The Countess Titonius appeared one day at one of Elena’s teas. The
Countess was a Russian lady who had married a Scandinavian nobleman, by
which act she had cast him into such complete eclipse that no one could
remember ever having seen him.
Well on the way toward fifty, the Countess still possessed the dregs,
albeit somewhat muddy, of a remote but once heady beauty. Her
overflowing obesity, her white and flaccid flesh, now served as the
support for a head and face much like those of a sentimental doll; and
as the Countess was given to writing amorous verses and reciting them to
anyone within hearing, she was frequently referred to in the circles in
which she moved, as “the five-hundred-weight of poetry.”
Already generously decolleté by mid-afternoon, her gigantic and
barbarous jewels adorned the hollows and rotundities of her quivering
flesh, or set off the high lights of a red gold wig for which the
Countess was perpetually purchasing additional curls.
For the most part her jewels were quite shamelessly false. Most worthy
of respect among their number was a pearl necklace, which, whenever the
Countess deposited her bulk in a chair, dangled grotesquely over the
protruding spheres of her opulent form. The pearls, irregular,
triangular-shaped, and with root marks, resembled the shark’s teeth with
which the members of certain savage tribes like to adorn themselves.
Gossip asserted that they were souvenirs of those lovers of her youth of
whom she had been able finally to extract nothing else.... It was
undeniable that the Countess was given to speaking, with no perceptible
restraint, of her innumerable tender experiences.
No sooner had the Countess learned from Elena’s own lips, that Robledo
was a millionaire fresh from the American wild, than she began casting
glances of passionate interest in his direction. Teacup in hand, she
captured him in a corner, and began a conversation to escape from which
he frantically sought a pretext.
“You, who are such a traveller, such a hero, must give me the benefit of
your experience. Tell me, what is your real opinion about love?”
The poetess heard the hero murmuring excuses. In spite of the tender
glances of her miopic eyes, she had frightened him!
A few weeks later Elena asked him to accept an invitation to a reception
at the Countess’s. “It will be amusing. Titonius is sure to ask her
Bohemian friends, so as to have some applause for her poems--of course
she’ll read them! There’ll be a lot of people there who come in the hope
of meeting celebrities, and there’ll be no-account artists, and youths
convinced that they have achieved immortality because they’ve succeeded
in collecting a train of admirers, or get their things published in the
columns of some wretched little sheet that nobody reads. You ought to
see all those absurd people! There isn’t another house like that one in
Paris. Anyway I promised the Countess that you would come and I’ll be
cross if you don’t!”
To keep peace Robledo betook himself at ten o’clock one evening to the
house of Mme. Titonius on the _Avenue Kléber_, having fortified himself
beforehand by dining with some South American friends at one of the
Boulevard restaurants.
Two servants, hired for the occasion, were helping the guests out of
their overcoats. The mixture of various social groups that Elena had
foreseen was noticeable even in the anteroom. Side by side with guests
of distinguished appearance, accustomed to the life of the drawing-room,
he noticed youths with leonine locks, whose formal evening dress was
revealed only when they slid out of threadbare coats with tattered
linings. He caught the contemptuous expression of the servants as they
collected these coats, as well as certain fur wraps grown bald in spots,
from ladies who, on emerging from these coverings, displayed the most
extravagant of head dresses.
An old fellow whose whiskers, of a dirty white, and whose wide slouch
hat made him look like the popular conception of a poet, threw off his
summer overcoat and the woolen mufflers wound about him. Taking his pipe
out of his mouth, he struck it on the heel of his shoe, and put it in
his overcoat pocket.
“Take good care of that, now,” he said to the servant.
Robledo’s fur coat inspired respect in the attendants. One of them,
after helping its owner out of it, kept it on his arm.
“You’ve taken a fancy to it?” the engineer inquired.
Paying no attention to his jesting tone, the fellow replied,
“I’ll just lay it aside, sir.... Because some one might make a mistake,
that he might sir, going away from here....”
