Adda Castillo noticed that Christian was turning from her. She had not
expected that, at least not so soon; and as she saw him grow cold, her
love increased. But his indifference kept pace with her ardour, and so
her passionate heart lost all repose.
She was accustomed to change and, in spite of her youth, had been
greatly loved. She had never demanded fidelity before nor practised it.
But this man was more to her than any other had been.
She knew who was robbing her of him; she had seen the dancer. When she
called Christian to account he frankly admitted as a fact what she had
mentioned only as a suspicion in the hope of having it denied. She
instituted comparisons. She found that she was more beautiful than
Eva Sorel, more harmoniously formed, racier and more impassioned.
Her friends confirmed her in this opinion; and yet she felt that the
other had some advantage to which she must yield. Neither she nor her
flatterers could give it a name. But she felt herself the more deeply
affronted.
She adorned her person, she practised all her arts, she unfolded all
sides of her wild and entrancing temperament. It was in vain. Then she
vowed vengeance and clenched her fists and stamped. Or else she begged
and lay on her knees before him and sobbed. One method was as foolish
as the other. He was surprised and asked calmly: “Why do you throw
aside all dignity?”
One day he told her that they must separate. She turned very white and
trembled. Suddenly she took a revolver from her pocket, aimed at him
and fired twice. He heard the bullets whiz past his head, one on either
side. They hit the mirror and smashed it, and the fragments clattered
to the floor.
People rushed to the door. Christian went out and explained that the
noise meant no harm and was due to mere carelessness. When he returned
he found Adda Castillo lying on the sofa with her face buried in the
pillows. He showed no fright and no sense of the danger that he had
escaped. He thought merely how annoying such things were and how banal.
He took his hat and stick and left the room.
It was long before Adda Castillo arose. She went to the mirror and
shivered. There was but one fragment of it left in the frame. But by
the help of this fragment she smoothed her coal-black hair.
A few days later she came to see Christian. On the card that she had
sent in she begged for an interview of but five minutes. Her farewell
performance in Paris was to take place that evening and she begged
him to be present at the circus. He hesitated. The glowing eyes in
the wax-white face were fixed on him in a mortal terror. It made him
uncomfortable, but something like pity stirred within him and he agreed
to come.
Crammon accompanied him. They entered just as Adda Castillo’s act was
about to begin. The cage with the lions was being drawn into the arena.
Their seats were near the front. “They’re getting to be a bit of a
bore, these lions,” Crammon grumbled and watched the audience through
his glasses.
Adda Castillo in scarlet fleshings, her dark hair loose, her lips and
cheeks heavily rouged, entered the cage of the lionness and her four
cubs. Perhaps something in the woman’s bearing irritated Teddy, the
youngest lion. At all events he backed before her, roared and lifted
his paw. Adda Castillo whistled and commanded him with a gesture to
leave the mother animal. Teddy crouched and hissed.
At that moment Adda, instead of mastering the beast with her glance,
turned to the public and searched the front rows with her sparkling
eyes. Teddy leaped on her shoulder. She was down. One cry arose from
many throats. The people jumped up. Many fled. Others grew pale but
stared in evil fascination at the cage.
At that moment Trilby, the mother animal, came forward with a mighty
leap, not to attack her mistress but to save her from the cubs. With
powerful blows of her paw she thrust Teddy aside and stood protectingly
over the girl who was bleeding from many wounds. But the cubs, greedy
for blood, threw themselves on their mother and beat and bit her back
and flanks, so that she retreated howling to a corner and left the girl
to her fate.
The keepers had rushed up with long spears and hooks, but it was too
late. The cubs had bitten their teeth deep into the body of Adda
Castillo and torn her flesh to shreds. They did not let go until
formaldehyde was sprinkled on her scattered remains.
The cries of pity and terror, the weeping and wringing of hands, the
thronging at the gates and the noise of the circus men, the image of
a clown who stood as though frozen on a drum, a horse that trotted in
from the stables, the sight of the bloody, unspeakably mutilated body
in its dripping shreds--none of all this penetrated in any connected
or logical form the consciousness of Christian. It seemed to him mere
confusion and ghostly whirl. He uttered no sound. Only his face was
pale. His face was very pale.
In the motor car on their way to Jean Cardillac, with whom they were to
dine, Crammon said: “By God, I wouldn’t like to die between the jaws
of a lion. It is a cruel death and an ignominious one.” He sighed and
surreptitiously looked at Christian.
Christian had the car stop and asked Crammon to present his excuses
to Cardillac. “What are you going to do?” Crammon asked in his
astonishment.
And Christian replied that he wanted to be alone, that he must be alone
for a little.
Crammon could scarcely control himself. “Alone? You? What for?” But
already Christian had disappeared in the crowd.
“He wants to be alone! What an insane notion!” Crammon growled. He
shook his head and bade the chauffeur drive on. He drew up the collar
of his greatcoat and dedicated a last thought to the unhappy Adda
Castillo without assigning any guilt or blame to his friend.
V
“Eidolon is not as cheerful as usual,” Eva said to Christian. “What has
happened? Eidolon mustn’t be sad.”
He smiled and shook his head. But she had heard of the happening at
the circus and also knew in what relation Adda Castillo had stood to
Christian.
“I had a bad dream,” he said and told her of it.
“I dreamed that I was in a railroad station and wanted to take a train.
Many trains came in but roared and passed with indescribable swiftness.
I wanted to ask after the meaning of this. But when I turned around I
saw behind me in a semi-circle an innumerable throng. And all these
people looked at me; but when I approached them, they all drew away
slowly and silently with outstretched arms. All about in that monstrous
circle they drew silently away from me. It was horrible.”
