to have inherited
any of her mother’s aptitude for getting into scrapes. One could not
easily detect in her the Italian strain, one only noticed that she was
a little different from French women, with a different timbre of voice
and an occasional mannerism evocative of something foreign, something
lazy and sly and mysterious, and if she had inherited secret affinities
with that warm romantic southern country of intrigue and superstition,
she kept them hidden, together with all manner of other things, strange
things, violent obsessions, curious tastes, dark obscure desires, and
knowledge of a dangerous kind. She chose to appear at this time, I
allude to the period covering the first years of Jane’s marriage to
Philibert, as merely the supreme expression of the elegant world of
Paris.

It is curious to watch the rise and fall of women in society. Women
loom on the horizon; suddenly for no apparent reason. A gold mine, a
rubber plantation, a motor-industry, suddenly looms into prominence.
It takes the fancy, it is advertised, it becomes popular, people
buy shares in it, the shares go higher and higher, the rush to buy
becomes a scramble, and then perhaps a fraud is discovered, there is a
collapse, and a large number of people find they have been expensively
fooled. So it is in society. Women loom on the horizon; suddenly
for no apparent reason they take the popular fancy. Comparatively
plain women or women we have all known for years and have considered
insignificant, become all at once conspicuous and important. Some one
calls her, the plain woman, a beauty. Some one else repeats it. People
become curious. They look at her with a new interest. A number of men
who were before indifferent to her charms begin to pay her marked
attention. The boom begins. Every one agrees that they have heretofore
been mistaken. Her nose is not a snub nose. She is a beauty. It is
whispered that so-and-so is _très emballé_. She is the success of the
season. And after, when her day is over, she still retains something,
once having been acclaimed a beauty she remains a beauty. Only the men
who dubbed her nose Grecian look at it now with the same indifference
that it inspired when they called it “snub.” They have been engaged in
a little flurry in the social stock market. They do not admit having
been fooled, but being inveterate gamblers they turn their attention
elsewhere. The boom of the gold-mine is over, they go in for rubber.
The men, i. e. the gamblers, are always the same in these affairs; it
is the women who come and go.

Bianca was not one of these. She was no shooting star in the social
heaven, she was a fixture, the little central shining constellation in
a firmament of lesser planets. As a child she had been an institution.
Strangers were taken to the Bois to look at the beautiful little girl,
who, all in white, white fur coat and white gaiters, and followed by a
white pom, walked there with her governess. She never sought the favour
of Paris. She laid her will upon it and it submitted. As she grew older
she made few women friends and tolerated no rivals. She was nice to old
men and old ladies, people like my mother adored her, but most young
women were afraid of her. Jane was an exception. Jane loved her. The
two as I say used to go about together. The intimacy was shocking to
me--I loathed Philibert for allowing it.

Jane had no suspicions. Her confidence in Philibert was such as to make
us as a family quite nervous. What would she do, we asked ourselves,
when she found out? Paris took little account of Jane. After the
first flurry of excitement over her wedding, it lost sight of her.
She disappeared behind Philibert. Curious how such a little man could
hide from view a woman so much bigger than himself. It was a case of
perspective. He stood in the foreground. To the more distant public she
was invisible; to those who came nearer she appeared as nothing more
interesting than a large fine piece of furniture. Philibert sometimes
in moments of good humour alluded to her as his Byzantine Madonna.

I should defeat my own object in telling this story if I did not do
Philibert justice. Yet how do him justice? If he were a centipede or a
rare species of bird my task would be easier. But he lived on the earth
in the guise of a human being, and he was not quite a human being. And
it is difficult to be just to a brother such as Philibert. He always
loathed the sight of me. I don’t blame him for that. I loathe the
sight of myself. I am an ugly object. But Philibert found it amusing
to hate me and to make me constantly aware of my deformity. My twisted
frame seemed to produce in him a kind of itching frenzy, to tickle him
to dreadful laughter, to irritate him to nervous cruelty. And I was
unfortunately never able to grow a thick enough skin to protect me from
him.

I suppose that I have always been jealous of Philibert. I loved
life, but it pushed me aside. I wanted it, I wanted it in all its
fulness, but it was Philibert who had it. And my incapacity to taste
so many of its pleasures has only made me regard it with a closer,
more wistful attention. I was like a ragamuffin in the street with
his nose plastered against the pastry-cook’s window, a ragamuffin
who dreamed that his pockets were full of gold, but who always found
that the bright coins he jingled so lovingly in his fingers were not
accepted over the counter. After repeated rebuffs, I gave up trying
to get anything, but I could not take my eyes from the feast and so,
even in my childhood, I resorted to the fiction of considering myself
an invisible spectator of other people’s doings, and I helped along
this little game by sitting as much as possible in dark corners or
behind the kindly screen of some large piece of furniture such as the
schoolroom piano. All that I asked of the world that so prodigiously
attracted my interest was that it should not notice me, and thus leave
me free to notice it, and I came at last to feel when some one out of
kindness or cruelty dragged me out of my corner, a sense of outrage.
So it was when Philibert, taking me by my collar, exposed me to kicks
and to laughter. So it was years later when Jane, taking me by the
hand, exposed me to the responsibilities of a friendship that demanded
action. I used to dodge Philibert when I could. I would have avoided
Jane’s confidence had I been able. Philibert’s tormenting in no way
involved me. I could just let him kick and was when he finished as free
as before to subside into my corner; with Jane it was different. Jane
involved me in everything.

And now that I am obliged to think of my own personal relation to Jane,
I have as I do so, a feeling of pain that is like the throbbing of some
old hurt or the recurrence of an illness. Jane was magnificent and
healthy and whole. She was half a head taller than I. I am cursed with
a visualizing mind. As I set myself to the business of remembering her
life, I see her constantly moving before my eyes, visibly acting out
her drama, and I see myself, a wizened little man looking up at her
from a distance. I have an acute sense of an opportunity lost for ever,
of precious time wasted. For years I refused to sympathize with her as
her friend. For years I would not talk to her because I was afraid she
would complain to me of my family. How little I knew her!

Slowly she imposed herself. Like a woman coming towards me in a fog, I
saw her grow more clear and more definite, until at last I recognized
her for what she was.

Was I merely in love with her? Was it that? Was that all? If so she
never suspected it. If so I did not recognize the feeling. It is, of
course, the accusation my brother brought against me. He spoke of my
criminal passion for his wife. It is very curious. The cleverest men
are sometimes very obtuse. Philibert’s intelligence was of the kind
that made it impossible for him to understand simple things.

In love with Jane? I find that I have no idea what the phrase means
and cannot apply it. It is as if I were trying to fit a little paper
pattern to a cloud floating off there in the heaven. My tenderness
for Jane does remind me a little of a cloud. It has changed so
often in shape and hue. At times it has seemed to me a little white
floating thing of celestial brightness, at others it has enveloped me
in darkness and always it has been intangible, vague, unlinked to the
earth.

And yet, even to me, she did seem at first very queer. It seemed to
me that she was really too different to be innocent of all desire to
make trouble. She often annoyed me by remaining so silent when any one
else would have burst out with a flood of protest, and by going pale as
death when a moderate flush ought to have expressed a sufficient sense
of disturbance. The excessive emotional restraint evidenced by those
sudden mute pallors of hers used to worry me with their exaggeration.
I understood how this sort of thing, displeased my mother. I can
remember moments when I expected to see her bound across the room and
go crushing through the mirror, so tense was her physical stillness.
Claire used to look at her then with lifted eyebrows and turn away with
a nervous shrug of impatient disdain. I felt with Claire. I understood
this sort of thing little better than she did. We were accustomed to
people whose gestures were used to enhance the fine finished meaning of
spoken phrases, not to dumb creatures whose eyes and quivering nostrils
and long strong contracted fingers betrayed them in drawing rooms. I,
caught up in the fine web of my family’s prejudices, had found myself
from the midst of those delicate meshes seeing her as they saw her,
as some gorgeous dangerous animal who was tearing the very fabric of
their system to pieces with its many gyrations. As I say, I doubted her
innocence. I suppose like every one else in the family I was affected
by the glare Mrs. Carpenter’s obvious ambition threw over her. It
didn’t seem to me possible that Jane had married Philibert simply and
solely because he fascinated her. Not that I didn’t know Philibert
to be capable of fascinating any one he wanted to, but because such
fascinations had never seemed to me to contain in themselves any
basis for marriage. The truth involved too great a stretch for my
imagination. I had to find it out gradually. It necessitated too,
the admission on my part that for Jane the name of Joigny counted for
absolutely nothing. I couldn’t be supposed to know that Jane didn’t
care a straw about marrying our family, when her mother so obviously
laid great store by her doing so.

But I started to explain Philibert, and suddenly it comes to me; I
believe that at the bottom of everything he did was the controlling
impulse of his hatred of life. Undeniably he despised humanity. It
exasperated him to tears. Its stupidity put him in a nervous frenzy.
He was animated by a kind of rage of mockery. Everything that humanity
cherished was to him anathema. He had been born with a distaste for all
that men as a rule called goodness, and was nervously impelled towards
that which they called evil. And yet the evil he courted didn’t do him
any harm. I mean that it didn’t wear him out or spoil his digestion or
stupefy his intelligence. On the contrary it agreed with him. He had
begun to taste of life with the palate of a worn out old man. The good
bread and butter and milk of the sweetness of life was repulsive to him
and disagreed with him. He could live to be a hundred on a moral diet
that would have killed in a week a child of nature. Sophistication can
go no further. His equipment was complete, and he had, I suppose, no
choice. His nature was imposed on him at birth. His punishment was that
he lived alone in a world that bored him to extinction.

Seriously, he appears to me now, as I think of him, as a man living
under a curse. I believe him to have been haunted by a sense of
unreality. To get in contact with something and feel it up against
him, that was one of the objects that obscurely impelled him. His
extravagances of conduct were efforts to arrive at the primitive
sensation of being alive. He did not know this. He only knew that
he hated everything sooner or later. He was conscious merely of an
irritating desire for sensation and amusement. His fear was that he
would run through all pleasure before he died and find nothing left for
him to do. It may have occurred to him at times that the world minus
human interest did not provide endless sources of amusement. The things
one could do to distract oneself were not after all so very many. Even
vice has alas, its limitations, and it was not as if he were really in
himself vicious. He had an absolute incapacity for forming habits good
or bad. Could he have saddled himself with one or two the problem would
have been simpler. Could he have become a drunkard how many hours would
have been accounted for! If women had only had an indisputable power
over him, what a relief to let himself go. But no. He was the victim
of no malady and no craving. Drink as he might, his head remained
excruciatingly clear, debauch himself as much as he would, he remained
master of his passions, and day after day, year after year, he was
obliged to plan what he would do with himself.

He found in the world only one kindred spirit. Bianca was the one
creature on earth who was a match for him. She was more, and he knew
it; she was in his own line his superior. Many people have been
astonished at Philibert’s _liaison_ with Bianca. They have considered
the intimacy of these two people strange. I believe that Philibert’s
feeling for Bianca was as simple as the feeling of a good man for a
good woman, and as inevitable as if he and she were the only two white
people in a world of black men. I believe that Philibert turned to
Bianca in despair and clung to her out of loneliness. He and she were
alone on the earth, as alone as if they had been gods condemned to live
among men. She was his mate, moulded in the marvellous infernal mould
that suited him. _Voilà tout._

But she was a more refined instrument than he was. She filtered
experience through a finer sieve. She had a steadier hand. Hers was
the great advantage of being able to wait for her amusement and her
effects. She was economical of her material. Philibert was afraid of
running through the whole of experience and exhausting too soon the
resources of life. Bianca was not afraid of anything, not even of
being bored. She meted out pleasure with deliberation. She calculated
her capital with fine precision, she measured the future with a
centimetre rule, and poured out sensation into a spoon, sipping it
slowly.

Philibert was a spendthrift. Bianca was as close as a peasant woman.
And on the whole Philibert was honest. He did not try to deceive the
world. He was too impatient and despised it too much. When he fooled
it he did so openly and if people found him out he laughed. But Bianca
was deep as a well and as secretive as death. What Philibert was so he
appeared, but no one knew what Bianca was.

During the summer that Jane spent alone at Joigny with her child,
Philibert and Bianca saw a great deal of each other. Bianca had musical
evenings that summer, in her garden, and little midnight suppers that
were quite another variety of gathering. Philibert never drank too much
at these suppers, neither did Bianca; as much cannot be said of some
of the others, if Philibert’s own account of these graceful orgies was
true. It was at one of them that poor Fan Ivanoff’s husband threw a
glass of champagne in her face, cutting her cheek. Neither Fan nor her
wretched Russian were asked again. Bianca did not like that sort of
thing.

Jane has told me that she did not go to America that summer because
she hoped that Philibert would come to her at Joigny. She had found it
impossible after the first shock of his revelations to believe that
they were true. She told herself that he had been carried away by one
of his fine frenzies of talk and had said things he had not meant. It
was incredible to her that he should really mean that he cared nothing
for her. He had, to her mind, given her during those years of marriage
too many proofs to the contrary. Thinking it over alone she came to the
conclusion that there was some mystery here that only time would make
clear to her, and she therefore determined to wait. For a month, for
two months, for three, she believed he would come and if not explain,
at least put things on some decent footing, but he did not come for
the simple reason that Bianca wouldn’t let him.

One has only to stop a moment and remember what he had at stake
to realize the extent of Bianca’s power over him. He was entirely
dependent on Jane for money. There was no settlement of any kind and
he had none of his own. With her enormous income pouring through his
hands, he had not a penny to show if she left him, and when people
accused him later, as some did, of having put aside a portion of that
revenue for himself they were wrong. His code of ethics, morals,
what you will, his idea anyway, of what was permitted and what was
not, allowed him to spend all her income and even run into debt; but
not keep any of it for the future. It did not shock him in the least
to spend Jane’s dollars on his various mistresses but it would have
disgusted him to find any of these coins sticking to his palms. As long
as he poured them out he was satisfied with himself; had he hoarded it
he would have been ashamed.

In any case he knew the risk he ran, for he understood Jane, and knew
that the fear of scandal would not keep her if she once decided to
break with him. Nor could he have diminished the magnitude of the
catastrophe that this would mean. His sensational reign had only
begun, but it had already become vital to his happiness--I use the
word happiness, for lack of another. He had done great things, but
nothing as yet to compare with what he intended to do. The fame of his
entertainments had already reached the different capitals of Europe,
he had seen to that, but this was mere advertisement, preparatory
work necessary to the realization of his ultimate purpose. He was in
the position of a company promoter who had sent out his circulars and
gathered in a certain amount of capital, but had not yet founded his
business, and was still far from holding the monopoly he aimed at. He
was certain of success but he must have time. If his plans miscarried
now he would be his own swindler.

Jane, he realized perfectly, felt little interest in his schemes. It
was one of the grudges he had against her. Her attitude from the
first had been galling in its simplicity. When on the eve of their
marriage he had proposed to her building a house, she had suggested
that perhaps one of the beautiful old ones already existing in Paris
might do, but on his insisting that none could compare with the image
he had in his mind, she had given in with a sweetness and promptness
that had taken his breath away. It is characteristic of him, in this
connection, that though he wanted his own way and intended to get it,
his pleasure in doing so would have been very much greater had she made
it more difficult. Her pliability seemed to him stupid and when she
merely said, looking over the plans he proudly spread out before her,
some weeks later, “It’s dreadfully big, but if you like it I shall,” he
came near to gnashing his teeth. It was equally galling to him neither
to impress her nor to anger her, but he was obliged to contain himself,
for after all, as he put it to Claire, he couldn’t go and tear the
thing up just to spite himself. She would calmly have put the bits in
the waste-paper basket.

When it came to arranging the house she had said--“I want one room at
the top for my own. No one is to go there. I shall arrange it myself,”
and the rest she left to him. I believe he never entered that room and
never knew what she had done to it. If he thought about it at all,
he doubtless thought she had arranged it as a chapel. He probably
imagined an altar and candles and photographs of the dead. Jane never
told him about it. Some obscure instinct of mistrust must have been at
the bottom of her shyness. She had furnished it quite simply like a
room in the Grey House in St. Mary’s Plains. Her Aunt Patty had sent
her a rocking chair, an old mahogany dresser, the window curtains from
her old room, and some of her special belongings that she had left
behind when she came away. It was the strangest room at the top of that
mansion. I remember well the day Jane took me to it. She had come in
from some function and was looking more worldly than usual. I remember
gazing beyond her outstretched silken arm with its jade bracelets
into what seemed to me the most pathetic of sanctuaries. The window
curtains were of faded cretonne. The worn rocking chair had a knitted
antimacassar. Two battered rag dolls sat on an old spindle-legged
dresser against the wall. A spirit dwelt there that I did not know.

But I am wandering away from my subject. What I started to say was that
Philibert’s life hung by the thread of Jane’s belief in him and he
knew it. If he thought that thread was an iron cable then that fatuous
belief alone might explain his putting such a strain upon it, but I
don’t believe it was so. However far he thought he could try Jane,
there was no sense in doing so, and he wouldn’t have done so had he
followed the dictates of his own wisdom. It would have been so easy
to have gone for a week to Joigny. Two days would have sufficed. A
three hours’ journey in the train, two days away from Bianca, and Jane
would have been reassured and his own future secure. So he would have
reasoned it out had he been left alone, but Bianca did not leave him
alone.

Her motive was quite simply to make mischief. She wanted Jane to
suffer. She loved Philibert but she wanted him to suffer as well. There
was nothing more in it than that. The most subtle people have sometimes
the simplest purposes. Bianca’s subtlety often consisted in doing very
ordinary things in a way that made them appear extraordinary. Her
cleverness in this instance lay in the fact that Philibert did not
suspect her motive. It is even doubtful whether he knew that it was she
who prevented his going. Certainly she never did anything so stupid
as to tell him not to go. It was rather the other way round. If they
discussed it at all it was Bianca who urged upon him the advisability
of his doing his duty as a husband. I can imagine her lying back on her
divan with her lovely little spindly arms over her head and saying with
a yawn, that really he was too negligent of his wife. His wife adored
him. She was ready to fall into his arms. She was probably very sulky
now, but once he appeared she would welcome him with all the ardour
she was saving up during her _villégiature_. I can see Bianca looking
at Philibert through half-closed eyes, while she touched up for him a
portrait of Jane calculated to make him shudder.

Bianca herself was going yachting in the Mediterranean. She wanted to
be hot, to soak in enough sunlight to keep her warm for next winter.
They were to laze about the Grecian islands. G---- the historian was to
be one of the party. While she was giving her body a prolonged Turkish
Bath and taking a course in Greek history, he would be free to bring
in the cows with Jane. No, he couldn’t come with her, it would be too
compromising for him. American women began divorce proceedings on the
least provocation.

And Philibert, of course, did go on that yacht to the Grecian isles,
but to judge from his humour when he returned, he did not get out of
the trip what he had expected. Bianca having lured him out there seemed
to forget that he had come at her invitation. She left the party at
the first opportunity and went off inland on a donkey, and didn’t come
back, merely sent a message for her maid and her boxes to meet her at
Athens.

Nor did Philibert find Jane waiting for him in Paris as he had
expected, nor any message from her. It was the butler who informed him
that Madame had gone to Biarritz with the Prince and Princess Ivanoff,
and it was to Biarritz that Philibert was obliged to go to fetch her
home.




XI


Things had been going very badly with the Ivanoffs. Their combined
resources left them poorer than either had been before. Ivanoff’s
resources consisted in debts, but debts that he never was obliged to
pay, because he couldn’t. His creditors, those I mean who were in
the business of money-lending, became more hopeful when he married
and approached Fan without delay believing of course, that being an
American she was rich. Poor Fan with her few meagre thousands a year
meted them out bravely enough at first, paying here and there, the
minimum that was nevertheless her maximum. Ivanoff had a small rather
shabby flat on the Isle St. Louis, with one big room. It could be said
of it that the place had atmosphere and would attract their friends
if they made the most of its Bohemian charm. So they decided to live
there, thinking thus to keep down their expenses. But Fan needed
many things that had been unnecessary to the existence of Ivanoff.
She required cleanliness, a bathroom with a hot-water installation,
cupboards to hold her clothes, a lace coverlet for her bed, and enough
wood and coal to keep the place warm. Ivanoff had never realized the
damp and cold; when he was cold he drank vodka or brandy. He had not
been over fond of washing; he took his baths at the club or in a public
bath house. Fan’s maid was a complication. There was no proper room for
her. She was constantly grumbling about Fan’s discomfort and served
her little mistress with grim disapproval, making continual scenes
with the Prince for the way he failed to look after the Princess, and
going out herself on the sly to buy things for the house that she felt
were wanted. The one department in the _ménage_ that ran well was the
kitchen. Ivanoff had a gift for cooking. He could train any youngster
and turn him in three months into an excellent cook. When they gave
parties he would go into the kitchen, put on an apron, roll up his
sleeves and cook the dinner. He did his own marketing, going out with
a basket on his arm. One ate better at his table than anywhere else
in Paris. He used to make a bit now and then by passing one of his
cooks on to a friend. He bought his wines in out of the way corners
of France, and got them cheap, and these too, he sometimes sold at a
profit. Nevertheless their expenses during the first year of their
marriage were more than double their income. They had many friends;
a great number of Russians, French, Italians, and Spanish and a few
Americans came to their suppers, that were served in the big living
room. People ate reclining or squatting on cushions with little tables
before them. When the tables were carried out, some as yet undiscovered
artist from a distant country turned up with a violin under his arm, or
Ivanoff himself with his guitar on his knees would sing the folksongs
of his country, with the long window open to the moonlit river and
the dimly-looming towers of Notre Dame. All this was very gay and
pleasant, but they could not keep it up unless they did something to
make money. For a year Fan tried to find a respectable employment
for her husband, but she was met everywhere with polite, but to her,
mystifying refusals. Even the antique dealers refused to employ him to
buy for them. Yes, they admitted, he had an exceptional “flair,” but
he had no idea of money, and if he fell in love with a piece was as
likely as not, in a burst of enthusiasm, to pay the owner more than he
asked. And Ivanoff himself said that he had no capacity for steady work
of any kind. She would send him to interview some financier or banker;
he would go and talk charmingly about all manner of things save the
business in hand, and then say “You know the Princess my wife wants
you to do something for me. I have come to please her, but of course
you and I understand that it is no use. It wouldn’t last a month, and
I might make some mistake that would anger you.” And he would come
away happily, to report to Fan that there was nothing he could do
in that line. She was obliged to admit him to be incorrigible. The
only thing he could do to make money was play cards. He played Bridge
superlatively well. If he played enough he could count on making a
hundred thousand francs a year.

I believe, because Jane has insisted that it was so, that Fan was for
a long time unaware of the fact that Ivanoff made a living at cards,
and I know that when she discovered that his stories about rents from
properties in Russia were fairy tales and that the sums he turned over
to her were really his winnings at little green baize tables, that
she took it very hard for a time, and made him stop playing, but how
could they then pay their bills? For six months she held out and he
obediently stayed away from his clubs, spent his time wandering along
the quays, twanging his guitar on his sofa, and cooking the dinner,
while Fan’s little wizened face grew sharper and her laugh shriller and
her cough more troublesome.

The inevitable happened. She caught cold. There was no coal to heat
the flat. The maid, Margot, flew at Ivanoff, in a paroxysm. Ivanoff
wept and tore his hair, fell at the foot of Fan’s bed, implored her
forgiveness and rushed off to the Club. One is obliged to accept
the inevitable. Fan asked no questions after that. I thought that I
detected a furtive look in her eyes and a note of high bravado in
her gaiety, when she staggered out of bed to go about again amusing
herself. I imagined that she was ashamed. I may be wrong. In any case
though every one knew their circumstances, she remained enormously
popular.

The strange thing was that Ivanoff could always find people to play
with him. The certain knowledge that they stood to lose heavily,
irresistibly attracted men to his table, rich men, of course, he only
played with rich men. He couldn’t afford Bridge as a pastime. And I
know for certain that he derived from it no amusement. If his victims
approached that square of green baize with pleasurable shivers of
excitement, it was not so with him. Winning money at cards was no
more interesting to him than is the breaking of stones to an Italian
labourer. He played with what seemed to most people an exaggerated
pretence of boredom, but his boredom was no pretence. Ivanoff never
pretended in his life. He was a child of nature, a great dark abysmal
child of the Slavic race. People liked him, they couldn’t help it. He
was considered rather mad and utterly undependable. He had a way of
disappearing mysteriously, and of reappearing again suddenly, and he
never attempted to account for these absences. “Where have you been
this time Ivanoff,” some one at the club would ask him, and he would
smile his wide mongolian smile that narrowed his eyes to slits making
him look like a chinaman, and then a worried wistful look would come
over his sallow face and he would smooth carefully his heavy black
hair--“I don’t know,” he would say, “I really can’t remember,” and
somehow one believed him. He drank heavily, and when he was drunk
he would talk about God, and the soul of the Russian people that
was a deep pure soul besotted with despair, and would say that God
in His wisdom must put an end to human misery very soon. He had an
extraordinary gift for languages. Indeed he had many gifts and no
capacity and no ambition. It never seemed to occur to him that he ought
to provide for his wife, or look after her. For the most part, between
his disappearances he followed her about like a great tame bear. He
had an immense respect for her. “What a head she has,” he would say.
“What a head for figures, and what a will. She can make me do anything,
anything, except the things for which I am incurably incapacitated. I
am like wax in her hands.”

Poor Fan! If he had had a little more respect for himself and a little
less for her, it would have been easier for her. He drank more and
more heavily as time went on. Night after night he would come home
to her drunk and lie in a stupor wherever he happened to fall. Again
and again he would beg her forgiveness, throw himself at her feet,
kissing them and weeping like a heart-broken child. And because she
found him beautiful, and because she believed he loved her, she did,
over and over again forgive him, but she was worried half out of her
mind. It began to dawn on her that his card-playing wasn’t enough;
that he borrowed money of everybody. She foresaw that the day would
soon dawn when every one of his men friends was a creditor. It didn’t
occur to her at this time that he borrowed money from women as well.
Nor did it occur to her as a possible solution to cut down her expenses
by changing her mode of life. She and Ivanoff, and a lot of their
friends for that matter, lived on the principle that, as Montesquieu
said, it was bad enough not to have money, but, if in addition one
had to deprive oneself of the things one wanted, then life would be
intolerable. She had married Ivanoff to be a princess and to have
a good time. She was still pleased with being a princess and more
determined than ever to enjoy herself. Pleasure, noisy, distracting
absorbing pleasure was becoming more and more necessary to her. As her
troubles thickened, her craving for excitement grew. The more she was
worried the more she needed to laugh. Her life became a staccato tune
of laughter and hurting throbs and petulant crescendoes of gaiety. It
was a tinkling dance with a drumming accompaniment of worry, the rhythm
of it moving faster and faster as her problem deepened.

And people as I say liked her. Even Claire continued to see much
of her. She was considered original and very plucky. Her parties
were amusing, and she herself could be trusted to make any dinner a
success. Her very shrill yell of laughter came to have a definite
social value. She talked with a hard gay abandon that affected people
like a spray of hot salt water. Fagged and blasé spirits turned to
her for refreshment. She would enter a drawing-room on the run, and
call out some extravagant yet neat phrase, and every one would become
perky and animated. Always she had had some amusing and extraordinary
adventure five minutes before her arrival. Her taxi had dumped her
into the street, or a man had tried to abduct her or she had found a
bill of a thousand francs lying on the doorstep. One never questioned
her veracity. Nobody cared whether these things really happened or
whether she made them up for the general amusement. It was all the
more to her credit if she took the trouble to invent them. And enough
things did happen to her, heaven knows, dreadful things. She was always
in trouble. Her health was execrable. People mentioned phthisis. She
had a way of fainting in the street and waking up in strange houses
from which she had miraculous escapes. Decorated by her amusing gift
of description, made entertaining by her contagious laughter, her
miseries and her unfortunate adventures came to be an endless source of
amusement in society. Her misfortune was her social capital; she turned
it all to account.

Jane alone was not amused. Jane alone took Fan’s troubles seriously as
if they had been her own, and watched her with concern and tried to
reason with her. But Fan didn’t want any one to reason with her and was
annoyed by Jane’s anxiety. At bottom I believe, during this period of
their existence, that Jane bored her. She loved her, of course, in a
way, because of their childhood, she knew that she could count on her
in any crisis, but she preferred talking to Philibert. When she lunched
in Jane’s house, she and Philibert would sit together after lunch and
scream with laughter, and then, when she was about to leave, her little
face would suddenly turn grey with fatigue, and she would say to Jane’s
anxious enquiry--“Yes, my dear, I’m as sick as a dog. I haven’t slept
for a month. I’m living on _piqûres_,” and then, tearing herself out
of Jane’s embrace she would go away coughing, coughing terribly all
the way down the stairs. Jane gave her a good many clothes. Fan told
me so herself. “My dear,” she said, “I’m not going with Jane any more
to her dressmaker’s. She insists on my taking too many things, and if
I don’t she’s hurt. I escaped from Chéruit’s this morning with nothing
more than a chinchilla coat. What do you think of that? I shall send it
back when it comes, and there’ll be a scene.” And she did send it back,
and there was I suppose, what she would call a scene. Jane spoke of it
too, for she had overheard. She said--“Of course I’d rather give Fan
blankets and coals, but as I can’t do anything sensible for her, why
shouldn’t she let me do something foolish?”

I will say for Fan that she did not sponge, neither on Jane nor on any
one else. She left that part of it to Ivanoff. And again Jane insisted
that she didn’t know about Ivanoff. In any case it was Ivanoff who gave
Jane her opportunity, as she believed, to help Fan. He came to see her
one afternoon in a high state of excitement, made her swear she would
never tell Fan a word of what had passed between them, and then asked
her for fifty thousand francs. He said that they would be turned out
into the street if he couldn’t get the money in two days, and that
every stick of their furniture would be sold. It was unnecessary for
him to explain to Jane why Fan should not be told. Jane knew, at least
she thought she knew, that Fan would refuse the money. So she gave
Ivanoff a cheque payable to herself and endorsed it and felt happy to
have been able to help them. Ivanoff had pointed out that it would be
best for her not to make out a cheque in his name. This was the thin
end of the wedge.

Ivanoff having been well received, came back six months later and
again after that. He had from Jane all told about two hundred thousand
francs during a period of two or three years, not a large sum to Jane
certainly. She easily enough hid the payments from Philibert by paying
the amounts out of her personal account for clothes, travelling,
flowers, trinkets, and so on. Occasionally she would countermand an
order for a fur coat and feel that she was making a personal sacrifice
for Fan, and this added a very real element of joy to her pleasure. And
there was no doubt in her mind that this money did go to help Fan.
Ivanoff always had some tale of Fan’s illnesses, her doctors’ bills,
her need to go to some watering place for a cure, her last unfortunate
venture in the stock market. Nevertheless Jane was worried. She was
worried, God help her, because she was deceiving Philibert. The subject
was heavy on her mind. At times she felt she must tell Philibert all
about it, but Philibert did not like Ivanoff. She was afraid to tell
him for fear he should put a stop to her doing anything more in that
quarter. Philibert tolerated Fan because she was amusing and helped to
occupy Jane, but he would not tolerate Ivanoff, and refused to have
the Russian in his house. He was unaware of the latter’s quarterly
afternoon visits. This, too, Jane had been obliged to keep from him.
If she told Philibert that Ivanoff had been to call and had been
received, she would have to explain why. Philibert seldom showed any
interest in the people she received on her day in the afternoon, but
he did occasionally ask her who had been there, and suggest that
one or another was really too stupid or too ugly to be welcomed
under his roof. He did not wish his house to be invaded by touring
Americans or by the halt, the lame and the blind, so he exercised a
sort of censorship over his wife’s calling list. Ivanoff was one of
the people who to Philibert were beyond the pale. Up to the night of
Bianca’s supper party he had forced himself to greet the big Russian
with civility when he met him in other people’s houses, but after the
beastly exhibition the latter had made of himself there, he had let it
be known that he did not wish to find himself again anywhere in the
same room with him.

It was therefore extremely unpleasant to Philibert to learn from his
butler that Jane had gone to Biarritz with the Ivanoffs. Nothing,
indeed, that Jane could have done could have been so disagreeable to
him. Had she planned it on purpose as a revenge, she could not have
calculated better, and he believed she had done so. He had come to his
senses. He had perceived during the train journey north that he had
been very foolish to take such risks. It occurred to him that he had
not heard from Jane for two months, and that he did not know where
she was. She might have gone to America, she might be there with the
intention of not coming back. She was capable of anything. The news
he received on arrival was a relief that left him free to enjoy his
exasperation. He was not in a desperate fix after all, it was Jane who
was in a fix. She had at last given him a definite cause of complaint
and had incurred his displeasure in a way that made it easy for him to
act against her. If this were her way of taking a line of her own and
paying him back, she had played beautifully into his hands. He took the
train for Biarritz, smiling and revolving pleasantly in his heart the
things he would say.

But Jane had had no ulterior motive in what she had done. She had come
back to Paris at the end of September and had found Fan lying exhausted
by haemorrhage in an untidy bed with a bowl of blood beside her, and
Ivanoff on the floor, his head in his hands, sobbing, while Margot
stormed at him for his uselessness. Jane had simply picked Fan up in
her arms, and had carried her away, and Ivanoff like an unhappy dog had
followed, his tail between his legs. The haemorrhage had thoroughly
frightened him. It was a fortnight later that Philibert, one brilliant
afternoon announced himself at the Palace Hotel Biarritz. Fan was
better and Ivanoff had recovered from his terror. Philibert found the
two women in an upstairs sitting-room overlooking the sea. Fan was on
a couch, her little wizened face screwed into a smile of bravado under
her lace bonnet, and a cigarette between her rouged lips. Jane looked
the more ill of the two. Her usual glowing pallor had turned to the
whitish-grey of ashes, there were purple circles under her eyes. She
was looking out of the window, her hands clasped behind her head, and
when Philibert entered she wheeled at the sound of his voice, and then
stood silently trembling.

Fan cried out at him, gaily impertinent. “Hullo, Fifi, you didn’t come
too soon, did you?”

He didn’t answer her. “Come with me,” he said to Jane briefly, and she
followed him out of the room. He had passed Ivanoff below in the bar.
The sight had added nothing pleasant to his humour.

What he said to her was what he had intended to say. Her wasted face
made no impression in her favour, on the contrary. He read in her
agitation signs of guilt and seemed to have forgotten that he had
abandoned her during six months on the pretext that she loved him too
much.

As for Jane, she listened to him in a silence that she tried to make
natural and easy.

Telling me about it afterwards she said, “I had determined this time to
give him no opportunity of laughing at me. I made scarcely a movement.
Though I was trembling, I managed to sit down in a comfortable chair
and cross my legs and lean back, as if he had come to tell me something
pleasant.”

He expressed without preamble his displeasure at finding her in the
company of the Ivanoffs. He was surprised to find that she cared for
such people. She knew, that he loathed Ivanoff and considered him
an unfit companion for any respectable woman. He saw no reason why
his wife should make his name a by-word in the glaring publicity of
such a place as Biarritz. Here she was in the centre of a dissolute
set of cosmopolitan adventurers, behaving like a common woman of
light character, or at least giving the impression to the world of
so behaving. He presumed that the Ivanoffs were her guests and were
costing her a pretty penny. That was a side issue. The Russian was a
dissolute ruffian who lived not alone on his winning at cards but on
women. He was a man kept by women. As for Ivanoff’s wife, she knew what
her husband was up to and profitted by his earnings. Jane, with white
lips interrupted him here.

“I don’t believe you,” she said quietly. And then more sharply, “You
forget that Fan is my best friend.”

He sneered. “I do not forget. I am merely unable to congratulate you
on your taste. As for Ivanoff’s habits I can give you precise details.
There is a woman in this hotel--” Something in Jane’s face stopped
him. She did not speak at once, but leaning slightly forward, one arm
on the table before her, looked at him calmly and smiled. She had done
a good deal of thinking during those lonely months at Joigny. Alone
and unobserved she had passed through her crisis. She was no longer
the same person. Day after day, tramping the country, she had passed
in review the years of her marriage and had scrutinized their every
content, discovering slowly their meaning. She had learned a great many
things. She was beginning to understand more than she had ever dreamed
existed, of complication and danger in her surroundings, and she had
determined if Philibert came back to her to put up a fight for her
life, she meant her life with him: for the one thing she had not yet
learned was to despise him. She still blamed herself for not having
made him love her. She still cared for him. But she had learned a great
deal, and among other things she had found out that she was alone.
There was no one for her to turn to. His family, with one possible
exception, myself, she realized now disliked her.

So she met him calmly. His attack had actually been a relief to her.
Her agitation had been due just simply to the marvellous fact of his
having come back to her, and she read in his annoyance a proof of his
not being after all as indifferent to herself as he tried to make her
believe. She voiced this.

“I was not aware,” she said quietly, “that you in the least cared
what I did.” Her words and her tone startled him. He looked at her
quickly. It was clear to him that she was older and wiser and would be
more difficult to deal with than he had supposed. A gleam shot out at
her from his eyes. It met an answering gleam. In silence their wills
clashed. They were both aware that a struggle had begun. It was she
who, after a moment, continued--

“I do not believe what you say about Fan and Ivanoff. I know that your
worst accusation is untrue. Fan is incapable of accepting such money.”
She paused as if to calculate her effect and added deliberately. “As
for Ivanoff, if he lives on women then I am one of them. I have lent
him money myself.”

He had turned away from her, but at this he whirled round like a top,
his face contorted.

“What? What do you say? You? You have given him--?”

“Yes, I have given him money on several occasions.”

Her immobility had its effect. He hung over her speechless, his lips
twitching, and she continued to look at him. At last she spoke.

“What do you think I gave him money for, Philibert?”

He saw instantly his danger. Her tone conveyed it to him. If he voiced
a suspicion of anything so horrible he destroyed himself for ever in
her eyes. His brain worked quickly enough to save him. Marvellously and
lucidly he knew she would never forgive him for suspecting her, and
suddenly he knew that she could not be accused. Her virtue that had so
bored him was unassailable and her pride frightened him. Whether he
liked it or not there it was before him, and as if he couldn’t bear
the sight of it he whirled away from her and stalked to the window,
muttering peevishly something about his not knowing why or what she had
been up to. But she didn’t let him off. Her voice followed him across
the room.

“I gave Ivanoff money for Fan. You understand that, don’t you,
Philibert. You don’t suggest for a moment anything else, do you?”

He remained with his back to her, and she remained where she was,
waiting, watching his nervous hands that twisted his coat-tails, and
his foot kicking the window-sill, watching her image of him shrinking,
wavering, changing. At last she rose. She was afraid now, afraid of
despising him, afraid to watch him any longer. She moved to the door
and from her further distance spoke again.

“I have given Ivanoff in all two hundred and fifty thousand francs.
If you have anything to say about my doing so, please speak now. I am
waiting.”

And he, at last, found the words with which to meet her.

“I don’t believe Fan ever got a penny of it.”

At that she faltered a moment, but only a moment. Her tone when she
spoke was smooth and light.

“Well, if she didn’t it’s lost.” She could take it as high as that.
She gave a little shrug, just the slightest shrug. It may be that
she really did strike him as almost coming up to his own standard at
that moment. In any case he chose the instant for his own recovery.
He had seemed not to know what to do. He had made a very painful
impression. His indecision had humiliated her more than his violence.
She felt ashamed for him now, and all the pent-up passion in her
surged uncomfortably, hurtingly, against the shock her opinion of
him had received, sending hot waves of blood pounding through her
veins, that gave her a feeling of sickness. He divined something of
this. It was time that he recovered himself, and his recovery was
beautiful. It shows him, I maintain, an artist. He went up to her
deliberately and took her hand, and looking into her eyes said--“You
are astounding,” then watching his effect he added, “You are superb. I
do not understand, but I admire.” And then deliberately with consummate
gallantry he kissed her hand.

And poor Jane was pleased. On top of all her deep misery she was
conscious of a little silvery ripple of pleasure. Though it would never
be the same with her again she thought that she had won a battle, and
made an impression, and with a kind of anguish of renunciation she
accepted his offering. She knew now that he would never give her what
she wanted, but she believed that he was prepared at last to give her
something, and she was bound to allow him to do so.

They left Biarritz the next day, having agreed between them on a
number of things. Jane was to inform the Ivanoffs that their rooms
were retained for a fortnight longer. Philibert promised that he would
never allow Ivanoff to know that he knew Jane had given him money. Jane
in return agreed not to repeat the experiment and to have no further
dealings with Ivanoff of any kind. She refused, however, to give up
seeing Fan as she had always done.




XII


One day toward the middle of the winter of that year, Claire said to
me; “What has happened to Philibert? He acts as if he were in love with
his wife.” It was true. We had all noticed it. I mean Claire and my
mother and myself, but gradually we came to notice something else as
well, namely that Philibert’s increased attentions did not seem to be
making Jane happy. She was strangely preoccupied and for her, strangely
languid. Her old buoyancy was gone, and with it the impression she had
so often conveyed of an over-powering awkward energy. _Maman_ need
never fear now that Jane would fall on her and crush her. Claire need
not worry about being pushed into corners. When Jane did join our
family parties, and she came much less frequently than in the early
days, she was almost always so absent-minded as to seem scarcely to
realize where she was. She would come in with Philibert and the child
Geneviève, kiss my mother gently on the forehead and then sink into
a chair and forget us. We might now have said anything preposterous
that came into our heads. She would not have noticed us. She did not
listen to our talk, and when we addressed her directly would give a
little start and say--“_Je vous demande pardon, je n’ai pas compris._”
Sometimes I caught Philibert watching her as if he too were mystified
and troubled. He would drag her into the conversation. “_Mais, mon
amie, écoutes donc, quand on vous parle_,” he would exclaim in
affectionate remonstrance, and she would flush a little and make a very
obvious effort to pay attention. My mother felt there was something
wrong. It may have seemed to her that she was herself responsible. She
may have felt a certain contrition about Jane, or she may merely have
found it intolerable that any one should derive from her drawing room
circle so little apparent interest. In any case she made on her part an
effort and talked to Jane much more, and in a different more intimate
way than she had ever done before. And, of course, when actually
talking directly to _Maman_ Jane was perfectly attentive and perfectly
courteously sweet-tempered. But when my mother turned her head toward
some one else, Jane, as if released from the end of some invisible
string that had held her erect in her chair, would slip back and lean
her cheek on her hand, and the light in her eyes would be veiled by
that invisible glaze that means an inward gazing. Such are the eyes of
the blind. One could at such moment have waved one’s fingers an inch
from Jane’s face, and she would not have blinked, at least that was my
impression.

And she was incredibly thin. Many people thought this becoming to her,
but to me it was painful. I had no wish to find Jane beautiful if I
felt that she was going to die, and there were days when I did feel she
was, as one says, going into a decline. She had been so harmoniously
big that one would never have supposed she carried much superfluous
flesh, until one saw it wasting away and found her still alive, and not
a hideous skeleton. Her marvellous hands and feet were now, I suppose,
even more marvellous, but to me their beautiful exposed structure of
lovely bones was a source of pain. Her wrists and ankles were so slim
that one felt if she made a wrong movement they would snap, and her
rich lustrous clothes seemed to find round her waist and bust nothing
to cling to. Only her broad shoulders and narrow hips seemed to support
them. One could not tell where her waist was. Sometimes under the
silken fabric of her skirt one saw the shape of a sharp knee bone.
Her face seemed to have grown much smaller. The cheeks hollowed in
under prominent cheek-bones, and her small green eyes were sunk into
her head--that was more than ever like some carved antique coin and
had taken on a quite terrifying beauty; I mean that the charm of her
ugliness had received its special ordained stamp, the mark that the god
or imp who made it had meant it to have. She reddened her lips a little
now; otherwise her face was untouched by powder or rouge. The skin
was of the palest ivory colour, a close smooth dull surface, without
a blemish, soft and pure and dead. There was about the texture of her
skin something curious. It made one dream of a contact so cold that
if a butterfly brushed against it the little living thing would fall
lifeless to the ground.

And a new charm disengaged itself from her person. She seemed possessed
of a hitherto-unused and undiscovered magnetism, and she dwelt with it
silently, wrapped in a kind of gentle gloom that she tried now and then
to throw off as one throws off a wet clinging garment. I do not want
to give the impression that she was moody, for that would be untrue.
She was, on the contrary, of an uncanny equanimity, and when she smiled
her smile crept slowly and softly over her face and as softly faded
away. There was no jerk of nerves about it. Nervous was the last word
one could apply to her. She was superlatively quiet, unnaturally calm,
and yet at times she looked at me like a haunted woman, a woman haunted
not by a ghost but by an idea, perhaps by some profoundly disturbing
knowledge.

We were increasingly troubled. We wondered if at last she had found
out things about Philibert, particularly about Philibert and Bianca,
and somehow the fact that we knew he was devoting himself more to Jane
and less to Bianca did not console us. What indeed was it but just the
most disturbing thing of all that Philibert’s new devotion to Jane
produced in her no flush of responsive joy? My mother was very worried
indeed, and we were affected by her anxiety. Even Claire began to watch
Jane with a questioning puzzled attention. Often I found Claire’s dark
eyes travelling from Jane to Philibert, from Philibert to my mother,
from my mother back to Jane. And simultaneously my mother’s eyes moved
from one to the other, and so did Philibert’s and so did mine. We
were all looking from one to the other, watching, referring, puzzling,
comparing. Jane alone looked at no one.