And with a gesture at the mound of unsightly coverings, he winked at
Robledo.
The sight of the American “millionaire” in her own drawing room aroused
great enthusiasm in the poetess. Scattering the guests to right and
left, she plunged through the throng to meet him, grasped him by both
hands, and leaning on his arm, bore him along with her, presenting him
to her friends. Her eyes dwelt on him proudly as though he were the
chief attraction of the occasion.
Only the day before Elena had given him due warning.
“Take care! The Countess is enamored of you, and kidnapping is quite in
her line....”
But now the poetess, in a veritable avalanche of words, was giving vent
to her enthusiasm as she introduced the American.
“A hero,” she was exclaiming, “a superman from the pampas, where he has
hunted lions, tigers, and even elephants....”
Robledo looked alarmed at these fantastic improvisations, but the
Countess was far beyond geographic scruples.
“When you tell me all about your wonderful deeds, perhaps I shall write
a poem about them, an epic, in the modern style of course, telling the
adventures of your remarkable life. Men are only interesting to me when
they are heroes....”
Again Robledo wore a look of alarm.
As for the moment there chanced to be no one near at hand to whom she
could present her distinguished guest, the Countess conducted him to a
small room into which no one had yet wandered, perhaps because the odors
drifting in through a portière betokened the close proximity of the
kitchen.
Sitting down in an arm-chair as wide as a throne, she bade Robledo be
seated. But when he looked around for a chair, the Countess Titonius
pointed to a low stool near her feet.
“That will be more intimate,” she declared. “You will look like a page
of olden times at the feet of his lady.”
Robledo could not altogether conceal his dismay at these words, but he
obediently followed his hostess’s directions, although his own generous
proportions were something of an obstacle.
The Countess meanwhile was imitating Elena’s childish gestures and
lisping speech, with rather grotesque effect.
“Now that we are alone,” she was saying, “I hope you will speak freely
with me. I am going to ask you the same question as before. What do you
really think of love?”
Robledo, quite overwhelmed, murmured something about love’s being a
disease from which the human race has been suffering for thousands of
years, without growing any the wiser about its cause and cure.
The Countess was now very close to him, scanning him with her
shortsighted eyes to which she held her shell-handled lorgnette. Leaning
down over her vast girth, her cheek almost touched that of the man
seated at her feet.
“And do you think that I shall ever find a soul to understand my own--so
misunderstood?” she was asking him.
Robledo was quite calm as he replied gravely,
“Oh, I am sure of it. You are still young, and have plenty of time....”
The words threw the Countess Titonius into such ecstatic rapture that
she could not restrain herself from caressing her companion’s cheek with
the tip of her lorgnette.
“Spanish gallantry!” she sighed. “But we must part! Let us keep our
secret from the eyes of a world which cannot understand.... Yes, I can
read your eyes. Our souls shall meet again, more intimately ... but now
my social duties call. Once more, I am nothing but a hostess.”
Rising from her arm-chair throne with all the ponderous weight of her
bulk, she went away, attempting as she did so, to move with the light
step of a young girl. She did not forget to throw Robledo a kiss from
the end of her lorgnette.
Disconcerted by this episode, and somewhat annoyed by being placed in so
grotesque a position, he also left the room.
On his way back to the drawing-room he stumbled upon a man of small
stature, who, in spite of having suffered a rude blow in the collision,
meekly murmured his apologies. Later Robledo saw him again, wandering
timidly about, watching the servants, and at the same time looking as
though he were asking their pardon for doing so, and pushing the
furniture that had been deranged back to its place. Whenever anyone
spoke to him he made haste to answer with abject politeness, and then
fled precipitately.