She passed her hand over his forehead to chase the horror away. But she
recognized the power of her touch and was frightened by her image in
his eye.
When from the stage where she was bowing amid the flowers and the
applause she perceived the touch of his glances she felt in them a
threat of enslavement. When on his arm she approached a table and heard
the delighted whisper of people at them both, she seemed to herself
the victim of a conspiracy, and a hesitation crept into her bearing.
When Crammon, practising a strange self-abnegation, spoke of Christian
in extravagant terms, and Susan, even in their nocturnal talks, grew
mythical concerning his high descent, when Cardillac grew restless
and Cornelius Ermelang, the young German poet who adored her, asked
questions with his timid eyes--when these things came to pass she
feigned coldness and became unapproachable.
She scolded Susan, she made fun of Crammon, she laughed at Jean
Cardillac, jestingly she bent her knee to the poet. She confused her
entire court of painters, politicians, journalists, and dandies with
her incomprehensible mimicry and flexibility, and said that Eidolon was
only an illusion and a symbol.
Christian did not understand this--neither this nor her swift
withdrawals from him, and then her turning back and luring him anew. A
passionate gesture would arise and suddenly turn to reproof, and one of
delight would turn into estrangement. It was useless to try to bind her
by her own words. She would join the tips of her fingers and turn her
head aside and look out of the corners of her eyes at the floor with a
cool astuteness.
Once he had driven her into a corner, but she called Susan, leaned her
head against the woman’s shoulder and whispered in her ear.
Another time, in order to test her feeling, he spoke of his trip to
England. With charmingly curved hands she gathered up her skirt and
surveyed her feet.
Another time, in the light and cheerful tone they used to each other,
he reproached her with making a fool of him. She crossed her arms and
smiled mysteriously, wild and subdued at once. She looked as though
she had stepped out of a Byzantine mosaic.
He knew the freedom of her life. But when he sought for the motives
that guided her, he had no means of finding them.
He knew nothing of the intellectual fire of the dancer, but took her to
be a woman like any other. He did not see that that which is, in other
women, the highest stake and the highest form of life, needed to be
in her life but a moment’s inclination and a moment’s gliding by. He
did not grasp the form in her, but saw the contour melt in glimmering
change. Coming from the sensual regions of one possessed like Adda
Castillo, he breathed here an air purified of all sultriness, which
intoxicated but also frightened him, which quickened the beat of the
heart but sharpened the vision.
Everything was fraught with presages of fate: when she walked beside
him; when they rode side by side in the Bois de Boulogne; when they sat
in the twilight and he heard her clear and childlike voice; when in the
palm garden she teased her little monkeys; when she listened to Susan
at the piano and let the bright stones glide through her fingers.
One evening when he was leaving he met Jean Cardillac at the gate. They
greeted each other. Then involuntarily Christian stopped and looked
after the man, whose huge form threw a gigantic shadow on the steps.
Invisible little slaves seemed to follow this shadow, all bearing
treasures to be laid at Eva’s feet.
An involuntary determination crystallized in him. It seemed important
to measure his strength against this shadow’s. He turned back and the
servants let him pass. Cardillac and Eva were in the picture gallery.
She was curled up on a sofa, rolled up almost like a snake. Not far
from those two, on a low stool, sat Susan impassive but with burning
eyes.
“You’ve promised to drive with me to the races at Longchamp, Eva,” said
Christian. He stood by the door to show that he desired nothing else.
“Yes, Eidolon. Why the reminder?” answered Eva without moving, but with
a flush on her cheeks.
“Quite alone with me----?”
“Yes, Eidolon, quite alone.”
“My dream suddenly came back to me, and I thought of that train that
wouldn’t stop.”
She laughed at the naïve and amiable tone of his words. Her eyes grew
gentle and she laid her head back on the pillows. Then she looked at
Cardillac, who arose silently.
“Good-night,” said Christian and went.
It was during these days that Denis Lay had arrived in Paris. Crammon
had expected him and now welcomed him with ardour. “He is the one
man living who is your equal and who competes with you in my heart,”
Crammon had said to Christian.
Denis was the second son of Lord Stainwood. He had had a brilliant
career at Oxford, where his exploits had been the talk of the country.
He had formed a new party amid the undergraduates, whose discussions
and agitations had spared no time-honoured institutions. At twenty-two
he was not only a marksman, hunter, fisherman, sailor, and boxer, but a
learned philologist. He was handsome, wealthy, radiant with life, and
surrounded by a legend of mad pranks and by a halo of distinction and
elegance--the last and finest flower of his class and nation.
Christian recognized his qualities without envy and the two became
friends at once. One evening he was entertaining Cardillac, Crammon,
Wiguniewski, Denis Lay, the Duchess of Marivaux, and Eva Sorel. And it
was on this occasion that Eva, in the presence of the whole company,
lightly broke the promise that she had given him.
Denis had expressed the desire to take her to Longchamp in his car. Eva
became aware of Christian’s look. It was watchful, but still assured.
She held a cluster of grapes in her hand. When she had placed the fruit
back on the plate before her, she had betrayed him. Christian turned
pale. He felt that she needed no reminder. She had chosen. It was for
him to be quiet and withdraw.
Eva took up the cluster of grapes again. Lifting it on the palm of
her hand she said with that smile of dreamy enthusiasm which seemed
heartless to Christian now: “Beautiful fruit, I shall leave you until
I am hungry for you.”
Crammon raised his glass and cried: “Whoever wishes to do homage to the
lady of our allegiance--drink!”
They all drank to Eva, but Christian did not lift his eyes.