“So you think I’d take Philibert back?”
“Yes, I do. We all do.”
“And begin again living together, after this?”
“Yep.”
“You don’t find it appalling even to think of--?”
“No, merely a little uncomfortable to begin with.”
“You take my breath away.”
She eyed me calmly. “My dear Jane, don’t be the high tragedian. All
marriages are like that. How many women do we know, do you suppose,
whose husbands haven’t had little vacations--?”
“If you don’t mind we won’t talk about it. Other women’s marriages are
nothing to me.”
She shrugged her shoulders and lit another cigarette, and for a time we
were silent. I looked at her. She seemed to me terrible, hard as nails
and more cynical than any one, and yet she was my friend. Nothing, I
knew then as I watched her, nothing that she could say or do would
alter that fact. She belonged to me. What she felt would always affect
me. In some absurd way I was responsible for her. Our childhood and
its meagre austere background, with all that she repudiated, held us
together.
Presently she began again. “Now listen to me, Jane. Philibert may
be a brute, but he’s done a lot for you. He has given you a very
great position. You were rich but he knew how to make your money
tell. There’s not a house in the world like yours. I don’t mean only
the furniture. Your parties are beyond everything. You’re more
_recherchée_ than any woman in Paris. You can pick and choose from all
the great people of the world, the men with brains. Lord! how you could
amuse yourself if you wanted to. I only wish I had your chance. Do you
think I’d let my husband’s infidelity spoil my life? I’d be no such
fool. I might not like it, but I’d make up my mind to forget it. Well,
here you are and you want to go back and crawl into that little hole in
a prairie and stifle there.”
“Yes, I do.”
“But the people there--” she almost screamed.
“I don’t know about the people. They may not be what you call amusing,
but they’re at any rate natural, common or garden human beings, and
anyhow if there weren’t another soul there’s Aunt Patty; she’s the
finest woman in the world, and I adore her.”
Fan looked at me in amazement.
“I’d die!” she gasped on a long, wailing breath. We were again silent,
then, while the image of Aunt Patience took shape before us, gaunt,
with her big bones showing under her limp, black clothes, worn, strong,
knotted hands, crooked humourous face, weather-beaten like a peasant’s,
straggling thin, grey hair. And suddenly I saw her as she appeared to
Fan, a shabby old maid in frumpy clothes, talking with a nasal twang,
saying things like Mark Twain, worshipping Huxley and Daniel Webster
and Abraham Lincoln, a child woman of stern moral principles, unaware
of the existence of such life as ours, displeased and angry at our
doings, hurt deeply by our words and our laughter. I imagined her
in Paris, stalking down the Rue de la Paix like a pilgrim from the
Caucasus, a figure of grotesque grandeur disturbing the merry frivolous
traffic, sublime, terrible spectre of stark simplicity, utterly out of
her element in our world. And I was angry with Fan for evoking such an
image. I turned away from it in distress, ashamed.
“You’ve already gone too far,” she said impishly. “You can’t get back.
You’re spoiled for your Aunt Patience.”
“We’ll see,” I muttered. My suspicions were suddenly roused by a look
in her little squirrel face.
“You’ve been talking to Claire,” I said.
“Well, what if I have?”
“She sent you.”
“Yes, she did; but I was coming, anyway.”
“I don’t believe you. You hate my being unhappy, you were worried, but
you’d have avoided coming if you could. The fact that we’ve always been
friends and that you can’t help it is a nuisance to you. Well, tell me,
what is Claire’s point of view?”
“She thinks in some measure that it’s your fault. She says Fifi has
behaved very badly, but that if you’d been clever he wouldn’t have done
anything sensational, anything to make a scandal.”
“I see.”
“She’s very unhappy about it all. She says it’s making her mother ill.
She says that if it were not for her mother it would not matter so
much, but that if you divorce Philibert it will kill her.”
“Why doesn’t Claire come herself and tell me all this?”
“She doesn’t dare. She says you don’t like her.”
“That, my dear, is funny. I’ve adored her for years and she’s
consistently snubbed me.”
“Well, anyway, you’re so different, she feels you wouldn’t understand.
You see, she puts up with a good deal herself.”
“I know. Perhaps I understand more than she thinks I do.”
“She’s very unhappy in her marriage, too, but she doesn’t make a fuss
about it. She doesn’t expect the impossible.”
“Whereas I do?”
“Well, yes. Between you and me and the lamp-post I think you do.”
“I only ask to be allowed to save Geneviève from a fate like my own.”
“Oh, my dear, if you think they’ll let you have Geneviève--”
“What do you mean?”
“A man always has rights over his child in this country, whatever the
facts against him.”
“You suggest that the law wouldn’t give me my own child?”
“It wouldn’t, not the French law.”
“Well, we’ll see about that, too.”
“Jane, you’re terrible.”
“Am I?”
“Yes, you frighten me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What shall I say to them?”
“To whom?”
“Claire, Madame de Joigny, your Aunt Clothilde, all of them.”
“Say nothing. Why should you serve them? Why should you side with them
against me? Weren’t you mine years before you ever saw one of them?
What’s become of our friendship? What’s become of your loyalty? You’ve
sold yourself, you’re not what you used to be, you’d do anything now
for a pleasant life. Because they’re attractive and have attractive
manners and make pretty speeches you’d do anything for them. What good
does it all do you? You’re ill, you’re worn to a frazzle, your husband
has been dragging you down, down, into a darkness, queer, unimaginable,
shameful, and you can’t get loose. You just dance about in the
blackness. Your feet stick in the mud. Having a good time somehow,
anything for a good time. Coughing yourself to pieces, raging fever on
you, your heart sick with distrust, restless, evasive, evading issues,
you go on dancing, laughing, having a good time. Why don’t you pull
yourself together? Why won’t you let me help you? I love you. I love
you much better than Claire does. If your husband were put in prison
what would Claire do, do you think?”
But Fan had grown deadly pale. I stopped, horrified. She was leaning
against the mantelpiece, spitting into her handkerchief: there was
blood on it.
That evening when I had taken her back to Madeleine de Greux’s--for
she refused to stay with me--and we had put her to bed, she clung to
me weakly. Her eyes closed. “It’s all true, what you said, Jane,” she
gasped, “but I can’t help it, I can’t stop. If I stopped amusing myself
I’d die.”
“But, my darling, let me get you well first, let me take you somewhere.”
“Perhaps, later,” she whispered, “if you don’t go to America. Perhaps
we might try Switzerland, but not where there are sick people.” She
shuddered. “I hate sickness so, and unhappiness. It’s so ugly. Being
gay is beautiful. It makes things look beautiful. Ivanoff is a devil,
but you’ll admit he was beautiful. I like attractive brutes better
than clumsy saints. So do you, that’s why you married Philibert, just
because he was so attractive. No one could be so attractive when he
tried. Admit it, he gave you wonderful hours, you know he did. Wasn’t
that something? What’s the use of being good if you’re deadly dull?
Good men aren’t our kind, my dear. They’d bore us to death. Philibert
made you happy for a time, wonderfully, because he knew how. What
more do you want? Don’t be a fool. Take it all as it comes. Make an
arrangement with him--you owe him something. I’ll be all right in a
day or so. Let me know what you decide. Americans are hipped on their
ideals. All that’s no use. French people know what’s what. Claire would
love you if you gave her a chance. They are all ready to be fond of
you, and they’re delicious people. Don’t be a fool. There, leave me
now. We were idiots to quarrel. You have a nasty temper, my poor Jane,
and your heart’s too big for this world. You’ll come an awful cropper
if you’re not careful.”