The Countess meanwhile had gathered a group of men about her, for the
most part long-haired individuals of those Robledo had noticed in the
cloak-room. Many of the women guests were openly making fun of their
hostess, raising their eyebrows at one another with a gesture whose
meaning was not hard to guess. The old fellow who had left his mufflers
and his pipe in the coat room announced solemnly:
“We respectfully request that our beautiful Muse recite some of her
poems!” at which there was much applause, and many approving nods. But
the Muse showed herself to be intractable, and began to move this way
and that in her chair, shaking her head. In a weak tone, as though
suddenly ill, she murmured,
“No, my friends, I cannot ... tonight, it is impossible ... some other
time perhaps....”
Her admirers grew insistent, and the Countess was forced to repeat her
refusals, her voice constantly fainter. Finally her guests abandoned her
for livelier diversions, and turning their back on the suffering Muse,
promptly forgot her.
Scarcely had a young musician, clean-shaven and with flowing locks, who
strove to imitate the genial ugliness of certain modern composers, sat
down at the piano and ran his fingers over the keyboard, when two girls
made a dash for him, put out their hands to his shoulders, implored.
They would love to hear his wonderful compositions--but later! Now he
must be indulgent, and come down to the level of the crowd, and play
something for them to dance to. Oh, a waltz would do, if artistic
principles stood in the way of his playing one of the American dances.
Several couples began to circle round the room and were rapidly joined
by others. Suddenly noticing that no one was left to pay court to her,
the Countess looked about in bewilderment, then rose, saying with
indulgent condescension,
“Since you really want to hear me, I’ll do as you insist. I’ll recite a
short poem.”
Consternation! The pianist, however, not having heard the Countess’s
surrender, went on playing, until the meek anonymous gentleman, whom
Robledo had noticed trotting about, repairing the disorder caused by the
guests, came up to him and grasped his hands. The music ceased, the
couples stopped short, and finally, with a bored expression found
chairs. The Countess began....
Staring, in an attempt to appear attentive, blinking, in an attempt to
repel the advances of sleep, yawning, or sunk in blank immobility, her
victims sat or lolled about. Two of the women, livelier than the rest,
were feigning great interest in the recitation. One of them went so far
as to put a hand behind her ear in order to hear better. A running
conversation was going on, however, behind their fans, which they
dropped to their laps now and then when they needed both hands for the
patter of applause. But they caught them up quickly to conceal their
laughter. The Countess was entertaining them so much better than she
knew!
Robledo chanced to be standing behind them. Leaning against the
door-jamb, he was half hidden by the hangings. The Countess meanwhile
was declaiming with increasing fervor, so that, in order to carry on
their conversation, the two women had to raise their voices.
“Instead of stuffing us with poetry, I wish she’d give us a decent
supper,” one of them was saying.
The other protested. The Countess set a table that was dangerous, but
certainly plentiful. Only the brave, not to say reckless, accepted her
dinner invitations, for on these occasions the Countess herself prepared
the courses. “And, my _dear_, by the time you reach dessert, you’re
lucky if you only have to ’phone for the doctor, instead of the
undertaker!”
Frequently interrupted by their own laughter, they rehearsed the
Countess’s history. She had once been rich; some attributed this past
wealth to her parents’ fortune, others to the fortunes--and fortunes--of
her lovers. Her marriage with the Count Titonius had provided her with a
title and the most insignificant of husbands, a fellow who, ruined by a
stupid speculation, tossed up a coin to see whether he should blow out
his brains or marry the Countess. And now, in her establishment, he
occupied a position quite inferior to that of the servants. When the
Countess’s nerves were in a state of tension because of the infidelity
of some one of her youthful protégés, it was her habit to throw all the
Count’s shirts and underwear over the banisters, after which with the
air of an injured queen she would order him to leave her presence for
ever.
A few days later, however, when the poetess was giving another party,
the outcast would reappear, meek, and sad, and shrinking, as though
fearful of occupying too much space in his wife’s rooms.