I should have felt this to be humorous had it not humiliated and
annoyed. It seemed to me that we were slightly ridiculous at times,
and at other times lacking in delicacy. The last impression irked
me exceedingly. For my mother and sister to be guilty of indelicacy
was strangely unpleasant, I knew they were not impelled in their new
interest by affection. They did not even now care for Jane. She had
become to them an enigma; that of course was something more than she
had been; there was a shade of admiration now in their wondering, but
no genuine feeling for her and no sympathy. Their sympathy was for
Philibert, and perhaps, a little for themselves. In any case they
were afraid for Philibert. They saw his great social edifice swaying.
They were holding their breath. And Jane gave them no sign. Had she
calculated her effect with consummate art her manner could not have
been more perfectly tuned to the high fine note of suspense. And they
dared not to ask her anything.

But as the weeks passed, they gave way to asking each other. In her
absence they constantly talked of her. It was curious how much of their
attention she took up by staying so much away. Claire and my mother
could now often be heard to say--“Have you seen Jane? What is the child
doing with herself? I find her looking very unwell. Has she complained
to you of feeling ill?” and now and again with a sigh of reproach
either my mother or Claire would say to the other--“What a pity you
never won her confidence. She tells us nothing, but absolutely nothing.
It’s as if she didn’t trust us.”

And Philibert seemed as much at a loss as they. He could enlighten them
very little. Gradually as their nervousness made them less discreet
they took to questioning him. “But what is the matter with her?” they
would ask, and he would shrug his shoulders. He didn’t know. Did he
think she was ill? No, she wasn’t ill, she had never been so active.
Was she then unhappy? Ah, who could say? She was now and then very
gay, much gayer at moments than he had ever known her. She went out
constantly. She had ideas of her own about receiving. She was arranging
a series of musical evenings for the audition of unpublished works of
young French composers. She was multiplying her activities. Sometimes
he did not see her alone for days together. And here my mother gently
and timidly interrupted him. “_Mais mon enfant_, when she is alone
with you, is she amiable, is she kind? _Enfin_, is she gracious?”
And Philibert again, but this time with a more exaggerated movement,
shrugged his shoulders--“_Comme cela._ I have no right to complain.”

And then quickly I saw them all look at each other and saw the same
thought flit from one mind to the other and dodge away out of sight,
and the spectacle of those intelligent evasive glances exasperated me.

“Yes, it’s a different story now, isn’t it?” I didn’t care for their
combined shocked stare, now centred on myself, and continued to
Philibert--“After all, you’ve got what you wanted, haven’t you? You
remember you told her not to love you so much.”

“Blaise!” My mother’s exclamation was a check. I had a sensation of
shaking myself free. “Well, isn’t it so? Weren’t you all awfully bored
with her caring too much for you, and now that she doesn’t, now that
she has withdrawn, is leading a life of her own, you are troubled, you
wonder. How can you wonder? Isn’t it all quite simple?” But I knew that
it was not so simple after all, so I stopped.

“You think then,” put in my sister gravely, “that she no longer
cares for us?” Her tone made me stare in my turn. It was earnest and
enquiring, and I heard Philibert to my astonishment echoing her words.
“Ah, you believe she no longer cares?” And most wonderful of all my
mother’s phrase. “Tell us, Blaise, what she does feel. I believe that
you understand her better than we do.”

It was quite extraordinary. I had the strangest feeling for a moment
of pride and power. They had all turned to me. They had all recognized
simultaneously that I possessed something valuable. And for a moment I
enjoyed the novel sensation. They wanted something from me, that was
pleasant, but what they wanted was Jane’s secret. They believed she had
confided in me, and they believed I would tell them. I felt again weary
and impatient and humiliated, and I brought out the truth abruptly. “I
know no more than you do what is going on in Jane’s mind, she has told
me nothing.” But I saw that they did not believe me.

The room, my mother’s room, seemed to shrink visibly. It appeared very
small and trivial. Its innumerable bibelots and souvenirs winked and
glinted, mischievous and precious, minute tokens of delicate prejudice,
obstinate and conventional and colourless. It all looked small and
meaningless and pale. I could have laughed. I was important there at
last. But it was a tiny place to me now. I pitied it. I felt suddenly
free and alone. I thought--“Jane has told me nothing, it is true,
nevertheless she trusts me,” and I felt them reading my mind and it
didn’t matter. They might know for all I cared that I knew nothing,
they would feel all the same that I knew Jane as they would never know
her. But what they would never know was, that knowing Jane as I did, I
knew many other things, wonderful things. I felt a lift, a lightening,
a widening of space, a fresh rush of wind as if I was being blown upon
by the breath of those wide American forests. Somewhere in my mind
vistas opened. I heard the murmuring of a free wind in high branches.
And all the time I saw my frail little mother in her damask chair, in
her little crowded silken room, and I loved her with tenderness and
compassion. An impulse seized me. I went over to her. I took her hand.

“If only you would love her,” I said, “everything would be all right.”
Then I saw that I had blundered. How could I have been so stupid as to
have imagined that they had been with me for that moment in those wide
high spaces where I knew Jane lived? My words sounded grotesque and
fatuous. I saw a shade come over my mother’s face. I heard Claire’s
swish of impatient drapery. Philibert snorted. I felt myself blushing.
My face tingled. I had made myself ridiculous. My mother’s hand kept
me off. Its nervous clasp pushed me from her while she murmured
plaintively--“_Mais je l’aime bien, mais je l’aime bien._”

Claire followed me out of the room. In the little dark hall we stood
close together. She had closed the door of the drawing room after her.
Beyond it we heard Philibert’s high nasal voice arguing. “What do you
really think, Blaise?” My sister’s voice was low and confidential. I
felt her mind pressing upon me with gentle insistence.

“I don’t know.”

“But you see a great deal of her, she talks to you.”

“Yes, but not about herself.”

“Come, Blaise.”

“Not about the present, only of the past, her home over there.”

She made an impatient gesture.

“Does she never mention Philibert?”

“Never in any way that matters. How can you think--? Do you imagine
then that she is vulgar?”

But Claire’s eyes, tranquil and dark with their usual mournful depths
of mystery, looked at me deeply as if she had not heard.

“I am afraid,” she said, “of Bianca.”

I was startled. The idea that Claire was afraid, so afraid as to voice
her fear to me in that low tone of secret confidence, seemed to make
everything worse, much more miserable.

“Why?” I asked, searching her face that so often evaded me with its
mockery and now was so grave and deliberate.

“She may do something.”

“What?”

“I don’t know, but she’s jealous.”

“Jealous of Jane?”

“Yes, hadn’t you noticed? She follows her about?”

“Bianca follows Jane about?”

“Just that.”

I thought how strange women are, seeing things that we none of us
notice. I followed Bianca, Jane and Claire in imagination, moving
about Paris in smooth rapid motors, slipping in and out of crowded
streets, shops, drawing-rooms, theatres, watching each other. But how
could Claire see one pursuing the other with all those people round
them, all the music, the waiters, the footmen, the lights scattered
along dinner-tables, the obstructing tables and chairs, the endless
engagements? My mind wavered, I felt dizzy. I saw each one of the three
women stepping out of her car, going into her house, the door closing
upon her, hiding her from the world.

I came back to Claire’s delicate face and brooding eyes.

“But why should Bianca be jealous?”

“But why not?”

“You mean she thinks Philibert is escaping her?”

“And isn’t he?”

“I don’t know.” Suddenly I felt at the end of my strength, as if I had
been undergoing a great nervous strain. “How should I know anything
about Philibert? You all seem to think I know what Philibert is up to.”
I felt strangely exasperated. “And what, _mon dieu_, is there exactly
between Bianca and Philibert?”

“Ah,” my sister smiled faintly, “that I cannot tell you, but whatever
it is, it is enough.”

“Enough to make trouble, you mean?”

“Yes, enough to make trouble.”

“Well, if you really want my opinion, it is that Jane does not bother
at all about Bianca.” And I began irritably to get into my coat. But
Claire, helping me on with it, still pressed me and said over my
shoulder--

“So you don’t think Jane in her turn is jealous?”

“I don’t think anything about it. What I think is that it is none of
my business.” And I grabbed my hat and left her, but looking back as I
went down the few steps to the outer door, I saw her looking after me
with an inscrutable smile, as if she had learned something from me that
she had wanted to know, and I determined to keep away from such family
talks in future.

I had my theory about Jane during those days, of course, but according
to Clémentine I was wrong. Clémentine thinks that Jane loves Philibert
even now, even now over there in that dreary little house. I can’t
believe it. But what does Clémentine mean by love, anyway? Clémentine
is a Latin, the smooth willing exponent and devotee of her senses. She
has known love--“_elle a rencontré l’amour plusieurs fois_.” If she
means anything, if there’s anything in what she says about Jane, it is
that Philibert still has the power to affect Jane, to make her pulse
beat quicker, even now. I wonder, but I don’t want to think about it.

I believed that winter that Jane had ceased to care for Philibert, and
that that was the explanation of her strangeness, that made her appear
so often like a sleep-walker. I argued that to a person like Jane it
would be more terrible to no longer love than to be no longer loved.
There were moments when alone in my room with her image before me, I
was certain that she was beginning to despise him. How could she help
it I would ask myself, and be filled with an exulting bitterness. I see
now what it was. I wanted her to despise him, and so believed it. But
it was not so much that I fiendishly wanted Philibert to suffer, for I
did not believe he would suffer. I wanted Jane to right herself. That
was it. I wanted her to get loose from her bonds that seemed to me to
expose her in an attitude humiliating and pitiful. I couldn’t bear to
contemplate her as Philibert’s slave. It was this thought that sent
me out at night to walk the streets in a fever. Ridiculous? Perhaps.
But haven’t I a phrase of Jane’s sounding in my brain even now that
justifies all my sickening suspicions of the past, one phrase, the only
one that she ever let fall that threw any light on her relations with
her husband.

It was only the other day in St. Mary’s Plains. Time had made it
possible for her to speak as she did. Ten years, fifteen, had passed,
but she spoke with an icy distinctness as if controlling a shudder.

“Bianca,” she said, “was jealous of that process of corruption that she
called my happiness.” But this is all too painful. I must stick to the
facts of my story.

Claire’s fear was all too well founded. Bianca was jealous and Bianca
was going to intervene. Philibert was slipping away from her and
falling in love with his stupid wife. That could not be tolerated.
She stirred uneasily. Moreover Paris was beginning to take account of
Jane. People were talking about her wherever one went. They argued
about whether she was ugly or just the most beautiful woman in Europe.
Sides were equally divided. But what did it matter whether one called
it beauty or ugliness, once her appearance had made its impression upon
the receptive mind of Paris? The Byzantine Madonna or the Egyptian
mummy or whatever it was that she had been said to resemble had come
to life. Paris recognized her as singular, and that was all that was
necessary. Soon she would be the rage. Some one would set the ball
rolling. Bianca saw it all quite clearly. Like a little witch bending
over a boiling pot she made her preparations. It would be funny to
think of if it had not come off just as she intended. The sorceress
was again on the move astride her broomstick. She was chanting her
incantations that were meant to bring a woman to the dust and a man to
her side. But first she sent for Fan and told her all about Ivanoff and
Jane and about Philibert’s interference in Biarritz. She had got the
whole story from Philibert and used it now with just the effect she
wished. She began lamenting the fact that she saw so little of Jane,
Jane was dropping her old friends. Hadn’t Fan noticed a difference?
No, Fan hadn’t. But Ivanoff--surely Jane didn’t see anything much of
Ivanoff these days, not at any rate as she used to? Fan laughed. If
Bianca thought Jane capable of flirting--. But Bianca meant nothing so
silly. Bianca meant simply that Jane had been very foolish and that
Philibert was angry with Ivanoff and wouldn’t have anything to do with
him because of Jane’s foolishness. Fan at this, had grown suddenly
serious. The rest was easy. It all came out. Ivanoff had had large sums
of money from Jane. Philibert had found out, and Jane had made him
swear to do nothing about it so that Fan should never know. This, of
course had been most unfair to Ivanoff as the latter had been given no
chance to clear himself with Philibert. Ivanoff might have been able to
explain many things that remained obscure.

The result of this conversation was all that Bianca would wish for.
Poor Fan rushed home to her dilapidated attic on the Isle St. Louis and
flung it all at Ivanoff’s great sleek meek head. He had been taking
money from Jane. How much money? When? Why? Where was it? How could he?
How had he come to think of such a thing? Didn’t he have any sense of
honour? Didn’t he have any shame? Ivanoff bowed his head. Meekly and
humbly he let her rave at him until exhausted, she flung herself on
the bed in a torrent of tears, and all that night he sat on the floor
beside her bed, extravagantly ashamed, thinking vague dark hopeless
thoughts, and now and then heaving a sigh.

It didn’t occur to him, the next day or the next or any day after that
to explain anything. Probably he was unaware that Fan’s second thoughts
were more poisoning and disturbing to her than the first. Ivanoff was
no psychologist. If he noticed that Fan was strained and looked at him
queerly, he remained passive and mute, and no light of curiosity seemed
to strike down into his abysmal calm. When suddenly Fan flashed out the
question--“Did you make love to her?” he merely shook his head, and
when at last after a week of fidgetting she announced that she had
written to Jane to tell her that they couldn’t pay the money back and
that she would understand the wisdom of their not seeing each other
any more, he stared vacantly, then frowned and sat down in a heap on
the divan for the rest of the day. Judging by his fantastic subsequent
behaviour, he must have been pondering upon the question. He probably
thought--“Women are worthless cattle. Jane has told. She has given away
the secret. She has hurt Fan. I am getting tired of Fan. Some day I
will go away, but Jane hurt her and made her tiresome and she must be
hurt too, before I go. But how? But how?” That was the difficulty. He
must think of some way. And all the time he was sitting there thinking,
he could hear Fan coughing and tossing in her room, and he could see
her little tame chaffinches jumping about in their cage in the window.
Fan was often like that, like a neat little bird flitting and hopping
about, but now she was sick and ruffled and not gay and chirpy at all.




XIII


I come now to the night of old François’s ball that he gave for his
daughter Bianca, that dreadful night of climax and exposure when
the fabric of appearance was torn to shreds and we were left there,
betrayed by ourselves to the eye of God, stark naked in all our
senseless passion and trivial brutality. The experience of that night
stands up for me out of the past bald and glaring in all its garish
savagery like a totem pole in a glittering desert. I circle round it.
The habits and tastes of civilization appear there like a mirage. I see
the actors of the drama behaving like primitive creatures possessed by
demons. Civilization skin deep? The banality is apt here. I have called
Philibert and Bianca the spoiled darlings and perfect exponents of an
ultra-refined social system, and so they were, but that didn’t prevent
their behaving like a cave man and woman. The only difference was that
they knew what they were doing. They were calculating and deliberate
and amused. They turned loose the reckless savagery with the little dry
laugh of knowledge.

I did not go to the ball myself. I had been away, had come back
unexpectedly, and had found myself by some extraordinary mischance,
some curious combination of circumstances, locked out of my rooms and
without a key. It was late. I remember being unwilling to rouse my
mother at that time of night, and standing in the street wondering
which one of my friends I would ask for a bed, I don’t know why I
suddenly decided to go to Philibert’s. I had never spent a night in his
house in my life, but now, as if Paris were suddenly an unknown city of
strangers and his roof the only prospect of shelter, I found my way in
a fiacre to his bleak and imposing door.

I remember the emptiness of the house as I entered, the great silent
entrance hall with its sleepy porter, and the coldness of the wide
marble stairway and my unwillingness in spite of the solicitations of
a couple of men servants to go to bed anywhere in any one of the blank
luxurious rooms offered to me, until Philibert or Jane came home to
authorize me to do so. “_Monsieur et Madame_ would undoubtedly be very
late,” the footman told me, “they were ‘_chez Monsieur le duc_,’ where
there was a ball.” I listened vaguely, accepted a tray of refreshments
and sent the men to bed, saying that I would wait up for the master.
But the wine and biscuits placed in the library did not tempt me to
ease or somnolence. I felt restless and oppressed. How big the place
was to house a man and a woman and a child. What a distance to little
Geneviève’s nursery. I picked up a book, put it down. A long mirror
opposite me reflected a portion of the great high shadowy room and my
own small wizened figure seated like a gnome in a circle of light.
The sight of myself, always unpleasant, set me wandering. I turned
on lights here and there. All was still and smooth with the vast
ordered beauty of a cold enchanted palace. The thought of Philibert’s
success as a house decorator passed through my mind without engaging
my attention, that seemed somehow to be fixed on something else,
something deep and elusive that had a meaning could I but find it.
What did they stand for, those high polished walls with their lovely
panellings? What did they enclose beyond so many treasures of art?
The rare still air in those gleaming spaces seemed to have a quality,
a presence, cold, enigmatic, and final. I tiptoed round the immense
deserted salons like a thief. I waited and waited with a growing
sense of the ominous, and then at last I heard the whirr of a motor
coming into the porte cochère, and going out along the gallery to the
great wide shadowy stairhead, I looked down and saw the light flash
out, filling the vast white lower hall, and saw Jane come in alone,
trailing her long gleaming draperies behind her, and advance across
that expanse of marble like a woman in a trance, holding up and out in
her hand before her, well away from her as if she were afraid of it, a
small object that I identified when she had almost reached the top of
those interminable stairs as a small dead bird with a jewelled pin run
through its body.

She spoke in a queer tired voice that grated slightly.

“I found it in the car, on the cushion. Ivanoff must have put it there.
It is one of Fan’s birds. A chaffinch--you see--He meant it as a
symbol.”

It was as if her teeth were almost chattering, and she were controlling
that shaking of jaws with an effort. And as she spoke, I saw Ivanoff
distinctly, taking that tiny feathered thing out of its cage and
wringing its neck with his strong brown fingers, and smiling through
his slits of eyes. Jane continued to hold it out before her and stared
at it. Presently she said again in that queer rasping voice--

“Look, it’s quite dead. It has been speared through the heart. The pin
is one I gave Fan years ago. The bird is her pet chaffinch. My Aunt
Patience used to tame chaffinches. There was one that used to perch on
her head while she worked. That was in St. Mary’s Plains.”

She stopped and looked at me a moment in silence enquiringly. We were
standing at the head of the stairs. Something in my face must have
arrested her attention. “Come,” she said in a sudden tone of command.
“Come into the drawing room. We will wait together for Philibert.” She
said the last three words much more loudly than the others. They seemed
to go rolling down the long gallery like rattling stones. I remember
thinking that she must be very ill and that I ought to persuade her
to go to bed. We moved in the direction of the drawing rooms. She was
dressed in some shining glittering sheathlike thing of a silvery tone
and wore emeralds in her ears and on her hands. Her eyes were as green
as her earrings, and her face the colour of yellowish white wax. She
dragged a chinchilla cloak after her as if it were terribly heavy. It
had slipped off her shoulders and I noticed that her skin was covered
with little beads of moisture. I thought--“The Lady of the Seas.” She
looked as if she had been in an accident--been wounded somewhere. I
half expected to see a red spot spreading over her side as she let fall
her cloak in the great drawing room and turned on, one after another,
a blazing circle of lights. The effect was startling. There was no
stain of blood on her gown, but the livid pallor of her face and arms
in that glare of light suggested that she was all the same in the state
of one who had all but bled to death. Under the glittering lustre of
many crystals, her face was a gaunt mask of yellowish bone and pale
greenish shadow, and her lips were drawn tight across gleaming teeth.
Her expression was famished, thirsty, breathless.

I was frightened, and at the same time strangely excited. Where was
Philibert? What was the meaning of Jane’s feverish icy glitter? Why
were we there, she and I, at three o’clock in the morning, transfixed
in a blaze of artificial light in a room that was as inimical as a
palace in Hell? As she turned away and moved to the mantelpiece, where
she stood with her back to me, leaning her elbows on the black carved
marble, I had a moment’s respite. What did she want me for? Wouldn’t
Philibert think it queer our waiting up for him in such ridiculous
solemnity. I addressed her long shining back.

“Do you often wait up for him?” She turned half way round.

“No, but tonight we must wait, we must wait until we know.”

Her words gave me a feeling of weakness. I was obliged to sit down. All
that light, all that gleaming parquet, all those precious cabinets,
full of rare glimmering treasures, and the night outside, wheeling
towards day, and Philibert coming from somewhere in a motor, and all
the people of Paris sleeping, quite still, in their beds but being
whirled through space on a turning globe, made me dizzy. I heard her
say from a great distance--

“Fan is not dead. She was at the ball. She avoided me. She looked very
ill. Ivanoff wanted to frighten me. I would have been, if I hadn’t been
more frightened by something else. Fan was my friend, so was Bianca. I
have no friends now. It is very strange to be quite alone when things
are going to happen.”

“What is going to happen?” I tried to speak naturally.

“I don’t know. We must wait. We will find out.”

She came across to me and then looked at me shyly. It was suddenly as
if she had come to herself again, and whereas she had seemed terribly
old, as old as a deathless woman of some strange legend, she was now
for a moment merely young and helpless and unhappy.

“You will be a friend to me, won’t you?” she asked dropping into a
chair before me. I nodded, unable to speak.

And so we sat on in the centre of that immense room in two gilt
fauteuils under the full glare of the chandelier. Occasionally she
said something, then would sink into silence and seem to forget that I
was there. But each time that the clock on the mantelpiece struck the
quarter or the half hour she would start convulsively.

At a quarter to four she said--“Ivanoff meant me to feel that I had
broken Fan’s heart, but Fan is all right. I saw her. She looked quite
happy tonight and she danced continually. What does that mean--a
broken heart? What makes one feel pain in one’s left side when one
is unhappy? Just the power of suggestion? Perhaps if that power were
strong enough it would affect the actual heart in one’s body, make
it burst in one’s side.” Then without transition, “I would have sent
for my Aunt Patience, but I did not want her to know. I was safe in
her house. Sometimes I think of the Grey House as the only safe place
in the world. If I went back there now, I wonder if I would feel the
same, or whether it would seem very small and stuffy and shabby. My
people there were very simple people. They loved me. They were all very
religious except my Aunt Patty who believed in science. One ought to
believe in something--I don’t. I can’t. I joined the Catholic Church to
please Philibert but I don’t believe. If my Aunt Beth knew she would
worry about my eternal life. I wonder if I would find that a nuisance
or just the most touching thing in the world. I wonder if they would
all look like funny old frumps or seem quite beautiful. One can’t tell.”

Her voice stopped. We sat in a silence that grew steadily more tense
and unbearable. The clock struck four and she started to her feet, and
a spasm twisted her features and she began to talk very rapidly while
at the same time she seemed to be panting for breath.

“I have found out tonight. I found out at the ball. It was like a
revelation from heaven. I saw it all in a blinding burst. The noise of
the music, the crowd, pale faces wheeling round me, bobbing ducking,
they couldn’t hide it from me. Bianca was there, at the centre, cold,
sharp, like a silver needle, watching Philibert, drawing him to her
like a magnet. Every one was there. I was alone. I saw Fan in the
distance. She avoided me, but I heard her coughing and her high little
voice crying out through her hacking cough to some one--‘Yes, my dear,
I’m dying. Why not? 39 of fever, but I simply had to come. What’s a
woman’s life worth if she can’t dance.’ And then that cough again.
Every one danced interminably. I saw Aunt Clothilde sitting like a
bronze fountain with a watershed of grey silk spreading all round her,
in a corner of the library; she was saying witty things in her squeaky
voice to solemn old men in wigs. I stood alone in a window, watching
Bianca watch Philibert. I must have spoken to a number of people,
I don’t remember. Hands reached for mine, voices murmured, voices
addressed me by name. Other voices laughed and whispered and cried out
round me. The music throbbed. Faces whirled past. Some women shrieked
and giggled out in the garden. Waiters and footmen moved about. Motors
hooted in the street. The waves of darkness welled up behind me to
meet the waves of light rolling out of the hot rooms. I was cold, cold
as ice, my face burning. Some one going past shouted at me, ‘I say,
you look ghastly. Have something?’ I didn’t answer. I was watching
Bianca. Bianca was my friend--I loved her. I watched men and women
approach her, touch her fingers, move away. I watched other men circle
round her, keep coming back, hang forward humbly, shoulders hunched,
heads bowed, waiting for a word from her, fascinated men who desired
and pleased her. Philibert was among them, but he didn’t hang forward
bowing. He stood near her, twirling his moustaches, talking to one and
then another, making gestures, laughing, frowning, snubbing people,
being impertinent, being amusing, flattering old dowagers, glaring at
presumptuous youths, criticizing women with his cold eyes, and every
now and then exchanging a look with Bianca. They scarcely spoke to each
other, but I could see their communion was uninterrupted. I saw and
understood--He has always loved her. They have always been together
like that, always. That is what I have found out, and more, more. It
was so before I came, before he met me, while we were engaged, when we
were married, always Bianca, she was always there.

“Tonight I saw them together, perfectly. I watched them. I wanted to
fathom them, to know what it was they possessed between them. I knew it
was evil. I longed to know their evil. The sight of Bianca roused in
me a horrible envy. I stood like a stone watching her. She used to be
my friend--I loved her. Evil appeared to me upon her face beautiful,
shining out like a sickly light, potent, alluring. Suddenly I heard a
squeaky voice say--‘Come here, child. You shouldn’t show yourself with
a face like that. If it’s so bad lock yourself up. Men are all brutes.
Some day you won’t care.’ I looked at your Aunt Clothilde, blind with
rage, you know, blind, and turned and went out through the window into
the garden. At the far end in the dark I walked up and down alone. The
music and the light streamed out of the long windows. I saw innumerable
heads bobbing. It looked like a madhouse. Philibert and Bianca were in
there together, cool, sane, infinitely wise. I was the insane person.
At one o’clock I went in again and crossed to where Philibert stood
beside Bianca and asked him if he were ready to come home. Bianca was
in white. She was almost naked. She had a cloud of white round her and
her body was as visible through it as a silver lily through water. She
looked fresh and cool as dew. Philibert answered but did not look at
me. ‘You need not wait,’ was what he said, but I was watching Bianca’s
face and I saw there something else. Her eyes were wide open. They
poured their meaning into mine. Her face was like a still white flower
holding two drops of deadly poison. She did not move. She did not
smile. It was all in her eyes. I looked down into them for an instant,
one instant. It was enough. I had a feeling as I turned away of coming
up out of a great depth, of breaking a spell. The Duke took me through
the rooms to the top of the stairs. I walked beside him, my hand on his
arm. I didn’t look back. I left them together.

“I found Ivanoff’s dead bird in the car. It didn’t frighten me. But
I was frightened. I felt as I drove away like some one who has had
a narrow escape, a very close shave. Why? What was it? Nothing had
happened, nothing visible, nothing to disturb the still immensity of
the spell-bound avenue. I drove on alone, up the Champs Elysées. The
sky was studded like a shield with hard pointed stars. The double row
of roundheaded lamps lining the black gleaming surface of the pavement
stood like sentinels put there to conduct me out through the Arc de
Triomphe into desolate uncharted space. I held Ivanoff’s dead bird in
my hand, and I felt as if I were driving away from that crowded ball
room straight over the rim of the earth. The sight of you here, at the
top of the stairs brought me to my senses. I remembered. I understood
on the instant of seeing you that I had wanted to kill Bianca,
tonight. That was what had frightened me. That was my close shave. You
stood there, worried and tired and kind. I recognized you.”

Her voice stopped suddenly. She covered her face with her hands. I rose
to my feet and took a step towards her, and just then the clock struck
five and its little gilt angel stepped out with his tiny jewelled
trumpet. She whirled towards it, lifting her face that was drawn like
an old woman’s.

“Philibert will not come ... I know now,” she whispered. “He has gone
away with Bianca.” She swayed, looked this way and that around the wide
gleaming room, them at me, holding out her hands. “Help me, Blaise.”

In a moment she had given way to sobbing. Ah, then, then I, who had
never touched so much as her hair or her cheek or the fold of her
dress, then indeed, I would have taken her in my arms to comfort her,
as one takes a child. But she was the great strong creature, I was
the weakling. I could only kneel by her chair and try to steady her
convulsed frame and heaving shoulders with my own arm round them in
futile incompetent anguish, while I heard her heart breaking as if it
were so much strong stuff being splintered there in her side.

It was six o’clock when she went to her room. The servants were not
yet about. The house was still, impenetrably calm, the curtains still
drawn, the formality of its beautiful equanimity unchanged.

Six o’clock; Bianca and Philibert were well on their way by that
time, travelling south, rolling smoothly along over long white roads
between mysterious poplars in a misty dawn. They had provisions with
them in the car. I can see them now as I think back, opening a bottle
of champagne, eating sandwiches, and I can hear their laughter. They
were very gay, very pleased with the way they had done it. They had
walked straight out of François’ house together at three thirty in the
morning, had stepped into the motor in the presence of a crowd of
departing guests, and had disappeared. The audacity of the thing was of
a kind to tickle them immoderately. They must have laughed a good deal.
I wonder that Jane and I, spellbound under that glaring chandelier,
didn’t hear them. Strange that the echoes of their light laughter
didn’t travel back to us across that widening distance, while we waited
and listened. Strange to think of that old _roué_ François wandering
back through his emptied rooms, among the débris of that night’s
festival, all unsuspecting. Very curious to think of Philibert and
Bianca murmuring to each other, their laughter giving way to the bitter
and exultant growling of their excited senses, while I led Jane back
to her room. No one saw her go tottering down the hall leaning against
me. No one saw her swollen face looking through the door and trying to
smile at me before she closed herself in alone.




PART II




I


That was long ago. We were young then. What a haunting annoying phrase.
One meets it everywhere, in books, on people’s lips, or unspoken in
their eyes. The other day in the Grey House, sitting opposite Jane
in the shabby little parlour, there it was again. She spoke it, but
not wistfully, more with relief than regret. I stayed ten days in St.
Mary’s Plains and during those days she told me the rest of the story,
bit by bit, till she came to the end--I put it down now as she told
it--what follows are her own words as I remember them.

     *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *

That was the end of my youth and the beginning of life. Until then I
had been made use of, but after that I acted and I became responsible
for myself.

Fifteen years ago, we sat till morning waiting for Philibert. I no
longer remember what I felt. Have you tried to recall sensations of
pain, and by thinking very closely about all the little circumstances
surrounding them, to experience again the stab or the ache? One can’t.
I can’t feel again that agony. I suppose it was agony. You remember
it better than I do, for you saw it. One remembers things one has
seen and things one did, but not what went on inside one’s own dark,
impenetrable body and soul, invisibly. I remember what I did at
that time and what I said and what other people said and looked. I
remember your face, and Jinny’s fear of me, and her fretting for her
father, and Fan’s coming and saying that I looked like a mad woman,
and from these facts I deduce the other fact that I was suffering,
but I have forgotten the feeling. That is very strange when you come
to think of it, for how, then, can I know that it was so? I don’t
know. It is all merely conjecture. One would have thought, from the
way I behaved and the way it changed everything that my emotion of
that time was tremendous; was immensely important. But it wasn’t. It
had no substance. It didn’t stand the test of time. It has vanished
completely. Other things have lasted.

What are these feelings, emotions, passions that we make such a fuss
about? Nothing but sparks struck from an impact, a collision of some
kind. They seem to burn us up, to consume us for a moment, then they
vanish. They have no body, no staying power, no reality, but we mould
our lives by them.

I am a woman. My life has always centred about people. In tracing the
course of events, I find that their causes were invariably personal--My
life is a long strong twisted rope made up of a number of human
relationships, nothing more. There was first my mother, and my Aunt
Patience, then Philibert, Bianca and Geneviève. Philibert went away. I
did without him. One can do without anything,--everything. I am proving
it now. But Bianca kept coming back; I never got rid of her.

My life is a failure. It is finished. It is there in its dreadful,
unchangeable completeness spread out before me. I look at it, as I
would look at a map, and when I think that it is I who made it, this
thing called a human life, I am bewildered and ashamed. How did it come
about that I made so many mistakes, and did so much that was harmful to
others? There was no desire in my heart to hurt, no will to do wrong.
On the contrary I wanted to make people happy, I wanted to do right.
It is very strange. It is almost as if the intensity of my will to do
right forced me to do the wrong thing. Is there some explanation? Is
there a key to the problem of living that I never found? Or was it all
simply due to Bianca? My Aunt Beth used to say that the only way to
live rightly was to do the will of God. But what does that mean? How is
one to know what the will of God is? Often I wonder whether my failure
is due to my never having found out about God. Most of my people here
in America would not hesitate to say yes--but I am not sure. It seems
to me that I was even more eager to do His will than I would have been
if I had been certain of His existence. It would have been an immense
relief to me to have known that God was in His Heaven and that I did
not have to bother about my own soul. “Put your troubles on the Lord,”
our parson used to say in St. Mary’s Plains. Well--I don’t know. That
is a solution for many. If they do that--just shelve everything and go
by texts in the Bible for their order of daily conduct, living must be
very much simplified--but I couldn’t do that. Something stiff and hard
and honest in me wouldn’t allow it. I couldn’t believe that I could
talk to God and ask His opinion. I used to try--when I was a child and
when I was a woman. Praying was like whispering into a chasm, a void,
an echoing emptiness. My questions came back to me, unanswered, mocking
echoes of my own tormented soul.

So I floundered along.

I do not excuse myself. I am to blame. I am responsible. I know that.
I lived among charming people. I had, as people say, almost everything
heart can desire. My husband did not love me, but beyond that what had
I to complain of? I had money, health, power, friends. I was one of the
fortunate. Hundreds of women, no doubt, envied me.

I hadn’t the gift of living. Your mother has it, so has your sister. It
is common among French people, they are artists in life, but I was for
ever looking beyond life for its purpose, and thus missing its savour
and its meaning. The people I loved were too important to me and the
people I hated--but I can see now that Bianca wasn’t as interesting or
as important as she seemed. She was only a vain and selfish woman after
all. But she was for twenty years my obsession.

I must talk about Bianca. It was really in order to talk about Bianca
that I asked you to come, for I am not yet rid of her. She haunts me
here in this innocent old house. Enigmatic in death as she was in life,
her personality persists, exquisite and depraved and relentless. She
comes to accuse me. Having ruined my life, she accuses me of her death.

I did not kill her. Some of you thought that I did. You didn’t mind.
You didn’t blame me, but you thought so. Ludovic, I am sure, is
convinced of it, and if he does not precisely approve, he at least
accepts the fact as the inevitable outcome of our long exhausting
duel. More than once he told me that until I could rid myself of
the obsession of Bianca, I should be unable to understand the first
little thing about life. He was the one person who understood my
feeling for her and hers for me. In his uncanny wisdom, so devoid
of all prejudice, he knew that our hatred was based upon an intense
mutual attraction, and that we hounded each other to death because
under other circumstances we would have loved each other. The long and
dreary spectacle of two women hating each other for years with intense
sympathy, or if you like, loving each other with an exasperating
antagonism and hatred, was to him pitiful and contemptible. He would
have had me put an end to it somehow, anyhow, at any cost. Taking
another’s life is to him no crime compared to ruining one’s own. Well,
it is at an end now. Bianca is dead, and I am buried alive. We did each
other in, but it took twenty years, and I never touched her with my
hands, or did anything to bring about her death, save will her to die.

And her death came too late to do me or mine any good. Philibert was
finished. My life was in pieces. There was nothing left to patch up.
She had come between me and my husband and child, while living, but
her death cut me off from them, more absolutely than anything she
could have done alive. And, fiendishly, as if with consummate cunning,
she died mysteriously leaving with me the unanswerable question, as
to whether or not, I had made her kill herself. I go over and over it
all, day after day, week in, week out. I remember my last view of her
alive, in that hotel corridor, the look she gave me over her drooping
shoulder, leaning against the half open door, her hand on the door
knob, her long languid weight on it, one pointed foot trailing, and on
her grey face, a desperate vindictive longing, a wistful cruelty, a
question, a threat, a prayer. Was she at last imploring me? Did she in
that moment remember everything? Was she mutely and bitterly asking me
to come and hear her confession? Would it all have been put right by
some miracle had I gone to her before it was too late? I don’t know--I
shall never know. I only know that our wills clashed again for the
last time, that for the last time I resisted her, and let her drag the
incredible weight of her diseased and disappointed spirit out of my
sight, for ever.

And how am I to know that her death wasn’t an accident, and that her
look of desperate appeal wasn’t just such a piece of acting as she had
treated me to, at intervals for twenty years? Over and over again,
she had done the same trick. Invariably, after one of her pieces of
devilry, she would approach me with that wistful penitent masque, and
stir me to forgiveness and compassion. Repeatedly, she fooled me.
I could save her--I could influence her for good. I was strong and
balanced and sane. If only I would give her what she needed, what she
lacked, some relief from herself in some external thing, some faith,
some definite obstinate purpose, beyond the gratification of her own
vanity.

And each time I believed, each time I forgave, each time looking into
her wonderful face, I thought I saw there, a spiritual meaning. It
is enough to make one scream with laughter. It was all acting. It
must have been. It was all done for the purpose of tormenting me more
exquisitely afterwards. For years she fooled me--for years I wouldn’t
believe she was what she was, a woman of immense personality and no
character, but I am at last certain that this was so. Ludovic says
that it takes as strong a character to be really wicked as really
good. He used to rave over Bianca, to anger me, I suppose, call her
perversely--“_une femme admirable--la plus courageuse damnée qu’il
avait jamais vue_.” I don’t agree with him. I do not mean that Bianca
had a weak character. I mean literally that she had no character at
all. Where one feels in the average human being, the strong resisting
kernel, the stern spiritual centre that contains identity there in
Bianca there was nothing. At the middle centre of her being there
was emptiness. She had, morally, no core. She was as formless as
one of those genii in the Arabian Nights who came out of Ali Baba’s
earthenware pots.

I ought to know, for I loved her. She was my friend during the happiest
years of my life, when I believed in Philibert, and was confident.
I say it again, we were friends. I believe even now, in our early
friendship, in those days, Bianca was actually, and much to her own
surprise, fond of me. That she began being nice to me out of a spirit
of mischief is no doubt true. The idea of making Philibert’s wife, her
intimate, was the sort of thing likely to appeal to her but having
made the advances out of perversity, she found herself interested and
attracted. Why did she like me? It is difficult to say. Perhaps because
I was a new type and one that wouldn’t in the ordinary course of
events come her way. I puzzled her. To her I was something primitive,
savage, and dangerous. She used to call me her “_Peau Rouge_.” She
said I made her think of Buffaloes and Bison and prehistoric animals,
of black men round camp fires in jungles, of snake dancers and deserts
and the infantile magic of savage races. She wove stories about me and
hunted up old prints of queer outlandish people who she insisted had
my type of head. I was, she asserted, only half-tame, and being with
me gave her the same kind of pleasure as having a leopard about. She
was physically afraid of me. Not only at the beginning, but always to
the very end, but in those days, my losing my temper, she found, “_un
très beau spectacle_.” Her blue eyes would shine, her lips part in
amazement, and timidly she would stroke my shoulder, murmuring--“How
wonderful you are. What a volcano.”

She used to ask me endless questions about my childhood and appeared
greatly intrigued by my obstinate attachment to what she affectionately
termed, my ridiculous impossible background. She would make me tell
her about life in the Grey House, the baking of cakes in the kitchen,
the hymn singing on Sunday evenings, and the summer trips to the
wilderness, to the woods of Canada, or across the prairies of Omaha,
Dakota, and Arizona. She would lie on her couch in her boudoir making
patterns in the air with her lovely fingers and purring like a pleased
little cat while I described the plains, stretching endlessly under the
sky to the white horizon, the lonely wooden shacks blistered in the
sun, and infested with flies, the lazy cowboys on indefatigable loping
broncos--and she would murmur--“_Ah, je comprends cela--c’est grand,
c’est monstrueux, c’est beau._”

As for me, need I explain why I loved her? Who has not felt the quality
of her beauty? What man or woman that ever saw Bianca, failed to
respond to the peculiar penetrating charm of her personality? I see her
in memory, a vivid creature, perfect, compact, clear in the midst of a
crowd of blurred and colourless shadows. Her beauty was incisive, keen.
It cut into one’s consciousness sharp as a stab. It stamped itself on
one’s brain, indelible and certain. I see her face as clearly today as
I saw it the day I first laid eyes on her when she came up to me in
your mother’s salon and said--“You must like me, I insist.” It is there
close to me, rising out of the grave as pure, as firm, as precisely
drawn as if I held the perfect indestructible masque in my hand.

I see her eyes open lazily, wider and wider, and shine out suddenly,
bluest blue, so blue that they seem to send out a blue light through
their black lashes. Ah, how lovely she was! How could I not believe in
that loveliness? Blue, brilliant fire-blue eyes set far apart under
a fringe of black hair and pointed curving thin red lips. I could
model her now exactly--the cup of her small chin, her long round white
throat, flat bosom and shoulders flowing down thin arms to her narrow
beautiful hands. Her body was a fragile thing, strong as steel.

And women of Bianca’s breeding never give themselves away in ordinary
life. They are closed and secret books, open only to those who have
the key. No one can read them who is not of the initiated. I did not
know the language. There was nothing about her to convey to me that
she was anything more than she seemed, a remarkable and gifted woman
of great distinction, a creature so refined as to seem to me to belong
to another planet from the one on which I had been born. It seemed to
me extraordinary that such a person should notice me at all. I was
filled with gratitude. I was humble, devoted, flattered, and Philibert
gave no sign. If not actually enthusiastic about our friendship, he
still seemed content enough, and I was happy in the thought, that this
wonderful woman who had been his comrade from childhood was now, my
friend too.

And she was careful, as we grew more intimate, to show me, only those
aspects of herself that she knew would flatter and delight me. Never
did she mention subjects likely to frighten me. Her talk was all of
art shows and music and books and the ridiculous absurdities of “_le
monde_” and those things in her life that I couldn’t help noticing
with concern, she explained in a way to enlist my sympathy. She was
desperately unhappy, she told me, in her marriage, her husband’s
immorality was a great grief to her; the sorrow of her life was,
that she could have no children and so on, and so on. Once she even
confided to me that there was insanity in her family, and that she was
constantly haunted by the fear of going insane. I was, at this, in a
tumult of sympathy. I was prepared to forgive her a far greater number
of eccentricities than she ever showed me.

She was, she told me, of a mixed strain of southern blood, a Venetian
on her mother’s side, on her father’s a _Provençale_. From her I learnt
that the old Duke, her father, was descended from the _Comtes de
Provence_ of a line that had numbered kings in the middle ages. For
many generations they had been _Seigneurs_ of a wild and mountainous
region north of Avignon. Their fortress, the “_Château des Trois
Maries_” stands high against the sky on a spur of rock that reaches
out from the ragged hills, above the wide valley of the Rhône. This
was Bianca’s home. There in that sad and wonderful country of brown
sunlight, she was as nearly happy as she could ever be on earth. I went
to Provence with her one summer. And now that she is dead, I think of
her, not as she was in Paris, languid, perverse, and irritable, but as
she was in her own country. I see her against the swarthy background
of those ruined hills scarred by the hordes of invading Saracens. Her
little person seems to ride above that sunbaked land of blistered
roads and dry river beds, on the wings of legend through a burning
and sanguinary past of repeated invasions; of Barbary pirates from
across the sea to the south, and Visigoths from the north, of wandering
Bohemians, of steady marching Roman armies, of Popes flying from Italy
for refuge, of gentle saints stranded in tiny boats on the desolate
marshy shores of the _Camargue_ and I see her as she ought to have been
and as she was sometimes, down there, her face brown, her blue eyes
flashing, and her thin body, lean and hard, mounted on one of the small
fleet horses of the country, galloping at the head of the thundering
fighting bulls towards the arenas of Nimes or Arles. This was her
proper setting. It was here at the _Château des Trois Maries_ that she
showed herself to me, as she would have been had she not been accursed.

I remember one day in her room in the west tower of the Castle,
her talking of herself, as she never talked to me before or since,
honestly, as honestly as she could, and with light laughter breaking
into her short light biting phrases. From the high window we could see
the white dust of the road whirling down the valley before the hot
scurrying wind, groves of poplars bending their plumed heads, little
brown houses surrounded by close vineyards huddled behind screens of
cypress trees.

“I was born here,” she said, “of a woman who loathed her husband and
hated this country--but I wasn’t really born--I was made by witches
one hot windy midsummer day. They made me out of the burning sun and
the shrieking mistral and the hot white dust, in the black shade
of cypresses, and they added to the hot mixture, ice water from
that mountain stream; then they each laid on me a curse. One said,
the oldest and wickedest--‘She will covet the earth, but only love
herself.’ The second said ‘She will be haunted by the evil spirits of
dead men.’ The third said--‘Since the people of this country are fond
of wild jokes and pranks,--they are you know, _très blagueurs, les
Provençaux_, she will be much given to playing mischievous jokes that
will do others harm.’ Then they left me in the dark cypress grove,
where my mother who was wandering about and longing for the laughter
and music of her Italy, found me. She, poor darling, invoked the three
Marys for my protection, _les Saintes Maries de la Mer_ who are carved
in the stone over the great door, _Marie Salomé_, _Marie Jacobé_ and
_Marie Madeleine_; their shrine is in the grotto behind the house--but
they had been shipwrecked themselves and were too inefficient to cope
with my witches--and so that you see is what I am--burning hot and
icy cold, and with a dry wind, shrieking in my heart, and three times
accursed. I feel it. I know it. I have known it since I was a child--At
first I struggled, then gave in, took my curses in my arms and made
them mine, made them, I tell you--my religion--” She gave her dry
laugh. Her voice was high and sweet and careless. She spoke, without
passion, in her dry conversational tone. “If I could never love any
one but myself, never forget myself, try as I might in excesses of
every kind, then I would love myself utterly. If I was to be haunted
by the unfulfilled ideas of men and women long dead, then I would give
myself up to those ideas, and if my pranks were fated to do people
harm, well--what business was it of mine? I would enjoy doing people
harm--idiots that they are, why should I care for their thin silly
feelings?

