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.