“I can’t imagine,” the other was saying, “why she persists in giving
these receptions, when the woman is ruined! For instance, on the table
out there where we’ll have supper in a little while, you’ll see large
pastry pieces, and hot-house fruit--rented, my dear, rented for the
evening, just like the servants. Everyone knows it, and no one dares
take any of these show pieces, the Countess would be so furious--so all
we’ll get will be tea and cakes, and we’ll have to pretend that’s all we
want!”
They stopped a moment to applaud the Countess, who was emboldened by her
apparent success, to begin declaiming a new poem.
Robledo, as little interested in the malicious gossipings of these two
women as in his hostess’s recitations, took advantage of a moment during
which the Countess was bowing to her audience, to leave the drawing-room
and make his way to the alcove which had been the scene of his romantic
passage with the poetess.
The meek and obsequious gentleman he had stumbled against earlier in the
evening was now stretched out on the divan, smoking, and looking much
like a laborer enjoying a few minutes of rest. He had been watching the
spirals of smoke from his cigarette unroll in the heavy air, but when
Robledo sat down near him, he felt it incumbent upon him to smile at the
stranger. In a few moments he inquired,
“Are you bored to death?”
Robledo looked sharply at him before he answered.
“And you?”
The little man nodded sadly, and Robledo made a gesture which plainly
said, “Let’s clear out, shall we?”
But the little man’s eyes seemed to reply, “If I only could!”
“You are living here in the house?” inquired Robledo finally.
And the little man replied breathlessly, with a jerk of his head and
arms.
“This is my house. I am the Countess’s husband....”
After this revelation, Robledo thought it discreet to retire. Putting
the cigar he had been about to light back in his pocket, he returned to
the drawing-room.
A great burst of applause met his ears. The poetess had stopped! And
convinced that she would recite no more that evening, her admirers were
expressing some of their delight, while the Countess grasped the hands
of the friends about her and mopped her damp brow, murmuring,
“I shall die.... Such emotion.... I am in a fever.... Art is like that.
You shouldn’t have made me recite....”
Looking about as though searching for someone, she caught sight of
Robledo and made for him.
“Your arm, Hero of the Pampas! You shall lead me out to supper!”
The guests, for the most part, made no attempt to conceal their joy as
the door of the dining-room opened. There was a general rush for the
_buffet_, some of the guests elbowing and trampling the others.
Leaning on her escort’s arm, the Countess was gazing at him with
passionate eyes.
“Did you pay special attention to my poem, ‘The Rosy Dawn of Love’? Do
you know whom I was thinking of as I recited those verses?”
Robledo turned away. A laugh was about to escape....
“How could I guess, Countess? I’ve lived in the desert so long, I’m
nothing but a savage!”
The guests were crowding around the table, casting hungrily admiring
glances at the examples of the pastry cook’s art that occupied its
centre, surrounded by pyramids of enormous fruit. The cakes and
sandwiches looked pathetically insignificant beside them! The two
servants who had been in charge of the cloak-room, and a butler,
resplendent with a silver watch chain across his waistcoat, and side
whiskers that made him look like an old diplomat, were defending the
pastry edifice in the centre of the table, condescending to hand out
only the trifles on its periphery; cups of tea or chocolate, small
glasses of _liqueurs_, sandwiches and cakes.
The old fellow of the mufflers, whom the Countess hailed as “_cher
maître_,” was trying vainly to make the servant understand that he
wished him to deposit some of the _pièce de resistance_, or at least
some of the fruit on the empty plate he was frantically extending. But
the servant looked at him with a shocked expression, as though he were
requesting something scarcely decent, and finally, after handing him a
cake and a sandwich, turned his back upon him.
Robledo, standing near the table, found himself close to the hired
“pieces” that the servants were so conscientiously defending. The
Countess had dropped his arm for the moment to reply to congratulations
on her remarkable reading. Relieved at being left to his own devices
for a few minutes, he examined the table critically, and while the
butler and his acolytes were attending to the needs of the crowd, he
picked up a plate and knife and tranquilly carved a piece out of the
most majestic of the pasties. He even had time to take one of the ruddy
pears from the showy mounds of fruit, and cut it in two. But just as he
was about to eat it, the mistress of the house, free for a moment from
her admirers, turned an amorous glance in his direction, only to see a
breach in the pastry edifice, and a handsome piece of fruit, ruthlessly
sliced, on the barbarian’s plate....