“You think I am talking nonsense. If you believed me, you would be
horrified--_eh, bien_--be horrified--but you will never understand. You
will never believe that I am as bad as I am. That is the reason I like
you--that is the reason I talk to you. You are obstinate and faithful
and strong--and beside that you have demons too--I see them in your
awful sullen face that I like.

“I tell you--that I am used by ideas that are not my own--that do not
come out of my own head, that come to me from I know not where. They
come persistently--out of the sky, circling back again and again like
black birds coming out of the sky to this tower. For instance; an idea
comes to me that I must go to Nimes and see a certain matador and send
for him and make him love me--I know he will be stupid and coarse and
disgusting, and I refuse. Then things happen. Every day lines appear in
the papers--his name is everywhere, in every village on every stable
wall--I laugh--and give in--and it is all stale and horrid before it
begins, but the idea had to be carried out. That you will say is just
the stupid giving into caprice of any idle woman--but it is not always
so ordinary. Suppose that some day the idea comes to me that I must
entice my husband into the oubliette. I laugh at the idea and chase it
away. Six months later it comes back more insistent, a thing with a
voice. It says ‘Get him into the north tower. He is a mean creature. He
will fall down the oubliette’--and I say peevishly--‘But I don’t mind
his being alive--he doesn’t bother me, I am not interested in killing
him’ and again I drive away the idea--but it will come back, it will
keep coming back till it is satisfied. There have been many ideas like
that demanding of me to be satisfied. Sooner or later I carry them
out--do their bidding. Often in hours of lucidity I see how dangerous
they are. I fight against them, distract myself with some idiocy or
run away--take the train, go in the opposite direction--but almost
always I give in, in the end.” She stopped. I see her now against the
stone coping of the window, leaning out--her head in the sun--looking
down--the wall fell sheer--a hundred feet of masonry and rock.
“Sometimes I think I will throw myself down to get rid of them, these
ideas of men and women whose restless bones are the hot dust of these
mountains--but why should I--why give myself as a sacrifice? It would
be silly--the people I will hurt if I live aren’t worth it--”

She jerked back into the room and came to my side, laying a hand on my
shoulder, and standing so that I could not see her, a little behind
me, her lips close to my ear. “There are other things,” she whispered,
“worse things--ideas--that I couldn’t tell--” Her fingers clutched my
shoulder, tightening until they hurt me--“You help me, but sometimes
I am angry with you for being what you are and want to hurt you. Some
day, who knows, the idea may come to me to do you harm. You are safe
now because I don’t understand you, and feel you are stronger than
I--but if I ever detected a weakness in you--or if you ever bored me,
then I should hate you, then I would certainly do you a hurt. It’s a
warning--” she broke off with a laugh, kissed lightly the tip of my ear
and left me.

I was not afraid of her then--what she said did not disturb me. I
laughed at it; I was happy and confident. I had everything in the world
I wanted, and I lived in a daze of joy and excitement--Europe, Paris,
the miracles produced by my wealth, still dazzled and amazed me; going
to bull-fights with Bianca, or hunting wild boar, with the old Duke,
or attending the Courts of Rome, Vienna, Berlin or St. James’s with
Philibert, everything was marvellous. I had no time to worry, and no
reason to do so that I knew of.

But I remembered what Bianca had said, and in the light of what
happened, I understood that she had been speaking the truth. It was
simply her way of admitting that she was a supreme egotist. Put simply,
it meant that the one motive power in her, was her vanity. It was her
vanity that held her together and gave her an outline. And as she grew
older she developed it as other women develop a gift for music. She
worshipped herself, and she made of her egotism an elaborate religion.
Her adoration of herself grew into a passion and burned with the ardour
of a saint’s miraculously revealed inspiration. She would have gone to
the stake for it. It incased her in complete armour. No one and nothing
could touch her through it. She was the only woman I have ever known
who lived consistently and exclusively for herself, and she did so with
the sustained passion of a religious maniac. One can only compare her
to a Savanorola.

Her vanity was her power and her curse. It was an ogre. It had to be
fed. Human beings were thrown to it as to the devouring dragons in
fairy tales. We were all victims. I was, and you were, and Philibert
and Jinny, and Micky and Fan and all the others. Insatiable vanity,
that was all there was to Bianca in the last analysis. That was all the
meaning of her, but its manifestations, its results, its devious ways
of arriving at its own ends, these were infinite, would fill volumes.

You can see how the curse would operate. It operated through her
intelligence. Had she been stupid, all would have been well, but
concentrated on the study and care of herself, elaborating year after
year her attentions to herself, nursing her body, her face, her senses,
supplying to herself stimulants and soothing preparations, searching
for curious new sensations, she was aware of her own limited power to
please herself. Distinctly she perceived something beyond her reach,
a quality of experience outside her range, a beauty she could not
attain. She would have liked best to have been a queen of love, whom
all men adored, like the radiant Simonetta--fairy queen of Florence,
beautifully worshipped by an entire population, and she only succeeded
in being _la femme fatale_. With no gladness in her soul, she could
not inspire gladness--always in the faces of her victims she saw a
reflection of her own darkness. If occasionally, in the lurid light
of the excitement she could so easily evoke, she saw in a man’s face
a flash that resembled joy, ecstacy, delight, she as often saw it
fade to a dismal stupidity, or rage or disgust. Impossible for her to
create anything more than an imitation of bliss. Her egoism spoiled
its own gratification. It contained poison. Her touch was magical and
deadly. This, in the end, bored her. She used to complain exasperatedly
of people being afraid of her. The care with which they succumbed
disgusted her. Men grovelling at her feet, men writing sentimental
verses, men touching her with clumsy hands; she came to loathe them.
There was nothing in it; she wanted something else, something out of
the ordinary, something continually surprising, unexpected, dramatic.
Alas! Humanity goes its stolid way comfortably enough in spite of the
Biancas of the world. Men will “play up” to a certain point. They will
pretend to be dying of love to please a beautiful lady’s caprice, but
they won’t really die. One of the things Bianca longed for was to have
a crop of suicides laid to her account. She would have been pleased had
some of her victims blown their brains out, but somehow they didn’t.
They only threatened to do so. Once out of her sight, they recovered
the normal and sallied forth from her boudoir to enjoy fat beefsteaks.

Her tragedy lay in understanding what she missed. She observed that
inferior people experienced a range of feeling of which she was
incapable. Insignificant women inspired the passions she longed to
inspire. She envied and despised them. She envied every happy woman
her happiness, every lover his love; her eyes watched them all, with
curiosity, disdain and exasperation.

What in me began, after our three years of harmony, to get on her
nerves, was my monotonous and exclusive feeling for Philibert. That
such a sentiment should continue to absorb me and satisfy me, after
five years of marriage was too much for her. She became irritable and
teasing. She began to make fun of my love for my husband. She called it
stupid, vulgar, grotesque, indecent. I lost my temper, she grovelled,
enjoying that, but when next we met she began again, professing an
extraordinary merriment at the sight of my mawkish sentimentality.
With a sudden flash of insight I accused her of envy. She grew livid.
In a choking whisper, she told me that Philibert for his part was no
such idiot and that all I had to do was to look about me to find out
the truth. I left her in a rage and stayed away. I did not see her
again until the night of her ball, some months later, to which I went,
knowing that she had determined to take Philibert away from me. It was
the fact that Philibert as she believed had begun to care for me, that
made her finally act. She simply couldn’t bear to think that Philibert
and I should come to understand and truly care equally for each other.

I went to her ball to make a scene, to frighten her into giving him
back to me, but I did nothing. I didn’t speak to her. I didn’t go
near her. I simply stood and watched her. The sight of her paralysed
me. I realized that no man who had ever known and loved Bianca, could
care for me. And I came away, knowing that between me and Philibert,
everything was ended, and I came away terrified. As I left the house, I
remember muttering to myself “I must escape”--“I must escape.” Escape
from what? I don’t know. From them both, from what they had done, from
what they stood for, from the world of treachery and deadly pleasure to
which they belonged.

But I did not get away. I never got away. I never escaped from Bianca.
I never got out of range of the sense of her presence and of her
infernal charm. I still cared for her. Hating her, I still wondered
that she could have hurt me, still wept and called out to her in the
dark at night to know why she had done it, still felt her to be the
most fascinating woman I had ever known, and it was this that made
my jealousy of Philibert unbearable and fiendish. I had been twice
betrayed and I knew loving them both, and knowing them both, precisely
the quality of the delight they had in each other.

And I knew too, that Bianca was acting as she did because of me--even
more than because of Philibert. I was conscious and I was convinced
that she was conscious that the real meaning of the whole thing lay
in her feeling for me. There was between us, a relationship that had
become hateful, but that was still going on, a thing that was going to
endure, a mutual sympathy outraged and hideous now, but persisting. If
she had only wanted Philibert--well, she had him already. No--what she
wanted was to hurt me. And making all allowances for the attraction
between them, had it not been for me, he would not have inspired her
with a sufficient energy to bolt with him. The situation would have
lacked that something peculiar and curious which she wanted, had she
not felt as she did about me.

But I may be confused between what I knew then and what I know now.
It may be that I did not understand it all so well, then--I forget--I
cannot recall my actual state of mind. I give less importance to
my preoccupation with Philibert than I should do, and lay too much
emphasis on Bianca, because you see, I have got over Philibert, the
hurt he did me is long since past and I no longer care about it, but
from Bianca--I have never recovered. She never let me go--she never
finished with me. It wasn’t just one thing--it was a series of things
stretching over years, a continual coming back. You see--in the last
analysis it was because of me that she ran away with Philibert, broke
Fan’s heart and laid schemes for corrupting Jinny--and these things
took fifteen years to accomplish. There was war between us for fifteen
years.

The story of my life is the story of my duel with Bianca. Other people
played a part, other feelings absorbed me for long periods, other
relationships endured, but my relationship to Bianca was the long
strong rope that hanged me. You will see how it was.

Why did she go on with it? I don’t know. Unless it was that I never
gave in. Had I collapsed after Philibert left me, she might have been
satisfied--and satisfied, she would have lost interest in me--and I
should have been saved.




II


It is very difficult for me to recall my state of mind during the days
that followed Philibert’s going off with her.

I’ve an idea that I was in a kind of stupor, not much noticing
anything. I must have given orders that no one was to be admitted, for
I learned afterwards that Claire and your mother both called, and a
number of other relatives. I think I remained in my room for a day or
two lying on the bed with my clothes on and refusing to open the door
to my maid. It was Jinny who roused me. The servants were frightened.
The nurse brought her down and she pounded on the door with her little
fists till I opened it, but when she saw me she gave a shriek and ran
away from me and hid in her nurse’s petticoats. That brought me to
my senses, my child’s fear and the servants’ faces. I had a bath and
something to eat. They brought me my letters obsequiously, and with
furtive curiosity. I could hear the servants hanging about whispering.
I imagined them talking, talking, endlessly talking it over downstairs.
They were strangers to me, Philibert’s servants, servants of that
great, horrible house that I disliked. I had no reason to stay there
now. Nothing kept me--I would go home to St. Mary’s Plains.

I started a letter to my Aunt Patience, what was I to say to her? “My
husband has run away with another woman. He never loved me. My mother
married me to him for her own purposes. Now that she is dead there is
no more reason to go on with this horrible farce. I am coming home.”
Something of that kind? No, I couldn’t. I stared at the words I had
written--“My dearest Aunt Patty.” I seemed to see her sitting off
there, at the end of that great distance, adjusting her spectacles,
opening my letter with expectant fingers. I saw the shabby room, the
sunlight on the worn carpet, the littered writing desk, the piles of
books, the stuffed birds in their glass cases. I saw my aunt an old
woman, facing old age alone, with equanimity, following year after
year the pursuit of knowledge, not afraid of time, not oppressed by
solitude, going up to bed night after night in the empty house and
kneeling down in her flannel dressing-gown beside her narrow white
counterpane to pray to God, and remembering me always, never forgetting
me, never leaving me alone.

Once she had said, “When you’re in a hole, Jane, and don’t know what to
do, you can always do the thing you hate doing most and you’ll probably
not be far wrong.”

Looking out of the window I became aware of Paris and I thought of
those words. Paris! There it was streaming by, to the races. Was it
aware of what had happened to me? I wondered. Did people know that
Bianca and Philibert had run away together like a couple of actors,
like a pair of quite common people? I imagined society agog with the
scandal. I saw them gloating pitying. I heard women saying--“_Cette
pauvre femme, elle était vraiment trop bête._” It seemed to me that
every one in the street must be looking up at my windows with curiosity
and derision. They were invading my privacy, pulling off from me the
last decent covering of my dignity. Well, why sit there and bear it?
Why suffer public humiliation? My eyes fell on my engagement book. I
observed that Philibert and I were due for dinner that night at your
Aunt Clothilde’s. I rang for my maid and told her to telephone _Madame
la Duchesse_ and say that although Monsieur, having been called out of
town, would not be able to present himself at her dinner, I would come
with pleasure, as had been arranged. My face in the glass seemed much
as usual. I had done all my weeping with you, my poor Blaise, three
nights before. Having made up my mind to go out I now experienced a
certain relief. The coiffeur was summoned and the manicurist. Aunt
Clo’s dinners were very special affairs, so I chose a nice dress,
white, and put on an extra rope of pearls. As you know, my appearance
created something of a sensation. I saw that at once. They had thought
me already dead and buried, and were gossiping as I suspected, over my
remains. My business for the moment was to show them that I was alive.

Ah, but how dreary and trivial it all seems now. Why? Why? What earthly
difference did it make what they said or thought? But I am telling
you about it, just as it was. I wanted, I needed desperately at that
moment, the sense of my own dignity. It was all I had left. So I went
out to that dinner party and defended it.

Aunt Clo was nice. She was pleased with me and put me opposite her. It
was a vatican dinner, semi-political. I had, I remember, the Italian
Ambassador on my right and the Foreign Minister on my left. Your aunt
was between the Archbishop and the Duc de B---- recently arrived
from Rome. The talk was brilliant, I believe. I heard it in a daze,
but managed to keep my end up somehow. Clémentine was there, at her
best, in wonderful form. She must have known all about Philibert,
for she came up to me after dinner and said--“Blaise de Joigny is my
great friend. You must come to see me. We have much in common.” Our
friendship dates from that night.

But when I reached home I felt more tired than I had thought it
possible to be. I went up to the nursery. Jinny was asleep in her cot,
hugging a white woolly dog. I knelt beside her and sent out my spirit
in search of God, but I did not find Him. I could not pray. I heard my
baby’s breathing, blissful, trustful breathing. I knelt listening. She
was so small and sweet. Above her was an immense blackness. She made
now and then happy little sounds in her sleep, and lying there so still
I saw her moving on and on, invisibly, into the future to the ticking
of the nursery clock, carried along as she lay there on the current of
life, life that was an enormous dupery, an ugliness and a lie.

The days passed, separate and distinct, moving in a procession, each
one to be watched and endured separately, moving by their own volition,
taking no account of me, having nothing to do with me, answerable to
some mysterious power that started each one rolling like a bead dropped
from the end of a string, and in each one, as in a crystal, I saw the
pageant of Paris revolving, but I was outside, drifting in empty space.

The longing to get away from it all was unbearable. I would go--I
would go--I must go--Patience Forbes was the only person in the world
who could help me--and yet I went on working out my idea that took me
about among people, and you, dear Blaise, went with me. Your attitude
was of a delicacy rare even in your world of delicate adjustments
and sympathies. You understood, you constituted yourself my escort.
Do you remember those days, how we went from one place to another,
luncheons, dinners, private views, official receptions, and how we
tacitly agreed on just the amount we were bound to do for our purpose?
I scarcely realized at the time all that it meant for you to do this,
and how the family would resent your attitude. I know now that they
never quite trusted you after this. As I remember we talked nothing
over and did not, I think, mention Philibert save once, when I asked
you if you knew where he was. You did know, of course. Every one knew,
I suppose, except myself. They had been seen, those two, boarding
the Simplon express. They were in Venice, you told me, I had wanted
to know for convenience. Having adopted a line, it seemed best to
follow it consistently. One was to assume that my husband had gone
away for a holiday. I was there to make his excuses to suffering
hostesses deprived of his society. The note to be struck was light and
commonplace, as if his absence were like any other of his many past
absences. The pretence deceived no one, but then the consistent lying
made for decency. I was marking time. It was particularly difficult
because I was not acting in accord with my nature. Had I been natural
at that time I should have been horrible; I should have smashed
things. But I was not behaving like myself. I see now what it was;
I was behaving like one of you, behaving as Claire, for instance,
would have behaved in my place. I was adopting your methods and your
standards. Not to give myself away, not to let any one suspect what
I was feeling and thinking, not to make a false step, not to make
above all a public fuss, that seems to have been my idea. To preserve
appearances as beautifully as possible, that was what you and I were
working at, as we trailed drearily round from one place to another
saying suave things with smooth faces.

And there was another influence working on me, even more subtle and
far more pervasive. You will smile, perhaps, when I tell you that my
quiet behaviour came from looking every day across the Place de la
Concorde to the austere and reserved façade of the Madeleine, or across
a silver distance of pale houses to the far alabaster pinnacle of the
Sacré Coeur high above the city, but it was so. Paris exercises upon
its inhabitants a fine discipline of taste. Those who love it change
unconsciously. The long, wide, symmetrical avenues, the formal gardens,
with their slim fountains, single waving sprays of crystal water, the
calm façades of long rows of narrow, uniform houses, palest yellow in
sunlight, pearl white towards evening, these things have an effect upon
one’s manners that is imperceptible and profound. They spelt to me
harmony and restraint and Plato’s idea of beauty. My high falsity was
at the best only less futile than a good, noisy bout of hysterics. What
comforted me in these hours of doubt was that I knew you were no more
certain than I. You did not represent your family. You were neither
a go-between nor a spy nor a jailor, you were a friend. Positively I
believe there were moments when you wanted me to break out, break away,
throw caution and carefulness to the winds. Sometimes there was so much
compassion in your face that I almost cried out to you not to care so
much. I wanted to warn you that it was only for the moment that I was
keeping my head up, that I wouldn’t be able and didn’t intend to go on
with it indefinitely and that the thought behind all my smooth social
words was; “He has gone for ever. Soon I’ll be free to say so.”

I did really believe Philibert had left me for good. It never occurred
to me that he would ever come back, and that belief was in a way
my refuge. I was rid of them both; Bianca, I told myself, would be
satisfied now and would leave me alone. She would carry on her mischief
elsewhere, not in my life. My life was, I believed, my own, separated
for always from hers and from Philibert.

Then one day Fan turned up. She came in jauntily, her head in the air,
as if nothing had happened. She looked very smart, her hat set at a
rakish angle, her short, pleated skirt flippant above her neat ankles.
From across the room she called out “Well,--Jane, we’ve married a nice
pair of men. Here’s Philibert’s skipped and I’ve had to send Ivanoff
packing. He’d taken to beating me, I’m black and blue all over. Some
people like it--I don’t.” She gave me a peck on the cheek. “Poor old
Jane, you’re taking it hard, I suppose.” She turned back the sleeve
of her dress. Her arm had welts on it. “You should see my back.” I
shuddered, but at sight of my emotion she twitched away from me with a
nervous laugh. “Between my Slav and your Frenchman I don’t know that
there’s much to choose. God, if it were only an occasional beating I
shouldn’t mind.” She did a waltz step across the room, twirled round on
her tiny feet, lit a cigarette standing on tiptoe, and collapsed into a
chair in a spasm of coughing.

“I had it out with Ivanoff, my dear, about you, and I know all about
it--just the exact sums you gave him for me, bless your baby heart,
and everything. At first I doubted you. I was a fool. I’m sorry.
Unfortunately I found out other things. There are other women in the
world who don’t love me at all, but who pay for my shoes. Do you hear?
Do you get what I mean? I find I’ve been paying my bills with their
money. What do you say to that? I ask you simply. And we’re on the
streets now--at least he’s gone--I’m staying with Madeleine de Greux,
and the bailiffs have got our furniture.” And she went off into a wild
scream of laughter. It was incredibly painful. She sat there as neat
and smart as a pin. Her small cocked hat on one side of her head, her
pretty little legs crossed, one high-heeled patent leather slipper
dangling in the air, the other tapping the floor, she puffed smoke
through her little tilted nose and looked at me desperately out of her
hard, level eyes, while she yelled with laughter just as if some one
were tickling her till she screamed with pain.

I went to my desk and got out my cheque book. “Let’s pay off the
furniture first,” I said as prosaically as I could, but she jumped up
irritably.

“God! Jane, what a fool you are. Put that cheque book away. Do you
think I’d touch another penny of yours? There--don’t be hurt. Of course
I would if I needed it, but what good will money do? I can’t go and
hunt out Ivo’s mistresses and pay them back, can I? Oh, God! Oh, God!
Oh, God!--I did like him. Men are devils. Even now I’m worried about
him. I imagine him locked up somewhere or dead drunk in the gutter
lying out in the dark--whereas he’s probably at Monte having a high old
time. By the way, your French family is in a great state about you.
Claire says their position as regards you is very delicate. I suppose
it is. They don’t know whether to come here or to leave you alone. They
wonder what you’re going to do. They’re frightfully cut up about Fifi,
and they’re afraid you’ll do something final like getting a divorce.”

“Well, my dear, that’s just what I do think of doing.”

“I see.” She ruminated, chewing her cigarette that had gone out.
“They’ll never forgive you if you do.”

“I suppose not, but I don’t see that that matters.”

“Oh, but it does. They’re so perfectly charming. They’d make Paris
impossible for you.”

“That sounds charming, I must say.”

“Don’t be stupid, Jane. You know what I mean. You know how clever they
are. They’re the most attractive people on earth. But if you set them
against you, the whole clan, you’ll find life here very different.”

“I don’t propose to live here.”

“Where then?”

“In St. Mary’s Plains.”

“Heaven help you, my poor misguided lamb.”

“I’m homesick,” I persisted obstinately.

“Of course, for the moment, because you’re unhappy.”

“No, not only because I’m unhappy. I like the Grey House. I belong
there. It’s quiet, it’s safe, it’s real, it’s the place I know best in
the world.”

“Nonsense. It’s a dingy little shanty.”

“You can call it names if you like. I don’t care what you say. I’m
going back there.”

“For good?”

“I don’t know--perhaps.”

“Well, you won’t stay, so you’d better not risk it.”

“Risk what?”

“Having to eat humble pie and come back to be forgiven.”

It was my turn to get up with a fling of exasperation and walk about.
She followed me with her bright, piercing gaze.

“Think a little, Jane. Use your brains, if you can. Think of the
difference between your life here and your life at home in that
Godforsaken hole of St. Mary’s Plains. Look at this room. Look out
of the window and remember. Don’t I remember? Wooden sidewalks with
weeds growing between the boards, boys playing marbles in the street,
women hanging out their washing in backyards, Sunday clothes, oh,
those best Sunday clothes, revival meetings, Moody and Sankey in tents
on the lake shore, picnics, bicycle rides, dances at the Country
Club, freckled youths kissing you on the verandah, great news--Ethel
Barrymore is coming in her new play that’s been running a year in New
York. Excursions on the lake, fifty cents a round trip and soft drinks,
sarsaparilla, ginger ale, buggy rides, shopping down town, talking to
old women--cats who gossip about somebody’s new red silk petticoat,
too flighty, indecent. All going to church and shouting ‘Hallaleluja’
and eating blueberry pie afterwards till their mouths are all black
inside.”

“Well,” I said. She wriggled about as if sitting on pins.

“You want to give up Paris, this house, your position here, for that?
You’ve got Europe at your feet. You’ve only got to sit tight and every
one in Paris will be on your side. Fifi will come back and be as good
as gold. You’ll be able to do what you like with him after this.”

I stopped her.

“So you think I’d take Philibert back?”

“Yes, I do. We all do.”

“And begin again living together, after this?”

“Yep.”

“You don’t find it appalling even to think of--?”

“No, merely a little uncomfortable to begin with.”

“You take my breath away.”

She eyed me calmly. “My dear Jane, don’t be the high tragedian. All
marriages are like that. How many women do we know, do you suppose,
whose husbands haven’t had little vacations--?”

“If you don’t mind we won’t talk about it. Other women’s marriages are
nothing to me.”

She shrugged her shoulders and lit another cigarette, and for a time we
were silent. I looked at her. She seemed to me terrible, hard as nails
and more cynical than any one, and yet she was my friend. Nothing, I
knew then as I watched her, nothing that she could say or do would
alter that fact. She belonged to me. What she felt would always affect
me. In some absurd way I was responsible for her. Our childhood and
its meagre austere background, with all that she repudiated, held us
together.

Presently she began again. “Now listen to me, Jane. Philibert may
be a brute, but he’s done a lot for you. He has given you a very
great position. You were rich but he knew how to make your money
tell. There’s not a house in the world like yours. I don’t mean only
the furniture. Your parties are beyond everything. You’re more
_recherchée_ than any woman in Paris. You can pick and choose from all
the great people of the world, the men with brains. Lord! how you could
amuse yourself if you wanted to. I only wish I had your chance. Do you
think I’d let my husband’s infidelity spoil my life? I’d be no such
fool. I might not like it, but I’d make up my mind to forget it. Well,
here you are and you want to go back and crawl into that little hole in
a prairie and stifle there.”

“Yes, I do.”

“But the people there--” she almost screamed.

“I don’t know about the people. They may not be what you call amusing,
but they’re at any rate natural, common or garden human beings, and
anyhow if there weren’t another soul there’s Aunt Patty; she’s the
finest woman in the world, and I adore her.”

Fan looked at me in amazement.

“I’d die!” she gasped on a long, wailing breath. We were again silent,
then, while the image of Aunt Patience took shape before us, gaunt,
with her big bones showing under her limp, black clothes, worn, strong,
knotted hands, crooked humourous face, weather-beaten like a peasant’s,
straggling thin, grey hair. And suddenly I saw her as she appeared to
Fan, a shabby old maid in frumpy clothes, talking with a nasal twang,
saying things like Mark Twain, worshipping Huxley and Daniel Webster
and Abraham Lincoln, a child woman of stern moral principles, unaware
of the existence of such life as ours, displeased and angry at our
doings, hurt deeply by our words and our laughter. I imagined her
in Paris, stalking down the Rue de la Paix like a pilgrim from the
Caucasus, a figure of grotesque grandeur disturbing the merry frivolous
traffic, sublime, terrible spectre of stark simplicity, utterly out of
her element in our world. And I was angry with Fan for evoking such an
image. I turned away from it in distress, ashamed.

“You’ve already gone too far,” she said impishly. “You can’t get back.
You’re spoiled for your Aunt Patience.”

“We’ll see,” I muttered. My suspicions were suddenly roused by a look
in her little squirrel face.

“You’ve been talking to Claire,” I said.

“Well, what if I have?”

“She sent you.”

“Yes, she did; but I was coming, anyway.”

“I don’t believe you. You hate my being unhappy, you were worried, but
you’d have avoided coming if you could. The fact that we’ve always been
friends and that you can’t help it is a nuisance to you. Well, tell me,
what is Claire’s point of view?”

“She thinks in some measure that it’s your fault. She says Fifi has
behaved very badly, but that if you’d been clever he wouldn’t have done
anything sensational, anything to make a scandal.”

“I see.”

“She’s very unhappy about it all. She says it’s making her mother ill.
She says that if it were not for her mother it would not matter so
much, but that if you divorce Philibert it will kill her.”

“Why doesn’t Claire come herself and tell me all this?”

“She doesn’t dare. She says you don’t like her.”

“That, my dear, is funny. I’ve adored her for years and she’s
consistently snubbed me.”

“Well, anyway, you’re so different, she feels you wouldn’t understand.
You see, she puts up with a good deal herself.”

“I know. Perhaps I understand more than she thinks I do.”

“She’s very unhappy in her marriage, too, but she doesn’t make a fuss
about it. She doesn’t expect the impossible.”

“Whereas I do?”

“Well, yes. Between you and me and the lamp-post I think you do.”

“I only ask to be allowed to save Geneviève from a fate like my own.”

“Oh, my dear, if you think they’ll let you have Geneviève--”

“What do you mean?”

“A man always has rights over his child in this country, whatever the
facts against him.”

“You suggest that the law wouldn’t give me my own child?”

“It wouldn’t, not the French law.”

“Well, we’ll see about that, too.”

“Jane, you’re terrible.”

“Am I?”

“Yes, you frighten me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What shall I say to them?”

“To whom?”

“Claire, Madame de Joigny, your Aunt Clothilde, all of them.”

“Say nothing. Why should you serve them? Why should you side with them
against me? Weren’t you mine years before you ever saw one of them?
What’s become of our friendship? What’s become of your loyalty? You’ve
sold yourself, you’re not what you used to be, you’d do anything now
for a pleasant life. Because they’re attractive and have attractive
manners and make pretty speeches you’d do anything for them. What good
does it all do you? You’re ill, you’re worn to a frazzle, your husband
has been dragging you down, down, into a darkness, queer, unimaginable,
shameful, and you can’t get loose. You just dance about in the
blackness. Your feet stick in the mud. Having a good time somehow,
anything for a good time. Coughing yourself to pieces, raging fever on
you, your heart sick with distrust, restless, evasive, evading issues,
you go on dancing, laughing, having a good time. Why don’t you pull
yourself together? Why won’t you let me help you? I love you. I love
you much better than Claire does. If your husband were put in prison
what would Claire do, do you think?”

But Fan had grown deadly pale. I stopped, horrified. She was leaning
against the mantelpiece, spitting into her handkerchief: there was
blood on it.

That evening when I had taken her back to Madeleine de Greux’s--for
she refused to stay with me--and we had put her to bed, she clung to
me weakly. Her eyes closed. “It’s all true, what you said, Jane,” she
gasped, “but I can’t help it, I can’t stop. If I stopped amusing myself
I’d die.”

“But, my darling, let me get you well first, let me take you somewhere.”

“Perhaps, later,” she whispered, “if you don’t go to America. Perhaps
we might try Switzerland, but not where there are sick people.” She
shuddered. “I hate sickness so, and unhappiness. It’s so ugly. Being
gay is beautiful. It makes things look beautiful. Ivanoff is a devil,
but you’ll admit he was beautiful. I like attractive brutes better
than clumsy saints. So do you, that’s why you married Philibert, just
because he was so attractive. No one could be so attractive when he
tried. Admit it, he gave you wonderful hours, you know he did. Wasn’t
that something? What’s the use of being good if you’re deadly dull?
Good men aren’t our kind, my dear. They’d bore us to death. Philibert
made you happy for a time, wonderfully, because he knew how. What
more do you want? Don’t be a fool. Take it all as it comes. Make an
arrangement with him--you owe him something. I’ll be all right in a
day or so. Let me know what you decide. Americans are hipped on their
ideals. All that’s no use. French people know what’s what. Claire would
love you if you gave her a chance. They are all ready to be fond of
you, and they’re delicious people. Don’t be a fool. There, leave me
now. We were idiots to quarrel. You have a nasty temper, my poor Jane,
and your heart’s too big for this world. You’ll come an awful cropper
if you’re not careful.”




III


Philibert’s family had shown up to this point, a remarkable restraint.
As long as I went about as if nothing had happened, they left me alone,
but after my scene with Fan I allowed myself a revulsion of feeling. I
stopped going out. I shut myself up and sent for my lawyer. Philibert
had been gone two months. I saw no reason to put off any longer, the
action that I was determined on; I would start divorce proceedings,
leave things in professional hands and go home. What else could I do?

July was drawing to a close. The season was ending in a languid dribble
of belated garden parties. Fan, with a characteristic spurt of energy,
had recovered and gone off to the Austrian Tyrol with the de Greux,
leaving me with a last bit of reiterated advice about not being a fool.
I observed that I had no place to go, and nothing to do. Biarritz,
Trouville, Dinard, would mean carrying on the sickening pretence under
an even closer scrutiny than in Paris. The Château de Ste. Clothilde
had no charms for me now. I had liked the place, but Philibert had
spoiled it with his endless improvements. It was now, his creation
stamped with him. Sitting alone in my room at the top of the house with
the shabby relics of the Grey House, I thought of him as he had been
there in the country, strutting about directing his army of workmen,
cutting down trees, pulling up whole lawns to replace them with
gravelled terraces, and sinking into the reluctant earth marble basins
for the lovely vagrant waters of the park. He had always professed to
be the enemy of nature. It was true. What he called--“_Les bêtises de
la nature_,” filled him with disgust. Spreading trees and green fields
dotted with buttercups and bubbling streams tumbling through thickets
got on his nerves. “_Regardez donc le laissez-aller de tout cela_,”
he would cry. “How ugly it is. How stupid. It has no form, no design.”
Clumps of trees in a meadow he would liken to pimples on hairy faces.
He called grass the hair of the earth, and couldn’t endure it unless it
was close cut. He never saw a stream of water without wanting to use it
up in elaborate fountains. Gardens he regarded as “salons” in the open
air. One should use the shrubs and trees and flowers as one used silks
and brocades in an interior. Everything in a garden must be “_voulu_.”
Nothing must be left to go its own way, not a vine, not a rosebush, not
a tree should be allowed a movement of its own. Nature must be bound
and twisted into a work of art. “Ah,” he would exclaim, “how it amuses
me to torture nature.” You know what he did. The result was very fine
of its kind, certainly very grandiose. He would lead people out on the
terrace and, standing a minute, a shiny dapper little manikin, five
foot four in high heels above that great design of gravel walks and
fountains and squares of water, with their little parquets of green
grass closed in by hedges, like a series of drawing-rooms, he would
sparkle with enthusiasm. “You see,” he would say, “what I have done,
you see how these gardens _s’accrochent au château_, how it is all a
part of the house. The château could not exist without the garden,
nor the garden without the château. One would have no sense without
the other. Before I restored the grounds and elaborated on the old
designs of Lenôtre, the house was horrible.” He had placed complicated
machinery under his fountains that made the waters when they were in
play take a dozen varied successive shapes. Nothing amused him more
than watching all those waters playing, twisting, turning, tracing
strange designs in the sunlight, designs that he himself had imagined.
It gave him a peculiar joy to see his own idea produced in crystal
drops of water. He had worked in sunlight and limpid flowing water as
a painter works in colours, and had in a way produced for himself the
illusion of the miraculous.

He couldn’t understand why I suffered when he had all those magnificent
trees uprooted and when later on I complained that there was no shade
anywhere and no place to lie down with a book: “But, my poor child,
you’ve your bed for that, or your ‘_chaise longue_.’ This garden is
neither a bedroom nor a boudoir, it is a ‘_salle de fêtes_’.”

I remembered all this. Certainly for many reasons Ste. Clothilde was
out of the question. I would take Jinny home with me to St. Mary’s
Plains. The moment had come. A strange excitement came over me as I at
last wrote out the cablegram to Patience Forbes announcing our sailing
on the first of August. On the same day I had a talk with my solicitor.
_Maître_ Baudoin was a jaded, dry man, I believe honest, and rather
dull. He was eager for a holiday and very bored, I could see, at the
idea of being kept in town. He gave me little sympathy.

I wished to divorce my husband. That might or might not be possible.
It depended, of course, to a certain extent, to a limited extent, on
whether I had sufficient grounds, and whether _Monsieur le Marquis_
contested the suit. I intimated briefly that I believed I had
sufficient grounds. He eyed me gravely through half-shut deferential
and sleepy eyes. Did I think my husband would defend the suit, because
if he did, no matter what my grounds were, the case might last five
years. He told me this as a matter of conscience. Such a case would
be lucrative to him, of course, but it might prove fatiguing to the
parties more directly concerned. Five years? Yes, or even ten. That
was the way in France. A divorce against a man who fought it was very
difficult to obtain, and of course the Church did not recognize it.
That was not his affair save in so far as if I had the intention of
re-marrying, such a marriage would of necessity be considered bigamous
by all good Catholics. I had, I said, no intention of marrying a second
time. He seemed at that rather mystified. I desired, then, nothing more
than legal separation? That was much simpler. It was all a question of
property. Was there a settlement? He supposed I wished “_séparation
des biens_.” I told him that I had no wish to leave _Monsieur de
Joigny_ in financial difficulties and that that question might be left
until later, but he proved obstinate and kept on talking on the same
subject till my head ached. Finally I gathered that he was suggesting
as delicately as he could that Philibert might be bribed. “But I can’t
settle on him a large sum,” I objected wearily, “the fortune is tied up
for my daughter.”

“Ah, a trust?”

“Yes.”

“It all goes to your child on your death?”

“Yes, to my children or child, by my father’s will.”

“I see. She becomes, then, the important factor.”

“What do you mean?”

“You would lose her.”

“Why?”

“The law courts would not deprive her father of her custody.”

“But if he doesn’t care for her?”

“Are you sure he doesn’t?”

“He has left her.”

“For a time, perhaps, but she is his, and if, which would be most
unnatural, he did not care for her, he might still care for what she
represented.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to say that he cared for nothing but
his mistress, but I left the vulgar words unspoken. After all, I was
not sure that Philibert did not care for Geneviève. His moods of a
doting father might be genuine. He might indeed fight for her. My will
hardened as I wearily dismissed the tiresome discouraging man of law.
It was all more complicated than I had thought.

He had scarcely got out of the house before it was invaded by
relatives. With a startling promptitude, they bore down on me. They
must have had spies in the house. My secretary must have telephoned the
alarm, or the Governess or the Butler, any one, or all of the staff
may have been keeping them informed. In any case, there they were,
miraculously ushered into my presence without warning one by one,
or two by two, or in groups, aunts, uncles, cousins, first, second,
third cousins, cousins by marriage once removed, some of them people
whom I scarcely knew, strange old women in wigs with withered faces
and ragged feather boas, unearthed for the occasion out of their old
grand sealed houses; shrivelled old men with stiff knees and watery
eyes; it would have seemed funny, had my nerves not been on edge, had
their visits not appeared to me so exceedingly misplaced. I soon found
that no hinting on my part would make them take this view. They meant
business. They were the family. They were acting for the family and as
a family. Some of them constituted that sacred thing the “_conseil de
famille_” and they were acting in accordance with the rights and duties
of a French family in harmony with and under the protection of the law
of the French state. With correct and concise politeness they gave me
to understand that I was not free to do as I liked, that I was one of
them, bound as they were bound, and that if I chose to go against their
will, and defy my obligations, then I would do so at my own peril and
at the cost of what I held most dear. I saw what they were driving at.
They meant to keep Jinny whatever happened. If I declared war, I would
lose my child.

I put it brutally. They didn’t. They were charming. They beat round the
bush. They asked after my health. They drank tea and smoked cigarettes
and patted Jinny’s head and said charming things to her and gave her
bonbons but they made their meaning clear and the more diplomatic they
were, the angrier I became.

This kind of thing went on for three days. I remained obdurate. I
refused to commit myself, but gradually I was becoming frightened.
What frightened me was that I saw that they all, every one of them,
even those that I had thought most human, even your Aunt Alice who
was a saint and your Uncle Stanislas all sided with Philibert, all
stood solid behind him, all would stick to him no matter what he did,
before the world and against the foreigner who threatened the close
fabric of their community; and I took it as a sinister portent that
those of the immediate family, whom I knew best, your mother and Claire
and Aunt Clothilde, stayed away. In despair I went to Aunt Clothilde.
What, I asked her, did it all mean? She gave me no comfort. It meant
simply that things were so in France. French families were like that.
They clung together, and they did not admit divorce. If I tried to
divorce Philibert I would fail and would in the attempt lose my child.
Philibert, of course, was a rascal, but what would you, I ought to
have known it from the beginning. American women thought too much of
themselves. There was no modesty in the way I was behaving. Why should
I suppose that the whole scheme of the social state should be upset
because my husband liked another woman better than he did me? She
liked me, of course she liked me--for that reason she had refused to
take part in the family’s councils of war. But she was disappointed
in me, she had thought I had pluck. Here I was, behaving like a fish
wife who has been knocked into the gutter, screaming for my rights,
for vengeance. I had better go home and say my prayers. I went, and
as if in answer to the dreadful old woman’s bidding found a bishop in
the drawing-room. My nerves by that time were in such a state that the
suave and polished prelate soon had me in tears. He mistook them for
tears of repentance. He talked a long time about the consolation of
religion and the comfort of confession and rejoiced to find that I was
less inimical to the benign influence of Rome, than he had thought. I
scarcely heard what he said, but his fine ivory face and glowing eyes
and thin set mouth, gave me a feeling of uncanny power. I remembered
that I belonged to his Church, that I had been solemnly married at the
High Altar of Rome, that there I had taken vows, had professed beliefs,
and I felt a sudden superstitious terror. What if it were true, their
truth? What could they do to me, these mysterious ministers of the
Pope? What could they not do? In my fever, I saw myself tracked to
St. Mary’s Plains, followed up the steps of the Grey House by sallow
figures in black cassocks, and suffering, labouring for the rest of my
days, under the mysterious blight of an ecclesiastical curse.

When one lives in a country that is not one’s own, among strange
people whom one knows only superficially, surrounded by customs and
conventions that one does not understand, one finds it difficult to
decide moral issues. I felt bewildered and at a loss. It still seemed
to me at moments inevitable and right to divorce Philibert. At other
moments I felt less sure. The disapproval of the organized compact
community was having its effect. The antagonism of the family acted on
me with incessant pressure, however obstinately I repeated to myself
the words “I don’t care.” I did care. I was alone. I could not even be
certain that my Aunt Patience would approve. She might say in her terse
way, “Quite right, Jane. He’s forfeited your respect, get rid of him,”
or she might say, “You married him before God, you can’t undo that,” I
did not know what she would say. And the problem of Geneviève tortured
me. The fear of losing her if I divorced her father was no greater
than the fear of seeing her gradually slipping from me as the years
passed, if I remained his wife. No one knew better than I how charming
he could be if he chose. I watched him in anticipation stealing her
heart from me, turning her against her own mother. I saw her becoming
more and more like him, becoming his pupil, his work of art. Philibert
made things his own so easily. He had a genius for conquest. Everything
that he touched became his. How different from me! There was nothing
in Philibert’s house that belonged to me, except the few sticks of
furniture that I had hidden away in that room upstairs. The lovely
things in the great rooms troubled me. They affected my nerves as if
a chorus of small muffled voices were calling out to me in strange
tongues that I could not understand. I realized their beauty, but was
conscious of not appreciating them as they deserved. There was no
sympathy between us. They affected me but I did not affect them. I
could never make them look as if they were a part of my life. I was
loath to handle them, but no amount of touching with my fingers would
have given them a familiar look; the tables and chairs and tapestries
remained there around me, enigmatic, permanent, unresponsive. My life
spent itself, throbbing out among them, beating against their calm,
smooth surfaces without reaching them. There was no trace in that house
of the tumult of my own life. It continued cold, inexorable and strange.

It remained for your mother to seek me out in my loneliness and show me
what I should do. I thought at the time that I recognized her words as
words of truth. I do not know now whether I was right or wrong.

Claire never came. She sent her husband instead, not so much as a
messenger, more as an object lesson, a mute reminder--I caught her
idea--I was to look at him and realize what she was putting up with
and draw from the spectacle of his awfulness the moral. Unexpectedly,
his awfulness, appealed to me. There was something about this keen
little stolid French bounder that was a relief. His oily head, his fat
brown face, his monstrous nose and little bright beady eyes, these
unattractive things made up a hard compact entity. He was solid and
complete, round paunch, tight trousers, plump hands fingering a gold
watch chain, smell of bayrum and soap, aura of success, of materialism,
of industrial jubilance and all the rest of it. But he showed me
for the first time that day something more, himself smarting under
his thick skin with the innumerable de Joigny slights stinging him,
controlled enough not to let on, determined to get out of them in
exchange what they could give him, but not counting it much, a shrewd
downright kind little rascal, with a good old middle-class self-respect
strong in him, strong enough to make him feel himself their superior.

It didn’t take him long to make his point. He talked quickly and neatly.

Claire was unwell, she had sent him to add his voice to the family
howl. Claire never howled. When there was trouble, she withdrew. It
wasn’t her _genre_, to mix herself up in a fuss. Well--he wasn’t at all
sure that he had anything to say. Firstly because, after all, it was
none of his business. He wasn’t a member of the de Joigny family and
never would be. They had made that perfectly clear, years ago. So why
should he interfere?

I smiled. “Why indeed?” He smiled back, his hands crossed on his
stomach; his smile took a cynically humorous curve.

“If on the other hand, Madame, my sister-in-law, you want an outsider’s
opinion, it is at your disposal.”

“Two outsiders, confabing together,” I ventured.

