“You know that I’m frightened but you don’t know how frightened. Some
day, any day, tomorrow perhaps, he’ll see me as I am, a shrivelled-up
hag who has played the devil with her life. Do you remember Jane, how
your grandmother used to make us read the Bible on Sunday mornings in
St. Mary’s Plains? I remember a phrase--‘Born again.’ Well, I’ve been
born again. My soul is beautiful, it’s as beautiful as the morning, but
I’m as tired and ugly as ever--and my mind is as old as hell. I’ll lose
him if I marry him, or if I don’t, I feel it in my bones. I used to
think--‘I’m so much cleverer than he is that I’ll be able to keep him.’
My dear, don’t talk to me about cleverness in holding a man. I’d give
all the brains in the world for one year of beauty. If only I could
be quite quite lovely for just one year. God! but it’s tiring to be
always trying to look nicer than you are.”
On another day she broke down and sobbed and implored me to tell her
that she was mistaken, and that he wouldn’t get tired of her. “He’s
so sweet,” she cried, “so sweet. He gets so cross with women who
aren’t nice about me. When they make love to him he doesn’t seem to
understand, he thinks them idiots, but each time that he comes back
to me from one of them, I am afraid to look at him, afraid to see
his eyes, veiled, shifting. It’s awful--too awful! He couldn’t hide
anything from me, could he?”
The next time I saw her she was the colour of ashes.
“He hasn’t been near me for a week. Some one has got hold of him. I
know who it is.” Her teeth chattered, she kept twisting her hands, but
as I sat there miserably watching her, the telephone rang, and she was
off like a crazy woman. “Yes, yes, I’m at home, of course. Oh, Micky
darling, do--do--come quick, quick”--and when she came back to me she
was laughing and crying and saying over and over, “I’m a fool! I’m a
fool.”
It was the end of March that they made up their minds to go away
together to Italy. She was very lucid and calm about it. Paris had got
on their nerves. The life they were leading was impossible. His family
might cut him off without a penny, but that couldn’t be helped. They
would stay in Italy until the divorce decree was made absolute, and
they could be married. Micky had a foolish idea about its being unwise
for them to start together from Paris. They were to take the Simplon
Express. She was to go ahead and board the train at La Roche Junction.
As this was very near Ste. Clothilde, would I mind her going there and
stopping the night?
As it happened I was going to Ste. Clothilde for Easter, a few days
later, so I advanced the date of my journey and took her with me.
How much she knew or suspected of what had been going on between Micky
and Bianca, I do not know. She never told me. All that she ever said
was--“I know he didn’t plan it deliberately, I know he didn’t mean
to--when I left him.” But she must have known enough to be terribly
anxious, and I imagine that her decision to go off with him to Italy
was a last desperate move.
The Simplon Express left Paris at nine and stopped at La Roche at
eleven o’clock at night. Micky was to take two tickets and the sleepers
and get on the train at Paris, ready to lift her aboard.
“Once I am on the train,” she kept saying, “I feel that I will be safe.”
La Roche was a three hours’ motor run across country from Ste.
Clothilde, the roads were winding lanes, confusing and indistinctly
marked; so we decided that she had better do the distance before dark.
She might puncture a tire, the motor might break down, anything might
happen, she was feverishly anxious to allow herself plenty of time. She
started at three o’clock.
Her face was strained and seemed no bigger than a little wizened
infant’s face as she said good-bye. For a moment, on those immense
stone steps in view of Philibert’s great formal gardens with their
fountains and statues and broad gravel walks, she clung to me. Then
with a final nervous hug flung away and jumped into the car. Her last
words were “I’ll not come back till I’m married, Jane, so give me your
blessing.” And out of my heart I gave it, kissing both my hands to her
as the motor swung down the drive, and through the great iron gates.