A great change occurred in the sentiments of the poetess. At first she
looked shocked, as though witnessing an act which transgressed all
consecrated usages. Then came indignation, and finally rage.... It was
she who would have to pay for this stupid destruction.... And she had
believed for a moment that she had found--in this savage--a hero-soul
worthy of her own!
Abruptly leaving her “Patagonian Bear,” she sought out the pianist who,
circling round and round the table, was pleading with one servant after
another for sandwiches and a little more wine....
“Give me your arm, friend Beethoven!” With a dramatic gesture she
continued.
“One of these days I shall write a libretto for this young man, and then
there’ll be a little less talk about Wagner!”
She took him along with her to the drawing room, now deserted, and made
him sit down at the piano, while in clarion tones she declaimed to an
accompaniment of arpeggios. But nothing could tempt her guests from the
dining-room. They remained clustered round the table, maintaining
however, the group distinctions which all Mme. Titonius’ efforts at
Bohemian _camaraderie_ were powerless to break down.
Robledo caught a glimpse through the crowd of the Marquis de Torre
Bianca and his wife, who had just come in, having spent the earlier part
of the evening at another party. He noticed that Elena was talking
mechanically, murmuring phrases that had no meaning, as though she were
thinking of something else. Convinced that his chatter annoyed her, he
went off in search of Federico, from whom he obtained little attention
for the reason that the Marquis was very busy describing to someone he
had just met the important undertakings that his friend Fontenoy was
engaged in, in various parts of the globe.
Bored, and not yet quite clear as to the reason for his hostess’s sudden
desertion, he sank into a large armchair, and almost at the same instant
heard someone talking behind him. Not the two women gossips this time,
but a man and a woman, who, seated on a divan, were repeating the same
things he had overhead before, as though no two guests in that house
could do anything else but gossip about the Countess. He paid little
attention to what they were saying until suddenly he heard the name
Torre Bianca. The woman was saying,
“Did you ever see such jewels? Of course everyone knows that neither she
nor her husband had to work hard to get them. Everyone knows that
Fontenoy pays for all those little luxuries.”
The man had a different version.
“I was told that those jewels were paste, as pasty as those of our
poetical Countess. The Torre Biancas kept the money the banker gave them
to pay for the real gems, or else they sold the real ones and had these
substitutes made.”
The woman sighed at the banker’s name,
“That man is nearly bankrupt--everybody says so! And some go so far as
to talk about court proceedings and a prison sentence. What a
bloodthirsty creature that Russian woman must be!”
The man laughed sceptically.
“Russian? There are people who knew her when she was a girl in Vienna,
singing in music-halls. Also some one in diplomatic circles told me that
she is Spanish, of an English father. No one knows her nationality, she
doesn’t know it herself....”
Robledo got up from his chair. He couldn’t very well listen to any more
such talk without speaking. But just as he was leaving the room he heard
a double exclamation of surprise coming from behind him.
“Here is Fontenoy! How strange to see him here! He never comes, for fear
the Countess will ask him for a loan.... Something unusual must be going
on!”
Robledo recognized Fontenoy in one of the groups. He was just at that
moment bowing to the Torre Biancas. Robledo noticed that he was smiling,
and seemed as serene as usual. More than that, he had lost his usual
abstracted air that always made him look as though he were thinking of a
note due the next day. He seemed calmer and more confident than Robledo
had ever seen him look; in fact the only remarkable thing about his
manner was the exceptional affability with which he greeted the people
about him.