“No,” he spoke abruptly, in a light sharp staccato, a nasal voice,
not unpleasant, the voice of the phenomenally intelligent French
bourgeoisie. “You are not as I am. You are a woman. They won’t let you
in--but they won’t let you out. You belong to them. I don’t--beside
I am of their people. I am French--I have my own backing. They don’t
like what I represent but they are obliged to admit its importance. It
is the backbone of France that I represent, the bread they eat, the
stones they walk on, the nation they ground under their heels in the
old days. They stamp on me now, but only in play, only to save their
faces--not seriously--they can’t. You, Madame, are different. You are a
foreigner, and ‘_sans défense_.’ _La famille de Joigny_ have a contempt
for foreigners. Your protectors are in America. They snap their fingers
at them. You are helpless--”

It was true. Well then?

He eyed me, humorously. “It depends on what you want out of them. I
take it they can’t give you much of anything. You didn’t marry one
of them, as I did, to ameliorate your situation in society. Putting
aside the charm of the son and daughter, why did we do it? I did it
as a bit of business. For me it was ‘_une affaire_--’ how it turned
out is neither here nor there. I can look after myself. For you it is
different, I repeat you are helpless. They are too many for you.” He
chuckled good-naturedly.

Again it was true; I assented meekly.

“Ah ha--_Voilà_, you see it. Then, my advice is--‘_Filez_’--get out.”

“And Geneviève?”

“Bribe them.”

“You think--?”

He ruminated, his nose in the air--“Yes, I think--if you make it
enough.” He laughed again, rose briskly, took up his hat, his
cream-coloured gloves, his gold-headed cane. For an instant his bright
little eyes scrutinized me--he seemed about to speak, his thick lips
formed, I saw them there, grave words, a confidence perhaps, a lament,
a plea for sympathy, I know not what. He didn’t speak them; he was very
intelligent; he had a delicacy as fine as theirs, when he cared to show
it. There was a nicer compliment to me in this clever little bounder’s
attempting no understanding with me, than any I had received in many a
long day.

He left with me a pleasant feeling of my own independence, he left me
invigorated and more sane than I had been, but your mother wiped out
the impression he had made, with one wave of her hand.

I remember the sight of her in my doorway. I was so little expecting
her that I had a chance to see her quite clearly during one instant,
before I realized who she was. A small black figure in a stiff little
ugly black hat and short cape, a dumpy forlorn little figure of no
grace or elegance, and a worn nervous face, out of which stared a
pair of very bright determined dark eyes. She might have been a very
hard-driven gentle woman, determined to brave insults and apply for
the post of housekeeper. This in the flash before all that I knew of
her covered her like a veil, and before she spoke.

I did not want to see her. I knew in an instant why she had come. I
remember wondering if I could get out of the other door before she
spoke, before I really looked at her, and all the time I was looking
and she was looking, we were staring at each other.

I had always had a deep regard for her. The fact that she did not like
me, made no difference. That was where Claire’s husband had fallen
short in his putting of the case. He didn’t know that I cared for
Madame de Joigny; he didn’t know that I wanted the family to love
me, because I loved them. Now in your mother’s presence, I felt the
immense disadvantage of this. She cared nothing for me and I was bound
to give in to her. I knew I would give in. I knew that I was about to
make one last attempt to win her. I tried to rouse myself. I recalled
and went over in my mind the opinion I knew she had of me. I knew that
physically I was repulsive to her. Often when I approached her, I had
seen her shudder. She thought me _outrée_. Once she had said, “Why is
it Jane, that you can never look like other people? Everything you put
on becomes gorgeous and exaggerated. It is most unfortunate.” And she
was afraid of my feelings, my violent enthusiasms and my deep longings.
Oh, I knew, I knew quite well. Instinctively she felt my hot blood
pounding in my veins--and recoiled from contact.

Most of all she hated me because of what I had done to Philibert. I
had made him nouveau riche; I had made him ridiculous; I had made him
unhappy, and worst of all, I had made him appear to her, cruel and
vulgar. When he was unkind to me, she hated me for being the cause of
his unkindness. You thought her love for Philibert a blind adoration
but it was not blind. She understood him, she knew him to his bones,
and she spent her life in shielding him from her own scrutiny. Her
relief was in submitting herself to his charm. She delighted in him,
but she hated his conduct. It seemed to her that he was a victim
of what she most hated. She accused him in her own heart of being
faithless to her faith, the faith of his ancestors. She saw on him the
stains and distorting marks of the vulgar world that amused him, but
she was continually falling in love with him and losing herself in
his charm, seeking solace, suffering, being disappointed. I believe
Philibert made your mother suffer more than he made me suffer, far, far
more, for you see she couldn’t stop loving him, she could never be free
from him. He was her own, her first-born, the child of her passionate
youth. He was her self that she had projected beyond herself, he was
her great adventure, he was the gauge she had thrown down at the feet
of fate, and it took all her courage to face calmly the travesty he
made of her miracle.

My existence, you see, added immeasurably to the difficulty of her
task. If he had married Bianca, Bianca, she believed, would have kept
him in order and would have presented him to her soothed eyes in the
light of a gallant gentleman. In marrying me he committed a serious
error in taste to begin with, and having married me he behaved to
me like a brute, and this was almost more than she could bear. The
interesting thing to notice was that though she suffered horribly she
made no attempt to remedy matters, did not try, I mean, to help us, and
never gave me even as much as a hint as to how I should wisely have
treated him, but limited her energy to just bearing her mortification
without giving a sign of it. It did not seem to her worth while
interfering to try and put things right when they were bound to go
wrong, but it did seem necessary to keep up the make-believe that they
were not going wrong. Almost everything in the world was going wrong.
One couldn’t face it. One must shut oneself up. One must ignore ugly
facts.

Philibert’s going off with Bianca in that spectacular fashion did,
I know, very deeply hurt your mother. The horror of it to her must
have been unspeakable. Here, at last, was an ugly fact of monstrous
proportions that she could not ignore. She was bound at last to do
something. She saw her son disgraced, her name dragged through the
divorce court, she heard her world echoing with the clanging noise of
scandal. She felt around her the brutal heaving of the foundation of
her life. In her little tufted silken drawing-room that reminded me
always of the inside of a jewel case, she had sat listening, shivering
with apprehension. News came to her of the runaways. They were in
Bianca’s palace in Venice giving themselves up to curious orgies of
pleasure. People told strange tales of their doings. They seemed to
have gone mad. News came then from another quarter. I had consulted
my solicitor. Claire was thoroughly frightened. Your mother did not
hesitate then. She was old, she was tired, she was without hope or
illusions. She saw her son as he was, and she saw Bianca at last as
she was, and she believed that for her there was no happiness to be
derived ever again from those two people. But she loved Philibert, she
loved him with anger and contempt and a breaking heart, and she was
determined to save him the last final ignominy, and so she put on her
bonnet and came to me. And as I thought of these things I was drawn out
of my chair toward her in spite of myself.

I begged her to be seated. I told her that I was touched and distressed
by her coming to me, and that had she sent me word I would have gone
to her. She smiled wanly with her old infinite sweetness. That smile
was the most consummate bit of artistry I have ever beheld. It denied
everything. It assumed everything. It fixed the pitch of our talk, it
indicated a direction and a limit. It outlined before me the space
in which I was to be allowed to move. It gave her the leading rôle
in the little drama that was about to be played out between us, and
it established her position once and for all as that of a great lady
calling upon an awkward young woman. But I saw beyond her smile. I saw
what she had been through, and was suffering. The combined play of
her terrible reddened eyes and that lovely unreal smile impressed me
profoundly.

For any other woman the beginning of such a conversation would have
been difficult, but your mother, opened up the subject that lay before
us with ease and delicacy. Her phrase was finely pointed. She used it
as she might have used a silver knife to lift the edge of a box that
contained something ugly.

“I do not know,” she said, “whether or not you have ever loved my son,
but I have felt that his sudden departure must have seemed to you very
shocking, so I have come to reassure you.”

I recoiled at this. It seemed to me that I was being attacked and that
was the last thing I expected. I was startled and puzzled by those
opening words. What difference did it make whether or not I had loved
her son? For a moment I felt angry. After all it was he that had left
me; why then, should I be accused? As for reassurance, I did not want
any. This was no time for reassurance. An ugly spirit stirred in me. I
was about to answer abruptly, when I saw that the purple-veined hand
that lay across the table before me was trembling. It was animated by
some painful agitation that shook it even resting as it did on that
strong surface. The withered palm was rubbing and quivering against the
polished wood, the worn finger tips were tapping spasmodically. My eyes
smarted at the sight of it. I spoke gently.

“Yes, _belle-maman_, I thank you for coming.”

“Ah, my poor child--and the family--I hear the family has been at you.”

“They have been here.”

“You must not mind them. They do not understand. In our world women,
you know, take things differently, they do not expect what you expect.”

There was a pause. What could I say? She seemed very reasonable and
very kind. I had never felt her so near to me before.

When she spoke again it was even more simply. “I have had no news of
Philibert,” she said sadly. “Have you?” The tone of her voice was
intimate and more natural than I had ever heard it when addressed to
me. It implied that we were both unfortunate together. I responded to
it with a flicker of hope.

“No,” I replied, “I have no news, but I have reason to believe that he
will not come back.”

“Ah,” she cried. “What makes you think that? But it is impossible.”

“No,” I continued, “it is not impossible. It is true. He gave me to
understand that himself.”

I felt her watching me closely.

“You mean?” she breathed.

“I mean that I must now take measures to live my own life. It is
impossible for me to live in his house any longer.”

It was then that she made one of her quick, characteristic mental turns.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s a monstrous house. I don’t wonder you detest it.”

I almost smiled, but I was determined to get to the point. “Dear
_Belle-Mère_,” I insisted, “that is neither here nor there. What I mean
is that I must be legally free from Philibert.” I hesitated, I saw her
face whiten, but I pressed the point. “It is best for me to tell you
that I have decided to divorce your son.”

I don’t know what effect I had expected and feared to produce. It may
be that I thought she would break down or faint dead away, or something
of that kind. She had seemed so frail that I had been really afraid of
the effect of my words. But nothing of this sort happened. The blow I
had dealt seemed to spend its force in the air. It glanced off and went
shivering into the rich, cold atmosphere of the room.

“My dear,” she said, enunciating her words very precisely, “_on ne
divorce pas dans notre monde_.” And she looked away from me, coolly
taking in the room with its priceless objects as if summoning them
to witness to the truth of her statement. She was right to look round
that room. It was her room, not mine. It understood her, not me. She
had called it a moment before a detestable house, but that made no
difference. Its magnificence was to be made use of all the same. We
were in the room that Philibert always referred to when he took people
over the house as “_le salon de Madame de Joigny_,” or “_le boudoir de
ma femme_.” It was the nicest room in the house. You remember it well,
with its pearly grey boiseries fine as lace, its Frangonard panels,
its green lacquer furniture, the three windows on the garden where a
stone fountain lifted its fine sculptured figures from the lawn. The
light in the room was silvery green and translucent as the light seen
beneath the surface of clear water, and in that dim radiance the fine
precious objects floated above the polished floor as if even the laws
of gravitation had been circumvented in the fine enclosed space. The
boiseries had been in the Trianon--you remember Philibert had procured
them after much bargaining. They had been designed and executed for
Madame de Montespan. Their perfect beauty constituted a document, a
testimony to the marvellous taste and finished craftsmanship of an
epoch. France, in all its delicate dignity, existed in that room. It
is no wonder that your mother looked about her for moral support. The
rest of the immense house might have belied her, here she could place
her faith without hesitation. I opposed to it the profession of my own
faith.

“In my country,” I said dully, for I was beginning to feel baffled and
confused, “we are not afraid to admit errors, to put away the past and
begin something new.”

“But this, my dear child, is your country,” she said more gently. “You
are a Frenchwoman now.”

I smiled. “Do you really think so?” I asked her. She drew a sharp
breath. “Ah, if you only were,” she cried softly, “you would know how
impossible it is to do what you want to do, and how useless.”

My attention closed sullenly like a clamp on the words “impossible,”
“useless.” I stared at the floor. Why impossible? Why useless? Why
did I listen to this woman who did not love me, and who told me that
my longing to live was useless? How was it she made me listen to her?
Where was her advantage? She was certain and I was uncertain, that
was it. I was not quite sure, but she was sure. Her definite idea was
projected out at me and into me like a hook. It took hold of me. I
felt myself wriggling on it, and I heard, through the confusion of my
own ideas that seemed to buzz audibly in my head, your mother’s voice
talking.

“You are young,” it said. “You come of a young people. You believe
in miracles. You seek perfection on earth. Believe me, I am old and
wise, ideals are all very well, but one must be practical about life.
Philibert has behaved very badly. He has made a scandal, but you can
remedy that and maintain your dignity by disregarding his escapade, or
at any rate treating it as nothing more than an escapade. And such it
is, nothing more, believe me. The acts of men are never anything more.
_Mon Dieu_, if we took what they did seriously, where should we be, we
women? We must take them for what they are. _Il le faut bien._ We must
never count on them. We must count on ourselves.”

But I seemed gradually to lose track of her words. It was strange,
but the sound of her voice was conveying a meaning more profound and
more direct than her spoken phrases. The sound of her voice rang in
my ears like a light, mournful, warning bell, high metallic, hollow
and sweet. It was old, an old sound much older than the lips through
which it issued. It seemed to come from a far distance, from the
distant past. Hollow and sweet and measured, its monotony insisted on
the fine tried truths of the past, it called up proud, faded images
of old resignations and compromises and lost illusions, and sounded
constantly the note of the persistent obstinacy of pride. The words “we
women” reached me. I was a woman, she was a woman. We were together.
There were men in the world and women. When one reduced things to their
last simplicity all women were bound together in the same bundle,
dealing with the same problem. She, the older woman, was wise, I was
foolish; but we were sisters in disappointment, we were weak, we must
be proud. We had both loved Philibert, but even I had never loved him
as she loved him. And he had broken her heart. The dignity of our
life depended on our pride, to hide our hurt, to make no sound, no
complaint, to arrange silently to make things bearable, to influence
men without their knowing it. Our advantage lay in our clairvoyance.
We could see through them when they could not see into us beyond our
skins. We were weak if we treated them as they treated us, but we were
strong if we remained mysterious, mute, proud. The children were ours.
Everything we did was for our children. Philibert was her child. She
must remember, she could not forget, he was her son. If we destroyed
the family we destroyed our children. Even when the men destroyed it
we must hold it together. We must pretend, for our children. When the
man was gone we must pretend he was still there. Truth and beauty
and dignity lay behind the pretence. We must pretend obstinately. If
we pretended well enough it became true. We must not endanger our
children’s lives, anything but that.

Little Geneviève came dancing into my vision, her hair flying, her
little skirts blowing, her toes dancing; a shadow fell on her, she
stopped her gay jumping about. She was all at once pale. Her eyes gazed
at me reproachfully, mournful eyes of a child, suffering. Something
about her was wrong, twisted, maimed. I shuddered. Your mother’s voice
was still going on. The words she spoke were concise, delicate little
pieces of sound strung together close like beads, they made a long,
pale, shining chain that reached from the beginning of time out into
the future. Over and over again I heard the same words. It seemed to me
that she was endlessly repeating the same thing as if it were a bit
of magic, of hoodoo. I wondered if she were hypnotizing me. Women must
pretend--women, the protectors--the strong foundation--the family the
basis of life. Women must keep the family intact. If we destroyed the
family we destroyed our children--Philibert her child--Geneviève my
child.

I looked up and saw your mother as I had never seen her before--she was
bare--she was stark naked--she was fighting for her child, for her son,
for what he was to her, for him as he must and should be to her and to
the world, for his safety, and his dignity. There was nothing between
us. We were together, two women. She was appealing to me as a woman
like herself. Philibert was her child. Even if she were deceiving me,
pretending to care for me, what did it matter? I understood her--she
was there in the great simplicity of her pretence assuming me to be
like herself, proud, gentle, sure, a woman like herself. Vulgar! I was
vulgar; my struggling for freedom was coarse; I was making an ugly
disgusting fuss; I was ashamed.

A sensation of warmth and delight crept over me--and I knew that I had
decided to do what she wanted. It seemed to me that she became my own
then, and that I belonged to her and she to me. It was impossible to
wound her. The most important thing in the world was not to disappoint
her. She expected something of me, renouncement. She expected me to
spare her son. She asked for my life, my freedom, two little things I
could give her, so that she would not be disappointed. I must give them
to her. It would be beautiful to make her happy. That was wonderful.
Whatever happened she would always know. There would be something fine
between us. We would be together. I would belong to her and she to me:
two women who had understood something together.

I touched her hand. I saw that her eyes were filled with tears. Her
fingers clutched mine. “_Ma pauvre enfant, ayez pitié de moi_,” she
quavered.

“There dear, don’t think of it any more.”

“Wait, at least, until I am dead,” she whispered. I knelt beside her,
just touching her hand. I was weeping, too, now, silently as she was,
gently, mute tears.

“I will never do it,” I said. It seemed to me wonderful to give her my
freedom, gently, like that, in a whisper, kneeling close to her, not
frightening her, asking nothing, putting things right, easily, at the
cost of all my life.




IV


I did not go to America until the following year, and then I went
alone, leaving Jinny with your mother. You remember about that, how
after all they made me leave my child behind as a hostage. We won’t
dwell on it now. It was only significant in so far as it showed me that
my new intimacy with your mother was not quite what I had believed it
to be.

As for St. Mary’s Plains, it gave me a different welcome from the one
I had expected. It disapproved of me and showed it. My people went
for me. They greeted me with the proprietary affection that claims
the right to outspoken criticism. On the whole, I liked that. It was
a relief. Although at first I was bewildered, amused and occasionally
annoyed by their vigorous upbraiding, I was glad that they felt
entitled to treat me as they did: their scolding gave me a feeling of
their solidarity with me. And it was refreshing to find myself among
a group of people who had no respect for my fortune but blamed me
honestly for being so disgustingly rich and doing so little good with
my money.

Paris gossip had reached St. Mary’s Plains. I had thought it so far
away, so safe. I was mistaken. Many acquaintances had been going back
and forth across the Atlantic carrying information, more or less
correct, of my doings. The fact that my husband was no longer living
with me was variously interpreted. Had I come rushing home for refuge
that first summer they would have been on my side, but I had not. I
seemed to have cynically accepted his liaison with another woman and
was brazenly continuing my worldly life.

My Aunt Patience, as I came gradually to realize, had been the person
least affected by these tales. She lived the life of a hermit, wrapped
up in her studies, and had refused to listen to gossip. “I guess Jane
herself tells me what she wants me to know,” she had said to more than
one busybody, but of course I suspected nothing of all this on arrival.
I had gone to America because of an unquenchable longing to be with my
own people, but I was not without a certain feeling of pride. I was
scarcely fatuous enough to consider myself as a martyr, but it did seem
to me that I had suffered through no fault of my own and had taken
my troubles with a respectable calm. Philibert was still wandering
about Europe with Bianca. I had heard nothing from him directly. An
occasional message reached me through his solicitors, that was all. I
had continued to carry on. I was keeping my promise to your mother.

My Aunt Patty came to New York to meet my steamer. I saw her from
the deck, before the ship was in dock, a powerful figure, something
elemental about her, reducing others to insignificance; I waved. She
looked at me but made no sign; she did not recognize me. As I came
down the gangway I saw her peering about in the crowd still searching,
and when I walked up to her and said “Aunt Patty, it’s me, Jane,” she
dropped her large black handbag and gave a gasp. She of course was
the same, only more so, bigger and grander, with her black mackintosh
flapping, her bonnet askew and wisps of grey hair hanging down, a
grand old scarecrow. How she hugged me, her long arms round me, people
jostling us. That was a blissful moment. I was perfectly happy for that
moment, a child at rest and comforted.

Then she said, “Where’s your baby?”

“I didn’t bring her, Aunt.”

“Oh!” Her face fell.

“I couldn’t, Aunt, such a long trip for such a short visit, and her
father wouldn’t let her come.”

“I see.” She shut her grim lips. It was clear that she was very
disappointed.

We were to take the train that night for St. Mary’s Plains. There was
some confusion about my luggage and trouble about getting it across
the city. I seemed to have a great deal. A great deal too much, my
Aunt said. Celestine had a difference of opinion with the porters and
scolded them in her high, voluble, native tongue. My Aunt did not know
what to make of Celestine.

I was ridiculously excited when we arrived at St. Mary’s Plains and
drove up Desmoisnes Avenue, and then as our taxi stopped and I looked
across the grass to that modest old house I had a feeling of immense
relief. This was my home.

The Grey House welcomed me kindly. It had shrunk in size. It had grown
shabby and ugly, but it had the charm of an old glove or shoe, much
worn. I loved it with gratitude and pity and an ache of regret.

Standing in the front hall I knew that its spirit was unchanged. My
mind reached out comfortably to its furthest corners, to the cupboards
on the back stairs and the pantry sink that I knew as I knew my own
hand. I remembered the smell of the carpet on the dark stairs and the
way the Welsbach burner sizzled on the landing, spreading a round of
light on the stained wall. My room was just as I had left it twelve
years before. The white counterpane on the narrow bed, the flat pillow,
the rag rug on the waxed floor that my Aunt Beth had made for me when I
broke my arm falling off the stepladder.

Patience changed for dinner into a black silk blouse and serge skirt.
Her high collar was fastened with an oval brooch of gold, the only
ornament I ever saw her wear. There were two servants in the house,
a cook and a housemaid. I suspected that one had been got in for my
visit. It was clear to me that she was poor, even poorer than she had
been. The house was not too clean and very shabby. Patience Forbes
was no housekeeper. She never cared what she had to eat or poked into
corners to find dust. The drawing-room looked forlorn in the pale gas
light. I gathered that she never sat there but spent all her time in
the museum among her precious specimens. The drawing-room made me feel
dismal. In the days when my Aunt Beth kept house it had been a cosy
room. Now the old mahogany sofas and chairs, covered in frayed black
horsehair, were pushed back against the wall in ungainly attitudes.
They seemed to watch me reproachfully. I loved their austere, proud
forlornness, but I felt uncomfortable. The place did not disappoint me,
but I felt that I disappointed it. The blurred and misty mirrors that
held mysteriously behind their marred surfaces the invisible reflection
of my little grandmother’s sweet face and prim figure showed me myself,
large, bright and vulgar, a great outlandish creature in an exaggerated
dress, glittering, hard and horrible. I was profoundly disturbed. If I
looked like that to myself, how must I look to my Aunt Patience? I soon
found out. She was not a person to mince matters. She told me plainly
that I looked wicked.

“Wicked, Aunt?”

“Yes, Jane, that’s just about it.”

“But, Aunt, this is terrible. What is it? What shall I do about it?”

She stared at me grimly. “I don’t know. I guess it’s everything--your
clothes, that thick bang across your eyes, those ear-rings, that red
stuff on your lips. It looks bad. It makes you look like an ungodly
woman.”

I rubbed off the lip salve and took off the ear-rings. “Is that better?”

“Humph. A little.” Suddenly I saw her face quiver, her mouth twist. I
crossed to her and knelt on the floor beside her, put my arms round her
and looked into her working face.

“Aunt, tell me, what’s the matter? Tell--”

“There, Jane, I’m an old fool.” She tried to laugh but failed. Her
voice cracked. “I can’t help it. You’re so different that I’m scared.
Janey, Janey, you’ve no call to be so different.” She put her large
worn hands on my shoulders.

“I’m not changed in my heart, Aunt.”

“Are you sure?”

“I am sure.”

“There ain’t nothing real wrong with you, Jane?”

“No, Aunt.”

“You can tell me solemnly that your heart’s not changed, that you’ve
come to no harm?”

I looked into her eyes. Humbly, I knelt and looked into those honest
eyes, not beautiful, with blistered, opaque irises, the whites yellow
now with age. I knew what she meant, and I knew what would put things
right between us. If I told her everything, all about Philibert and
Bianca and my own loneliness she would give me the sympathy I wanted.
Then all her criticism and disappointment would be swallowed up in
pity. I hesitated. I did not believe that she knew anything of my
troubles with Philibert. I had never written her one word about being
unhappy. My happiness, I knew, was the most precious thing on earth to
her. How, then, tell her now, and why? Break her old heart so that she
might comfort me? Sadden the remaining years of her life that I might
enjoy the luxury of being understood? And how explain? What could she
ever understand of such things? She was an innocent woman.

So I lied. I chose my words in order to keep as near to truthfulness as
I could.

“No, Aunt, I have come to no harm. I am just the same as the girl
who left you twelve years ago. My looks, why should they matter to
you, Aunt? They are not my own. All that is just dressmakers and
hairdressers and the people round me. I have grown to look like them
there, but I am more like you and yours than you think. I have been so
home-sick, Aunt. I have longed so longingly for this, just this, Aunt,
just to come home.”

Her face had changed, her eyes searched mine wistfully now.

“You are unhappy, child.”

“No, Aunt.”

“Your husband?”

I felt myself turn pale as she held my head between her hands. What
could I safely say? There was a look in her face that frightened me.
Did she know after all? Had she heard?

“Aunt, he is a Frenchman, different from us.”

“But is he a good man?”

“Yes.”

“True to you as you are to him?”

“Yes.”

For a moment longer she looked at me closely, then with a sigh of
relief leaned back. “I believe you, Jane, I always said it wasn’t true.
I couldn’t believe my girl wouldn’t tell me.”

I buried my head in her knees. I felt sick and guilty, and as I knelt
there I saw that long ago I had thrown over my Aunt Patience for your
mother, though I loved Patience Forbes better than any one in the world.

Presently she said humorously with her slow American twang--“Well, I
guess I’ll have to get used to your looks, Jane, and not be silly, but
I reckon it would be easier if your voice weren’t so French. You’ve got
a queer sort of accent. I don’t know what all your aunts and uncles
will say when they see you. I expect if you explain it’s just the
effect of the world you’ve come from they’ll think it’s a pretty queer
world.”

But I had no intention of explaining myself to my relatives. Aunt Patty
had the right to bring me to book, but no one else had. It seemed to me
that night, lying awake in my cool, puritan bed, rather funny to think
of the people of St. Mary’s Plains holding me to account. What had I
done, after all, to come in for a scolding? I had told my aunt I was
unchanged. In a sense it was true. If I had not been the same I should
not have wanted to come.

I could hear Celestine fussing about in the next room. Celestine was
going to be a thorn in the side of the Grey House. She was out of
place. There she was surrounded by my clothes. My clothes looked
horribly gawdy littered all over that room. Presently her light was
extinguished. I lay in the dark between the sheets that smelled of
lavender, my eyes open in the kind familiar darkness, and told myself
that it was true, that I was unchanged, the same--the very same
person that had lain in that bed in that same homely safe obscurity
years before--and for a time, the sounds and the unseen but palpable
presences round me, seemed to agree, to reassure me.

I heard the tram rumbling by up the Avenue, I could see in my mind’s
eye, the arc light above the street shining on the high branches of
the elm trees, the comfortable houses set back in their grass plots,
shrouded in shadow, lighted windows showing here and there, and beyond
them to the West, I knew was the river, filled with the dark hulls of
ships, lumber schooners from the great lakes, pleasure boats, tugs,
their red lights riding high above the black water. From the side of
my bed my mind could move surely out through the night among known
objects, along familiar and friendly streets, past houses and shops
and churches, all acquainted with me as I was with them. And I felt
the furniture of the room was kindly, sedate and prim, taking me
for granted, assuming that all was well, that I belonged there--but
did I? Was it true? The years seemed to have been rolled up, as if
the intervening time were a parchment scroll, put away in a corner,
but there was something else, something different that could not be
put away. It was in me. It existed in my blood, in my body. It was
restless and it gnawed me. No--no--it was not true. I was not the
same. No miracle could undo what had been done to me. No relief could
obliterate from my mind what I had learned. I was old--I was tired and
corrupt--something irrevocable had happened to me--something final and
fatal, that no longing and no prayers could ever exorcise.

St. Mary’s Plains had “got a move on” during my absence, so my
relatives told me. I saw as much. It had entered upon one of those
sensational periods of industrial success that come to American towns
so unexpectedly. Some one had invented a stove, some one else a
motor car. Former modest citizens were making millions and building
factories. Down town was encroaching on the pleasant shady districts of
up town. The lots on either side of the Grey House had been bought by a
syndicate who proposed to put there a hotel and an apartment building.
The Grey House would be sandwiched in between them. It would become a
little dark building at the bottom of a well, but Patience Forbes had
refused to sell, though the price offered her would have left her more
than comfortably off for the rest of her life. I asked leave to buy the
Grey House from her for greater security, but she refused. “I’m safe
enough, Jane, because I don’t want money. No man alive can make me sell
if I don’t want to. You’ve no call to worry about me.”

My Uncle Bradford was not in town but there were a great many other
family connections who came to see us and asked us to come to them for
large hospitable succulent meals. They greeted me with hearty kisses
and handshakes. “Well, Jane, glad to see you home at last. Hope you
left your husband well.” And then we settled down into chairs.

“You certainly have changed. You’re real French, aren’t you? We’ve
heard a lot about your doings. It sounds pretty funny to us, giving
parties all the time to crowned heads, aren’t you?” This from the men,
or from the women more gently--

“Dear, couldn’t you have brought your baby? We’re so disappointed. Yes,
you do seem different, but we hope you’re happy. We can’t imagine your
life, you know. It seems so empty, so artificial. The papers give such
strange accounts. All those gambling places, your cousin fighting a
duel, it sounds so strange. France seems to be turning to atheism with
terrible rapidity. The separation of Church and State might be good if
it led to a spiritual revival, but they don’t keep Sunday at all, do
they? All the theatres are open Sundays they say.”

The elders were gentle but positive in their disapproval, the younger
generation frankly intolerant. They had been struck by various
religious and emotional disturbances that had swept the country,
evangelical revivals, a thing called the “Student Movement,” and a
university type of socialism. I felt myself being measured up to a
certain high standard and found lamentably wanting. Had I forgotten
their standards, I asked myself, or was this something new? When they
asked me what I was doing with my life I said I didn’t know, that it
took me about all my time just to live it. Wasn’t I interested in
anything? Oh, yes, a great many things, music especially, and old
enamels. They didn’t mean that, they meant causes. I didn’t understand.
What causes, I asked, did they refer to? Women’s suffrage, the negro
question, sweated labour. No, I was obliged to admit that women’s
suffrage had not interested me and that there being no negro question
in France I hadn’t thought about the subject. As for sweated labour,
I supposed it did exist in Paris, but that its evils had never been
brought to my notice. All the young people were espousing causes. They
quite took my breath away. They believed so hard in so many things,
and they talked so much about the things they believed in. Really they
were violent talkers. Their fresh young lips uttered with ease the
most astounding phrases. They were fond of big words. Their talk was a
curious mixture of undigested literature and startling slang. Some of
the things they believed in were love, democracy, the greatness of the
American people and the equality of the sexes. What they didn’t believe
in they condemned off-hand. There was for them no quiet region where
interesting questions were left pleasantly unanswered. They abhorred an
unanswered question as nature abhors a vacuum. Every topic was a bull
to be taken by the horns. Everything concerned them. There was nothing
that was not their business. They were crusaders, at war with idleness
and cynicism, vowed to the regeneration of the world. They went for
me, but how they went for me! I was a renegade, a back-slider, a poor,
misguided victim of an effete and vicious foreign country. I had
nothing to give them of any value. When I talked of the charm of Paris
they yawned. When I mentioned my friends they called me a snob. When
I spoke of my activities they laughed in gay derision. On the whole I
didn’t mind. I was too tired to mind. They were so young, so keen, so
good to look at, so full of hope. I wouldn’t have stopped their talking
for the world, and I liked them for despising my money.

I envied them. They were happy, they were free. Deep in my heart I
suspected that they were right to despise my life. In the evenings when
they gathered on the shadowy verandahs of their comfortable countrified
houses, the young men with mandolins, the girls in billowy muslin
dresses, I listened to their laughter and their tinkling music, feeling
so old, so very old. On those summer nights Aunt Patty and I would
sometimes sit on the front steps of the Grey House as the custom was in
the town, and all the street would seem to be charged with romance and
joy and mystery. Through the trees one could see young forms flitting
from house to house where lights streamed from hospitable windows down
across the plots of grass, while on the shadowed verandahs young hearts
whispered to young hearts, whispered of dreams that must come true,
gallant, innocent dreams.

And there was the difficulty of religion. They couldn’t swallow my
having become a Catholic. On the first Sunday morning I asked my Aunt
Patience if she would like me to go to church with her.

“Why, yes, Jane, but I thought you’d be going to the Catholic Church.”

“I’d rather go with you, Aunt.”

“Come, then.” But I saw that she was troubled.

“You see, Aunt, I don’t really care what church I go to; I’m only a
Catholic for social convenience.”

“That’s too bad, isn’t it?” She was putting on her bonnet.

“I don’t know, I don’t seem to have any feeling about it one way or
another. I never could seem to learn much about God, Aunt, don’t you
remember?”

“But don’t you believe in Him, Jane?”

“Honestly, Aunt, I don’t know. Sometimes I wish I could, but that’s
when I’m in trouble and only because I want some one to help me out.
That’s not believing, is it? It’s just cowardice.”

My aunt grunted. “Religion mostly is, but there’s something else, like
what your grandmother had.”

“Yes, I know.”

She said no more, and I was grateful to her for taking it like that. We
were companions in spite of everything.

But when my Aunt Beth came with her husband to visit us things became
more difficult. She had taken my turning Roman Catholic as a dreadful
personal problem of her own, and felt, dear little soul, that she
must try to bring me back to the fold. The result was painful. She
came armed with tracts and pamphlets, a whole bag full of appalling
literature. I was greatly astonished, for I remembered her as a very
gentle little creature. With age she had grown militant in the cause of
evangelical truth. She took me to camp meetings and prayer meetings.
She would come into my room at night in her pink flannel dressing gown,
her little middle-aged face aglow with ecstatic resolve, and would
press into my hand just one more message, a dreadful booklet, “The
Murder of God’s Word,” or something of that kind. I was at last driven
to appeal to my Aunt Patience for protection. She took up the cudgels
for me.

“I guess Jane’s all right, Beth, I wouldn’t worry. God’s the same,
whatever your Church.”

“But Patty, it’s heathen idolatry, worshipping the Virgin Mary. The
Virgin Mary was just a woman like you and me.”

“Well, dear, what does it matter? Perhaps Jane doesn’t worship her in a
heathen spirit, do you, Jane?”

“No, Aunt, I’m afraid I don’t worship her at all.”

“But think of the Jesuits,” wailed Aunt Beth.

“I don’t,” snapped Aunt Patty.

“Patty, I believe you’re in danger of losing your faith.”

“No, I’m not, Beth, don’t you fret about me. I’ve a good conscience
before my God and my Saviour. Now just you leave Jane in peace and
trust her to God. That’s what you’re told to do in the Bible. Just you
trust the Lord. He’ll look after Jane.”

And Beth would be momentarily silenced more by the sense of her elder
sister’s family authority than by any respect for her arguments.

Aunt Patty and I were happiest when we were left alone.

In July it became very hot. The back garden was ablaze with flowers.
Rows of hollyhocks lined the wooden fences at either side. Butterflies
fluttered in the sun. The bee-hives at the bottom of the garden were
all a-murmur. We spent long hours on the back verandah, and Aunt Patty,
her knitting needles moving swiftly (she knitted a good deal, but
always had a book open on her lap), would question me about my life
in Paris, and I would tell her as much of the truth as I could. Her
conclusions were characteristic.

“Your set over there doesn’t seem to have too much sense,” she would
say. “You sound a very giddy lot. You take no interest in science, do
you? I don’t suppose you’ve any of you an idea of what’s being written
and done.”

“Oh, come, Aunt, some of us are awfully clever. Fan knows all about art
and music. My sister-in-law paints and embroiders quite beautifully,
and all our relatives are gifted.”

“Humph, art is all very well, but do you keep up with the times?”

“How do you mean, ‘keep up’?”

“I mean, child, with what’s going on in the world of thought,
intellectual progress. They’re making great strides in medicine in
Germany. France is doing most in mathematics. But I daresay you never
heard of Professor Lautrand. He lives in Paris. Ever met him? Ever
heard of him?”

“I’m afraid not, Aunt.”

“Well, there you are, one of the great spirits of the age.” And she
rubbed her nose with her knitting needle. “A noble intellect. His books
have opened up for me a new world. To think you could talk to him and
don’t even know he’s there! Why, landsakes, Jane, if I were in your
shoes I’d wait on his doorstep till my bones cracked under me.” She
laughed.

“Come and visit me, dear, do, and we’ll have him to lunch every day,”
I urged. At which she laughed again her young, hearty laugh, but with
a wistful look in her eyes as if the light of a lovely dream glowed a
moment before her.

“No, Jane, no. I’m too old to go gallivanting about Europe, but I do
wish you’d take my advice. You never did take any interest in science.
If you did you’d not be so dependent upon mere human beings. If you’d
only study geology and biology and the history of races, you’d see
that human beings are no great shakes, anyhow, and don’t count for
much, save that they’ve the power of thought. Has it ever occurred
to you to stop and consider how wonderful it is that you can think,
and how little you avail yourself of the privilege? Go one day to the
_Bibliothèque Nationale_, that’s what it’s called, they’ve got one of
my books there, and just think for a moment that all that building is
crammed full of the records of man’s thought. Stupid, most of it, you’d
say, too dull to read, all those books. Well, that may be their fault
and it may be yours, but it’s neither here nor there. The fact is that
the recording of knowledge is a miracle.”

Wonderful Patience Forbes, taking me to task for the frivolity of my
world, sitting on the back verandah, her spectacles on the end of
her nose, her knitting on her lap, her heelless slippers comfortably
crossed, her little modest volume tucked away on a shelf in the
_Bibliothèque Nationale_. She seemed to me very remarkable, and she
seems even more so now. Time for most of us is just a process of
disintegration, old age is often pitiful and ugly, but at the age of
sixty-five Patience Forbes had the heart of a child and the robust
enthusiasm of a student. She had been persuaded by the State Board of
Education to write a series of text-books on birds, and in the evenings
she would work in the room she called the museum, and I would sit
watching her while she chewed her pen, rapped irritably with her hard
old fingers on the desk, or went down on her knees before a shelf of
books to look up some reference. Sometimes she would walk the floor and
grumble--“Gracious, how difficult it is to write a decent sentence.
English certainly isn’t my strong point. I write like a clucking hen.
Style never was in my line.” And then she would laugh, her young,
vigorous, chuckling laugh.

When I compared my life with hers, how could I not feel that there was
justice in all that young American condemnation. Patience Forbes was
old, she was poor, she went about in tram-cars, she worked for her
living, and she was happy. There was no doubt that she was happy. She
envied no man and no woman, and asked nothing of any one. She would not
even let me help her. She said that she had everything she wanted and I
was bound to believe her.

Early in August we went up to my Uncle Bradford’s camp in the woods
at the head of the lake. He had written urging us to come and saying
that if we didn’t he would come down to St. Mary’s Plains as he wanted
particularly to see me.

A white steam-boat, with side paddles churning peacefully through the
water, carried us for a long day and night and part of another day west
by north-west, past little white straggling towns, calling at long
piers to deliver mails and provisions, moving on and on, farther and
farther across the wide shining expanse of water, away from the world
of men. Timber schooners passed us, square-rigged, coming down from the
great forest lands. The skies were boundless and light and high above
the water. We moved in marvellous translucent space. The air was new as
if the world had been created yesterday.

Uncle Bradford and his sons with their wives and children had built
themselves log houses on the shore of the lake. The forest stretched
away behind them as far as the Canadian border, and a great tract of
it belonged to them, with its rivers, its game and its timber. Some
of them were in the lumber business, others came there merely for the
summer holidays. I found my Aunt Minnie there, and an even greater
crowd of youngsters than in St. Mary’s Plains. Uncle Bradford, dressed
in a red flannel shirt and a sombrero, ruled his camp like a Russian
patriarch, and again I found every one interested in things that I
had forgotten were interesting. There in that glorious pagan world
surrounded by virgin forests they worshipped a stern and exacting
God, read the Bible, and argued in the evening before the blazing log
fire as to whether the mind were separate from the soul, or evolution
incompatible with the principles of Christianity. And I wondered at
them, for they were not afraid of their puritan God, nor weary of
endless argument. Their consciences were clear. They could look God in
the face, and their brains, if rather empty, were admirably keen.

I watched the women. They all seemed to have devoted husbands who
assumed the sanctity of marriage to be the basis of life and took
the beauty of their women for granted. Extravagant youngsters, how
I envied them. Husbands who remained faithful lovers, wives who
remained innocent girls, all contented and unafraid, and with their
outspokenness, shy people keeping secret the sacred intimacy of love.

The children were splendid animals. They liked me and included me in
their games. We used to go swimming before breakfast when the heavenly
morning was crystal pale. I would slip from my cabin and join those
little bronze figures, run through the clearing to the shore and down
the wooden pier, stand an instant with them all about me breathing in
the sweet air, then with a shout all together we would dive. I swam as
well as any of those boys. It pleases me now to remember their respect
for my prowess. And I could paddle a canoe and throw a ball like a man,
and I caught the largest fish of all, a fine big salmon trout weighing
fifteen pounds. My thought was--“I want a boy like one of these to
become a man for Jinny. I want her to have a husband from my people.”

It was a delicious life. The air was fine and dry and sharply scented
with the scent of pine woods drenched in sunlight. Each morning was a
miracle as clear as the first morning of creation. Swift rollicking
streams tumbled over rocks, fat salmon jumped in deep pools. Mild-eyed
Indians came travelling down from the depths of the vast forest,
paddling their lovely canoes of birch bark, laden with grass baskets
and soft moccasins embroidered in beads. The nights were cold. One
was lifted up into sleep, one floated up and away into sleep under
sparkling stars, hearing the waves lapping the shore and the wind
murmuring through the branches of the innumerable pines of the forest
that spread away, further and further away, endlessly, countless trees
murmuring a strong chant under the wide sky, stretching beyond the edge
of the mind’s compass, as far as one could think, as far as one’s soul
could reach out, the forest, the sky, the water, calm, untroubled,
eternal.

Then suddenly something crashed into that crystal space.

My Uncle Bradford took me one morning to his office.

“You are nearly thirty now, Jane.”

“Yes, Uncle.”

“I have a letter for you from your father. He left it with me to
deliver to you when you were thirty years old.”

I took the envelope he handed me. I was trembling. My uncle mopped his
forehead and cleared his throat.

“You will be absolute owner of your property when you are thirty.”

“Oh,” I said blankly.

“Yes, you were not to know. It was your father’s wish. Did your mother,
before she died, tell you anything about him?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Well, I’m sorry. It was her place to tell you. Your father is buried
out west, in Oregon.”

“Yes, I know.”

“He’s not buried in a cemetery. He’s buried on a hill. He bought the
tract of land himself.”

I waited. The noises of the camp came cheerily through the cabin
windows. There was a strong smell of pine wood and resin and of bacon
frying somewhere out of doors.

“Your father broke his neck falling down the elevator shaft in a
New York hotel. The verdict was accidental death, but it was not an
accident. Your mother knew, and I knew.”

I stood up, staring at him stupidly, holding the letter in my fingers,
then quickly turned and went out. I crossed the camp and struck off
into the woods. In a quiet place I sat down and opened the letter. It
began, “My dear daughter Jane.” I know it by heart. This is the letter.


     “_My dear daughter Jane_: It is time for me to go. A man is free
     to choose his time. This I believe, not much else. I am sorry to
     leave you, but you are only five years old and you will be better
     off with your grandmother in St. Mary’s Plains than you would be
     with me. Your grandmother and your aunts will take care of you.
     They are good women. It’s not their fault that they don’t like me.
     The truth is, Jane, that I’m not their kind. I’m nobody’s kind and
     I’m awful tired of being alone in a crowd. This world is getting
     too full of people for me. I want space and I guess I’ll find it
     where I’m going.

     I wouldn’t leave you so much money if I knew what to do with it.
     It never did me any good. It was only fun getting, not having. At
     first I worked with my hands--in the earth--then I found gold. I
     bought land and more land, built a railroad or two, and then Wall
     Street got me. That was like the poker table I’d known when I was
     a boy working on the Chippevale Ranch. That was just excitement,
     no good to any one, but fun for a spell.

     When you are thirty years old you’ll have as much sense as you’re
     ever going to have. Perhaps you’ll do better than I did. Perhaps
     you’ll know how to spend. I didn’t. I’d like you to enjoy what
     I’ve left you. It would console me some.

     I’m not a believer in the Cross of Jesus and I don’t want it on my
     grave, but I’m not sure there isn’t something over yonder on the
     other side. I hailed from the far West. It’s spoiling now, but a
     wide prairie and a high sky are the best things I know, that and
     working with your hands.

     Good-bye, little girl Jane, you’re the only thing I mind leaving
     behind. I’d kind of like to know what you’ll be like when you get
     this.

     Your Uncle Bradford’s an honest man, there aren’t many, you can
     trust him. He’ll give you this and explain that there was no
     disgrace. Only I didn’t feel like living any more. There are too
     many people hanging round. I want to get away. If I’m doing you a
     wrong by quitting I ask you to forgive me.

     “Your loving father,
     “_Silas Carpenter_.”


I worked it out that night with maps and time-tables. I had just enough
time to go to Redtown and get back to New York to catch my boat. I left
the next morning. My aunt went with me. Uncle Bradford’s steam launch
took us down the lake. We caught a train at a place called Athens and
joined the western express the middle of the next day. It took us three
days and three nights to get to Oregon. We crossed the Mississippi
river early one morning. The next day we thundered through the Rocky
Mountains. The plains beyond were immense and stupefying.