I felt singularly depressed. Fan and I in that formal and splendid
panorama, were such minute creatures--were no bigger, no stronger than
a couple of flies. Never had the Château de Ste. Clothilde seemed so
cold, so inhuman, so foreign. I no longer disliked the place, I had
grown used to it as I had grown used to other things. Its imposing
architectural beauty, delicately majestic, serenely incongruous with
nature, had made its effect on my mind. I understood to some extent
the idea that had created it, the high peculiarity of taste that
had chosen to mock at woods and fields, by building in their midst a
palace smooth and fine as a thing of porcelain. Gradually I had come
to appreciate the bland assurance of the achievement with all its bold
frivolous contradictions of reason and common-sense. The moat that
surrounded three sides of the château, was like a marble bath. It had
no _raison d’être_. Never had any owner dreamed of defending this
place from any invaders, but the moat was there, full of clear water,
palest green in which were reflected the silvery walls and high shining
windows. And on the fourth side of the house, a joke perhaps, or to
contradict the chilling effect of the moat, the eighteenth century
architect who adored Marie Antoinette in her shepherdess costume,
built an immense flight of steps straight across the length of the
south façade, lovely, smooth, shallow steps, made to welcome a crowd
of courtiers in satins and trailing silks, and dainty high-heeled
slippers. It had amused me at times to imagine them there in that
theatrical setting, and to recreate for myself the spectacle of their
_fêtes galantes_--but on the day that Fan left me to go to her boy
lover, I took no pleasure in the ghostly place. The sky was grey, the
faintly budding trees marshalled a far-off beyond the formal gardens,
showed a haze of green that seemed to me sickly, and the suggestion of
spring in the air gave me a feeling of “_malaise_.”
I remembered that Bianca and Philibert had gone off by the same Simplon
Express five years before. They too must have stopped at the station
of La Roche at eleven o’clock at night, or had they boarded the train
farther down the line? I couldn’t remember what they were supposed to
have done. All that had nothing to do with me, yet I was waiting for
Philibert to arrive with a dozen people who would be my guests, his and
mine.
My chauffeur reported his return at nine o’clock that evening. They had
reached La Roche at six as planned. He had left the Princess at the
station. The Princess had not wished him to wait until the arrival of
her train. He had insisted, _auprès de Madame la Princesse_, as I had
told him to do, but she had been displeased and had sent him away.
It was a rainy night, loud with a gusty April wind. The big rooms
of the château were peopled with moving shadows and filled with
whisperings and sighs. The wind moaned down the chimneys and set the
far branches of the trees in the park to tossing. I was alone in the
house save for the servants. Jinny had gone to her grandmother for a
few days.
I slept badly and woke early. My room was scarcely light. The sun was
not yet up, or was obscured by a dismal sky. I listened apprehensively
to the moaning restless morning. I listened intently for something--a
sound, I didn’t know what. Then I heard it. The telephone downstairs
was ringing. I knew in an instant what that meant, and flew down
the corridor, my heart pounding in my ribs. A clock somewhere was
striking six, seven, I did not know which. A man’s voice spoke over the
phone,--“_La Gare de La Roche--La Princesse Ivanoff prie La Marquise
de Joigny de venir la chercher en auto--La Princesse l’attendra à la
Gare--La Princesse s’est trouvée malade dans la nuit et a manqué son
train._” I did not wait to hear any more. I was on my way in half an
hour. The drive seemed terribly long, interminably long. Fan all night
in the station of La Roche--what did it mean?
I found her sitting on a packing case on the station platform, her head
against the wall. Her face was bluish, her lips were a pale mauve, her
hands, wet, like lumps of ice.
“I’ve been sitting here all night,” she said in a dull voice. “I’m
cold.” The station master helped me get her into the car. He seemed
troubled and ashamed. He explained that they had not noticed her during
the night. After the passing of the express he always went home to
bed. The station was deserted during the middle of the night, and the
waiting room locked. No passenger trains stopped between twelve and
five in the morning. At five the Princess had been discovered by an
employé but she had refused to move. They had tried to get her to drink
some coffee from the buffet. She had asked him to telephone which he
had done. The Princess had told him that she had felt faint during the
evening while waiting and had thus missed the train.
On the way home she did not speak. