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.