I visited the grave alone. A block of granite, reminding me of a
druid’s stone, marked the spot on the hill where he was buried. It
stood up stark and solid on the bare ground. It looked as if it had
been left there endless ages before by some slow, gigantic movement
of nature, some glacier travelling by inches from the north, or some
heaving of the earth’s surface. One side of it was polished and bore an
inscription cut into the stones:--


     “HERE LIES SILAS CARPENTER, WHO WAS BORN IN THIS PLACE BEFORE IT
     WAS A TOWN AND WHO DIED IN NEW YORK ON JANUARY 5TH 1885.”


From the hill-top one had a view of the city lying along the sea, a
new, bright city, an unfriendly sea of a dazzling blue. I sat down
on the grass by the great stone. Here, at last, was something that
belonged to me and to no one else. No one would dispute with me the
possession of my father’s grave. I felt excited and uplifted as if I
had come into a precious inheritance. And yet what had he left me?
A message of failure, an unanswered question, a sense of not having
counted for him enough myself to keep him on the earth. He had shuffled
me off with the rest of it. My mother must have hated him. She must
have had something to do with his giving it up like that. I would have
loved him. I would have understood him. If he had waited for me we
would have been good companions. If he had lived I would never have
gone to Paris. I would have gone west with him to his wide prairie
and high skies. Everything would have been different. I had missed
something. What had I missed? I looked out across the dry grass, the
rolling hills, the big, bare, blazing land, the glittering sea under
the windy sun, and I recognized it as mine. I had missed my life. I had
taken the wrong turn.

We boarded the train again next day and recrossed the continent of
America. It took us seven days and nights to reach New York. We passed
through Denver, Chicago, Cleveland, and countless other cities. We
crossed deserts white as sand and overgrown with cactus. In the middle
of the Mohawa desert we stopped at a place called Bagdad to give the
engine a drink of water. Bagdad was a single wooden shed standing
in a waste of sand. Bagdad, Bagdad. It was very hot in the train. My
aunt and I sat most of the time on the open platform at the end of
the observation car, watching the earth fly from under the train and
drinking iced drinks that the coloured porters brought us. It is very
exciting to be in a train like that, rushing across the earth at such
speed, suspended in space as if on a giant bridge, and the vast, the
immense, the overwhelming panorama flying endlessly past. Cities,
rivers, prairies, mountains, lonely farms, the steel jaws of stations
engulfing you, out again through the crowding buildings of a city you
will never know, full of people you will never see, into the open, the
horizon endlessly wheeling, the earth under the train flying backwards,
but the far edge of the earth towards the horizon wheeling with you.
Thundering along, the pounding of the engine, the grinding wheels
exciting your brain to a special liveliness, the train is a miraculous
thing, a steel comet cushioned inside imitating a dwelling, but a
long comet whirring through space, a blaze of flying light by night,
a streak and a noise by day, and from it you look out upon a thousand
worlds flying past, and you have glimpses, instant, quick glimpses, of
countless mysterious lives, a group of children hanging over a fence
waving, a farmer in a wide straw hat sitting in a blue wagon at a
railway crossing, a boundless golden field behind him of innumerable
garnered sheaves all gold, a village like a collection of wooden boxes,
saddled horses tethered to a rope in front of an unpainted post office.
Cowboys driving cattle, rolling prairies, horses, wild, running,
kicking up their heels, a lonely cabin against a hill, hens scratching
outside, thin smoke coming from the wobbling iron smoke stack, lost in
the boundless blue; families moving, all their household goods piled
on wagons, the men walking beside the horses with long whips, a mail
coach lurching along a mountain road, the driver has a Colt revolver in
his pocket. You know that. You hope he’ll get the highway robbers who
will be waiting for him at dark. Bret Harte wrote about him. And now
Walt Whitman’s country--Leaves of Grass--a great poem, the greatest.
He knew. He had found out. He understood the giant, the great urge of
life, in this my country.

And I thought of my father, crossing and recrossing the continent,
restless, lonely, powerful, dissatisfied, an isolated man moving up and
down the land, handling money, gambling with money, not knowing what to
do, growing tired of it all.

I said to my aunt--“It was twenty-five years ago, but it brings him
close.”

“Your father’s death?”

“Yes, it makes a difference.”

“How?”

“I’m with him. It clears the ground.”

I did not quite know what I meant then, but I know now.

We reached New York. I was suddenly filled with foreboding. In the high
window of our towering hotel I sat with Patience far into the night. We
sat together like watchers in a tower, and a million lighted windows
shone before us in the blue night.

“I am afraid, Aunt.”

“Why, my child?”

“I am afraid to leave you.”

“Yes, I know.”

How much did she know, I wondered? What did she suspect? Philibert had
not written to me, of course. She must have noticed. She must know a
good deal.

“You have your little girl, Jane. Think of her.”

“I do. She’s a prim little thing, not a bit like me.”

“Promise me to love your child, to love her enough.”

“Enough for what, dear?”

“Just enough; you’ll find out how much that is.”

“I will try to love her as you have loved me, Aunt, always.”

She gripped my hand. “Janey,” she muttered, “my girl.” We sat a long
time silent. The desire to unburden all my heart was unbearable. But it
was too late now.

“Europe is too full of people, Aunt. They have made the earth into a
trivial thing. It is not good for people to subdue the earth. In Paris
one is never out of doors. I don’t feel at home there. I am sick for my
own country, for a wide prairie and a high sky.”

“You’ll come back again, Jane.”

“Yes,” I answered, “I will come back.”

I thought she was asking for a promise. I did not know that she was
stating a prophecy.

And in the morning I went aboard my ship and my aunt left me and went
down the gangway onto the pier, and the ship moved slowly away from the
dock. There she was again, standing in the crowd in her queer black
clothes, but this time the water between us was widening. She lifted
both her arms to me in a last large gesture of full embrace, then her
arms fell to her sides, and she stood there buffeted by the wind,
jostled by the crowd, a strong old woman, looking after me bravely. I
had a desperate moment. I wanted to jump, to swim back. I felt an agony
of regret, of longing, of warning. I struggled. It was horrible, such
pain. What did it mean? Why was I going? It was wrong, it was wrong.

I never saw her again.




V


I slipped back into Paris, its pleasant walls closed round me, and the
voice I had heard over there, in my wide country was hushed. It was
like coming out of a great open space into a room. There was all at
once about me a multitude of nice pretty things, a shimmer of lights,
a harmony of bright sounds, the smooth, soothing, flattering touch
of luxury. No whisper of elemental forces could penetrate here. Men
of incomparable taste and limited vision had made this place to suit
themselves.

Jinny was waiting for me, a prim fairy with starry eyes, standing
daintily on tip-toe to be kissed, smoothing her white frock carefully
after my hug. She told me that she had seen her Papa. He had been on a
visit to _Grand’ mère_! He had given her a strawberry ice in the Bois
and had taken her to see Punch and Judy. Then he had gone far away to a
country where old kings were buried and one rode on camels across the
sand. The _Guignol_ had been very amusing, but she had agreed with her
papa that she was rather old for Punch and Judy. Some day he would come
back and take her to big parties. I looked at Jinny, little Jinny, who
didn’t like to be hugged, pirouetting on one toe and looking at herself
in the glass, and I remembered my promise to Patience Forbes. It wasn’t
enough to dote on my child, to crave her sweetness, her caresses, her
laughter. There would be a struggle. There would be endless things. I
saw them coming, all the events of her poor little life, so spectacular
in its setting. I was there to ward them off, to challenge fate and the
future, to love her with enough wisdom and enough tenacity and enough
self-abasement to--well, to see her through.

And I had an idea that she wouldn’t help me much. She would perhaps
always be content to curtsey to herself in the glass. I felt this, but
I felt it with less keenness than I expected. There seemed something
a little unreal about struggling desperately to ward off evil from
my child. There were flowers in the room, orchids and violets and
roses, sent to greet me. A sheaf of letters, invitations to lunch, to
dine, to listen to music. The first night of the Russian Ballet was
announced for the following week. Rodin asked me to his studio to see
a new bronze. Beauty all about me, amusement, stimulus, within easy
reach, treasures of pleasure like sugared fruit hanging from fantastic
branches waiting to be plucked.

Your mother’s kiss of greeting showed me that Philibert’s visit had
made a difference. It was a cold, gay little peck and was accompanied
by nervous pats and hurried playful remarks on a high, forced note.
Clearly she was nervous. Almost, it seemed, as if she were afraid of
me. Poor little _belle-mère_. She had fallen in love with her son all
over again, but why need that make her afraid of me? I was disappointed
and annoyed by her renewed subterfuges. It seemed to me strange that
she should think I would begrudge her the pleasure her son could still
give her. I thought of explaining my feelings to Claire, but Claire was
not in a receptive mood and there was after all nothing to be gained by
it. I was a little tired of explaining. I was, I found, even a little
tired of the de Joigny family. My obligations to them and theirs to me
seemed less important since my return. It occurred to me that I had
taken myself and my problems with a ridiculous seriousness. I was still
very fond of your mother, but I no longer asked of her the impossible.
All that I now wanted of the family was a sufficiently respectable show
of approval and a mild give-and-take of friendliness. I felt equal to
living a life of my own and I proposed doing so. When you suggested
giving a dinner for me in your rooms I was delighted. You promised me
Ludovic and half a dozen of the best brains in Paris. That seemed to
me an excellent way to begin.

Aunt Clothilde sent for me one morning a few days later. I found her
in bed under an immensely high canopy of crimson damask, sipping a cup
of the richest chocolate, a coarse, white cambric cap, like a peasant
woman’s, tied under her double chin, her wig hung on the bed-post. The
room was vast and stuffy and dark and hung with dingy tapestries. On
one side of the bed sat her _dame de compagnie_, knitting, on the other
a frightened priest with a sallow, perspiring face. Aunt Clo waved a
plump hand as I came in. The duenna and the priest rose hurriedly.

“No, _mon Père_, I won’t help you. You are no doubt a saintly man, but
that’s not enough for the business in hand. You’ve not got the brains.
You couldn’t preach to a lot of worldly women, you’re too timid. Look
at yourself now. You’re trembling before a wicked old woman who may
have some influence with the Archbishop but has none whatever with
Saint Peter. Come, _mon Père_, brace up and go to the heathen. There’s
a nice post vacant in Madagascar. I’ll put in a word for you there if
you like.”

The poor man’s face worked painfully. He murmured something and
scuttled away across the great room. The little companion held open the
door for him and followed him out.

Aunt Clothilde turned to me. “Blaise,” she began at once, motioning
me to sit down, “has asked me to dine with him. Does he dine? Has he
a cook? He says so, but how do I know? What will he give me to eat?
He says the dinner is for you. Since when has he taken to giving his
sister-in-law dinners? He wants me to put you in countenance, and
to impress his disreputable bohemian friends. He says they are all
geniuses. What is a genius? Your mother-in-law thinks they all died in
the seventeenth century. She may be right. How can one be sure? And why
should I dine with a genius? Is that a reason? He promises me, as if it
were a favour, that man Ludovic, a monster with greasy grey curls who
worships an Egyptian cat. Blaise says he is a very great scholar and
that you deserve a little pleasure. Will you find pleasure in his old
scholar? Why should you? I’d rather have a beautiful young fool myself.
It appears the family is horrid to you. Is that so? Wouldn’t let you
take your child to America, eh? Well, I don’t mind having a dig at the
family. Tiresome people, always splitting hairs. And you’re a good
girl. You’ve got pluck, but I thought you were going to hurt Bianca
that night.” She chuckled. “Well, what do you think? Shall I come to
this dinner to meet your crazy friends?”

“They’re not mine, Aunt, I don’t know them.”

“You know Clémentine, she likes you. She’s all right, a Bourbon and a
S---- on her mother’s side, but of course as mad as a March hare, and
no morals. She doesn’t need ’em. But don’t take after her, you’ve got
’em and you need ’em. All Anglo-Saxons are like that. Take care. Of
course it would be no more than Philibert deserves.”

I laughed. “You talk, Aunt, as if Blaise’s friends weren’t proper.”

“Proper, what’s that? Aren’t they just the most disreputable people
on earth? Isn’t that why they’re amusing? Really clever people are
never proper. It takes every drop of Clémentine’s blue blood to keep
her afloat, and that man Felix! these writers with their habits of
sleeping all day, Blaise tells me he is writing a play without words.
It must be witty. _En voilà une occasion pour faire de l’esprit._ And
the Spaniard, the painter, it appears that he wants to do a fresco for
my music room. Well, he won’t. Only, if he doesn’t for me, he will for
François. Blaise says he’s the greatest mural painter since Tiepolo. I
detest that ‘_Trompe l’œil_’ school, but I’d like to spite François.
What do you think? I’m very poor this year. I sold a forest for half
its value. Now then, what about Philibert--gone to Egypt with his
little salamander, has he?”

“I believe so, Aunt.”

“And you? You don’t look very sad.”

“I don’t think I am, Aunt.”

“Good, excellent; you console yourself, eh?”

“No, Aunt, I don’t; not, that is, in the way you mean.”

“Rubbish; don’t look so virtuous, child. If you haven’t already, you
soon will. We all do. It’s a law of nature. My husband was the dullest
man on earth, I couldn’t abide him. If he hadn’t been the first Duke of
France no one would ever have asked him to dinner. How do you think I
put up with him for twenty years? You find me an ugly old woman, very
fat, very fond of good cooking. My child, there are only two kinds of
pleasure worth having in this world, and one of them has to do with the
stomach. I’ve enjoyed both. I now only enjoy one. That’s enough. What
a face you make at me! If you go against the laws of nature you’ll get
into trouble.”

“But, Aunt, seriously, these clever friends of Blaise--are they
disreputable?”

“Child, child, how boring you are, you Americans have such literal
minds. All I mean is that they’ve no moral sense. They’ve something
else though in its place, something better, perhaps, or worse, anyhow
more discriminating.”

“I see.”

“No, you don’t, but it doesn’t matter. You’ve a moral sense that
bothers the life out of you. Now go along with you. I must get up. I’ll
come to your party. Your mother-in-law won’t approve. She’s a superior
person. As for you, God knows what you’ll be in ten years time with
such a husband and such a conscience. I had better keep an eye on you.
In the choice of a lover you can ask my advice. I know men. They’re not
worth much, but you don’t take or refuse one for that reason. You’ve
found that out for yourself by now.”

She dismissed me, waving again her little fat hand from under the
immense canopy of her bed.

I left her, amused and rather exhilarated. A wicked old woman and a
very great lady. It didn’t occur to me to take her seriously, but I
liked her. All the same, the last thing I wanted was a lover. The mere
thought filled me with disgust.

Your dinner was awfully nice, Blaise dear. I remember the evening well.
A few snowflakes softly floated down in your little courtyard as old
Albert, your manservant, in his ancient green coat, opened the door. He
had cooked the dinner and arranged the table and made the fire in the
living room and put the champagne on ice; I knew that, but his manner
was of a fine, calm formality as he ushered Aunt Clo and myself into
your presence. A group of men who somehow impressed one as not at all
ordinary, and a bright little lady dressed like a parrot, in a tiny,
shabby, candle-lit room, filling the place comfortably with their easy
good-humour, that was my first impression, followed quickly by others,
pleasant, special impressions, aspects sharp and neat in an atmosphere
that gave one a feeling of tasting a fine subtle flavour. Each person
in the room was an individual unlike any one else. With no beauty to
speak of, several were old men in oddly cut clothes, they were more
interesting to watch than any lovely creature. Their faces were worn
and lined and gentle, thin masks through which one saw the fine play
of intelligence. Some were already known to the great world of thought
and public affairs, others have since become so, but all were simple,
homely men that night, with a certain childlike gaiety that was very
appealing.

Albert’s food was excellent; succulent, substantial food that suggested
the provinces. The wine was very old. For a moment as I watched
your convives inhaling the bouquet from lifted glasses, I imagined
myself far away in Balzac’s country, a snowy street of silent houses
stretching out between high poplars to a great river, a carriage at
the door, with a postillion in a three-cornered hat, waiting to drive
me to some romantic rendezvous. But the talk swept me along with its
merry-go-round of the present.

I cannot, after all these years, recall what was said, impossible
to recapture now the quick turns of wit, the dry little jokes, the
swift touches of poetry, that followed each other with such rapid
intellectual grace. It was all incredibly rapid. I could just manage
to keep up with the sense of it. I didn’t attempt to take part. Ideas
were as thick in that room as confetti at a fête. Clémentine, in an
apple-green dress, with a round red spot of rouge on either cheek,
swayed this way and that in response to innumerable sallies, her
face changing like lightning. She was a match for those men. Her wit
played over the history of her country like a jolly little ferret
nosing out and pouncing upon joke and anecdote from the vast field of
the past. Cardinals, princes, and ruffians were held up to ridicule.
International affairs were dealt with clearly and deftly by her cutting
tongue. She played with the ideas round her as if they were a swarm of
brilliant darting winged creatures. Her delight in this battle of wit
was contagious. The talk grew faster and faster. Soon every one was
talking at once. No one could finish a sentence.

Cambon was explaining to Aunt Clothilde why the Government would not
tolerate an Ambassador to the Pope. Clémentine was defending the
English, no one appeared to like the English. Felix was making fun of
Diaghilev, the new Russian who had appeared with his Imperial Ballet a
week before.

What delightful people! Certainly without reservation of any kind I
find them now as I did then the most delightful people in the world.
Ludovic wore a celluloid collar. His body was too heavy for his legs
and his head too big for his body; no matter; his profound, quiet
gaze and tired, brown face expressed a nobility that made one ashamed
of noticing his ill-cut coat. Felix looked like a faun. With his
exaggerated features thrust forward into the candle-light he said
funny, penetrating things that kept Aunt Clo chuckling. I watched,
fascinated. These were the people Aunt Clo called disreputable,
utterly lacking in a moral sense. Were ever sinners so joyous, so
light-hearted? Rebels against creeds, against the fixed order of
society, against the didactic spoken word, they were kind to me,
the Philistine, exerting at once and with unconscious ease the most
disarming charm.

Vaguely I recalled the mentality of my American home. It was there
behind me, like a cold and lifeless plaster cast behind a curtain.
Here was something infinitely more interesting, something brilliantly
living, something merry and subtle and fine that defied disapproval.
The powers of evil? Chimeras! No room for them here, no room for
anything dismal and boring. I felt an uplift, it was like an awakening.
All that horror of soul searching, all the dreary puritan A. B. C. of
right and wrong was a childish nightmare. These people understood the
world. They made fun of evil. They loved each other and found no fault
with their friends. Under their gaiety was a deep sympathy for poor
humanity.

They said things that would have sent St. Mary’s Plains reeling with
horror into one large devastating revival meeting. If St. Mary’s Plains
could have dreamed of the character of their conversation it would call
upon God to destroy them. I laughed. Albert filled my glass.

Some one was saying--

“Time is a circle.”

“The sunrise, why the same sun? Who knows?”

“Truth? Why should one want truth? Truth is a thing we have invented.
An accurate statement of facts? But there is no accuracy except in
mathematics, and in mathematics there are no facts.”

Were they joking? Or were they serious? Both. I felt like a schoolgirl,
very ignorant, very crude, with a stiff blank mind like a piece of
cardboard. They slowed down to listen to Ludovic. I remember Ludovic
speaking to them all with his eyes smiling under their spiky grey
eyebrows. I think I remember what he said. It was the first time I had
heard him talk, as he talked to me so often afterwards.

“I sit in some old city of the past and look back upon the present
and still further back into the future. Why not? Time is an endless
circle, wheeling around one. Why trouble to imagine a beginning
or an end? Why these unnatural conceptions? The old legends are
more sensible. The ancient mystic symbol of matter, Ouroborro, the
tail-devourer, a serpent coiled into a circle, symbol of evolution, of
the evolution of matter. There is something there, something to think
of. Let us all think of molecules, and remember the Philosopher’s
Stone. Have you ever laughed at the legend of the Philosopher’s Stone
that can transmute metals and give the elixir of life? What if it were
discovered, this stone? Suppose radium were in the legend stone of long
ago. Wouldn’t that suggest to you that we have only just discovered out
of the long labour of our known cycle of civilization something that
was known before by another race of men? Who knows, perhaps that race
conquered its earth with this stone, turned it from a savage planet
like this of ours into a Garden of Eden, and then, surfeited with ease,
died of inertia, lapsed into darkness, fell from the Heaven it had
made. That is to say, Adam, the father of our race, may have been the
last survivor of a race of fallen gods, supermen.”

Clémentine took my arm as we went out of the dining-room.

“You find us a little mad?” she asked.

“Oh, no.”

“Tell us how you find us. You are different, big and strong and young
and strange. Your point of view about us would be something new.”

“I find you extraordinarily happy.”

“Oh yes, we are gay.”

The men had followed us.

“We laugh.”

“We find the world so funny.”

“But we’re serious too. There’s Ludovic as solemn as a trout. He’d be
dreary if we let him be.”

“Only we don’t. Why should one worry? One can’t change anything. You
must be one of us. It’s so amusing with us. You will see how amusing it
is.”

So it was that they adopted me. And that night as I drove home through
the moonlit streets I thought of St. Mary’s Plains with distaste and
impatience.

But what I remember best of all about that evening was the sweet funny
way you beamed down the table when you saw that your friends liked me.
You were, you know, just a little nervous about the impression I would
make on them. They were so much more brilliant than any one else that I
don’t wonder. But it all went off well, bless your heart, thanks to the
penetrating sweetness of your will that willed us to be pleased with
one another.

There followed years of power and pleasure. Your friends made good
their promise. They taught me to enjoy. Ludovic began to form my mind.
Clémentine gave me the daring to use it. I learned how pleasant it
was to follow one’s caprices, to indulge one’s tastes, to realize
one’s dreams. Do you remember the things we did? What indeed didn’t
we do, with our picture shows, our pantomimes, and our music? When
we wanted to do a thing we did it. When we wanted to go to a place
we went. What fun it was going off at a moment’s notice to Seville,
to Constantinople, to Moscow. Some one would say--“Have you seen the
_Place Stanislas_ at Nancy by moonlight? No? But you must.” “Let’s go
tomorrow,” and we went. Or--“I hear that at Grenoble there is a lady
who owns a glove shop and who has in her back parlour a Manet, let us
go and buy it, if it is true.” Of course we went and found it was true
and bought it. Felix it was who took us all the way to Strasbourg for
one night and day, to eat a pâté de foie gras and hear mass in the
Cathedral.

But we were happiest of all in Paris. Paris was inexhaustible. Not a
nook or cranny of interest and charm escaped us. Sometimes early in
the spring mornings we would walk through silvery streets or along
the quais or take the penny steamer down the Seine. We sampled every
restaurant known to our gourmet Felix. We sat in icy studios at the
feet of shy ogres. Even Dégas thawed to us, while rare spirits from odd
corners of the earth joined us in the evenings. And increasingly the
beauty of Paris was revealed to me. I cared for it intimately now, and
I loved its smooth pale historic stones with a delicate sensuousness.

I was happy. I was as happy as an opium eater. I lived in a continuous
mood of enjoyment that had the quality of a dream. All this was mine
to behold and delight in, and I was responsible for none of it. I was
passive. I was calm. The play played itself out about me, and I was in
no way involved. What people did and what they didn’t do had no real
significance. When Ludovic said: “A man has as much right to take life
as to give it,” I thought placidly, “Perhaps so, in this world.” When
he denounced property and capitalists and said we should all be poor, I
thought, of course, that is so, and when he pointed out to me a woman
who had killed her father because he was cross-eyed and got on her
nerves, I merely looked at her with mild curiosity. He said that she
was very sensitive and charming, and I believed him. It didn’t seem to
matter.

And if at times it occurred to me that I was becoming callous and
selfish, at others I felt that I was becoming intelligent and
charitable.

Jinny was my one responsibility, a little will-o’-the-wisp creature who
danced into my room of a morning to drop a kiss on my nose and dance
out again. Jinny, so entrancingly pretty, so ridiculously dainty, who
never soiled her hands or tore her frock or spilled her food, who said
her prayers night and morning to a silver crucifix that her father had
sent her from Italy, and who confessed her minute sins every Friday to
a priest but never confided in her mother.

My child baffled me. There was nothing in my own childhood’s experience
that threw any light on the little close mystery of her nature. She
didn’t like animals, she hated romping about, she was afraid of the
cold. What she liked was to be curled up on cushions in front of
the fire and listen to fairy stories. Her indolence was complete,
her capacity for keeping still, extraordinary in one who moved so
lightly when she did move. Sometimes when I looked up from the book I
was reading aloud to her, I would find her great brown eyes fixed on
me with a look of uncanny wisdom. She seemed to disapprove of me. I
wondered if this had anything to do with the teaching of her priestly
tutors that her father had prescribed for her, or whether it sprang
from a natural precocious feeling of the difference between us. We
were certainly a strange couple. Even in moments of my most anguished
tenderness, I could not but feel the incongruity. The idea that she was
much more her father’s daughter than mine was one that I tried not to
dwell on.

I had been going happily along, thinking that I could enjoy this
adventurous life of my new friends without being involved in it, when
I found out that I was much less free than I thought. Your mother did
not approve, I knew, and I gathered that she blamed you for leading
me astray, but it came nevertheless as a surprise when she gently
interfered.

“Aren’t you making yourself a little notorious, my child?” she asked
one day.

“Notorious _belle-mère_?”

“Yes. Dining in restaurants in the company of such strange men.”

“They are not very strange, dear, except in being so very intelligent,
and I never, at least scarcely ever, dine alone with men. There is
almost always Clémentine.”

“I know, that’s just it. For a chaperone, you couldn’t have chosen
worse.”

“But surely, _Belle Mère_, I need no chaperone, I am old enough to go
about alone?”

She closed her eyes wearily, opened them and spoke sharply.

“French women of good family never go about alone, and never dine in
public places.”

“But Clémentine--”

“Don’t talk to me of Clémentine.” I was startled by the sudden note of
sharp personal grievance in her voice. “Her conduct is scandalous. Her
mother was my first cousin and dearest friend. It is fortunate that
she is dead. How could she be blamed for that marriage, yet Clémentine
always blamed her and set to work deliberately to make her suffer.”

“I know nothing of Clémentine’s marriage.”

“Well, her husband--but no matter, there is no excuse for her making
herself an object of derision.”

“I scarcely think she does that, dear, she is in great demand you know,
in the very highest quarters.”

“At foreign courts, perhaps, not in her own country. If it weren’t for
the obligations of kinship no one, but no one would speak to her.”

“Just what is it that she has done that you so disapprove of?”

“She has made herself cheap. She has vulgarized her position, she plays
at being a bohemian, she has bartered away her dignity for a little
sordid amusement.”

“And I?”

“You are in danger of doing the same, but in greater danger.”

I was annoyed and rose and moved to the door.

“You are going?”

“I am afraid I must. I have an appointment.”

“Ah, you resent my speaking to you?”

“No, dear, but--”

“But--?”

“I am afraid I cannot quite agree with you.”

Her face hardened. I made an effort.

“_Belle-mère_, I am doing no wrong. Surely you believe that. These men
are nothing to me, not one of them.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “You love no one?” she asked.

“No.”

“That too, is just as I thought.”

“You wouldn’t mind that, I suppose?”

“Mind it? How should I? How would it concern me?”

I was a little taken aback. “It only matters then what I seem to do,
not what I really do?”

She smiled, rather sarcastically, I thought. “Put it that way if you
like, my child.”

“But, _belle-mère_, don’t you really understand at all, that I am
trying to be happy and keep my self-respect?”

She eyed me a moment strangely, then dropped her head.

“We will never understand each other,” she said at last. “We won’t
discuss things any more. It leads to nothing.”

But Claire felt that she, too, must make an attempt to bring me to
reason. She attacked me on the subject of Geneviève. There she was
clever. Was I not neglecting my child a little? No, I replied I was
not. I was out so much, I seemed to take so little interest in her
education. At this I flared up.

“Her education, my dear, is as you know, not in my hands. Her father
has made clear his wishes on that subject. Her mind is confided to
the keeping of Monseigneur de Grimont and you know what he is doing
with it better than I do. What with her prayers, her masses and her
confessions, her priestly tutors who instructed her in Latin and Greek,
Italian and Spanish, and the good sisters who teach her to embroider
altar pieces and to believe every ridiculous miracle in the lives of
the saints, such healthy heathen interests as I can cultivate in her
little ecstatic soul have small chance of flourishing.”

“But Jane, surely she has her dancing, her riding, her music?”

“Yes, of course, she has everything, everything, but no time for her
mother. Her days are as full as a time table. Try as I may, I can
never get more than an hour a day with her. How then am I to make her
my life’s occupation? That’s what you meant, wasn’t it? You said I
neglected her.”

“What I meant was that you seem to have forgotten us all, Geneviève
included, and to have forgotten what we and therefore what she must
stand for in society.”

“On the contrary.”

“You mean--?”

“I mean that I constantly think of it, but perhaps not just as you do.”

“Well, if you want your daughter to take Clémentine as a pattern.”

“I don’t,” and then added with deliberate wickedness, “I wouldn’t have
poor little Jinny attempt anything so impossible.”

“You admire her so much?”

“I do.”

“But she’s grotesque. She goes in for politicians and for journalists.”

“I adore her.”

“She’s shameless--her affairs--”

I cut her short. “I know nothing about her affairs. What I know is that
she has a generous soul, a warm heart and the most brilliant mind in
Paris. No other woman in Paris can touch her for brains.”

Claire lifted her eyebrows. I saw that she washed her hands of me.
At the moment I was glad of it. As for Clémentine, she cared nothing
for what Claire or any one else thought of her. She was a law unto
herself. Her love affairs, of which I knew more than I admitted, were
as necessary to her as her meals. She must have food, and she attached
no great importance to it. An artistic find, an amusing trip or an
exciting debate in the Chamber of Deputies, would make her forget with
equal ease her lunch or a sentimental rendezvous. Her relations with
men didn’t seem to me to be any of my business. There was a certain
recklessness there that I didn’t understand. I left it at that. It was
Fan who told me about Clémentine’s marriage.

“My dear, her husband had unnatural tastes. He kicked her downstairs
a month after the wedding. She can never have any children, and she
hasn’t spoken to him since. Also, she is said to have said that she
would never again have anything to do with a man of her own world. If
she did, well, she has kept her word. Her mother stopped her getting
her marriage annulled. Clémentine never got over that. She’s at war
with the whole tribe of her relations, but of course she can’t cut
loose from them for she hasn’t a son, and anyhow one doesn’t in France.
So her revenge is to do just those things that most irritate them.
They wouldn’t mind a bit how many lovers she had if she would choose
them from her own class, and preserve the usual appearances. What they
can’t bear is her going about with men whose fathers made boots or
sold pigs. And in justice to them you should remember that these men’s
grandfathers cut off their own grandfather’s heads.”

“They prefer, I suppose, a person like Bianca.”

“Of course, a million times.”

“It’s nothing to Clémentine’s credit then that she’s a true friend and
incapable of grabbing a man from another woman.”

“No, as long as she dresses like a futurist picture, and carries paper
bags through the streets and dines with Ludovic at Voisin’s, she’s a
horrid thorn in their sides.”

“Well, I’m sorry, because you know I don’t propose to stop going about
with her.”

“Lord, no, why should you? You certainly deserve a bit of fun. Come to
the Mouse Trap tomorrow night. We’ve a supper party after the Russian
Ballet.”

But I knew what that meant, a troup of theatrical people, and every one
drunk by morning, so I declined. I saw a good deal of Fan these days,
but she had certain friends I _couldn’t_ see. It didn’t amuse me to
watch women get tipsy. Those Montmartre parties depressed me horribly.
And I felt sure of Clémentine and her band on this point. It was just
one of the admirable things about them that they could be so daringly
gay and never verge on the rowdy. I had seen her administer a snub to
a hiccoughing youth. She could be terrible when she was displeased,
and whatever one said of her, for that matter whatever she herself
felt, no one could get away from the fact that she was as proud a lady
as any in France, and perfectly conscious of her privilege of caste.
It was just this consciousness of her lineage, I imagined, that gave
her such a sense of security. She knew that she could do anything she
chose and be none the less privileged for it, and actually none the
worse. If she touched pitch she knew it wouldn’t stick to her fingers.
If she dipped into Bohemia, she did so knowing that she could never be
said to belong there. There was always behind her a solid phalanx of
relatives who would never disown her however much they disapproved.
Always in her maddest escapades there were the towers of the family
castle looming behind her. They cast an august shadow. She might dress
like an artist’s model, never would she be taken for one. She was safe,
perfectly safe and she knew it, and so did every one else.

But with me, as Aunt Clothilde pointed out, it was different.

“There’s nothing to prove what you are but the way you behave, my poor
Jane. If Clem took it into her head to play at being a barmaid, the
de Joignys and all the rest of them would wring their hands and call
it a scandalous idiocy, but if you did the same thing they’d say,
‘Of course, it’s quite natural, she probably was a barmaid in her
own country,’ and they wouldn’t wring their hands at all, they’d be
mightily pleased.”

“So they think my associating with Ludovic is proof of a low mind?”

“Well, what do you find in that old bourgeois?”

“I find a gold mine.”

“A gold mine of what?”

“Information, ideas.”

“Humph!”

“But it’s true, Aunt, he is educating me. He gives me books,
philosophy, history, all sorts of books, then we discuss them.”

“Just like going to school, eh?”

“Very much like that.”

“And it doesn’t bore you?”

“On the contrary.”

“Well, no one will ever believe you. If Philibert comes back, he
certainly won’t.”

She broke off and looked at me closely.

“Ah ha, you still care for him, then?”

“No, no, how could I, I mean how could he? It’s impossible that he
should return now, surely.”

A week later I found a note from him on my breakfast tray, announcing
his return. He was installed in his own rooms in the west wing of the
house, and he would “present his duties” at the hour I chose to name.
And the post that same morning brought me a letter from Bianca. It
said--

“If you blame me for taking away your husband, it is stupid of you. I
did you a great service in doing so. Perhaps that was why I did it. I
can think of no other reason. For myself I regret it, but not for you.
I envy you. Bianca.”

My fingers trembled as I read this strange epistle, and I felt cold.
Actually--it seemed as if the room had gone cold as ice.




VI


It seemed at first as if Philibert’s return were going to make very
little difference to me. For some weeks I was scarcely aware of his
presence in the house. There was plenty of room for us to live there
without running into each other. When we did meet at the front door
or on the stairs, his manner was marked by just that formal courtesy
that was the usual sign of deference from a man of his world towards
his wife. To the servants, there was always one or two present at such
encounters; there could have been visible no flaw in his armour, nor in
mine.

Our first meeting had been brief. Whatever his intention in seeking me
out in my boudoir, it took him not more than five minutes to find out
that there was nothing to be gained by a prolonged conversation, and on
the whole, nothing to be feared from me, did he but leave me alone, but
I imagined that I read upon his face more disappointment than relief.
He had not been afraid, perhaps just a little uneasy, but he had been
curious. He had expected something, and as he left me the expression of
his back and the vague fumbling of his hand in the tail pocket of his
coat, gave me the impression that whatever it was he had wanted, he was
going away without it. This impression, however, was fleeting, a deeper
and more painful one remained, and kept me a long time idle at my desk.
He was changed in a way that for some subtle inexplicable reason had
made me ashamed to look at him. There was in his pallid puffy face, in
the sag of his shoulders and the crook of his knees, something that I
did not want to understand, something that he had no right to show me.
Inside his immaculate clothes he was shrivelled to half his size. His
wonderful padded coat sat on him as if on a lifeless and flaccid dummy
out of which had escaped a good deal of the sawdust stuffing. Bianca
had done with him. She had worn him out. He looked old. His eccentric
elegance no longer became him. It was as unsuccessful as a plastered
make-up on the face of an old woman. That was the sharpest impression
of all, he looked a failure. I wondered that he had the courage to show
himself, not to me but to Paris, where he had always walked with such
impudent assurance. His showing himself to me seemed to me not half so
daring. It seemed to me to prove once more and finally his complete
contempt for my opinion.

I went on with my life. If I found that the savour had gone out of it,
I did not admit this all at once to myself. The situation didn’t bear
thinking about. If one thought about it one would be likely to find it
quite extraordinary enough to upset one’s mentality, and I proposed not
to be upset by it, and Philibert, apparently, with a certain exercise
of tact that reminded one of a burglar arranging the furniture and
putting out the lights after ransacking a room, made things as easy
for me as he could, by, as I say, keeping out of my sight. I soon
found, however, that he wasn’t keeping out of other people’s. On the
contrary, I began to be conscious of him moving about near me among his
friends. It was really rather funny. Only at home under the roof that
housed us both, was I quite free from him. In other people’s houses I
was constantly meeting his shadow. He had either been there, or was
coming, occasionally I was certain, that he had but just taken his
departure as I came in. Something of him remained in the room. I caught
myself looking about for his hat, and the faces of my acquaintances
betrayed varying shades of discomfiture or amusement. Mostly I
gathered as time went on, was their feeling one of amusement. Paris
had not been at all squeamish in welcoming Philibert, and it found our
continued _chassé-croisé_ rather ridiculous. But with its very special
adaptibility and its extraordinary flair for situations, it continued
to be tolerant of my evident absurd wish not to be coupled with my
husband, and did not ask us out together.

Aunt Clothilde, sitting enthroned like some comic Juno above the social
earth, put an end to this. As was her habit she sent for me and barged
into the subject in hand.

“Now then, Jane, this sort of thing must stop.”

“What sort of thing, Aunt?”

“You and Philibert playing hide and seek all over Paris like a couple
of silly children. Don’t pretend you don’t understand. You chose your
‘_parti_’ long ago when you didn’t insist upon a separation, so now you
must go through with it. Nothing is so stupid as doing things half way.
You’ve ignored his behaviour. You’ve not bolted the door in his face,
and to all appearances you’re a reunited couple.”

I tried to interrupt.

“Don’t interrupt me. I don’t care, and nobody cares what goes on
between you and Philibert in your private apartments. Whether you’re
nasty or affectionate is nobody’s business but your own, but as regards
society, society expects people in it to behave in a certain way, and
to make things easy and agreeable and smooth. That’s its main object,
its only _raison d’être_. We people who think ourselves something are
nothing if we’re not well bred, that is, if we don’t know how to help
other people to keep up the pretence that every one is happy, that life
is harmonious and that there’s nothing dreadful under the sun. Society,
French society, is very intolerant of bad manners, not as you know of
anything else. It is exclusive with this object and adamant on this
point. It let you in, now it expects you to behave. You’ve enjoyed its
favour, you owe it something in return. What a bore to lecture you like
a school-mistress, but there you are. I’m going to give a dinner and
you and Philibert are both to come, and that will be the end of this
nonsense.”

And of course I did as she said.

And again your mother’s manner to me conveyed a sense of my action
having made a difference, but this time an enormously happy difference.
She beamed, she was more affectionate than she had ever been. She
called me “_Ma chère petite_” “_Ma fille aimée_.” Drawing me down to
her with her delicate blue-veined hand, she would press her lips to one
of my cheeks then the other, lingeringly, and with a pathetic trembling
pressure, and look from me to Philibert with happy watery eyes in which
was no scrutiny or questioning. She was growing old. Something of her
fine discernment was gone. She was no longer curious to know what lay
behind appearances. It was enough for her to have recovered her son and
been spared the sight of his ruin. Like a child she clung to Philibert.
I admit that his manner to her was very charming. He went to see her, I
believe, every day.

Claire did not seem so pleased with our renewed family life that
resembled so curiously the life we had lived round your mother five
years before. Her smile was bitter, her tongue caustic, but she looked
so ill, that I put her temper down to bad health. It was, strangely
enough, Philibert who explained to me, driving home from his mother’s
one Sunday afternoon.

“You mustn’t mind Claire,” he began. “She is in trouble.”

“I don’t. I can see she is in wretched health.”

“Her health is the result, not the cause, of her unhappiness.”

“Oh?”

“Her husband has fallen into the hands of a scheming woman who wants to
marry him. He has threatened Claire with a divorce.”

I was taken aback. I stammered. For an instant I wanted to laugh, but
Claire’s haggard face was after all nothing to laugh at. I remarked
mildly; “But I thought that in your world one didn’t divorce?”

“He’s not of our world, never was, never will be. Besides, it bores
him, he’s had enough of us.”

“I see.”

“He’s had too many snubs. We’ve been stupid. That affair of the Jockey
Club rankles.”

“You mean that if you had taken him into the Jockey Club ten years ago
he wouldn’t want to divorce your sister now.”

“Quite possibly. It would have involved him in other things, given him
something to live up to. As it is, he has, as you know, gone in for
politics.”

“No, I didn’t know. I never hear him mentioned. I’m very sorry if
Claire is unhappy about it.”

“She is, terribly.”

“But she hates him.”

“Not quite that. In any case the disgrace would kill her. She has
always been a retiring protected creature. The publicity would be
peculiarly awful for her.”

I knew that what he said was true, but he had more to say, and he
stammered over it.

“We thought that you, Jane, might do something.”

I was startled. “Do something?”

“Yes, to help, to persuade the man not to.”

“But I scarcely know him.”

“He has a great respect for you.”

“For me? What nonsense.” I looked at him sharply. “What do you mean,
Philibert?”

His pale blue eyes turned from mine to the Sunday pageant of the Champs
Elysées.

“He wants a place in the Government. He would be greatly influenced by
political considerations, a prospect of success. Your friend Ludovic
could do something there.”

“You mean that you want me to ask Ludovic to ask the Premier to give
your brother-in-law a place in the Cabinet on condition he doesn’t
bring divorce proceedings?”

“It needn’t be a big place, you know. An under-secretaryship would do.”
The car drew up, came to a stop. “You’d better talk to Blaise about it
before you decide to leave Claire in the lurch.”

But you showed a curious reluctance to discuss the question and
referred me to Clémentine. I found her in the disused stables behind
her house where she had fitted up a studio. She was in a linen overall,
her arms smeared with clay, a patch of it on the tip of her tilted
nose, her hair screwed untidily on top of her ugly attractive head.
She pointed out a clean spot on a packing case and after lighting a
cigarette I sat down there.

“I’ve come about Claire.”

“I know.” Her face twinkled. She gave a laugh and taking up a handful
of wet clay slapped it on the side of the gargoylish head that she was
modelling.

“Why won’t Blaise talk to me about it?”

“He doesn’t like their using you in the matter. He has delicacies of
feeling.”

“I don’t quite see. He adores his sister.”

“Of course.”

“And is very unhappy about her, as they all are.”

“Naturally.”

I pondered. “After all, I belong to the family.”

“Quite so, whether you like it or not.” She ducked about scraping and
smoothing with flexible thumb.

“But I’m fond of them.”

“Of Claire?”

“Yes.”

“People are.”

“You sound very dry.”

She gave a poke to her ugly old man’s protruding eye.

“_Mon dieu_, I’m not too fond of your family, as you well know. They
bore me. I was brought up with Claire. We know each other.”

“You don’t like her.”

“She is uninteresting, no courage, no character.”

“She has put up with a great deal.”

“Has she? She liked her husband’s money, you know, and he’s not a bad
sort, really, merely vulgar, quite good-natured.”

“She loves her children,” I said weakly. At that Clémentine looked
round quickly.

“Do you call that a virtue?” she asked.

I stammered. “I don’t know, I suppose so. It seems to me human.”

“Well, my dear, when humanity has nothing more to recommend it than the
fact that it cares for its young, I shall be ready to depart to another
planet.” She sat down on a high stool, one knee over the other, a foot
hung down, dangling a shabby shoe. Her face was full of merriment.
She chuckled. Her eyes danced. She gave me, as she always did, the
impression of containing in herself an immense fund of interest and
gladness and of finding life much to her taste.

“You mustn’t destroy my belief in my love for my child,” I said, half
laughingly.

“Your belief in it?” She wondered.

“Yes, in its being--worth something.”

“To which one?”

“To us both.”

She puffed at her cigarette. “If I had had a child I should have loved
it terribly, and stupidly,” she said seriously. “I should probably have
been worse than any of you. Maternity is a blinding, devouring passion,
is it not? I don’t know, but so I imagine. A mother’s love for her
child, what is there more admirable in that than in any other fact of
nature? Only when it is strong, so terribly strong as to become wise
and unselfish is it interesting. Even then, no, it is not interesting,
it is only natural and necessary, and often, very often, it is a curse
to the children.” Her face had gone dark and intense. She jumped down
from her stool, gave herself a shake, laughed, turned to her work--“No,
your mother-women are dreadful. I prefer those who love men. Sexual
passion is good for the feminine soul. It makes us intelligent. Tell
me, is it true that in America sensuality is considered a bad thing?”

“Yes. We--they--admire chastity, purity.”

“How do you mean--purity?”

“One man for one woman, love consecrated by marriage.”

“All one’s life?”

“Yes.”

“How strange. Love, you say, consecrated by marriage. How very funny.
You mean then seriously, not just social humbug? In their hearts do
intelligent women, women like yourself, feel love, love as the interest
and savour of life, coming unexpectedly, perhaps often, to be a bad
thing?”

“Many do.”

“And you--what do you think?”

“I? Oh, for me, I can’t generalize about it. I have no ideas on the
subject.”

“I see.”

