The drawing-room was strewn with the remains of supper. The table
had not been cleared. There were broken glasses on the floor, empty
champagne bottles about; a puddle of wine, some one had spilled a
bottle of Burgundy. The cook opened the door for me. The manservant
and Fan’s maid had decamped with the silver leaving word that they had
taken it in payment of their two years’ wages. A bailiff was sitting on
the sofa. Fan was lying in her room in the dark with a wet towel round
her head. She said “Oh, hell!” as I came in and turned her back on me.
The room had a curious sickly odour, some drug she had been taking,
I suppose. Her clothes lay in a heap in the middle of the floor. The
dress was torn, the stockings soiled and stained. I felt sick at my
stomach. Fan gave a groan.
“For God’s sake, Jane, go away; I’ve got the most ghastly headache.”
All I could do was settle with the bailiff and help the cook clear
up the mess. Fan scarcely spoke all the morning. The telephone kept
ringing.
“Tell them I’m ill. Tell them to go to the devil,” she called out. She
lay there in a dripping perspiration, the sheets clinging to her thin
body. She looked like a corpse fished out of the Seine. Suddenly she
sprang up. “Good heavens! what time is it? I’m lunching at the Ritz
with the Maharajah’s crowd at twelve thirty.”
She sat with her feet dangling over the side of the bed holding her
head in her hands. “My head’s bursting--my head’s bursting. Get me a
blue bottle off the shelf in the bath room--six drops--no ten--I’ll
take ten. It’s wonderful stuff--wonderful! I’ll be alright. You’re an
angel.” She talked in a kind of singing moan, a despairing half-crazy
chant. “You’re an angel, Jane--you’re too good for this world. I’ll
never be able to pay you. How much did you give that man? Oh God! My
head! I wish you hadn’t--leave me alone now. I must get dressed. Those
Indians won’t know I’m half under. I’ll be all right if I can find my
things. Go along--no--no--I don’t want any more help. Ivanoff was here
last night; he went off at three this morning. I don’t know where he’s
gone; they played chemmy. He won fifty thousand francs from that boy of
Adela’s--that baby. I made a scene; I made him give it back. He knocked
me down afterwards. He won’t come here again. Anyway he’s gone for good
this time. If you ever speak to me of this, I’ll go mad. Leave me alone
now. You won’t tell me what you paid that man, but I hate you to pity
me, and you’re an angel--you’d no right to interfere. Do for heaven’s
sake leave me alone now. God! what a world!” She tottered to her
bathroom, trailing her lace nightgown after her. It hung by a ribbon to
her bruised shoulder. She shut the door. I heard her turn on her bath.
I went away. She avoided me for weeks after that.
Bianca had come back to Paris; she had been, so gossip related it,
travelling about Spain with a famous matador. Some people said she
had joined his troupe disguised as a boy and had, more than once gone
into the arena in a pink suit embroidered in silver and had planted
once, the banderillas, in a bull that had five minutes later run his
horns through her paramour. I neither believed nor disbelieved the
story. José had seen her in the Stand at Seville looking marvellous in
a lace mantilla, a black dress high throated and a string of pearls
which she flung to the popular hero. She had been wild with excitement,
had stood up in her box and called out, and had torn her pearls from
her neck with twenty thousand delerious Spaniards shouting round her,
and Bombazelta III the Matador on his knee before her, beside the
carcase of his victim. Why shouldn’t she have gone a bit further?
She liked danger. She could look the part. Actually, I did see a
picture of her; three cornered hat, slim tight jacket and breeches,
embroidered cape. It suited her, of course; she had the body of a
boy, and Bombazelta III was a peculiarly striking man. His photograph
was in all the Spanish papers. I found them lying about the library in
Paris. Philibert must have sent for them. His nervousness during those
days betrayed his interest. Though he never mentioned Bianca’s name,
I knew that he was still in touch with her, that they wrote to each
other, that he followed her movements. It did not surprise me, when
during that summer he went for a week to Saint Sebastian, he called it
Biarritz, but I knew where he was. It was Philibert’s behaviour on his
return that made me think the stories of Bianca’s sensational caprice
were true. Besides, it was just the kind of thing to amuse her for a
time.
I wasn’t interested. I didn’t want to know anything about her. All
that I wanted was never to see her again. But she had no intention of
leaving me alone. Her bullfighter dead, she came back to Paris. Paris
is a small place. The community in which we lived was crowded, cramped,
intimate. Every one was constantly meeting every one else. Bianca
stepped back into her place in it as if nothing had happened. Except
for the fact that we were not asked to meet one another at lunch or
dinner, one would have supposed that our acquaintances were unaware of
our having any reason to dislike each other. The inevitable happened.
A newly appointed ambassador gave one of his first dinner parties and
found no better way of making it a success than having us both present.
We sat on either side of a royal guest. Across his meagre chest we
eyed each other. Bianca looked much as usual, younger if anything. She
had simplified her make-up. Her fine eyelashes now unplastered with
black, curled wide from her great blue eyes that looked as innocent as
forget-me-nots. Her face was smooth and white. The smallest thinnest
line of carmine marked the curve of her lips. Her dress was a piece of
black velvet wound round her white body that was immaculate and lovely.
She had the freshness of a water lily, and moved through the salons,
cool and serene in an attitude of still dreamy detachment, and her
curious magnetism emanated from her like a perfume. She drifted up to
me after dinner.
“You must talk to me, Jane--” Her voice was cool and concise. “We have
important things to say to each other.”
“I have nothing to say.”
She lifted her eyebrows. Her lips curved to a point. She gave a little
sigh.
“Why do you lie? You are _très en beauté_, Jane--you are wonderful. Why
do you lie?--You know you owe it all to me--”
I turned my back on her but I felt her standing behind me, watching
me, her eyes shining, her delicate nose palpitating faintly, her eyes
reading me. She had no intention of leaving me alone.
Our next meeting was at Madeleine’s. Madeleine was the woman who looked
after my face. Bianca went to her too. I was sitting in front of the
dressing-table, my head tied up in a towel, my face plastered with
grease, when Bianca came in. She chattered and gossiped and held up
the photograph of herself in the costume of the Spanish bull-ring. “I
was distracting myself--” she laughed. “I had been bothered by some
very curious ideas. You remember our talk at the ‘_Château des trois
Maries_.’ Well, that sort of thing. I thought the excitement would
help. It did. I was within a yard of the bull when he died. Some of the
blood splashed me. I didn’t like that.”