From afar the American watched him and noticed a brief glance that
passed between him and Elena. Whereupon the banker, with a slightly
bored expression, left the group he had been with and slowly made his
way to the small room that had witnessed the scene between Robledo and
the Countess.
As he went towards it he absently pressed the hands held out in greeting
and in the hope of capturing him for a moment’s conversation. “Happy to
see you here,” he murmured, and passed on.
Forcing to his lips his habitual smile of kindly protection, he nodded
to Robledo, but scarcely had he done so when the smile vanished.
For in that moment the two men had faced one another, and Fontenoy saw
something in the Spaniard’s expression which made him drop his smiling
mask. His own soul seemed to be looking out at him from those eyes....
That glance, rapid as it was, he would never forget, thought the
Spaniard. He and this man scarcely knew one another, and yet there had
been in Fontenoy’s eyes an expression of complete trust, as though he
were showing him, in that brief moment, all that he had ever thought and
felt.
Then he saw Elena skillfully making her way, without appearing to do so,
towards the same room. A curiosity of which he was ashamed pricked him.
He had no right to take part in the affairs of these two people. At the
same time it was impossible for him to be indifferent to the unwonted
event which, he knew intuitively, was even then about to occur....
The banker must have found it urgently necessary to speak to Elena--only
this supposition could explain his seeking her at the Countess’s....
What were those two saying to one another?...
Pretending to be absorbed in reflection, he passed by the door.... Elena
and Fontenoy stood talking; their lips scarcely moved as they faced one
another, standing very straight, as though they had resolved that no one
must guess, from the curves of their lips, what they were saying....
Fontenoy’s rapid glance at him made him regret his curiosity; for this
glance moved him as the other had done. It told him so plainly that the
man who was looking at him in this fashion was passing through one of
the most critical moments of his life. He could almost believe that
there was a reproach in his eyes.... “Why does what happens to me
interest you if you cannot help me?...”
So he did not walk past the door again. But yielding to an unexplainable
impulse that was stronger than his will, he remained close to it,
listening.... No, his conduct was not gentlemanly. He was behaving like
any one of those scandal-mongers he had been overhearing. Apparently his
surroundings were demoralizing him....
It wasn’t easy to catch what those two people on the other side of the
door were saying.... In one of the rooms the guests were dancing, in
another someone was pounding a piano.... But a few confused words
reached him. Fontenoy and Elena were speaking louder now, perhaps
because the noise of the piano bothered them, perhaps because of
increasing tenseness....
“Why waste words in dramatic phrases?”--It was Fontenoy’s voice. “You
couldn’t go away! That is for me to do--that is the only thing I can
do!”
The noise made by the dancers and the pianist filled the eavesdropper’s
ears. But as the musician grew more merciful he caught the words another
voice was saying--Elena’s voice--sounding as though it came from a long
weary distance....
“Perhaps you are right. Oh, money! money! For people like us, who know
what it means in our lives, what a horror to be without it!”
Shame of his spying overtook Robledo, driving out the curiosity which
had for a moment controlled him. If these two people had sought one
another out, it was for him to respect their secret. Anyway the mystery
would be short-lived. Perhaps it would not last through the evening....
Going back to the dining room, he found Federico there, still engaged in
conversation with his new acquaintance, an old gentleman who displayed
the rosette of the Legion of Honor in his buttonhole, and looked like a
retired government functionary.
Federico had at last terminated his extensive description of Fontenoy’s
enterprises, and the old gentleman was saying,
“I haven’t the slightest doubt whatever of your friend’s integrity, but
I should think twice before putting any money into his schemes. It
strikes me that he takes unnecessary risks, that he invests his funds
too far from home. Maybe everything will be all right, at least as long
as he holds the confidence of the share-holders. But I am not so sure
that even at the present moment he isn’t losing it. And on the day when
the share-holders decide that they want figures and facts instead of
fine hopes, on the day when Fontenoy has to show just where he stands in
his business, well, on that day, I am not so sure.... I am not so
sure....”