She was silent a while. I watched her clever thumbs pressing and
smoothing the soft clay. She was no sculptor, but the head she was
modelling had a mischievous ugliness. Though badly done, it expressed
something. Watching her I realized again her immense capability, her
command of herself, her understanding of the elements of life. What was
she thinking of now, her sensitive witty face blinking sleepily with
half-closed eyes like a cat’s? Inwardly I felt that she was faintly
smiling at some pleasant memory or prospect. She was neither young
nor beautiful. Her wiry little person suggested nothing voluptuous or
alluring. She was dry and spare and untidy, yet her success with men
was unequalled. Impossible to imagine her in an attitude of amorous
tenderness, yet men adored her. And her lovers remained her friends.
She puzzled me. There was something here that I would never understand.
The high game of sex as a life occupation of absorbing interest and
endless ramifications, a gallant and dangerous sport at which one
became a recognized expert, in some such way I felt that she looked at
it. As an Englishwoman gives herself up to hunting, I reflected, and
exults in knowing herself to be a hard rider, just so Clémentine would
go at the biggest jumps, keep in the first field. Riding to hounds
or playing the daring game of love, the same sporting mentality, the
same ecstatic sense of life, all our faculties sharpened by danger. Why
not? Clémentine was sane, healthy, full of zest and delight. Impossible
to think of her in terms of maudlin sentimentality or sordid secret
pleasures. And yet for myself, I felt a loathing of men, a disgust at
the vaguest image of the contacts of sex. It was very puzzling. There
must be some deep racial difference between us, or some tenacious
effect of my upbringing that held me in a vice, or was it only that
Philibert had poisoned for me the sources of all emotion?

I moved about the dirty studio, brought back my mind to the subject I
had come to discuss. “We have forgotten about Claire, haven’t we?”

“Well, yes, what of Claire?” She yawned.

“Philibert says that Ludovic could arrange it.”

“No doubt he could. The President of the Council is you know his
greatest friend.”

“Yes, I know, but surely giving away secretaryships--”

“Oh, la la! Why not? Don’t worry about that. Madame de Joigny’s
son-in-law will make quite a respectable under-secretary as far as that
goes. I only wonder he’s not got what he wanted long ago.”

“What shall I do then?”

She looked at me, her head on one side, screwing up her clever
mischievous eyes.

“That, my dear, depends entirely on what you want to do.”

“Do you think Ludovic would mind my approaching him on such a subject?”

She laughed. “Do you?”

“No, I don’t. I should put it quite brutally, he would only have to say
no.”

“Quite so.” She continued to watch me with her funny intelligent grin.

“And that wouldn’t spoil our friendship, would it?” I asked again.

“No, I should say not, certainly not.” She laughed again and somehow,
frank as was that bubbling sound, I didn’t like it coming in at that
moment.

“Why do you laugh?” I asked, looking at her keenly.

Her face grew gradually grave, her eyes opened. We stared at each other
and in hers I saw a light, a flash, something keen and swift and bright
that made me warm to her, value her, exult in her friendship.

“_Vous êtes--vous êtes--_” she turned it off, waving a handful of clay.
“_Vous êtes admirable._” But I didn’t understand then, only long after.
I wonder what Claire would say if she knew that her fate hung on the
thread of Clémentine’s charity? For Clémentine saw it all, saw quite
clearly her opportunity for revenge. She had only to suggest what they,
unknown to me, were all thinking, namely that Ludovic, for the simplest
of reasons, would never refuse me anything, and their whole little
scheme would be undone. But she didn’t suggest it. There was nothing
spiteful in Clémentine.

So I went to him and told him the whole thing quite bluntly, and
he, without any fuss or without giving me any feeling of doing me a
favour, said that of course he would put in a word with the Premier.
They, he and the Premier, were going to the country together for a few
days. They were going to see Ludovic’s mother in her little farm on
the Loire. They would fish and sit in the garden. Perhaps over their
fishing rods on the banks of the lazy, reedy river, something could be
arranged. He then went on to tell me of his mother, who was very old,
nearly eighty-five, and who would not come with him to Paris because of
the noise. She was, he said, just a peasant woman, and had no interest
in his career. But she sent him baskets of apples from her orchard and
socks that she had knitted. She could not write. The _curé_ kept him
informed of her health. They had been very poor. As a child he had
always been hungry and he and his mother had worked in the fields.
Sometimes they had been so poor that they had had to beg for bread. His
father, who had been of a different class, had done nothing for him. He
had made his own way. The _curé_ had taught him to read and write. His
mother was content now. She had a cow and pigs and chickens, an apple
orchard and a garden. But she could not accustom herself to having a
servant in the house and did the cooking herself. He did not allude
again to Claire’s husband, neither then nor later. In time, as you
know, the matter was arranged, and I like to think that it was settled
in that _chaumière_ where Ludovic’s little old mother in her white
cap and coarse blue apron sat knitting, while the hens scratched and
cackled beyond the farm door. There is something humorous to me in the
fact that Claire’s luxurious home was secured to her in that place of
poverty and courage and contentment.

In the meantime Philibert had recovered his health and his looks. His
doctor and his masseur and his hairdresser and his tailor had in six
months restored to him a very good substitute for youth. He had gone at
the business methodically and with the utmost seriousness. Seeing as
little of him as possible at home, I nevertheless was aware of what was
going on. He lived by a strict régime. His rubber came every morning at
eight o’clock, his fencing master at nine. At ten he dressed. At eleven
he walked or rode in the _bois_. Faithfully he stuck to the diet his
doctor had ordered for him. He drank only the lightest wine. He gave
up smoking. His hand no longer shook. His face was smooth and rosy, he
had put on weight, he walked with his old springy impudence. He looked
almost the same, almost, but not quite. No beauty doctor on earth could
wipe away from his face the mark Bianca had put there. The droop of
the eye-lids, the sag of the lower lip, gave him away. To the crowd
he might seem the same Philibert, the leader of fashion, the joyous
comedian, the perennially young, but not to me, and not to himself.
We both knew that he was an old man now, and this fact formed a sort
of bond between us, a cold, grim, precise understanding that linked us
inevitably together. And for a time I didn’t quite hate this because
I felt secure, I felt that I had the upper hand. He was afraid of me,
and in a curious way depended on me. He depended on me, not to give
him away, not to let on to any one that he was, or had been, in danger
of breaking up. His vanity thus kept him at my mercy, while another
part of his brain found relief in the fact that I saw him as he was.
Sometimes I caught a look in his eyes that seemed to say--“I really
wouldn’t have the endurance to sustain this enormous bluff if I had to
bluff you as well.” I never answered his look. I couldn’t bring myself
to reach out to him in even the most impersonal way. All I could do
was to remain there beside him, in public sharing his life, in private
withdrawn, impassive, stolid, non-committal, and do him no harm.

And so it might have gone on indefinitely, the atmosphere of our house
coldly harmonious, calm as an icy lake, had not Jinny introduced an
element of hot, surging, dangerous feeling.

He loved her, too. At first I wouldn’t believe it, but I was bound
at last to admit that it was so. When I first began to notice the
increasing attention he gave her I had thought that he was “up to
something.” I suspected him to be playing the part of devoted father
with motives that had to do with myself, and as I could not conceive of
his wanting to make me like him, I imagined the reverse, that he wanted
to make me jealous, and I set myself to conceal from him the fact that
he had succeeded. I was terribly jealous, for whatever the meaning
of his apparent feeling for her, there was no doubt of her affection
for him. The child was obviously delighted to be with him. Repeatedly
when I asked her if she would like to go with me for a drive, she
would ask if “Papa” were coming too, and when I said no, her face
would change from pleasure to a curious expression of boredom that
was like an absurd imitation of his own. She would turn away quickly
and put out her hands to the empty room in a funny, hurting gesture of
exasperation, then suddenly, feeling my disappointment, would assume
a polite cheerfulness and say, with a quick, tactful insincerity that
reminded me all too vividly of her grandmother, “It is a pity Papa
cannot come, but of course, Mamma, I like best being with you alone.”
And I would cry out in my heart, “My poor, precocious infant, where did
you get such intuitions?”--but I knew where she got them.

There was between them a very striking resemblance. I looked sometimes
with horrid fascination from one to the other. She would come in with
him, swinging to his hand, twirling about, clasping it in both hers,
and laughing up in his face. Her light, exaggerated grace was his,
also the fineness of her little features. No one would ever at first
sight take her for my child, no one seeing them together could mistake
her for his. They disengaged the same brightness, the same chilly,
sparkling charm. How was it that in one it displeased me and in the
other so tormentingly appealed? Why, I asked myself, did I not hate her
too, since she so resembled her father? But the muttered question was
answered only by an inaudible groan. I had given him all my love, and
had now transferred it all to her, a stupid, elemental woman, I felt
that I was destined to be their victim. Strange thoughts, you will say,
for a mother to have about her child. Why not? I was afraid of her,
far more afraid than I had ever been of him. In the days of his power
over me I had been young, ignorant, insensitive; now I knew what I was
capable of suffering, knew only too well what little Geneviève could
do to me, did she take it into her head to become as like him as she
looked.

I tried to hide all this, but I felt that he saw. His manner changed.
He was at once more attentive to me and more careless, less formal,
more talkative, in a word more sure of himself. He took to dropping in
on me in the evenings before dinner, bringing Geneviève with him and
holding her beside him in the crook of his arm, while he unconcernedly
chatted, and all the while her great shining brown eyes were fixed on
me with their meaning lucidity. I was obliged to prevaricate, to seem
pleased, to lay myself out in an elaborate assumption of happy intimacy.

One night she came running back alone after going with him to the door
of his room, and threw her arms round my neck. I gathered her close.
Her caresses were so rare that I held her, positively, in a breathless
delight, with a sense of yearning tenderness so exquisite that it
frightened me. “So sweet, so sweet,” I murmured to myself, straining
her to me. Then I heard her say intensely, “It’s not true, it’s not
true, tell me it’s not true.”

I lifted my face from her curls.

“What is not true, my darling?”

“That you and Papa don’t love each other.” She kept her face buried. I
felt her heart beating against me, a frail little gusty heart beating
painfully. The room round us was very still, too still, no sound in it,
only the felt sound of our heart beats, and the clock ticking on the
mantelpiece. I must speak, I must lie to her, and as the words left my
lips I knew that they were involving me in endless deceptions, in a
long, long ghastly comedy, in countless humiliations.

“No, darling, it’s not true.”

Her little arms tightened round my neck.

“They said--” she whispered.

“Who said, my pet?”

“Some ladies. I heard them talking. They said, they said you would
never forgive him.” I felt her body trembling, and I too trembled, and
as I realized that I had thought her incapable of intense feeling I
felt deeply ashamed. “What did they mean, Mamma, tell me, what did they
mean?”

“Nothing, nothing.” I must have spoken harshly. “They were mistaken,
they were speaking of some one else.”

She lifted her face then and looked at me, her eyes were wide and
accusing. “Oh, no, Mummy, they said your names, they said Jane and
Philibert, your two names. It was at Aunt Claire’s. Dicky and I were
just behind the door, and I pulled him away so he wouldn’t hear any
more, but he only laughed at me and said, ‘Every one knows your parents
detest each other’--in French, you know, ‘_Tout le monde sait que tes
parents se détestent_,’ and then I kicked him.”

“Jinny!”

“I only kicked him a little. It didn’t hurt. I wanted it to hurt,
dreadfully.”

“My child, my child.”

“I know, Mummy, that it was very wicked. I told Father Anthony all
about it at confession, and he looked so sad, so beautifully sad. I
wept and wept. He told me to pray very hard to the Virgin to save me
from angry passions, and I did, but I enjoyed being angry. I felt big
and strong when I was angry, quite, quite different from ordinary, and
I thought you would understand. Were you never angry when you were a
little girl?”

“Yes, darling, I was.” Her question had startled me. I was profoundly
disturbed by this sudden revelation of her character.

But again her little mobile face had changed.

“You aren’t like that, are you, Mummy? You couldn’t be?”

“Like what, my darling?”

“Unforgiving.” Her eyes were on mine.

“I hope not, Geneviève.” She flushed at my tone, but continued to look
at me gravely and steadily.

“I thought you might have been angry with Papa for leaving us for so
long,” she said with an air of great wisdom. “I was, but I forgave him
at once.” I smiled.

“You see,” she went on, “I couldn’t bear him to be unhappy, for I love
him.”

“I know, darling.”

“And you love him, too?”

“Of course.”

She heaved an immense sigh.

“Then we are all happy.”

“We are all happy,” I echoed.

A minute later she was at the door, wafting me a gay little kiss. I had
not been able to keep her. She was not more than ten years old at that
time, but even then she was already the complete elusive creature of
swift fleeting moods and superlatively lucid mind that she is today.

And still I suspected Philibert of playing the part of adoring father
in order to make me do what he wished. So without alluding to Jinny,
never, in fact, daring to allude to her, I tried to bribe him. He
had hinted occasionally about wanting to resume our old habits of
entertaining, and his hint had shocked me. Such a farce had seemed
altogether unnecessary. Now I gave in to him and the same old
extravagant theatrical life began. To me it was incredibly boring and
at times quite ghastly. There were moments when it was as if over the
old sepulchre of our married life he had built an enormous and hideous
altar to some obscene heathen deity, some depraved Bacchus before whom
he and I giddily danced, with vine leaves in our hair.

“But,” I argued, “this is what he likes, and if I help him do it he
will have got from me all that he wants, he will leave Jinny alone. He
will have less time for her and will forget about her.” Unfortunately
all these social antics took up as much of my time as his. The result
was that neither of us saw the child save in hurried snatches, and in
that horrible house, now so constantly filled with people, with armies
of servants, and streams of guests, I had a vision of her skipping
about like a little white rabbit in a monstrous zoo. Poor Jinny, what
a wretched mess we made of her childhood, Philibert and I, with our
constant vigilant, yet inadequate, lying to each other in her presence,
and our ridiculous absorption in the tawdry pageant of society. And yet
we both loved her and were doing it, even he in his way, for her. He
wanting her to have an incomparably brilliant position in the world,
I wanting to keep him away from her, thinking in my jealous stupidity
that she would belong more to me the more he belonged to the world.

It was when she fell ill that I was at last convinced of his caring for
her. She had pneumonia, you remember, and was very near death for three
days. I can see Philibert now, sitting through the night by her bed,
he on one side, I on the other, I can see his face as he watched her
painful breathing, a face clammy with sweat, contracting suddenly in a
curious grimace when she struggled for breath. He never touched her.
He left that to me and the nurses. But he never once took his eyes off
her swollen little face. I was deeply impressed by the sight of that
fidgety, nervous man sitting so still, hour after hour, and I remember
his sobbing when the child’s breathing grew easier and the doctors said
the crisis was past. Poor Philibert, with his arms thrown across the
foot of Jinny’s bed and his head on them, sobbing like a child, I felt
very sorry for him that night.

But it was too late for Jinny’s illness to make any real difference in
our relationship. We had gone too far, I knew him too well. All that
I could do was add to my knowledge of him the fact that he loved his
child and leave it at that.




VII


The years passed, crowded with incidents, colourful, varied, gay. I saw
them going by, like gaudy pleasure boats, richly panoplied and filled
with graceful merry-makers, floating down a sullen river. Sometimes I
seemed to be alone, watching them go by, sometimes, beyond them, a long
way off, I heard a sound that was like the sound of waves breaking on a
distant beach.

You wince at what you feel to be my poor attempt at poetic imagery--I
am not trying to be poetic, I am trying to express to you my
experience, as precisely as possible. It was like that. In the middle
of a crowded place, at the Opera where women in diamond tiaras nodded
from padded cages, on the boulevards where a thousand motors like
shining beetles buzzed in and out of rows of clanging trams, in a
drawing-room ringing with staccato voices, I would find myself,
suddenly, listening to a sound that seemed to come from an immense
distance; a faint far rhythmic roar that was audible to my spirit, and
that I translated to myself in terms of the sea because it affected me
that way, like a booming murmur, regular as the booming of waves. I
knew what it was.

I seemed at such times to see Patience Forbes, standing on the other
side of the Atlantic, like some allegorical figure of faith, a gaunt
weather-beaten old woman, her strong feet planted firmly on the shore,
the wind whipping her black clothes about her, her brave old eyes
looking out at me, under shielding hands, across that immense distance.

The distance between us was growing greater. I no longer wrote to
her every week. There seemed so little to say. I found a difficulty
in telling her of my occupations and amusements. When it came to
describing to her the people I associated with, they appeared suddenly
trivial and peculiar. There was no one about me, whom she could have
understood. Clémentine with her genius for amorous-adventure, Ludovic
with his nihilistic philosophy, Felix the intellectual mischief-maker;
when I wrote to her of these people, I found that I misrepresented
them, made up for them colourless characters that did not exist and
would not distress her. Her innocence cut her off from us. The recital
of my life was like telling a story and leaving out the point. I gave
it up, disgusted by my feeble insincerity, and limited my letters to
news of Jinny and comments on public events. And she understood, of
course, that I was keeping everything back. She was no fool. I can see
now, when it is too late, what a mistake I made, and what a pity it
was. Now that she is dead, I think of her sitting alone in the Grey
House, waiting for my letters, opening them with old trembling fingers,
reading the meagre artificial sentences; her face growing tired and
grim at the meaningless words, then putting away the disappointing
sheets of paper in the secretary by the door. I found them there, all
of them afterwards arranged in packets with laconic pencilled notes
on their wrappers--“Jane doesn’t tell me much. She’s not happy.” “A
bad winter for Jane, she’s taken to gambling; she says nothing of her
husband.” “Jane was coming but can’t. I’m disappointed.” That note was
made the summer Fan died--I had determined to go to St. Mary’s Plains.
Fan’s illness stopped me.

I had been seeing very little of Fan. She had established herself in
a flat near the _Étoile_ where she lived alone, but where her husband
paid her an occasional visit. Ivanoff was pretty well done for in
Paris. There had been a scene at the Travellers’ Club, and afterwards
his old victims had refused to play cards with him. So he had gone
elsewhere. Men like Ivanoff can always pick up a living at Monte Carlo.
He spent most of his time there, but when he came back, Fan always took
him in. I never saw him on these occasions, nor apparently did any one
else, but Fan would announce his arrival bluntly, and with a sort of
defiant bravado, would put off her dinners and lunches to be with him.

She lived from hand to mouth. People who accused her of accepting his
ill-gotten gains were wide of the mark. Ivanoff contributed nothing to
Fan’s keep. It was the other way round. He came back to her when he was
on the rocks, came back to beg from her and to recuperate. Once she
said to me, “Ivan’s been asleep for thirty-six hours on the sofa in the
drawing-room. I swear to you it’s true. He has only waked up twice to
eat a sandwich and have a drink.”

But when I asked why she put up with him, she flung off with a laugh,
and--“God only knows.”

She lived from hand to mouth in a state of extravagant luxury. Her
stepfather had died, leaving her four thousand dollars a year, that
gave her twenty thousand francs before the war. One would have said
that she spent at the least five times as much, but she didn’t. She
had resources, and little arrangements that made it unnecessary for
her to pay for a good many things; and she earned a good deal. Her
reputation as one of the smartest women in Paris, and her popularity,
represented her capital, a very considerable sum. New and ambitious
dressmaking houses clothed her for nothing, and in return she brought
them the clientele they wanted. She had a standing account at certain
fashionable restaurants, where she was allowed to lunch for five francs
and dine for ten, and where to “pay back” she was the centre of many a
cosmopolitan dinner party. For ready cash she wrote social notes in a
fashion paper and occasionally launched a South American millionaire in
society. Every one knew about all this; no one minded. She never gave
any one away or presumed on her friendships and her frankness about her
own affairs which was dry and desperate and funny disarmed criticism.

“My dear,” she said one day to Claire over the tea table, “I’ve had
a letter from Buenos Aires from a man who offers me forty thousand
francs if I’ll take his wife about next spring, and a five thousand
franc tip extra, each time she dines at an embassy. Isn’t it a perfect
scream? I wrote back asking for a photo of the wife. It came yesterday.
I’ve turned down the offer.”

She borrowed from no one and accepted no gifts of money from her
friends, men or women, and I take the last to be the more to her credit
because half the people in her world assumed that she did and the other
half wouldn’t have blamed her if she had done so. Virtues, that you
all held so lightly, have at least a relative value. Fan was incurably
extravagant; she adored luxury, and I consider that her having married
a poor man, and having refused to procure for herself in a manner so
accepted by her world, the ease and comfort she craved, proves her to
have been an interesting person. I see that you don’t believe what
I say, but I know that it is true. Men did not pay her dressmaker’s
bills. As for her little motor brougham that created so much comment,
she bought that after an extremely lucky venture in rubber. She gambled
on the “Bourse” of course. Old Beaudoin the banker gave her tips.
Sometimes he invested her money for her. She would give him a few
thousand francs and a month or two later he would perhaps sends her
back twice the sum, but it is not exact to say that he always arranged
to double her investment. And if he did take her wretched pennies and
speculate with them and pretend that he had won when he lost, what harm
did that do him with all his millions? It was all by way of repayment
anyhow. Fan had got him and his fat wife asked to a lot of nice
houses. He owed her far more than he ever paid. And when she crowned
her services to him by making his daughter’s marriage, surely she had
earned the cheque he sent her or the block of shares, whichever it was.

To have a good time, to be happy, a more sentimental woman would have
put it, that was her idea. Who of us all had a better, or a different
one? Weren’t we all looking for happiness, always?

Once I saw a street arab playing in the dirt with bits of mica,
constantly threatened in his game by horses’ hoofs, wagon wheels,
policemen and hooligans. Fan reminds me of him. I remember his tiny
eager hungry grimy face, intent on his game. Fan was like him, I
watched her playing with bits of worthless brightness in the crowded
muddy streets of life, jostled, buffeted, knocked about, a little
rickety gutter snipe, fighting for the right to play, that is the way I
see her. It had a beauty! you’ll admit that, I suppose.

But we quarrelled. I bored her. She didn’t like having any one about
who couldn’t keep up the farce of treating her as the happiest of
women, and she made fun of my taking the intellectuals so seriously.

When I wanted to see her I had to go to her flat where luxury and
poverty and dissipation and folly were mingled together in an unhealthy
confusion. It was a curious place, very bare and new and totally
lacking in the usual necessities of housekeeping, such as cupboards and
carpets, table linen and blankets, but there were flaming silks thrown
about, and a good many books and heaps of soft brilliant cushions. A
grand piano stood in the empty drawing-room on a bare polished floor.
The dining room table held always a tray of syphons and bottles. There
might be no food, there were always cocktails and ragtime tunes to
dance to. Sometimes the electric light was cut off because the bill
wasn’t paid, but there was a supply of candles for such emergencies,
and if creditors were too pressing, Fan would take to her bed and lie
under her cobwebby lace coverlet on a pile of white downy pillows all
frills and ribbons, smoking endless cigarettes while weary tradesmen
rang the door bell, and her friends sat about on the foot of the old
lacquer bed telling each other questionable stories, and going off into
muffled shrieks of laughter.

Her friends were many and various. Among them were people like Claire
and Clémentine and the wife of the Italian Ambassador, but her own
small particular set, the group that she went about with most, had its
special stamp.

A cosmopolitan lot who had seen better days, and were keeping their
heads up, by grit and bluff; they were I suppose the fastest set in
Paris. The men didn’t interest me, but the women did, rather. There was
something hard and dependable about them that I liked. They bluffed the
world but not each other. Their talk was terse and to the point, their
language coarse and brutal. They made no gestures and seemed always to
be looking very straight at some definite invisible thing that occupied
their cold attention. It may have been the ugliness of life that they
were looking at. If so, it didn’t make them wince. It may have been the
past, if so it didn’t make them shudder or creep. They wasted no time
in remorse or regret.

At times they reminded me of tight-rope walkers crossing a dizzy abyss.
There was something tense and daring about their stillness, as if a
chasm yawned under them. No doubt it did, but it was not their worldly
position that was precarious, it was their actual hold on life. They
would go on with their old titles and ruined fortunes leading the
dance till they dropped, but they might drop any time. People in their
entourage did, they were accustomed to violence. One had had a lover
who called her up one morning and shot himself while she listened over
the telephone. Another had tried twice to kill herself. Most of them
drank and took drugs. Their hard glittering eyes gave out a glare of
experience, but their faces were cold, calm, non-commital, and if they
were worried by the caddishness of the men they loved, by debts and the
torments of passion, they gave no sign and held together and helped
each other. For damned souls, they made a good show, and I admired them.

They thought me a fool, however, and made a hedge around Fan, shutting
her off from me.

One morning I rushed round to her flat on an impulse. I had had no
message from her but a curious feeling of nervousness had bothered me
in the night. Some one had mentioned Ivanoff at a dinner table. I had
heard the words--“wife-beater”--“card-sharper.”

I found things at the flat in an indescribable state of disorder.

The drawing-room was strewn with the remains of supper. The table
had not been cleared. There were broken glasses on the floor, empty
champagne bottles about; a puddle of wine, some one had spilled a
bottle of Burgundy. The cook opened the door for me. The manservant
and Fan’s maid had decamped with the silver leaving word that they had
taken it in payment of their two years’ wages. A bailiff was sitting on
the sofa. Fan was lying in her room in the dark with a wet towel round
her head. She said “Oh, hell!” as I came in and turned her back on me.
The room had a curious sickly odour, some drug she had been taking,
I suppose. Her clothes lay in a heap in the middle of the floor. The
dress was torn, the stockings soiled and stained. I felt sick at my
stomach. Fan gave a groan.

“For God’s sake, Jane, go away; I’ve got the most ghastly headache.”

All I could do was settle with the bailiff and help the cook clear
up the mess. Fan scarcely spoke all the morning. The telephone kept
ringing.

“Tell them I’m ill. Tell them to go to the devil,” she called out. She
lay there in a dripping perspiration, the sheets clinging to her thin
body. She looked like a corpse fished out of the Seine. Suddenly she
sprang up. “Good heavens! what time is it? I’m lunching at the Ritz
with the Maharajah’s crowd at twelve thirty.”

She sat with her feet dangling over the side of the bed holding her
head in her hands. “My head’s bursting--my head’s bursting. Get me a
blue bottle off the shelf in the bath room--six drops--no ten--I’ll
take ten. It’s wonderful stuff--wonderful! I’ll be alright. You’re an
angel.” She talked in a kind of singing moan, a despairing half-crazy
chant. “You’re an angel, Jane--you’re too good for this world. I’ll
never be able to pay you. How much did you give that man? Oh God! My
head! I wish you hadn’t--leave me alone now. I must get dressed. Those
Indians won’t know I’m half under. I’ll be all right if I can find my
things. Go along--no--no--I don’t want any more help. Ivanoff was here
last night; he went off at three this morning. I don’t know where he’s
gone; they played chemmy. He won fifty thousand francs from that boy of
Adela’s--that baby. I made a scene; I made him give it back. He knocked
me down afterwards. He won’t come here again. Anyway he’s gone for good
this time. If you ever speak to me of this, I’ll go mad. Leave me alone
now. You won’t tell me what you paid that man, but I hate you to pity
me, and you’re an angel--you’d no right to interfere. Do for heaven’s
sake leave me alone now. God! what a world!” She tottered to her
bathroom, trailing her lace nightgown after her. It hung by a ribbon to
her bruised shoulder. She shut the door. I heard her turn on her bath.
I went away. She avoided me for weeks after that.

Bianca had come back to Paris; she had been, so gossip related it,
travelling about Spain with a famous matador. Some people said she
had joined his troupe disguised as a boy and had, more than once gone
into the arena in a pink suit embroidered in silver and had planted
once, the banderillas, in a bull that had five minutes later run his
horns through her paramour. I neither believed nor disbelieved the
story. José had seen her in the Stand at Seville looking marvellous in
a lace mantilla, a black dress high throated and a string of pearls
which she flung to the popular hero. She had been wild with excitement,
had stood up in her box and called out, and had torn her pearls from
her neck with twenty thousand delerious Spaniards shouting round her,
and Bombazelta III the Matador on his knee before her, beside the
carcase of his victim. Why shouldn’t she have gone a bit further?
She liked danger. She could look the part. Actually, I did see a
picture of her; three cornered hat, slim tight jacket and breeches,
embroidered cape. It suited her, of course; she had the body of a
boy, and Bombazelta III was a peculiarly striking man. His photograph
was in all the Spanish papers. I found them lying about the library in
Paris. Philibert must have sent for them. His nervousness during those
days betrayed his interest. Though he never mentioned Bianca’s name,
I knew that he was still in touch with her, that they wrote to each
other, that he followed her movements. It did not surprise me, when
during that summer he went for a week to Saint Sebastian, he called it
Biarritz, but I knew where he was. It was Philibert’s behaviour on his
return that made me think the stories of Bianca’s sensational caprice
were true. Besides, it was just the kind of thing to amuse her for a
time.

I wasn’t interested. I didn’t want to know anything about her. All
that I wanted was never to see her again. But she had no intention of
leaving me alone. Her bullfighter dead, she came back to Paris. Paris
is a small place. The community in which we lived was crowded, cramped,
intimate. Every one was constantly meeting every one else. Bianca
stepped back into her place in it as if nothing had happened. Except
for the fact that we were not asked to meet one another at lunch or
dinner, one would have supposed that our acquaintances were unaware of
our having any reason to dislike each other. The inevitable happened.
A newly appointed ambassador gave one of his first dinner parties and
found no better way of making it a success than having us both present.
We sat on either side of a royal guest. Across his meagre chest we
eyed each other. Bianca looked much as usual, younger if anything. She
had simplified her make-up. Her fine eyelashes now unplastered with
black, curled wide from her great blue eyes that looked as innocent as
forget-me-nots. Her face was smooth and white. The smallest thinnest
line of carmine marked the curve of her lips. Her dress was a piece of
black velvet wound round her white body that was immaculate and lovely.
She had the freshness of a water lily, and moved through the salons,
cool and serene in an attitude of still dreamy detachment, and her
curious magnetism emanated from her like a perfume. She drifted up to
me after dinner.

“You must talk to me, Jane--” Her voice was cool and concise. “We have
important things to say to each other.”

“I have nothing to say.”

She lifted her eyebrows. Her lips curved to a point. She gave a little
sigh.

“Why do you lie? You are _très en beauté_, Jane--you are wonderful. Why
do you lie?--You know you owe it all to me--”

I turned my back on her but I felt her standing behind me, watching
me, her eyes shining, her delicate nose palpitating faintly, her eyes
reading me. She had no intention of leaving me alone.

Our next meeting was at Madeleine’s. Madeleine was the woman who looked
after my face. Bianca went to her too. I was sitting in front of the
dressing-table, my head tied up in a towel, my face plastered with
grease, when Bianca came in. She chattered and gossiped and held up
the photograph of herself in the costume of the Spanish bull-ring. “I
was distracting myself--” she laughed. “I had been bothered by some
very curious ideas. You remember our talk at the ‘_Château des trois
Maries_.’ Well, that sort of thing. I thought the excitement would
help. It did. I was within a yard of the bull when he died. Some of the
blood splashed me. I didn’t like that.”

I broke in saying that I didn’t believe a word of it.

“Don’t you, Jane? Well, it’s no matter. It’s unimportant. The important
thing is that I’m sick to death of everything. Every one bores me.
I find you are the only woman in Paris who is alive. I’ve been
watching you--you are very extraordinary. You care for no one. You are
self-sufficient. You have achieved the impossible.”

All this time Madeleine was massaging my face and pretending not to be
interested. I could say nothing. I boiled with rage, helpless, wrapped
in sheets and towels, my face plastered with grease, and Bianca sat
there, her little white face buried in her furs and laughed at me. When
at last she had gone, Madeleine said the Princess had such a beautiful
character.

I felt that I was being bated like one of her famous bulls. I resolved
to make no move. I refused to be goaded to an attack. I was afraid of
her.

Then one day Fan came to see me. Instead of rushing in with her usual
shrill greeting, she walked up to me quietly, put her arm round me and
laid her cheek against mine.

“I’m so happy, Jane dear; I’m so happy.” Her voice was gentle. “I have
found what I have been waiting for all my life.” She went down on her
knees and looked up into my face. Hers was calm and rested and had upon
it an expression of sweetness that I had never seen there before. “I’m
in love, Jane dear. I’m in love with the most wonderful man in the
world. I wanted to tell you because I knew you’d be glad I was happy.”

She stayed with me for an hour and told me all about it. It was
the strangest thing, hard cynical Fan, suddenly become young and
sentimental and timid. They had met at St. Moritz that Christmas. He
was an Englishman, half Irish really, with a strong streak of Celt in
him. His name was Mark. She called him Micky. He was very beautiful, as
beautiful as a god. He had taught her to ski. They had been together
high up on snowy peaks above the world. One day she had fallen and
sprained her ankle. He had carried her down the mountain in his arms.
He was strong and straight like a young tree. He wanted her to divorce
Ivanoff and marry him. He said there was no other way for them to be
happy. He wanted to meet me. Would I come to lunch now, right away? He
was waiting for us. She had told him all about me.

I went, of course. That boy,--you remember him, and how handsome he
was, with his golden head and fresh bronzed cheeks and the long curly
eyelashes fringing his blue eyes, and his broad sunny smile. He was
too beautiful I had felt until he gave me that very broad smile.

Our luncheon was a happy absurd affair. Those two were ridiculously
in love--they behaved like children. They beamed, they blushed, they
looked into each other’s eyes, he very shy and sweet and attentive,
calling her Fan, and in talking to me trying to be dreadfully solemn.
“Please, Madame de Joigny, make her be serious. She must divorce that
chap, you know. There’s no alternative. It’s got to be done and I want
it done right away. Please back me up. I say, you mustn’t smile, you
know. It’s dead serious.”

How could I help smiling? He was very appealing. He rumpled his hair
and his eyes grew dark, and little beads of moisture stood out on
his high tanned forehead. I looked at Fan. Poor Fan! so much older,
so worn, so stamped with the stamp of her harrowing racketing years,
and yet a new Fan with a young light in her eyes; I was disturbed and
anxious.

My fears seemed during the weeks that followed to be groundless.
She held him. They continued their dream of bliss. He satisfied her
utterly. It was of course his beauty that she loved. Always she had
adored beauty in men--now she had it in its most charming aspect,
fresh, clean, young. They had nothing in common, but their passion. He
was stupid and rather a prude. He had grown up with horses and dogs and
a family of sisters in an English country house, had joined the army
and then had gone to South Africa with his regiment. He had ideas about
womanliness and the honour of a gentleman and the duties of his class.
He had never been in Paris before. Fan found no fault in him.

She began taking him about with her. Society was at first amused and
indulgent, then again the inevitable happened. He became the rage. A
number of women lost their heads over him. He was invited out without
her. Soon he was everywhere in demand, and Fan rightly or wrongly
persuaded him to go. This at first quite worried him. Women wanting him
for themselves and finding him obstinately faithful, turned spiteful.
He didn’t understand, for he wasn’t fatuous, but he must have heard a
good many things about Fan that he didn’t like.

I felt for him in a way. It seemed to me that he was holding his own
pretty well and behaving on the whole very decently, but I wished that
Fan’s divorce could be hurried along. She had hesitated about divorcing
Ivanoff. “Of course,” she said, “he lives off women, but I’ve known
that all along, and it doesn’t seem quite fair to get rid of him now--”
but she had given in, in the end.

The months dragged on. I began to wonder whether Micky would hold out.
It had been difficult to find Ivanoff. A long time elapsed before the
divorce papers could be served on him.

Micky still stuck to Fan, but he began talking about compromising
her and, after a time, I had an impression that he stuck to her
grimly, without enthusiasm. I imagined him to be cursing his own weak
character. He was weak and he knew it, and so did we. He clung to
Fan as a woman should cling to a man. This did not make her despise
him, it gave her a feeling of strength and safety. She encouraged his
dependence on her and adopted the rôle of guide and counsellor.

About this time I had a telephone message and a note from Bianca; both
summoning me to her in her old peremptory style. The message was that
the Princess wished to see me on urgent matters and would be at home
all that afternoon. I did not go. The note, received next morning was
as follows:


     “It is silly and dangerous to stand out against me. I am attacked
     by all the demons you know about and if you don’t come, something
     unexpected and unpleasant will happen.”


I paid no attention to it.

Fan’s character and the quality of her life changed completely; she
gave up going out and sank into the deep secretive isolation of a woman
who lives for one man alone. Her other men friends melted away. Many
of her women friends dropped her. Not those of her own little band,
but Micky didn’t like these. Claire who was fond of her, said--“_Elle
se rend ridicule avec ce garçon_,” and refused to have them to dinner
together. Fan didn’t seem to care; she stayed more and more at home.
This created for her serious money difficulties. She had never had any
meals at all to speak of in her own flat, and her butcher’s bill had
come to nothing, but now her boy had to be fed. He would come into
dinner or lunch nearly every day, rosy and ravenous, and consume large
beef steaks, fat cutlets, chickens, eggs, butter, sweets. Her bills
became larger as her revenues dwindled. She could or would no longer
avail herself of her old sources of wealth. Her vogue was vanishing,
and with it the amiability of dressmakers and restaurant-keepers. She
had a distaste now for gambling on the Bourse and asking Beaudoin for
tips. Micky it seemed disapproved of women gambling. Her love affair
was costing her her livelihood; and Micky himself gave her nothing,
perhaps because he had nothing much to give; perhaps because of some
idea of honour, perhaps because he didn’t know how hard up she was.
Fan was not the kind to let on. I know for a fact that she often went
hungry to give him a good square meal, and I suspected that under her
last year’s dresses, she didn’t have on enough to keep her warm.

It became increasingly evident as the winter wore on that there were
influences at work, perhaps a special influence that was worrying them
both, but I had no suspicion of the truth. Had I known I would have
done something effective--I would have wasted no time with Bianca.

Fan had burned her bridges. There was no going back for her now, no
slipping down into the old stupefying pleasures. He had changed her,
he had purified and weakened her. There was for her a future with him
or nothing. If she lost him, she would be done for. She knew this. She
remained clear-headed and played her cards with desperate caution.
And I watching her, saw just how frightened she was, but she told me
nothing.

I did not know that Bianca knew Micky. She went out very little
now. People spoke of her living shut up in her house as they might
have spoken of some lurid figure of legend, some beautiful ogress,
gnashing her hungry teeth in a cave, but I didn’t listen when they
talked of her. I wanted less than ever to hear about her. She still
saw Philibert, I knew, but this no longer concerned me. And she seemed
to have given up pursuing me. I ought to have known she was up to
something. I am sorry now that I refused to think about her, for I
might have reasoned it out and discovered by a process of logic, what
she was up to--I might have known that she would inevitably choose
Micky for her own, just because he was in love with another woman,
just because he was the pet of Paris, just because finally, Fan’s life
depended on him and because I cared for Fan as if she were my own child.

In March Fan began to lose her nerve. She said to me one day--

“You know that I’m frightened but you don’t know how frightened. Some
day, any day, tomorrow perhaps, he’ll see me as I am, a shrivelled-up
hag who has played the devil with her life. Do you remember Jane, how
your grandmother used to make us read the Bible on Sunday mornings in
St. Mary’s Plains? I remember a phrase--‘Born again.’ Well, I’ve been
born again. My soul is beautiful, it’s as beautiful as the morning, but
I’m as tired and ugly as ever--and my mind is as old as hell. I’ll lose
him if I marry him, or if I don’t, I feel it in my bones. I used to
think--‘I’m so much cleverer than he is that I’ll be able to keep him.’
My dear, don’t talk to me about cleverness in holding a man. I’d give
all the brains in the world for one year of beauty. If only I could
be quite quite lovely for just one year. God! but it’s tiring to be
always trying to look nicer than you are.”

On another day she broke down and sobbed and implored me to tell her
that she was mistaken, and that he wouldn’t get tired of her. “He’s
so sweet,” she cried, “so sweet. He gets so cross with women who
aren’t nice about me. When they make love to him he doesn’t seem to
understand, he thinks them idiots, but each time that he comes back
to me from one of them, I am afraid to look at him, afraid to see
his eyes, veiled, shifting. It’s awful--too awful! He couldn’t hide
anything from me, could he?”

The next time I saw her she was the colour of ashes.

“He hasn’t been near me for a week. Some one has got hold of him. I
know who it is.” Her teeth chattered, she kept twisting her hands, but
as I sat there miserably watching her, the telephone rang, and she was
off like a crazy woman. “Yes, yes, I’m at home, of course. Oh, Micky
darling, do--do--come quick, quick”--and when she came back to me she
was laughing and crying and saying over and over, “I’m a fool! I’m a
fool.”

It was the end of March that they made up their minds to go away
together to Italy. She was very lucid and calm about it. Paris had got
on their nerves. The life they were leading was impossible. His family
might cut him off without a penny, but that couldn’t be helped. They
would stay in Italy until the divorce decree was made absolute, and
they could be married. Micky had a foolish idea about its being unwise
for them to start together from Paris. They were to take the Simplon
Express. She was to go ahead and board the train at La Roche Junction.
As this was very near Ste. Clothilde, would I mind her going there and
stopping the night?

As it happened I was going to Ste. Clothilde for Easter, a few days
later, so I advanced the date of my journey and took her with me.

How much she knew or suspected of what had been going on between Micky
and Bianca, I do not know. She never told me. All that she ever said
was--“I know he didn’t plan it deliberately, I know he didn’t mean
to--when I left him.” But she must have known enough to be terribly
anxious, and I imagine that her decision to go off with him to Italy
was a last desperate move.

The Simplon Express left Paris at nine and stopped at La Roche at
eleven o’clock at night. Micky was to take two tickets and the sleepers
and get on the train at Paris, ready to lift her aboard.

“Once I am on the train,” she kept saying, “I feel that I will be safe.”

La Roche was a three hours’ motor run across country from Ste.
Clothilde, the roads were winding lanes, confusing and indistinctly
marked; so we decided that she had better do the distance before dark.
She might puncture a tire, the motor might break down, anything might
happen, she was feverishly anxious to allow herself plenty of time. She
started at three o’clock.

Her face was strained and seemed no bigger than a little wizened
infant’s face as she said good-bye. For a moment, on those immense
stone steps in view of Philibert’s great formal gardens with their
fountains and statues and broad gravel walks, she clung to me. Then
with a final nervous hug flung away and jumped into the car. Her last
words were “I’ll not come back till I’m married, Jane, so give me your
blessing.” And out of my heart I gave it, kissing both my hands to her
as the motor swung down the drive, and through the great iron gates.

I felt singularly depressed. Fan and I in that formal and splendid
panorama, were such minute creatures--were no bigger, no stronger than
a couple of flies. Never had the Château de Ste. Clothilde seemed so
cold, so inhuman, so foreign. I no longer disliked the place, I had
grown used to it as I had grown used to other things. Its imposing
architectural beauty, delicately majestic, serenely incongruous with
nature, had made its effect on my mind. I understood to some extent
the idea that had created it, the high peculiarity of taste that
had chosen to mock at woods and fields, by building in their midst a
palace smooth and fine as a thing of porcelain. Gradually I had come
to appreciate the bland assurance of the achievement with all its bold
frivolous contradictions of reason and common-sense. The moat that
surrounded three sides of the château, was like a marble bath. It had
no _raison d’être_. Never had any owner dreamed of defending this
place from any invaders, but the moat was there, full of clear water,
palest green in which were reflected the silvery walls and high shining
windows. And on the fourth side of the house, a joke perhaps, or to
contradict the chilling effect of the moat, the eighteenth century
architect who adored Marie Antoinette in her shepherdess costume,
built an immense flight of steps straight across the length of the
south façade, lovely, smooth, shallow steps, made to welcome a crowd
of courtiers in satins and trailing silks, and dainty high-heeled
slippers. It had amused me at times to imagine them there in that
theatrical setting, and to recreate for myself the spectacle of their
_fêtes galantes_--but on the day that Fan left me to go to her boy
lover, I took no pleasure in the ghostly place. The sky was grey, the
faintly budding trees marshalled a far-off beyond the formal gardens,
showed a haze of green that seemed to me sickly, and the suggestion of
spring in the air gave me a feeling of “_malaise_.”

I remembered that Bianca and Philibert had gone off by the same Simplon
Express five years before. They too must have stopped at the station
of La Roche at eleven o’clock at night, or had they boarded the train
farther down the line? I couldn’t remember what they were supposed to
have done. All that had nothing to do with me, yet I was waiting for
Philibert to arrive with a dozen people who would be my guests, his and
mine.

My chauffeur reported his return at nine o’clock that evening. They had
reached La Roche at six as planned. He had left the Princess at the
station. The Princess had not wished him to wait until the arrival of
her train. He had insisted, _auprès de Madame la Princesse_, as I had
told him to do, but she had been displeased and had sent him away.

It was a rainy night, loud with a gusty April wind. The big rooms
of the château were peopled with moving shadows and filled with
whisperings and sighs. The wind moaned down the chimneys and set the
far branches of the trees in the park to tossing. I was alone in the
house save for the servants. Jinny had gone to her grandmother for a
few days.

I slept badly and woke early. My room was scarcely light. The sun was
not yet up, or was obscured by a dismal sky. I listened apprehensively
to the moaning restless morning. I listened intently for something--a
sound, I didn’t know what. Then I heard it. The telephone downstairs
was ringing. I knew in an instant what that meant, and flew down
the corridor, my heart pounding in my ribs. A clock somewhere was
striking six, seven, I did not know which. A man’s voice spoke over the
phone,--“_La Gare de La Roche--La Princesse Ivanoff prie La Marquise
de Joigny de venir la chercher en auto--La Princesse l’attendra à la
Gare--La Princesse s’est trouvée malade dans la nuit et a manqué son
train._” I did not wait to hear any more. I was on my way in half an
hour. The drive seemed terribly long, interminably long. Fan all night
in the station of La Roche--what did it mean?

