“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.