I found her sitting on a packing case on the station platform, her head
against the wall. Her face was bluish, her lips were a pale mauve, her
hands, wet, like lumps of ice.

“I’ve been sitting here all night,” she said in a dull voice. “I’m
cold.” The station master helped me get her into the car. He seemed
troubled and ashamed. He explained that they had not noticed her during
the night. After the passing of the express he always went home to
bed. The station was deserted during the middle of the night, and the
waiting room locked. No passenger trains stopped between twelve and
five in the morning. At five the Princess had been discovered by an
employé but she had refused to move. They had tried to get her to drink
some coffee from the buffet. She had asked him to telephone which he
had done. The Princess had told him that she had felt faint during the
evening while waiting and had thus missed the train.

On the way home she did not speak. Her body was as heavy against me
as a corpse. Her head kept slipping from my arm. I held her across my
knees and gave her a sip of brandy now and then. Half way home she
began to shiver. Her body shook, her teeth chattered, grating against
each other. By the time we reached home, she was in a burning fever.

That night Philibert entertained his guests alone. I sat with Fan in
her room. About ten o’clock she stopped for a moment her terrible
exhausting tossing from one side of the bed to the other and said--

“I heard her laugh. She put her head out of the car window and laughed.”

“Who laughed, dear?”

“Bianca--she was with Micky in the train. They wouldn’t let me get on.
I had no ticket--”

She lay on her back now staring at the ceiling. Some one downstairs
was playing a waltz on the piano. The wind had fallen. Out of doors
the night was soft and still. Fan’s voice came from her dried lips,
distinct and harsh.

“I tried to get onto the steps of the train. The guard stopped me.
Bianca must have fixed him beforehand. Micky was drunk. She had fixed
him too, by making him drunk. He wouldn’t have done it if he hadn’t
been drunk. The railway carriage was very high, but I could see into
the lighted corridor. I saw Micky. His face was red and stupid. I
called ‘Micky--Micky, my ticket--quick; they won’t let me on without
it.’ But he didn’t seem to hear me. Some one was behind him in the
compartment.

“The _wagons-lits_ man asked me what I wanted. I screamed out--‘That
gentleman has my ticket.’ He half believed me. I saw him go in and
speak to Micky, and looking up--you know how high the carriages are--I
saw Micky shake his head. The attendant came back then and told me
that I was mistaken, the gentleman was expecting no one, there was no
place, the car was full. A whistle blew. The train started to move, I
grabbed the handle by the steps. The _wagons-lits_ man slammed the door
shut above me. The train moved faster, I ran along holding on. ‘Micky’
I called, ‘Micky.’ Some one pulled me back, wrenched my hand loose, I
stumbled, then I heard Bianca laugh, I saw her. She put her head out of
the window and laughed. I was on all fours, in the wet. It was raining.
I scrambled to my feet and ran down the platform. The train was moving
fast by this time. The last carriage passed me. I reached the end of
the platform. I saw the red light at the back of the train. They were
in the train together, Micky and Bianca. They were together, in the
little hot lighted compartment. They were going away together. She had
taken my place. I stood there. The red light disappeared. There seemed
to be no one about, it was very windy and cold. I don’t know what I did
after that. I remember the steel rails stretching out under the arc
light into the darkness. I wanted to run down the rails and catch the
train, but the train was gone, and I was afraid.”

They were dancing downstairs; I heard their feet scraping; the time was
changed to a fox trot--but Fan did not notice. She lay in a deep dark
empty place of her own, cut off from all the sights and sounds round
her, watching something, following something, the red lantern perhaps
at the end of a train going away in the dark.

I gave Philibert no explanation of Fan’s presence or of her illness.
The other people in the house thought that she had come for a visit
and had caught cold during a walk in the rain. I had told my maid to
suggest this explanation to the servants. She understood. They did
not give me away. Philibert never knew what had happened to Fan, but
he found out when he went back to Paris that Bianca had gone away
with the English boy. I remember wondering afterwards, how he liked
being the one who was left behind, but I wondered vaguely, without
any feeling for him. He mattered less than he had ever done. Nothing
mattered for the time being but Fan, very ill, with congestion of the
lungs, who wanted so much to die and end quickly what was already
ended. But she couldn’t manage dying. Death eluded her. Life was
unwilling to let her miserable body go. Like the remains of some
sticky poisonous substance left in a battered dish, it stuck to her.
Unwelcome, noisome, contaminated stuff of life, she couldn’t get rid
of it although the convulsing frame tried to eject it from her lips.
The horror of her coughing! the shaking of her pointed shoulders, the
sound of her wrenching stomach, the rattling of her breath in her poor
bony chest, the great deep resounding noises of pain in the fragile box
that held her wasted lungs! Her eyes would start out at me in terror.
She would clutch at me wildly and gasp--“Hold me. Hold me, Jane, I’m
shaking to pieces,” and I would hold her through the long spasm, and
then she would fall back exhausted and clammy with sweat. My heart
ached and ached and ached. I wanted so, for her to die. If she had
asked me to do it, I would have ended her life with an injection of
morphine, but she said nothing.

Early in May she had a bad haemorrhage. All the scarlet blood of her
veins seemed to me to be staining the cloths that I held to her mouth.
And afterwards she lay at peace, and I thought “Thank God this is the
end,” but it wasn’t. She rallied. Some strength came back to her. The
doctors told me to take her to Switzerland. I did so, and did not
remember until we were installed in our chalet near the sanatorium that
we were within a few miles of the place where she had first met Micky,
but she seemed not to mind at all being there, and would lie on the
balcony in the sun looking across the valley at the mountains with a
smile on her face, while I read aloud to her. Sometimes she talked of
St. Mary’s Plains, sometimes of Paris, a great many people wrote to
her, women who had been unkind when she was happy, were sorry for her
now; sometimes she was gay, laughing and childishly pleased with new
chintzes and tea sets and cushions that I ordered from Paris but she
never spoke of Micky.

Gradually she grew smaller and smaller. Her face was disappearing.
There was nothing much left of it now, but a pointed nose with
painfully wide distended nostrils, and two sunken eyes. I took the hand
glass away from her dressing table one night when she was asleep--she
didn’t ask for it, but one day not long afterwards, she said suddenly
“I would like something, Jane.”

“What, my darling?”

“I would like some new clothes, especially hats. I would like six new
hats from Caroline Reboux”; and then she looked at me suspiciously like
a sharp little witch.

I said, of course, that I would write for them at once. She dictated
the letter. Caroline was asked to send us the newest and smartest
models she had. “She knows my style,” said Fan from her pillow, “she’ll
send something amusing, won’t she, Jane?”

“I’m sure they’ll be ravishing, my dear.”

“Do you think I’m silly, Jane? I’ve a feeling it will do me good to
have those hats--when they come we’ll try them on, we’ll go for a
drive. We’ll pick out the most becoming and drive to--but how long will
it be before they come?”

“Not more than ten days--I should think,” I said avoiding her strange
eager eyes.

The next day she was very tired, she asked if there were letters but
only looked at the envelopes, saying--“They don’t care a damn whether
I live or die,” and the next day and the next, she asked again for
letters only to fling them aside.

In the evening she said, “I’m a beast, Jane--and a fool. Why did we
write for those hats? I know I can’t wear them, but I’ve always wanted
to order hats like that, half a dozen at a time without thinking what
they cost. You won’t mind paying, I know--and I don’t mind now. I’ve
been a beast about you, Jane, I used to envy you so many things.”

“What for instance--?”

“Well, your ermine coat with the hundreds of little black tails, the
sable cape, and your jade necklace, and your pearls. I always adored
pearls. I believe I could have sold my soul for pearls like yours at
one time. Funny, isn’t it? Lucky no one ever offered me any--no one
ever did you know. I wasn’t the kind to have ropes of pearls given
me for the asking. If I had only been beautiful, Jane--I would have
gone to the dogs sure as fate, but oh, I’d have had a good time. As
it is, I don’t seem to have had much fun, now that I think of it.
My past is like a dingy deep pocket with a hole in it somewhere.
I’ve been dropping trinkets into it all my life, and now I find it’s
empty, just an empty dark pocket--that’s my past.” She gave her old
shrill laugh. “It’s damn funny isn’t it, Jane--life, I mean. We go on,
hoping, hoping, looking forward, looking for something, thinking always
there’s something nice ahead for us, being cheated all the time, never
admitting it, never giving in, always expecting--fooling ourselves,
being fooled--up to the very end. What makes us like that? What keeps
us going? Who invents the string of lies we believe in?”

She lay propped up on pillows, her head sunk between her pointed
shoulders, her knees sharp as pegs pushing up the bed-clothes, and her
skinny hands like birds’ claws picked at the lace on her sleeve.

“Happiness--Jane? I was happy once, you know. It made me good, at least
I thought so. I felt good. I tried to be good. Everything dropped away;
it was like moulting. I came out a plucked chicken, no fine feathers
left. What was the use? I was too far gone I suppose, when it came--”
She stared up at me, her cheek bones flushed, her wide nostrils, great
black holes in her small face, palpitating. “Love came--now death--and
I’m not good enough for that either. What’s death to me? Nothing. I
can’t rise to meet it. I want some new hats. That’s all I can think
about, all I can bear to think about. My death Jane, like my life, is
empty. I fill up the emptiness with things, little things.” She held
her two hands against her side as if the emptiness were there, hurting
her. “Jane,” she said suddenly, “I wonder--” Her eyes widened, and in
them I saw the shadow of the great terror that gets us all in the end.
She stared, her dreadful gaping nostrils dilating, her mouth open, her
hands out in front of her, pushing against the air. Then suddenly she
laughed. “No, no, damn it all, let’s be frivolous up to the end. It’s
as good a way as another of seeing the business through.”

She died the end of July, with all her new hats strewn round the room
and a piece of wonderful lace in her hands. “Lovely, lovely lace, isn’t
it, Jane?” she had said a minute before, and then there was a tearing
sound in her chest and the scarlet blood flowing from her mouth, and
one choking cry as I sprang to her side.

“Jane--Jane--I’m going now and I’ve not seen him. Jane, tell him,
tell Micky I hoped--” Her eyes were agonized. The blood choked her.
She couldn’t speak, but I saw in her eyes what she meant--terribly I
saw--how she had believed up to the end that Micky would come back to
her.

It was Ivanoff who came and Ivanoff, great hulking shameful pitiable
creature who wept over her poor lonely coffin. We brought her back
to Paris, Ivanoff and I, and buried her in _Père-Lachaise_ one rainy
afternoon and then he disappeared again for the last time.

I went straight to Deauville. Philibert was there with his mother and
Jinny, but I went to find Bianca. I had seen in the paper that she was
at the Normandy.

I may have been out of my mind, I don’t know. I remember that I thought
I had Fan’s disease, but that does not prove that I was off my head.
The smell of it was in my breath, the dry sound of its hacking cough
in my ears, and constantly I saw before me, Fan herself, pallid,
shiny with sweat, two black holes in her face opening, panting for
breath--and behind her, looking over her dank head I saw Bianca, her
pointed lips smiling, cruel as only she in all heaven and earth could
be cruel.

It is true that I took a revolver with me to the Casino that night.
I remember putting it in my silk bag and pretending at dinner that I
had a lot of gold pieces by me, for luck. I had. I was going to the
Casino to gamble. I would find a place opposite Bianca and sit her
out. You remember the scene. People talked of it enough Heaven knows.
One would have supposed women never had played high before. A crowd
gathered round us--half Paris was there. I remember the Tobacco King, a
very fat man with a red face. It pleased him at first, he swelled with
importance. By three in the morning he had lost five hundred thousand
francs. His place was taken by the Brazilian millionaire--Chenal, the
opera star, was opposite. A number of men accustomed to playing in the
men’s rooms, joined our table. They half realized there was more in it
than just a game. Bianca opposite me, was white as a sheet. Her face
was like a white moon among all those red bloated faces. I watched
her. I watched her long carmine finger nails glinting as she handled
her piles of folded notes. We played against each other. The luck was
against me after the Tobacco King left. I was losing heavily. The fact
made no impression on me. I wasn’t playing with Bianca for money. The
little wads of thousand franc notes were symbols. The game was a blind.
I went _Banco_ against her as a matter of course, automatically, but
all the time I was playing another game. I was repeating silently to
myself, words that were meant for her. Your psycho-therapists would
say I was trying to hypnotize her, to subject her to my suggestion.
Well, I was; I was attacking her brain with all the power of my will.
I was concentrated on her to break her down. I was determined to
frighten her, to fill her with dread, with frantic dread of my hatred,
my loathing, my determination to make her pay for what she had done.
I succeeded. At four o’clock she began to show signs; attendants
kept bringing her whiskey, liqueurs, champagne; her face had turned
blueish, she went on. She was still winning. But she knew now, that
that wouldn’t help her. At five I saw her waver. She started to scrape
together her winnings. I did the same. She looked into my face; it was
evident to her that if she left the table I would follow her. She went
on playing. We sat there as you know till six o’clock. We left the
Casino as the doors closed--we left together.

“I am going with you, Bianca--don’t hurry, there is no hurry”--I
kept her by my side. The sun was rising as we crossed towards the
Normandy. “No--” I objected, “not there--come out on the beach.” It
was low tide. The sea was still. A light mist hung along the horizon.
The little waves glinted in the first sun rays. We went out across
the wet sand, Bianca’s turquoise blue cape trailing behind her in the
little pools where crabs scuttled out of the way of our high satin
heels. The sunlight bathed us. It showed her pallid as a corpse. What
I looked to her, I do not know. Our two long shadows moved ahead of us
to the edge of the water. There was no one near. Behind us stretched
the sands--in front of us the sea--afar out, was a ship, minute white
sails, sea birds darted in the blue--space--sunlight--silence. We
faced each other, and I told her very briefly what was in my mind. I
told her that the earth must be rid of her, at any rate that part of
the earth which held me, that I had a revolver in my bag and was quite
prepared if necessary to put an end to her life, or give it to her,
and leave her to do it herself. On the other hand I saw no particular
point in suffering the consequences of her death, and would be content
if she disappeared for ever from the world that I knew, from Paris,
from France, from the civilized places where ordinary men and women
like myself were in the habit of living. I told her that I would not
allow her to live anywhere any longer where I was--that she could
choose--either she would go--take herself off--disappear for ever--or
shoot herself there in my presence--If she didn’t, I would kill her the
next time I came across her.

It sounds extraordinarily silly and puerile as I relate this but
it did not sound silly to Bianca. You must remember that I knew
Bianca and knew just how that sort of thing might affect her--and
knew that physically she had always been afraid of me. I counted on
her superstition, her morbidness, her lassitude. I counted on the
stillness, the wide mysterious dawn, the still sea, the cold sky--and
I counted on her lack of character--on her “_manque d’équilibre_.” I
was right. I told her that she was loathesome and that at bottom she
loathed herself; I told her that she was sick of loving herself and in
fact, couldn’t go on much longer even pretending to herself that she
wasn’t vile. I told her that her vanity was strained to the breaking
point, that any day it might snap and that she would collapse. When
she could no longer keep up the fiction of her own interest to herself
what could she do? Nothing. She would be a drivelling idiot--she would
go insane as she had feared. Coldly I repeated it, over and over. She
was diseased; she was a maniac--an egotistical maniac and she would one
day become a raving lunatic. She could take her choice. End it now--or
go off and develop her lunacy elsewhere in some far country where the
curse of her presence would affect no one that mattered to me.

I can see her now--as she was that morning--standing in the sunlight
in her evening dress, her feet wet, her cloak trailing on the sand,
her face working. I had never seen her face twist before. That morning
in the glaring sun, it twitched and jerked and pulled, until almost I
thought that her mind had snapped and that she was already the idiot
I had prophesied, but she pulled herself together to some extent and
managed after a while to speak. What she said was trivial.

“It is your fault, Jane--you wouldn’t do what I wanted so I had to
hurt you again--you shouldn’t blame me--you know that I am possessed
of devils--Well, have it your own way--I’ll go. Don’t look at me like
that--I’ll go, I tell you. Stop looking, you frighten me--Yes, I’m
afraid of you--I admit it. Your look is a curse in itself--Wasn’t
I cursed enough when I was born--what have I done after all--Fan’s
death--? Pooh! She’d have died any way.”

But at that I gripped her. I must have twisted her arms. She gave a
shriek, then a whimper as I let her go, and staggered away from me,
back towards the shore. I followed her as far as the bathing boxes;
all the way she made little noises like a wounded animal, whimpering,
sniffing, almost growling. It was horrid. Her long swaying staggering
figure, her head hanging forward, her hands twisting her clothes round
her, clutching her sides--her shoulders twitching; she was, I suppose,
on the verge of hysterics. I felt no pity for her. The sight of her was
shocking and disgusting. She had gone to pieces as I thought she would
do. She had no character.

I watched her go--From the wooden walk I watched her stumble towards
the hotel, break into a run, turn to look back, disappear. It was
seven o’clock. An attendant opened a cabin for me. I stripped and swam
out--out--a mile, two miles, three, I don’t know. When I got back to
the villa Jinny was at breakfast. I felt hungry. We laughed over our
honey and rolls. At twelve I was told that Bianca had left Deauville by
motor.

That was in 1913, the year before the war.




VIII


Jinny liked to wear silks and velvets when she was quite a little girl.
Her taste for pretty clothes was something more than childish vanity.
I used often to find her in the room lined with cupboards where my
dresses were kept, sitting on the floor amid a heap of soft shining
garments, that she had dragged from their hooks, stroking the fabrics
lovingly, and purring to herself like a blissful kitten. She couldn’t
bear the touch of wool or starched cambric, and screamed herself into
hysterics when in obedience to the doctor’s orders, I tried one winter
to put her into woollen combinations. Her father humoured her in
this. I think it rather pleased him that she should be so delicately
fastidious. He found in it a proof of an exquisite sensibility and
likened her to the fairy-tale princess of the crumpled rose leaf.
Unfortunately he told Jinny the story and she immediately accepted it
as illustrative of herself, acted it out literally in her nursery,
obliging her nursemaid to make and remake her little bed, to smooth
and stroke and smooth again until every imaginary wrinkle in the soft
sheets was gone, before she would consent to get into it. This habit
lasted for some weeks until she read one day in her “_histoire sainte_”
of a saint who had acquired great spiritual blessing by sleeping on
the floor of her cell, whereupon she took no more interest in the way
her bed was made. The nurse was delighted until she discovered that as
soon as she had turned down the light and left the room, Jinny hopped
out of bed and lay down on the floor, choosing fortunately a spot near
the radiator. The harassed women, governess, nurse and nursemaid said
nothing to me the first time, nor the second that they found her asleep
on the floor, but finally came to me explaining that Mademoiselle was
very determined to die of pneumonia.

Jinny looked at me with grave shining eyes when I asked her what such
naughtiness meant.

“It is not naughtiness at all, Mamma, you misunderstand, it is the
saintly life, ‘_la sainte vie_.’”

Fortunately I was sufficiently aware of her romantic absorption in the
lives of the saints, and of her habit of applying everything that she
read or heard to herself, to guess what influence was working on her.
The “saintly life” had come up before. She had already had periods
of fasting that had given way before her great liking for bonbons,
and periods of prayer, that had given way to sleepiness, and had even
attempted at one time to beat her little shoulders with a strap off
a trunk, all of which things had worried me considerably, but none
of which had been immediately dangerous to her health, so I entered
straight upon the subject in as sympathetic a tone, that is on as
high a moral ground as I could find, using all my wits to adapt my
conversation and my thought to her mind, as if, as indeed may have been
the case, her idea was more lucid than my own.

“Darling,” I said in a tone as grave as the one she had used to me, but
with a certain timidity that she in her exaltation of the young devotee
had certainly not felt at all, “the saintly life is a beautiful thing
when rightly understood; it is too beautiful to be entered upon easily
and capriciously. If you have a true wish to model your life on that of
the saints who gave up every comfort for the salvation of their souls,
then I will help you. I will do it with you. We will change everything.
We will take away all the pretty things, and empty these rooms, yours
and mine, of the pictures, and the rugs, keeping only the strict
necessaries. We will sleep on hard beds, floor, we will eat bread and
water every day, nothing more; we will wear no more nice clothes, we
will each have a serge dress and very plain underwear, of some strong
cotton stuff, we will--”

But poor Jinny had grown quite pale. “Oh, Mummy, Mummy, you are cruel.
Don’t you see I can’t do all that? Don’t you want me to want to be
good.”

That you see ended well. She cried a little in my arms, and listened
quietly as I explained that being good was quite another thing to
the saintly life as she had understood it, and that this latter was
not vouchsafed to children, and we arranged between us that it would
be much more truly good, to take a great many baskets of toys to the
little poor crippled children in the big hospitals than to jump out of
bed when no one was looking, but I was not immeasurably reassured by my
victory. With Jinny it was always a case of its being all right till
the next time, and the next time was never slow in coming.

I take it that my own feeling for Jinny needs no explanation. I am
a simple woman, and I was her mother; she was all that I had. But
Philibert loving her so much was curious, don’t you think? It seemed
so inconsistent of him! I don’t even now understand it. Perhaps
the most obvious explanation is the real one. Perhaps it was just
because she was so very attractive. Had she been ugly I believe that
he would have disliked her. She was never ugly, she had never had an
awkward age. At fourteen she had already that look of costliness, of
something luxurious, sumptuous and precious that she has today. She was
slender and fragile and smooth. At times she suggested a child Venus
by Botticelli. Her mouth had the delicate drooping curve of some of
his Madonnas, her hands were full and soft and dimpled with delicate
tapering fingers. Sensuous idle hands, they were to her instruments of
pleasure. Touching things conveyed to her some special delight; with
her finger tips she enjoyed. I know for I have watched those hands for
years, moving softly and deftly over lovely surfaces, and following the
contours of flowers, of porcelain vases, but she never did anything
practical with them. Even embroidery, she disliked. But jigsaw puzzles
amused her--she and Philibert always had one somewhere spread out on a
table. They spent hours together fitting in the innumerable tiny bits,
their heads close together, excitedly comparing, fitting, exclaiming.
Philibert liked the idea of his daughter’s distaste for doing anything
useful. He encouraged her laziness and her absurd little air of languid
hauteur. When she dropped a glove or handkerchief and waited for a
servant to pick it up for her, he laughed.

Sometimes I tried to reason with him.

“You are spoiling her,” I said on more than one occasion, but he only
shrugged his shoulders.

“Don’t you see, Philibert?” I would insist, “that it is bad for her to
live in this atmosphere?”

“What atmosphere?”

“The atmosphere of this house, of Paris, of the world we live in.”

“Well, my dear, it is her house, her Paris, her world--she’s born to
it, and belongs to it, so she may as well grow up in it. What would you
have for her--something more like your own home over there, eh?--the
place that turned you out, so admirably fitted for our European
life--you want her to be as you were, is that it?”

“God forbid.”

“Well then--”

I couldn’t argue with him. I couldn’t tell him what I really felt and
feared, or explain to him how I hated for Jinny, all the things that I
now accepted for myself, for he was one of those things, the principle
one; I had accepted him. I had even grown to understand him, and if
it hadn’t been for Jinny, I felt that we might become friends. His
extravagances, his cynicism, his fondness for women were things that I
now took for granted. They no longer bothered me. For me, he would do
now, I no longer asked anything of him, but for Jinny he wasn’t half
good enough. As a father to my child, I found him impossible.

One often hears of estranged couples being brought together by their
love for a child. With Philibert and myself, it was the contrary. We
were both jealous of Jinny. We were afraid, each one, that she loved
the other best, and our nervousness on this point acted to keep us in
each other’s company while it made friendship impossible. Neither of
us liked to leave the other alone with her for any length of time. I
had stayed with Fan for three months and had come back to find Jinny
hanging on her father’s every word, and to find what I imagined was a
coldness between her and myself. This may have been my imagination,
or it may have been true; I don’t know, but I suspected Philibert
of working to alienate her from me, and he suspected me of the same
thing. If I suggested taking Jinny to Ste. Clothilde for a fortnight,
he either found a way of keeping us in Paris or accompanied us, and if
Philibert wanted for some reason to go away, to London or Berlin or
Biarritz, he was haunted by the idea that in his absence I might steal
a march on him with Jinny, so really bothered I mean, that nine times
out of ten, he would give up going unless I went with him. The result
was that we were more constantly together than we had been since the
first year of our marriage.

Looking back now to that winter of 1913-14 I see it as a season of
delirium, of fever, of madness. Paris glows there, at the eve of
war, in a lurid blaze of brilliance, its people giddy, intoxicated,
dancing over the quaking surface of a civilization that was cracking
under them. A period in the history of the human race was drawing to
a close. The old earth was rushing towards the greatest calamity of
our time, carrying with it swarming continents that in a few months
were to seethe and smoke like beds of boiling lava--and the people of
the earth as if aware that the days of pleasure were numbered, were
possessed by a frenzy. I say the people of the earth, but I mean of
course, the rich, the idle, the foolish, the so-called fortunate who
make up society and of whom Philibert and I were the most idle, the
most foolish, as we were perhaps the richest.

That winter marked the height of our folly and of our worldly
brilliance, and for me it marked at the same time the deepest depth of
futility and cowardice.

Philibert and I were like two runaway horses harnessed together,
and running blindly, with the smart showy vehicle of our empty life
rattling and lurching behind us, and poor little Jinny inside it.

His extravagance that winter was colossal. I did not try to restrain
it. He felt the inertia of old age coming on him, and was having a last
desperate fling: I felt sorry for him. His parties were fantastic. He
bought the servants’ under-linen at Doucet’s; I only laughed when he
told me. Money? Why not spend it! The more he spent, the less would be
left for Jinny, and that, I argued, was all to the good. If only he
could manage to run through the whole lot, then Jinny and I would be
free. Dinner succeeded dinner, dance followed dance. We received half
Europe and were entertained in a dozen capitals. London, Brussels,
Rome, Madrid, we took them all in. It was very different from my picnic
trips with you and Clémentine when we travelled second-class, carried
paper bags of sandwiches and had literary adventures in old book shops
with ancient scholars in skull-caps and spectacles. Philibert and
I travelled in Rolls Royces or in private trains. We had maids and
valets and couriers to smooth away every discomfort and every bit of
unexpectedness. Philibert never missed his morning bath and massage,
his Swede, too, travelled with us.

It was not very interesting. One glass of champagne is like another.
Royal palaces are as alike as cabbages. Everywhere we met the same
people and did the same things. We danced, we gambled, we gossiped, we
ate and drank and changed our clothes, and I was often bored, and often
gloomy. Too much brilliance has the effect of darkness.

In my dismal moods I told myself that I hated it, but probably I
didn’t. No doubt it had become necessary to me to be surrounded by a
crowd of flatterers. We are all fools--And I had no precise idea of
myself. Even at night, when I was alone, and when I should have been
stripped naked to my soul in the dark, I was still wrapped about to my
own eyes, in the flattering disguises of the world’s adulation.

In Jinny’s eyes alone did I seem to see myself as I really was. I
trembled as I looked into them.

I wonder if all women are afraid of their children? Perhaps not, the
woman who has the love of her husband and a clear conscience and a sure
hope of heaven. I had none of these things, and I was afraid. I had
staked everything on Jinny, but my conscience was not clear about her.
Instead of a hope of heaven, I had the hope of her happiness and yet
I knew that I was not doing what was necessary to realize it. What I
was doing was, when one thought it out, futile and ridiculous. I was
wasting my life to save hers; because of her, I had been involved in
this endless round of futility and I was behaving as if I believed that
if I were wretched enough, she would be happy.

What I wanted most of all was to save her from an experience like my
own. For her, there were to be no wretched sordid compromises with
life, no unclean pleasures, no subterfuges, no lying, no fear. She was
to remain good and brave and lovely and I was to find a true man for
her who would love her as I longed to have her loved, reverently.

And in the meantime, she was growing up surrounded by slavish servants,
by doting relatives, by luxury and dissipation and all that I did to
protect her, was to shut her up as much as possible in the schoolroom.

I had always been in the habit of talking to her of Patience Forbes,
her great aunt in America. It had seemed to me important for Jinny to
understand and value my people. I wanted her to love the woman who had
so loved me. To secure for that distant lonely admirable character the
respect and affection of my child was, it seemed to me, my duty. And
as a little girl Jinny had been interested in hearing about the Grey
House in St. Mary’s Plains, the waggon slide down the cellar door,
the attic full of old trunks, crammed with faded panniered dresses
and poke-bonnets, and the back garden full of hollyhocks and bachelor
buttons, and larkspur. She liked to hear of the great river that one
glimpsed between the houses at the bottom of the street behind the
garden, and of the ships that came smiling down laden with lumber from
the great forests, and she would climb into my lap and say--“Now tell
me more about when you were a little girl”--but as she grew older she
lost interest in these stories, and was more and more unwilling to
write to her great aunt and one day, when I finished reading to her a
letter from Patience, she gave a sigh and said petulantly,

“What a boring life--‘_Quelle vie ennuyeuse._’”

“Jinny!” I exclaimed sharply.

“But it is, Mummy. It must be. I see her there. Ah, Mon Dieu, so
dismal. ‘_Une vieille--vieille._’ An old old one--in dusty black
clothes, in a horrid little room. All her stuffed birds round her
in glass cases--so funny! But the atmosphere is cold. It sets the
teeth on edge, and she is ugly, like a man, with big feet and hands.
There--look!” She took up poor Aunt Patty’s photograph from the table.
“Look--what has that old woman to do with me? Why does she write to me
‘My darling little Geneviève’--I’m not her darling, I don’t love her at
all. I don’t want to think of her.”

I was very angry. “Jinny, you make me ashamed.”

“I can’t help it,” she almost screamed at me. “I can’t help it. _C’est
plus fort que moi_--she’s strange--she’s ugly.” And she flung the
photograph on the floor and stamped her feet--her face was white, her
eyes blazing--“I don’t want to think she belongs to us. I don’t want
you to love her,” and she flung herself into a chair in a paroxysm of
angry tears.

I sent her to bed; it was five o’clock in the afternoon, and gave
orders that she was to have bread and milk for her supper but when I
went to her later in the evening, though she was quiet, she stuck to
her idea.

“What did you mean by your terrible behaviour, Jinny?”

She eyed me gravely from her pillow.

“I don’t know, except that it is all dismal and strange in America, and
I can’t like Great Aunt, and if I can’t--why then I can’t--_Cela ne se
commande pas._”

I sat beside her, strangely depressed. Her little white bed with its
rosy hangings, her curly blond head on the lace pillow, the white fur
rug, the shaded lamp, the flickering fire, swam before me, blurred; I
half closed my eyes, and saw another child, an ugly child with a long
pigtail, in a cotton nightgown and flannel wrapper, kneeling by an old
wooden bed in a bare little room, and a tall grizzled woman standing
with a candle while the child said her prayers. “God bless my mother in
Paris and take me to her soon, and make me keep my temper and be like
my Aunt Patty--”

I had failed--I had failed.

But Jinny’s voice roused me. “Papa says it is an ugly country,
America--miles and miles of empty fields, just grass and grass
stretching all round.”

“Your father has never been there.”

“I know, but he knows about it. He says he would never go there,
not for anything, and that I needn’t--so if I’m never to see Great
Aunt--why bother?”

Why indeed? They were too much for me, those two, my husband and my
child.

In my depressed moods I used to go to see Clémentine. She listened
patiently, lying on a couch in purple pyjamas, smoking a cigarette
through a holder a foot long, and watching me intently while I
explained that I was no longer in control of my own life, that I was as
impotent as a paralytic, and that I hadn’t even the feeling of being a
part of anything that made up existence.

“It is all unreal--I have lost touch. I can’t grasp anything. There’s
a space,--‘_infranchissable_,’ between me and it. At times I feel that
the only reality is the past, the remote past. My childhood is real
to me, nothing much else. I remember my home in America, now this
minute sitting in your room, more vividly than the house I left half an
hour ago. Pleasure is a narcotic--I drug myself with it, but I don’t
really understand joy--I understand sorrow. Joy is a perfume that
evaporates--suffering is a poison that remains.”

Clémentine broke in abruptly.

“_Ma chère amie_--take my advice, I know what you need--take a lover.”

I burst out laughing, but she eyed me gravely.

“You laugh, but I know what I am saying. Your life is abnormal, don't
go against nature.” She rolled over on an elbow and laid a hand on my
knee. “You must love--it will wash away all your sick fancies. You’ll
see. Any one you’ve a liking for will do; surely you like some one?
Don’t be romantic, be practical. Face facts. Take things as they are,
and you will find beauty, mystery, rapture and sanity. Beyond the
little prosaic door of compromise you will find the world of dreams.
Believe me, materialism is the only road to happy illusion, and to
remain sane, we must have illusions.”

Well, that was her point of view, and she may have been right. I never
found out. I didn’t take her advice. Perhaps had I done so, I would be
in Paris now content with the illusion she promised me. Who knows?

That sort of thing is the solution of most lives. A growing lassitude,
a growing fear, the feeling that one has missed life, that it will soon
be too late, and at last we give in and take in the place of what we
wanted, what we can get.

I couldn’t. There was no one about who in the slightest degree
resembled a lover--my lover. And I was sick of the subject of love. For
years and years and years it had been served up to me, for breakfast,
for lunch, for dinner. Every theatre, every music hall, every novel one
opened, every comic paper was full of it. Travestied, caricatured,
perverted or idealized, but always the same old thing--sex--sex--sex
in all its ramifications--always monotonously the same; it bored me to
extinction.

Philibert, fastening on this woman then that one, all my friends
falling in and out of love, like ducks round a muddy pond; it put me in
a rage with the world.

The War came--and with it the end of a world.

I sometimes think that God’s final day of judgment will not be so very
different. The Edict will go out from Heaven. Life will stop. Humanity
suddenly arrested on the edge of time will look over the precipice
of Eternity--will pause--will shudder--then, why should it not act?
Why not revolt as it did in 1914 against the menace of universal
destruction? Was it not just like that?

Death was let loose on the earth. And men refusing to die, gave their
lives so that man might live.

The obliteration of life! Something else took its place. All the usual
things of life disappeared, human relationships, amusements, ambitions,
business, hope, comfort. The people vanished. No familiar faces
anywhere. Armies took their place. Men were changed into soldiers, all
alike. Women were turned into nurses. Their personalities fell from
them, they appeared again, a mass of workers, colourless, uniform, with
white set faces in professional clothes.

Our world, Philibert’s and mine suddenly fell to pieces; all the men
servants left, most of the women, called to their houses to send their
men to the war. Philibert found himself one morning a private in an
auxiliary service of the army; he too disappeared. The enemy was
marching on Paris; Ludovic telephoned me to say that I had best leave
for Bordeaux. I packed off Jinny to Nice with her grandmother. A woman
whose work in the slums I had been interested in for some years, was
taking an _équipe_ of nurses to the front. I went with her. Philibert’s
secretary had orders to pack up all the valuables in the house. I
forgot them. I forgot everything.

We went as you know to Alsace--were taken prisoners--sent back again.

On regaining Paris, I turned the house that I had hated into a
hospital. Most of its treasures had already been packed up and sent
away to a place of safety. The empty salons were turned into wards,
my boudoir into an operating room. I enjoyed filling the place with
rows of white iron beds and glass topped tables and basins and pails
and bottles and bandages. It had been a hateful house, it made a good
hospital. When it was in running order, I left again for the front.

I enjoyed the War. It set me free. I reverted to type, became a savage,
enjoyed myself. In a wooden hut, on a sea of quaking mud under a
cracking sky, I lived an immense life. I was a giant--I was colossal--I
dwelt in chaos and was calm. With death let loose on the earth, I felt
life pouring through me, beating in me; I exulted. Danger, a roaring
noise, cold, fatigue, hunger, these my rations, agreed with me. I was
a giantess with chilblains, and a chronic backache; I was a link in an
immense machine, an atom, a speck in an innumerable host of atoms like
myself, automatons, humble ugly minute things doomed to die, immortal
spirits, human beings, my brothers.

I observed that my little tin trunk contained everything needful for
life; soap, warm clothes, rubber boots, a brush and comb. I wanted
nothing; I was content to go for days without a bath. The beef and
white beans of the soldier was sufficient. I ate it ravenously.

I worked and was happy. I lifted battered men in my arms, soothed their
pain, washed their bodies, scrubbed their feet; poor ugly swollen feet
tramping to death in grotesque boots, socks rotting away in them. I
enjoyed scrubbing them. I had, for the business, pails of hot water,
scrubbing brushes, the kind one uses for floors, and slabs of yellow
soap. For some months, it was my job to wash the wounded who came in
from the trenches. Many of them were peasants, old bearded men who
talked patois, in soft guttural voices and called me sister. Their
great coats were covered with mud and blood, they crawled with vermin.
I loved them. They had given their lives, they had given up their
homes, their deep ploughed fields, their children, their cattle. They
did not complain. Their stubborn souls looked out at me kindly from
weary eyes, sunk under shaggy brows, and loving them, my brothers, I
loved France, the France I had not, before, known.

We were sent from one part of the front to another. Our _équipe_ had
a good reputation. Passing through Paris from time to time, I found
opportunities for using money. I gave, gratefully. Supply depots were
organized. Every one was in need, every one was doing something. The de
Joigny family were pleased with me. They made a great fuss over me when
I came to Paris. They spoke of my generosity, my devotion, my courage.
I loved them too, bulking them together with my comrades, my _poilus_,
the men of France.

I had lost track of Philibert during the first months of the war. Then
I heard that he had been put to guard one of the Paris gates. He stayed
there for three months, standing in the road, with a gun, stopping the
motors of officers, looking at passes. Poor Philibert! And there was
no one to take any interest now in what became of him. His world was
finished, his friends could do nothing for him. The France that was at
war with Germany did not know him. The men who were leading the nation
had never heard of him, or if they had, remembered him with a sneer.

Ludovic had entered one of the ministries. I went to him. Philibert,
I pointed out, was being wasted. He was a linguist. A month later he
was given the rank of interpreter and attached to the General Staff.
Occasionally he accompanied Ludovic to London, or Rome, or Boulogne.
Poor Philibert! He would have gone to the trenches if he could. He was
too old. I scarcely saw him, for four years.

When I had leave I spent it with Jinny. He did the same, but our leave
didn’t often coincide.

Jinny came back to Paris and lived with her grandmother. There was a
room kept ready for me in the flat.

Sometimes I motored down from the front, along the thundering roads
where armies moved in the dark, and with the gigantic rumble of motor
convoys, and the pounding of the guns in my ears, I would step into the
little still bright sitting room with its glinting miniatures and silk
hangings to find the two of them rolling bandages or knitting socks.

Jinny seemed to me quite safe there.

And in a way I was glad that the years of her girlhood should be passed
in a seclusion and quiet that would have been impossible in peace
time. There was no one left to spoil her now, no army of servants for
her to order about, no pageant of pleasure to dazzle her eyes. The
problem of her life seemed like everything else to be simplified out of
recognition.

I did not know that Bianca had come back to Paris. I had forgotten her.
Jinny was very sweet to me when I came. She would turn on my bath and
help me take off my things, and wail over my dreadful hands, stained
with disinfectants and swollen with chilblains.

“Oh, darling,” she would say, “how brave you are to do it,” and then
she would shudder and add--“I couldn’t--the sight of blood makes me
sick. How you can bear the ugliness--”

And I would assure her that she was much too young to do nursing.

Your mother was very kind to me. The war had aroused her from the
lassitude of old age. She had risen to meet it. Lifting her gentle head
proudly, she had seemed to look out beyond the confines of her narrow
seclusion, across the years, and to see her country rise before her in
its old beauty, its one-time grandeur.

“France will have her revenge now,” she had said, with a flash lighting
her weary eyes.

And her mind appeared more vigorous. She read all the newspapers or
asked Jinny to read them aloud to her. She took a great interest in my
work, and seemed to regard me as some admirable but inexplicable puzzle.

“You are too brave, _mon enfant_, and too exalted. When the war is over
and you come back to your old habits, to take up your old life--you
will see--”

“Maybe I shall never come back to it, dear--never take up again the old
life as you say.”

And again she smiled, thinking that I was joking, but I was not joking,
my brain was clear, I believe I knew even then, that I would never run
Philibert’s house again.

“You look happy, my child,” she said to me one day.

“I am, _belle-mère_.”

“Ah--but how curious!”

“But dear--it is not as if any one very near or dear were in danger.
Philibert is safe, Blaise too, driving his ambulances.”

“But the horror, the pain, the suffering all round one--look--already
in our family five young men killed--your Aunt Marianne bereft of her
sons--your Uncle Jacques crippled--”

“I know--I know--I do feel for them, and I do feel for France. When I
say that I am happy, I only mean, that for me the equation of life is
so simple, that I am content as never before.”

“I see--you are happy because of the sacrifice you have made--because
of all you have given up in the cause for our country. _Cela est très
beau._”

“No, dear.” I felt bound to try and explain. “It is not that. It is not
fine at all. I haven’t given up anything that I cared about. I have
only got what I wanted. I have found my place, my right place--the
place of a worker.”

She looked puzzled, then turned it off with a smile.

Jinny was growing up and the war was slipping by over her little blond
head like a monstrous shadow. She seemed in that greyness, to become
unreal. I did not know what was going on in her mind.

One night in March 1918 I staggered in on her. I must have been more
tired than I realized. My head was burning. The little soft still room,
your mother with her hair in stiff regular waves, a lace shawl round
her shoulders, and Jinny, smiling over a story book; it was like a
dream.

And Jinny was like a little creature in a dream. Her idle delicate
hands, her plaintive voice were strange. She had on a rose coloured
frock, and was eating sweets. Some one had sent her a box of chocolates.

“Look, Mummy, chocolates--we never have them any more, do we, _petite
mère_?”

I had seen the world rushing to destruction; the powers of darkness
triumphant. Just beyond those walls, along the road, one came to the
edge of the abyss.

“Mummy, I hate the war, _c’est si bête_--when will it end?” she pouted.

Suddenly I was angry; I felt that it was wrong for my daughter to be
like that, wrong and stupid.

“Jinny,” I cried--“are you asleep? Don’t you understand that the world
is coming to an end?”

But she looked at me with curious defiant eyes and asked, “What do you
mean?”

“I mean what I say. Come with me tomorrow. Come and see. Come and
help--you’re no longer a child. Come!” But she drew away from me with a
shiver.

“I couldn’t,” she said in a fine hard little voice.

And your mother broke in,

“Jane, you must be mad to suggest such a thing.”

“But I want her to know--to understand--to share--”

“That is wrong. What is there for her to understand? She is a child.
Her life is not involved in the war. It lies beyond. She should be
protected from this nightmare.”

“I want her with me.”

Your mother shook her head sadly. “If you want her with you, you should
stay at home and look after her. You have been admirable, you have
devoted yourself, but when the war is over, you will perhaps find that
you have made a mistake.”

“Mistake! Would you have me stay at home while men are dying by
thousands!”

She sighed gently. “Ah--well--dear--you know best, but I wonder
sometimes, if you are not deluded--”

Jinny had disappeared. I found her in her bedroom, her head buried in
her pillow.

“I’m a coward,” she sobbed, “a coward. I would be afraid to go.”

I took her in my arms. “My poor little lonely Jinny.” I held her a
long time--a long time--comforting her, conscience-smitten, troubled,
but the next day I left again for the front, following my monstrous
illusion, answering the terrible call of the greatest imposture in
creation. For I was wrong and your mother was right. The war was not a
fine thing. It did not save the world or renew it. It left nothing fine
or noble behind. It was an obscene monster. It called up from the soil
of a dozen continents all the fine strong men, and devoured them, it
summoned out of the heart of humanity, heroism, and it devoured that.
Courage, faith, hope, self-sacrifice, all the dreams of men were poured
into its jaws and disappeared. Nothing was left but broken men, and a
ruined earth.

I ought to have stayed with Jinny. That was my job.

Her nineteenth birthday was a week after the armistice. She had changed
from a child to a woman while I was away, helping men to die uselessly
and suddenly I saw that she was wise as I had hoped never to see her.
She said to me that day,

“I know Mummy about you and Papa--you needn’t pretend any more.”

It was time, the family said, that she should be married.




IX


We lived at the Ritz, Philibert and Jinny and I, and we were all at
sixes and sevens. Philibert’s world was in pieces. He would sit by the
window of our hotel salon that gave out on the Place de la Concorde,
twirling his thumbs and looking at the floor as if he saw the big
bright brittle thing that had been his world, lying about him in
fragments.

My world! I had glimpsed it during those four years in the open; it
had nothing to do with this profane ostentation of luxury, this coming
and going of discreet servants, this ordering of meals and of clothes.
The war had caught me up like a hurricane, had kept me suspended above
the earth in a region of thunder and lightning, had carried me a long
distance. Now that I had dropped to earth again, I could not get my
bearings. The objects about me, the shining motors, the ermine coats,
the jewelled clocks, the rich dandies, the smirkings and grimaces
looked silly, detestable. I had never liked them so very much, now
I hated them. I remembered the _poilus_ of France who had been my
comrades, dogged humble grimy heroes, who plodded to death across
fields of mud in clumsy coats of faded blue that were too big for them;
I thought of France, their France, a nation of men who had humbled me
to the dust and had left me weeping as a sister weeps who is bereft.
I belonged somehow with them, with those who had died, asking me to
send their pitiful treasures to their obscure homes, and with those who
still lived, who would have to begin again now the struggle for their
daily bread. And I felt akin to them in their toil, on the broad brown
life-giving earth under the open sky. I suffocated in Paris.

And the peace they had fought for became in the hands of diplomats and
politicians a tawdry thing. Their glib trivial lips talked of it as
if it were an annoying and exasperating, but still a rather amusing
puzzle; the peace a million men had died for had become the sport of
bureaucrats.

One asked oneself--what was the use?--No use--they had given their
lives in vain. But these were the men who had sent the nations to war.
Had this group of well-fed clerks and shopkeepers the right to condemn
a million innocent men to death? Would they, the men of France, have
gone, had they known, had they understood? Ah, the pity of it,--all the
young, all the strong, all the simple folk were gone. I heard talk of
Alsace-Lorraine, of the Rhine Provinces, of indemnities. Very difficult
it seemed to fix the boundaries of all the new nations that had come
into existence. Impossible to get enough money out of Germany to pay
for the war.

Reparation! Every one was talking of reparation! But how could they
hope to repair the irreparable. The war had been a gigantic crime
against the “people.” Who was responsible? I wanted to get out of this
crowd of jabbering diplomats. I wanted to get away and think things
out, but I couldn’t. Jinny kept me.

Jinny’s world, where was it? What was it to be? That was the immediate
question, the pressing problem. She had told me that she knew all about
Philibert and me. What did that mean? How much did she know? I could
not tell. Her mind was closed to me.

She eyed us, her parents, strangely. “What,” her eyes seemed to ask,
“are you going to do about me? You must do something. You may be done
for, both of you; you may have ruined your lives; I’ve a right to live.”

It was true. We both felt it. Our nerves on edge, we saw and with
exasperating clearness that we ought to join together, try to
understand each other for her sake, and set about the solution of her
future.

But we were strangers. The war had driven us in opposite directions.
We looked at each other across an immense distance. And the fact that
Jinny knew we were strangers to each other made us feel more strange.
It was as if the pretence we had made for her sake had really almost
become a reality; now that we need no longer keep it up, we felt
uncomfortable without it. And we knew further that there was going to
be a struggle between us about Jinny and we were both afraid to open
the subject of her future. And we were both afraid, a little, of her.
She stood there between us, lovely, aloof, mysterious, reading us,
divining our thoughts, judging us. Obscurely we felt this through the
lethargy that enveloped us.

Philibert was peevish. He kept asking me how much longer the Government
would want to keep our house as a hospital. When I said I didn’t know,
he snarled, scuffled his feet and said: “Well, can’t you tell them to
take their wounded away? I want to get back there. I want to reorganize
my existence. This, living like this makes me sick. Who knows what
state the pictures are in? Some may have been stolen. The Alfred
Stevens I’ve reason to believe were not properly packed. Everything
will be damaged. I feel it. I feel it. The Aubusson tapestries from the
blue salon--Janson you say, saw to them--a good firm, but I’m worried,
and any way, it will take months to get everything back. What a world,
what disorder! I detest disorder. Look out there at those American
soldiers on their motor bicycles--riding like mad men--Paris isn’t fit
to live in. It’s too bad--too bad--what is one to do? All these foreign
troops swarming about. One can’t call one’s soul one’s own.”

“They helped to win the war.”

He flung off with a growl. He suspected me of not doing what I could to
help him get back to his house. He knew that had I wanted to I could
have got the wounded transferred at once, but he didn’t want to make
the move himself at the “_Service de Santé_”--for fear that his action
might seem unbecoming, and he was afraid to ask me point blank what my
idea was. I had no idea--I was waiting for something to happen.

I didn’t have to wait long. It is all so curious, the way it worked in
together. Bianca’s coming back. Why should she have come back? She was
a woman of no character. I had frightened her and she had crumpled up
and run away. But she hated me for humiliating her. She could never
forgive me for having broken up her surface of perfection. So under the
monstrous cloak of the war she had crawled back to get in my way, to
trip me up, to do me in, somehow, and she had stumbled on the way to do
it. She had come across Jinny.

And to a woman like Bianca, Jinny must have been like a spring in a
desert, a thing of a ravishing purity and freshness. Like a woman dying
of thirst, she flung herself at the child’s feet. I see it all now in
retrospect. Poisoned, diseased, tired to death, addled and excited by
drugs, sick of men, unutterably bored with herself, here was the one
thing to appeal to Bianca, the one charm capable of distracting her
from the nightmare that possessed her. It is the usual tale of such
women. The cycle is completed. They all end that way. And add to her
corrupt affection for the child the impetus of doing me a final and
deadly hurt and you have the situation before you.

By the time I came back from the front, she was sufficiently intimate
with Jinny to prevail upon the child, never to mention her name to me.
I knew nothing. I was unaware that they had ever spoken to each other.

It would have been better if the family had been frank with me about
their plans for marrying Jinny. It would have been better because it
would have been kinder, and when you want to get round a person it is
as well to try kindness. Also, it would have been more intelligent.
Surely they might have understood me, by this time. How is it that they
did not foresee what would happen? How is it that they did not know
that if they tried to force my hand I would see red? You can persuade
a savage to do almost anything, but if you frighten him, he smashes
things. I was the savage. They should have known better how to deal
with me.

It was foolish to plot and scheme behind my back and plan to put me in
the presence of a “_fait accompli_.”

I can see, nevertheless, why they did it. They were afraid of me. They
distrusted me. After twenty years among them, I remained for them the
“foreigner.” It is painful to me now to realize this, but it was so;
I had not succeeded in becoming one of them. True that during the war
they had admired my work, but alas, even that service now assumed a
strange aspect, for the war, it appeared, had left me very queer. I had
come back with very strange ideas. Once when they were all talking of
the Russian Revolution and the danger of Bolshevism spreading through
Europe, I had said,

“Well, what of it?” They had looked at me aghast. “But Jane,” some one
had cried, “it would be the end of civilization”; and I had, perhaps a
little abruptly, brought out,

“Surely our civilization hasn’t so much to recommend it.”

They tried to laugh it off, but they were really very much worried.
Aunt Clo again sent for me. “I hear you have turned socialist and are
consorting with strange violent men in red ties--”

“That, dear Aunt, is nonsense. I still see Ludovic if you call him
violent, and he has, at my request, presented to me some socialists.
Clémentine and I are interested you know in the strange ferment of
ideas that is the aftermath of the war. Frankly I find these people
more alive than those of my own class, but the socialist deputies don’t
really appeal to me,” and I added maliciously, “they don’t go far
enough. Lenin, now, he is consistent, he has an idea--”

Your Aunt Clo chuckled--“No wonder the family is in a fever about you.”

I was annoyed. “You must tranquillize them. Clem and I go to the
meetings of the third International, but I’m not going to do anything
you know. It’s only that I find it such a bore to go on talking as if
the world were or ever could be as it was before the war. Let me have
any little distractions. They’ll do no one any harm. As long as Jinny
exists, they can feel quite safe. I shan’t throw a bomb or take the vow
of poverty. Communism doesn’t appeal to me when I think of my child. I
want her to be safe.”

At the mention of Jinny your aunt’s face had grown serious, as serious
as such a round expanse of placid flesh could grow.

“Well, what are your ideas for Jinny,” she snapped.

I was startled. I stammered. “My ideas--?”

“Yes--you know don’t you, that she’s got to be married?”

“Ah--but in time. In my country--girls don’t--”

“This isn’t your country. Jinny is nineteen, she’s very conspicuous.
There are already several _prétendants_--”

“_Prétendants?_”

“Yes. Hasn’t Philibert consulted you?”

“No.”

“It is as I thought.”

“What do you mean, Aunt?”

She pounded on the floor with her cane. She was almost impotent now and
spent her days in an armchair, from which she had to be lifted to bed
by two servants. And her temper was short.

“Don’t be a fool! I am warning you. You’d better ask Philibert. Don’t
tell him I told you. Oh well--do if you like, what is it to me, to have
him angry?”

I was very much disturbed but didn’t go to Philibert and ask him what
he was up to, because I wanted to gain time, and it didn’t occur to me
as possible that he would really commit himself without consulting me.
I wanted to gain time for Jinny herself. I had hopes for her of what
seemed to me the happiest of all solutions.

Philibert thinks to this day that the poor little abortive romance of
Jinny and Sam Chilbrook was my doing. Poor sweet babies. I had had no
hand in their falling in love. It had seemed to me to be the work of
God and I had kept out of it.

Sam had come to Paris from the army for the peace conference. He
was attached to the President’s suite. I had known his father and
his mother and his grandfather and grandmother. Every one knew the
Chilbrooks. They lived in Washington and Philadelphia, and the men of
the family had a taste for the diplomatic service. The grandfather you
remember was the American Ambassador in London, years ago. They were
very well off.

Sam was a romantic, with a humorous grin and the nicest voice in the
world. He had nice young eyes, and freckles on his nose. He liked to do
things in a hurry. He met Jinny at luncheon at the American Embassy and
fell in love with her at first sight.

“Please ask me to tea alone,” he said to me after lunch. “I want to
talk to you. I want to marry your daughter”--and he cocked an eyebrow
like a puppy.

I laughed and said, “But I don’t think you can.”

“Please ask me to tea anyway and please Madame de Joigny don’t laugh at
me. Love at first sight is sometimes true love, you know.”

I asked him to tea, and he put us into our car.

Jinny wrapped in grey furs, her face flushed palest pink, her eyes
shining, snuggled up to me and took my hand.

“What a nice lunch party, Mummy.”

“Did you enjoy it, darling?”

“Yes. I talked to the American with red hair. He has a face like a sky
terrier--he was very amusing.” Then with a little sigh, “Darling Mummy,
I do love you so.”

When Sam came to tea--he had seen Jinny twice in the meantime--he
wasted no time.

“I do seriously and truly want to marry your daughter, Madame de
Joigny.”

“But you can’t, she’s a Roman Catholic.”

“That’s easy. I’ll become one.”

I laughed again. I was beginning to adore him. “I will take care of
her,” he said, “as you would want me to take care of her. She would
be safe with me. She would be worshipped. I would kneel to her, and I
would make her happy. She would be happy, I vow to you, she would be
happy.”

“I am afraid it is impossible.”

“Why--?”

“Her father has other ideas.”

“Let me go to him.”

“You may of course, but he will send you packing.”

He flushed painfully and I saw in his eyes a deep shy hurt look, the
look of modesty and innocence--and faith.

“But if she loved me, surely he wouldn’t refuse then--”

“Perhaps not. I don’t know. He might all the same. It would depend on
how much she cared.”

“I will make her care.”

“But,” I broke off, I hesitated. Why should I have been so scrupulous?
What obligation had I to warn Philibert that his daughter might fall in
love with this eligible American? Still I did have a scruple.

“It is not considered fitting, you know, in our French world, for
a young man to pay court to a _jeune fille_ without her parents’
approval.”

“Then what am I to do?”

“I don’t know.”

We sat in silence a moment.

Suddenly he got up. He stood there before me, tall, clean, honest.

“You’re not against me, Madame de Joigny?”

“No, I’m not against you.”

“Well then, I guess I know what to do. I guess I can wait. You can
trust me, you know. I won’t bother your daughter. All the same, we are
all in Paris together, and I can’t help seeing her sometimes, can I?”
His eyes smiled, but he was very serious. I realized how serious he was
when Philibert remarked a few days later that he had met quite a nice
young American lunching at the Jockey Club, quite a man of the world,
a national polo player, a Monsieur Chilbrook. Did I know him? Yes, I
said I knew him, and had known his family always. Philibert thought
I might ask him to dinner with Colonel and Mrs. House, the following
week. I did so, but Sam made me no sign. He was perfectly correct. The
only thing that was noticeable was his successful effort to interest
Philibert. I myself was surprised. Poor Sam--little good it did him.

Jinny seemed happy. She enjoyed being grown up and going to parties. In
June we gave her a coming out ball, for in spite of all my premonitions
we had again taken possession of our house. After that I took her to
a number of dances. She was surrounded by young men of course. Sam
was only one of a dozen; she treated them all with the same radiant
aloofness. She made me no confidences. Her intimacy with her father
was greater than ever. Together they had supervised the unpacking and
rearrangement of the household treasures. Philibert was educating her.
I observed that she had his flair for bibelots. She had already all the
patter of the amateur collector. They went shopping together a good
deal. More often than not, coming in from some luncheon I would find
that they had gone out together for the afternoon.

On one such day, when I was sitting alone, Sam Chilbrook was announced.
He was troubled. His eyes were dark, his young face tired.

“Jinny loves me, I know she does, Madame de Joigny, but she is unhappy.
It is time I went to her father. You see I’m afraid,” he stammered,
“afraid that she won’t have the courage--if I don’t--”

“But have you spoken to her--I thought you promised.”

“I’ve not spoken--I’ve kept my promise, but I wish you hadn’t exacted
it. I know your daughter now. I know her character, and I love her. She
spoke yesterday in a way that frightened me--”

“What did she say?”

“She said that she loved her father better than any one in the world.”

“That was all?”

“Yes, no--not quite.”

“What else did she say?”

“She said that if it came to a struggle between them, or between you
and him about her--she was sure she would do what he wanted.”

“Well, then go to him!” He left me at five; it was that same afternoon
only a few minutes after he had gone, that you, Blaise, were announced.

I understand now what it cost you to do what you did. _Tout simplement_
it cost you the affection of your family. You ranged yourself on my
side, against them. That was what it amounted to. That anyway was the
way they took it.

I remember your face when you told me that I had best go round to your
mother’s flat at once, that Philibert and Jinny were there and some
other persons whom I ought to see. I didn’t at first grasp what you
meant. What other persons? The little Prince Damas de Barbagne of the
family des Deux Ponts and his uncle.

“In your mother’s drawing-room?”

“Yes.”

“With Jinny?”

“Yes.”

“But I refused to present him to her only a few months ago.”

“I know.”

“What then--?” Suddenly it dawned on me.

“Philibert!” I almost shouted, “Philibert has done this without
consulting me. That miserable little creature.”

You nodded.

I knew the Damas boy. Philibert and I had stayed with his uncle in
their dreadful old prison of a place.

The young man had made on me a very disagreeable impression. His
reputation was of the worst, and his appearance did not belie it. He
was small and weak legged and had no chin. His skin was bad and his
eyes yellow. He professed in those days a great admiration for the
Crown Prince of Germany, and I fancy had taken the latter as his model.
One of the things that amused him was, I found out, the torturing of
animals. Fan had told me a tale about him that I had never forgotten.

One day he was terribly bored. Not knowing what to do with himself
he brought all his dogs into the house. He had twelve, all kinds,
greyhounds, setters, great danes. He told his man to keep them in
one of the salons, while he went into the next one, and loaded his
revolver. Disgusted with life, he had become disgusted with his dogs.
He called them one by one. Then as they came through the door, shot
them dead. He didn’t miss one. He got each one between the eyes.

“Pour parlers” of marriage were going on you told me, between Philibert
and the august uncle of this heir to a bankrupt principality. I saw
it all. The house of the Deux Ponts was royal. It was a branch of the
Nettleburgs but had maintained a strict neutrality during the war. With
nearly every throne in Europe crumbling into dust, Philibert still
wanted a crown for his daughter’s head. In the midst of the savage
passion of anger that had seized me, I could have yelled with laughter.
Philibert still believed in his ridiculous baubles. He wanted to put
his little girl on a throne. Well, I would stop him.

She was mine. She was mine.

I had borne her out of my body. She belonged to me. I remembered
the months before she was born, I remembered the child in my womb,
stirring--the obscure passionate tenderness welling up in me--the
mysterious sense of union. I remembered Philibert’s disgust with my
deformity, his constant absence. He had left me to myself during those
months. He had left me, of course, to go to other women. I had brought
Jinny into the world alone. The pain had been mine, and mine the
ecstasy. What had Philibert to do with my child?

Now they proposed to dispose of her without my consent. They proposed
to hand her over to a degenerate. Well, they wouldn’t, I wouldn’t stop
them.

My entrance created something of a sensation in your mother’s
drawing-room. They were all there. I had time to take them all in,
while they stared at me. The august uncle who looked like the Emperor
Francis Joseph was standing in the window with Philibert. Your mother
had Jinny on one side of her, at the tea table, the Princeling on the
other. Her face blanched when she saw me. There was terror in her eyes,
physical terror, what did she think I was going to do?

Philibert was of course the first to recover himself. He came forward
in his most perfect manner.

“_Chère amie_, I am so glad that after all you were able to come. I had
explained to his Royal Highness about your terrible migraine--”

I took his cue. The pompous uncle and the pimple-faced Damas kissed
my hand, first one then the other. I asked your mother for a cup of
tea, and drank it slowly, conscious of Jinny’s eyes on my face. What
did they mean, those great brown starry eyes? What was going on in her
mind? I hadn’t any idea.

“I have interrupted you,” I said putting down my teacup. “Pray continue
your talk.”

No one spoke.

“You were perhaps gathered together for a purpose that concerns my
daughter? No?”

Philibert went crimson; the uncle coughed; I waited; your mother
rattled the tea things; she looked at Philibert, he looked at her.
“_Mon enfant_,” she quavered, at last, “His Royal Highness has honoured
you with a demand for your daughter’s hand in marriage, and as you
no doubt are aware, your husband,” her voice almost failed her, but
she controlled it, “your husband, my son, is disposed to think that
possibly these two young people would be very happy together.”

“Is it to ask their opinion that they have been brought here?” I asked
quickly.

The uncle coughed again. The little shrimp at the table stammered--“Not
at all, not at all. My opinion is very well known to Monsieur de
Joigny. I should be honoured.”

I rose to my feet. I knew now just how far matters had gone. They had
gone very far indeed! I had no choice. It was necessary to be quite
definite. I faced the older man.

“There has been a mistake, your Highness, I do not approve of this
marriage.”

Philibert made a jump towards me--an exclamation. I waved him off.

“I have other ideas for my daughter. You must excuse me from explaining
what they are. And now I must beg you to let me take this child home.
Come Geneviève.” For a moment she hesitated, her poor little face
crimson, her eyes filled with tears. I took her hand and drew her with
me out of the door.

That night Philibert and I had a terrible scene. I need not go into it
in detail. I cannot bear to recall it. It seems incredible now that
we should have behaved as we did. Things were said that will rankle
for ever, things that would have made it impossible, even if it hadn’t
been for the last ghastly episode of Bianca, for us to go on living
side by side. I look back with shame to that hour, I must have been
beside myself. What was goading me on more than anything else, was
the realization that Jinny was against me. She had been shocked by my
behaviour. That was how it had struck her. She had been horrified and
humiliated. That was all. I saw it in her eyes. She didn’t care to know
why I had done what I did. She only hated my having done it. She looked
at me with fear and almost, I thought, with a shiver of repulsion.

I refused to give Jinny a penny if he married her off without my
approval. He informed me that I could not, by French law, disinherit
her and that he would find a way of bringing me to my senses. As for
Sam Chilbrook--Philibert dealt with him the next morning, I don’t know
what he said to him, but the boy never came back. I never saw him
again. It must have been something pretty horrible.




X


There is little more to tell you. You know about Jinny’s subsequent
marriage and how after all Philibert, if he did not secure Prince
Damas, his heart’s desire, is still well enough satisfied with the
young Duke, his son-in-law. Philibert wanted the Duke, so I let him
have him. Jinny wanted the house in Paris so I gave it to her. The
three live there together, quite harmoniously I am told. And I? I do
not pretend that Jinny’s husband is a cad. He is no doubt, as nice as
most young men about town. I merely regret that he does not love her
nor she him. Doubtless they will get on very well once that fact is
established between them.

You see Jinny’s marriage was my supreme failure. I have lost her, I can
never do anything more for her. She will never turn to me in joy--or in
trouble.

She hates me. It was because she came to hate me that I gave way. She
believed that I killed Bianca. I didn’t, but then I might have, I have
no way of knowing whether or not I would have killed her.

I am trying to explain to you why I have come back to St. Mary’s
Plains. You remember Patience Forbes’ will. It read--“To my beloved
niece Jane Carpenter, now called the Marquise de Joigny, I leave the
Grey House and all that is in it, because some day, she may want some
place to go.” Well, she was right--I came back because I had no other
place to go to. I came back but I came too late. The people who lived
here and who loved me are all dead and I cannot, somehow, communicate
with them as I had hoped to. I do not know what Patience Forbes would
say of my life, and I shall never know. Her ghost does not comfort me
because I failed her too. I let her die, here alone.

They found her, you know on the floor by her bed, in her dressing gown,
the candle on the table burned down to its socket; she must have been
saying her prayers. Her Bible was open on the patchwork quilt; her
spectacles were beside it and three of my letters, some weeks old,
also, strangely enough, a facsimile (reduced) of the Declaration of
Independence, with a pencil note “To send to Jane.” You know how it
reads: “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for
one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them
with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate
and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God
entitle them.... We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men
are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit
of Happiness--”

The last lines I have quoted were underlined. What did she mean by
them? What did she want them to mean for me, lying there, dying, going
out on the great journey alone from the empty Grey House--dead, alone
in the house through that long night with the Bible and the Declaration
of Independence beside her?

I do not know what she meant--I only know that I left her alone to die.

And I do not know whether I have come back defeated or victorious. In
the conduct of life I was defeated. Whenever I tried to do right, I
did wrong. To the people I loved I was a curse. I had a few friends.
You remain, and Clémentine and Ludovic. But I must lose you too, now.
I feel it my destiny to be alone. I did not understand how to live
among men. But there are hours when sitting here in this shabby room,
I am conscious of a feeling of high stark bitter triumph. At such
times I think of my father’s grave over there beyond the horizon, on
a wide prairie under a high sky. A stone. That stone and I are linked
together. I loved Philibert once, I love Jinny. I am alone now, but
I shall hold out. I shall not give in. My life has been wasted, but
I shan’t end it. I shall see it through. It stretches behind me, a
confused series of blunders. I try to understand. It is finished, but I
go on living. There is nothing left for me to do but wait. Maybe if I
wait long enough I shall understand what it is all for.

I love France, but I had to come back here, and I know that I will
stay. It is right for me to be here. It is fitting and just. In some
way that I cannot explain the equation of my life is satisfied by my
coming, and the problem--I see it as clear, precise and cold as a
problem in algebra--is solved.

Here, in St. Mary’s Plains there is nothing for me. The big bustling
awkward town is full of strangers who have no time to interest
themselves in a derelict woman who has drifted back to them from
“foreign parts.” My return seems to those who remember me to be a
confession of failure. They are not interested in failure, so they
leave me alone. It is as well. I did not come back to talk but to
think. I did not come back to begin something new, but to understand
something old and finished. I do not need these bright brave ignorant
young people. To do what I am doing it is necessary to be alone.

But to go back to my story. Jinny had a shivering fit that night,
after the scene in your mother’s flat. Her maid called me. She lay on
her back in bed her teeth chattering, her knees drawn up and knocking
together. We put hot water bottles to her feet and her sides. It was a
warm night late in June, but she kept whispering that she was cold. The
doctor when he came said that it was nerves. He prescribed bromide and
perfect quiet for some time, afterwards a change. He told me that she
had a hypersensitive nervous organism, and should be protected always
as much as possible from excitement or emotional strain.

She slept quietly towards morning. Her hair clung to her forehead in
little damp curls, soft pale golden hair like a child’s. Her closed
eyelids were swollen above the long brown eyelashes. She lay on her
side with both hands together under her cheek, her lovely young body at
rest. Beautiful Jinny.

I sat watching her. The sound of her father’s voice and of mine, saying
hideous things rang in my ears.

Beyond the open window, the darkness was turning to light. All about
were still shuttered houses filled with sleeping people, a million
sleeping men and women. Their dreams and their weariness, and their
disappointments seemed to be rising like a mist above the hot close
houses.

I had promised Patience Forbes to love Jinny enough--enough for what?
Enough--for this--to save her this.

I had failed, and I felt old, so very old, and at the same time
my heart was full of childish longings and weakness. If only some
one would come and comfort me. If only some one would take my
responsibilities from me. I wanted help and relief. I thought of you. I
knew that you, Blaise, would have helped me, but Philibert had shut the
door in your face that evening and had snarled at me horrible things,
saying he would never have you in the house again. He had accused you
and me of a criminal affection for each other. I remembered his livid
face and twitching lips. A feeling of sickness pervaded my body and
soul. Jinny, asleep, was fragrant as a flower. I was contaminated,
unclean.

Suddenly she was there,--Patience Forbes, my Aunt Patience, standing
on the other side of Jinny’s bed. She had on her black mackintosh and
her bonnet with the strings tied in a knot under her chin. But she was
not quite as I had last seen her. The wisps of hair that straggled down
under her bonnet were white. There was something terrible and grand
about her. She was old, very old. Her face was brown and withered.
She looked thin, emaciated, her eyes sunken. She looked starved. Her
clothes were very shabby, the clothes of a poor woman. She was grand
and terrible. Her sunken eyes shone with a splendour I had never seen
before. She was looking down at Jinny--I saw her smile an ineffable
smile of unutterable beauty, then I waited breathlessly, with such
longing, with an anguish of longing. Surely in a moment she would turn
to me, gather me into her arms--now--now she was turning--

“Mummy--what time is it?” Jinny was sitting up in her bed rubbing her
eyes, yawning. Sunlight shone through the parted curtains. I looked at
my watch.

“Seven o’clock, darling.”

“I would like some coffee. Is any one about? I’m so hungry. Oh dear--”
She sank back onto her pillow. “I remember now, I remember--why did I
wake up?”

The next day, I received a cable announcing my Aunt Patience’s
death. Jinny was lying on her “chaise longue” eating chocolates. She
said--“Poor thing, but she was very old, wasn’t she?”

“Yes, seventy-five years old.”

“Older than _grandmère_!”

“Yes, several years older--” Jinny was not interested. There was no one
in Paris who had ever seen Patience Forbes.

Jinny seemed quite well again; only a little languid and silent. She
spent most of the day on her chaise longue, reading, having her nails
manicured, having her hair brushed, eating sweets, dozing; she was
quite affectionate.

One evening she said, “I think, Mummy, that I would like to go into a
convent.” She had on, I remember, a white satin négligé trimmed with
white fox, and emerald green brocade slippers. I must have smiled.

“Don’t smile, Mummy. I’m not joking, I have thought it all out. ‘_Il
faut se connaître._’ I am weak, I have a weak character. I liked Sam
Chilbrook, but I didn’t dare say so. I disliked the Prince very much,
I didn’t dare say so. If you and Papa could agree, I would be content
to do what you decided for me--but you can’t agree. No, no, don’t be
tragic. Don’t be so sorry. Let us be reasonable. If you never agree
on a husband for me, I must either choose one for myself and run off
with him and be married, or become an old maid. Neither seems a very
nice idea, does it--but to be a nun--that is beautiful. You remember
when I was little and tried to lead the saintly life--you thought it
ridiculous. You did not understand. There is something in me that
you do not take seriously because I am lazy and like pretty things
and marrons glacés. But it is there all the same. If you were a true
Catholic I could explain. To be a nun is beautiful--beautiful, and I
would be safe there, and out of the way. For you and Papa there would
be no more problem, you would not have to live together any more. And
the sisters love me; they would be glad to receive me. They are so
gentle, so sweet--you have no idea, and quite happy you know. Sometimes
they laugh and make little jokes, like children. It is much happier in
the convent than here.”

It was I that broke down then, and cried. I cried miserably, ugly
tears, sobbing against Jinny’s languid knees. I, a middle-aged woman,
disfigured, with a swollen face, a great, strong, tired, drab creature,
in whose tough body life had gone stale, was humbled before my
beautiful child.

I asked her forgiveness. Brokenly I begged her to be kind. And I
apologized to her. Kneeling beside her I tried to explain my inability
to believe in any creed, any dogma of the Church, I spoke of truth,
I proclaimed as if before a high spiritual judge, my honest search
for truth. Pitiful? Yes--but do you not believe that it is often
so--mothers kneeling to their children, avowing their mistakes, their
failures, begging for love?

I was desperate to destroy the thing that separated us--I was so lonely
so alone--it seemed to me that this moment held my one chance, my one
hope of drawing my child close to me. I looked up at her. Cool, lovely
youth holding aloof, if only she would come, if only she would respond
and take me in her slim fresh innocent arms. Ah, the relief it would
be--the comfort!

“Jinny--Jinny--love me--I need your love, I am your mother. I am
growing old. There is no one left for me to turn to--no one to advise
me, no one to care for me, except you. Do you realize what I mean? My
life is finished, it goes on only in you, only for you. Jinny, Jinny,
don’t you understand, I need you.”

She stroked my hair lightly with delicate fingers, but looking up, I
saw that her face was contracted in a nervous spasm--of distaste. A
moment longer I waited staring up at her face with a longing that must
have communicated itself to her, a longing so intense that I felt it
going out of me in waves but she made no sign.

“I do love you, Mummy--you know I do,” she said in a dull little voice.

I stumbled to my feet and left the room.


Philibert had gone away, so when the doctor said a few days later
that Jinny should go to Biarritz it was I who took her, though I knew
she would rather have gone with some one else. I should have sent her
with a companion. Had I left her alone then things might have been
mended, but I was too jealous, and though I knew the truth in my heart
I couldn’t bear to admit that my child didn’t like being with me. I
kept on thinking of ways to win back her love, silly feeble ways. I
was like a despairing and foolish lover who cannot bring himself to
leave the object of his passion though he knows that everything he does
exasperates her. I had no pride. I gave her presents. I did errands for
her that the servants should have done. With a great lump of burning
pain in my heart I went on smiling and busy, avoiding her eyes and
fussing about her, and she was exquisitely patient and polite.

I do not know to this day whether Bianca followed us to Biarritz
knowingly and with intent, or not. Clémentine told me afterwards
that she had seen Bianca with Philibert at Fontainebleau at the Hôtel
de France on the Sunday, the day he left Jinny and me, after our
scene, but whether she learned from Philibert during the week they
spent together of Jinny’s whereabouts and tracked her down, I cannot
tell. Probably not. Yet it may be.... It is all so strange that one
can believe anything. Philibert and Bianca together--after all those
years--that in itself is extraordinary. What sort of relationship could
have existed between them at the end? I don’t know. I do not attempt to
understand. They were people beyond my comprehension, but some thing
that they possessed in common, some bond, some feeling profound and
complex, had evidently survived.

It is useless dwelling upon their problem. Revolting? Evil? I suppose
so, and yet their infernal passion has somehow imposed upon me a dread
respect. Philibert after Bianca’s death crumpled up as if by magic
into a silly little old man. I saw it happen to him, there in that
hotel where he came rushing on receipt of the news. He stood in my
room shaking and disintegrating visibly before my eyes, profoundly
unpleasant, pitiful. It was as if Bianca had held in her hand the vital
stuff of his life, and as if with her death he was emptied of all
energy and power.

All this happened you see at Biarritz where Bianca came and found us.

I am almost sure that I did not think of killing Bianca, even at the
very end, when I found myself in her room, standing over her. And yet,
if she hadn’t taken that overdose of morphine herself, that very night,
what would have happened I don’t know.

It is very curious, her dying like that, whether by accident or intent,
no one will ever know, on just that night, and in just that place,
involving me in Jinny’s eyes, for ever. God knows there were plenty of
other places on the earth where she might more logically have chosen
to breathe her last. Why not in Venice in that great dark vaulted
palace of hers with the black water lapping under her balcony? Or in
her castle in Provence, where she lived with her demons, or in Paris in
the red lacquer den with its golden cushions? Any one of those settings
would have been more in keeping--but in the Plage Hôtel--above the sea,
no, there was no poetic justice in her choosing that spot. And if it
was an accident, then the freakish spirit who planned it did it with
his diabolical eye on Jinny and me.

We had been a week in Biarritz. Jinny had found some young people with
whom she played tennis in the afternoon. Occasionally I left her for a
game of golf. One day coming back I saw her sitting on the terrace with
a woman whose eccentric elegance was familiar, but whom I did not at
first recognize. I saw her back, long and narrow, a fur wrap slipping
from the shoulders, an attenuated arm hanging across the back of her
chair. Jinny, all in white, her hair a golden halo in the light of the
sun that was setting behind her, was facing her. Their faces were close
together. The older woman was leaning forward. She had Jinny’s hand in
both of hers. There was about this pose something intimate and intense.
Jinny started up at the sight of me, and the woman turned her small
dark head round and gave me a little nod. It was Bianca.

She was very much changed. I remember every detail of her appearance,
her red turban, her soiled white gown, her fur coat that looked somehow
rather shabby. She was carelessly dressed, she had an air both tawdry
and neglected. Actually she didn’t look clean. Her face was startling.
The makeup was badly done. Once it had been a smooth even white, now
the eyelids were yellow and on the thin cheek-bones were spots of red.
The finger nails of the beautiful hand that hung limp over the back
of her chair were enamelled pink but dirty. She had obviously been
going down hill at a rapid pace, and for one instant this realization
in the midst of my panic at finding her with Jinny, gave me pleasure.
For Bianca to turn into an untidy hag; that was something to make me
wickedly exultant.

She looked at me calmly out of her monstrous eyes. “It is centuries
since we met,” she said. I did not reply. I was trembling and I saw
that she saw my trembling. Her discoloured eyelids lifted, and sent
out their old fiery blue light. Her eyes grew more enormous. She
stared into mine and her thin pointed lips curved into a smile. “Not
since Deauville, after the death of poor Fan Ivanoff--four, five, six
years--is it not? Before the war. I have been so little in Paris.” Her
eyelids fluttered, her eyes deadened, a curious lassitude spread over
her suddenly. She drooped in her chair, she was like a bruised soiled
faded plant, almost to me she seemed to exhale the odour of decay.
“I have travelled--I have wandered--Spain--Portugal--America--Buenos
Aires--I am so restless, I go anywhere--” her voice trailed off. She
gave herself a little jerk. Her eyes slid to Jinny, dwelt upon her.
“Your daughter and I have been talking. ‘_Quel amour d’enfant_’--so
_exaltée_, so sensitive.”

Jinny, it seemed to me, was rather pale. She stood nervously clasping
her hands, her eyes moving from one of us to the other.

“The Princess brought me a message from Papa,” she said in a shrill
defiant note.

“Ah yes, I saw him just the other day--where was it? I cannot remember,
I have no memory, but he told me you were here.”

The long unclean hand again went out to Jinny. It caressed her arm. I
shivered. “Don’t,” I muttered in spite of myself.

Bianca jerked, a nervous twitch, and gave a little laugh.

“Ah, you see, my child, your mother doesn’t like--” She broke off.
Jinny’s face was crimson now. “Never mind--she is perhaps right. I will
leave you now. I go to the Casino. It is all so boring. Perhaps later--”

She did not look back at us as she trailed away. I thought to see
toads jumping up from the imprint of her feet.

Upstairs, I said as quietly as I could:

“How is it that you know the Princess?”

“Papa introduced me to her long ago--when I was quite a little girl.”

“You have seen her since?”

“Yes.”

“Often?”

“Several times.”

“You admire her?”

“Yes--she is strange. I like strange things.”

“I do not like her at all,” I said curtly.

Jinny sat on the edge of a table, poking into a box of chocolates.

“Why don’t you like her, Mummy?”

“Because she is a bad woman.”

“Oh no, surely you are wrong. She is Papa’s oldest friend.” She popped
a sweet into her mouth.

“Who told you that?”

“She did herself--and besides, I know--I have known a long time. She
was his first romance, his--what do you call it,--his calf love.”

I burst into harsh laughter. My laugh sounded to me ugly and terrible.
Jinny’s face went pale; I crossed to the window.

“What else did she tell you?” I asked with my back to her.

“She has told me about life in convents, she is very devout. She has
often been in convents to ‘_faire une retraite_.’ She says it is very
soothing there, but that I should not be in a hurry about making a
decision.”

“Ah!”

“Yes--she seems to understand me--she conveys much sympathy. She has a
magnetism--it draws one.”

“I know.”

“What is the matter, Mummy? You are angry. I feel sorry for the
Princess, she is so alone in the world, and she says she loves me,
that she is wonderfully attracted to me, that I would do her good.
She called herself laughing you know, but with a sadness--she called
herself ‘_une damnée_.’”

I could contain myself no longer. “_Une damnée_--well, that’s just
what she is--” I wheeled about. I felt my voice rising in spite of me.
“I forbid you ever to speak to her again. Do you understand? You must
never speak to her again.” My child’s face hardened. The eyes widened,
the nostrils dilated. She was very pale. Something sinister seemed to
rise between us. She receded from me.

“Don’t--don’t!” she whispered backing away.

“Don’t--don’t what?” I cried back. “You don’t want me to stand between
you and this horrible woman who has ruined my life--ruined your
father--ruined us all--and who wants now to ruin you.”

“No, no, no--don’t say such things.” She was screaming too now. “It is
wicked of you to say such things. I don’t believe it. I don’t believe
you. I won’t believe it. I love Papa, I love Papa better than you,
better than you. You have done it. You have ruined his life. I know it,
I have seen it. I have seen you look at him with hatred. How do you
think it feels to see one’s parents hating each other? Ruined? Yes, you
have ruined my life. You--you--you ought never to have brought me into
the world. I wish I were dead--I wish I were dead--” She rushed into
her room and banged the door.

I told myself looking out over that horrible sea, immense, restless
and cold, that nothing irretrievable had happened, that Jinny would
come back to me, that she would forgive, that things would be the
same. But I had no faith, and what did that mean, if things were the
same. Was that sufficient as a basis for the future? What if we went
on and on having scenes--screaming at each other. I was ashamed, and
shaken, and I was afraid. Bianca had come back--Bianca was there, down
the corridor--close to us, close to Jinny. “Une damnée”? she called
herself.

I must take Jinny away in the morning, but what good would that do in
the end? Bianca would follow us sooner or later to Paris. Jinny would
be sure to see her. I had a ridiculous picture of Bianca pursuing us
from place to place, lying in wait for Jinny--laying infernal schemes.
I remembered what I had recently heard of her strange habits, her
vicious tastes, of the effect she had had on certain women. I saw her,
a restless, haunted damned soul, the slave of infernal passions, a
prowl in the world, hunting for victims, growing more implacable as she
grew old.

I dressed for dinner. Jinny sent word she would dine in bed. On the
way to the lift, I saw Bianca go into her room. She looked back at me
over her shoulder, half smiling but with a curious look in her eyes.
Was it fear? Was it regret? I thought for a long time of that look, I
thought of it all evening sitting in my high window, listening to the
interminable boom of the waves. Her presence, near, under the same roof
was intolerable, like a dreadful smell, or an excruciating nagging
sound. I was feeling again, even now, through my terror for Jinny, and
in spite of my sickened sense of the woman’s decay, the impact of her
personality. She existed there beyond my door, special, vivid, intense,
and I began to feel her decrepitude as a reproach, her ruin as a
responsibility. Moment by moment I felt her, exerting on me a horrible
pressure. There had been in her dreary face, an appeal, a claim, a
despair that laid on me a weight. In her eyes, there had been, memory.
It was that that haunted me. Somehow, actually, her eyes had reflected
the past and had dragged my mind back, afar back to the days when we
had been friends. I remembered everything. In their deep burning blue
light that was like a lamp lighted inside a corpse, I saw her youth
and my youth glowing, and I remembered how we had been together, two
strong young things, curiously linked, responding to each other, with a
sympathy that should have been a good thing to us. She had said once,
“Jane, I love you--you are the only friend I have ever had.” And I
remembered the day she had talked to me of herself in that old castle
in Provence, above the white road and dusty vineyard.

I felt sick and was aware of an intolerable physical pain in my side.
Bianca, who had been so beautiful, and whom I had loved divinely once,
was a rotten rag now, soiled, dingy, bad smelling--and I hated her. We
hated each other. Our youth was gone--and all its beauty. There was
nothing under the sun but ugliness and hatred and the principle of life
was decay.

I walked the room. Jinny was asleep--lovely youth--fresh and sweet.
What would become of her? Bianca and I were two old women, done for.

To protect Jinny from her, Jinny who hated me, that was all I could do
now. I must go to Bianca. Either she would respond to me and give in to
me because of the memory that had stared out of her face, or I would
make her; I would force her to do what I wanted as I had done before,
but this was to be the last time--this must be the end.

I looked in at Jinny. She seemed to be asleep. Out in the corridor some
one had turned the light low. The long red carpet of the corridor led
straight to Bianca’s room. I went out quickly closing the door after
me. It took an instant to reach the door of Bianca’s sitting room. I
knocked. There was no answer. I opened it and went in. To the right
another door was open, a light shone through. Bianca was in bed. I
could see her. Her eyes were closed. The lamp beside her bed shone on
her face, a peculiar odour pervaded the room. “I will wake her and have
it out with her,” I thought to myself.

I went into the bedroom. A number of bottles, a small aluminum saucepan
and a hypodermic syringe were on the night table beside her. She was
breathing heavily and noisily, drawing quick, regular, snoring breaths.
It was obvious that she was drugged; the noise of her breathing was
very ugly. Her face was sharp and pinched and evil. An extraordinary
disorder prevailed in the room. I remember now being astonished by it.
Untidy heaps of underwear about, not very clean, dragged lacey things
on the floor, a high-heeled slipper on the centre table, a litter on
the toilet table that reminded one of an actress’s dressing room, a
tray with a champagne bottle and a plate of oyster shells on the end of
the chaise longue. And pervading every thing that horrid odour of drugs
and the sound of snoring.

I stood for a moment looking down at the woman in the bed. The sight
of her filled me with loathing. How unclean she was! She was like a
corpse. Already she was half dead. She was something no longer human,
scarcely alive. Her sleep had the quality of a disease, her breath was
poisonous.

Suddenly I felt some one beside me. It was Jinny, wrapped in her
dressing gown. White as a sheet, she stood staring down at that
dreadful face. “I heard you open the door,” she whispered, “I followed
you. What is it? What is the matter?”

“Nothing,” I murmured. “She is drugged, that is all.” I pointed to the
bottle of ether, the syringe in its little box. “Come,” I repeated
nervously, “come away.” It was horrible to have Jinny in that room.

“But, Mummy, can’t we do something, oughtn’t we to do something?”

“No--come--it’s nothing--I mean she’s used to it.” I dragged Jinny away.

The next morning, the people in the hotel were informed that the
Princess was dead. She had died in the night of an overdose of morphine.

It was Marie, Jinny’s maid, who burst in on her with the news, while
she was having her café au lait in bed. I heard Jinny give a shriek and
ran in to her--she had fainted.

Isn’t it strange the way it all happened? One would think that God
had a hand in it, but if there is a God, why should He want my child
to believe that I had committed a murder? It is that that I do not
understand.


Jane’s narrative was ended with those words. She had talked that last
night of my visit to her in St. Mary’s Plains, until nearly morning.
Her forehead grew damp as she talked and her lips dry and her words
carried along the sustained note of her voice like little frightened
sounds.

And during all those hours that she talked, I remember hearing no other
sound. I heard no voice in the street, nor the sound of trams going
by nor of dogs barking. In our concentration we were as cut off from
contact with the living world as if the whole city of St. Mary’s Plains
had been turned to stone.

That was just a year ago today. I suppose she is still there in that
meagre faded room, I can see her there, sitting in the high wooden
chair that belonged once upon a time to Patience Forbes. The wind is
hurrying across the immense prairies of her awful wide empty country.
It rattles the windows of that frail wooden house. She is alone there.

Last night we talked of Jane in Ludovic’s rooms. Clémentine was there
and Felix, we had been to Cocteau’s ballet. Jane would have enjoyed it,
they said; she would have understood the joke, and perceived the beauty.

Clémentine moved restlessly about. “What is she doing now, I wonder?
Surely she is doing something--”

“She is thinking things out.”

“Good God!” groaned Felix. “Our Jane--our great haughty creature--she
wasn’t meant to think. She was meant to be looked at--she ought never
to have had an idea in her head. What a waste--what a wicked waste.”

Clémentine on a footstool by the fire nursed her knees. “She did really
think we were immoral. We took life as a joke. She couldn’t understand.
She believed in the Bible--all the part about being wicked. She didn’t
know it, but her creed was the ten commandments. She is a victim of
the ten commandments.”

Ludovic shook his head. “She was right,” he said, “all her life she
wanted to do right--now she has done it. She has gone back to her
people. She should never have come here. There was nothing for her
here, but ourselves.”

“And were we nothing?” cried Clémentine, “didn’t we love her well?
Didn’t we understand?”

“No, we didn’t understand. And we didn’t count. We didn’t count for
her.”

Ah, Jane, Jane, it was true. We didn’t count. In all your story, you
scarcely alluded to us. We were just your friends who loved you, and
we didn’t count. If only you could know what we know about yourself;
if only you knew how we cared for you beyond all the differences of
conduct; if only you could have realized that life is not a thing to
fear, that it is a little trivial thing, or again, just a thing like
food, an element like air, to be eaten, or breathed or enjoyed. But you
thought it a mysterious gift, a terrible responsibility, a high and
serious obligation, with a claim on your soul. You thought it a thing
you could sin against. You confounded life with God.

This little street is so quiet tonight, so quiet and small. It shuts
me in. It shuts me comfortably in, but beyond it there is a great
distance--a great land--a great sea--a high and terrible sky.


THE END



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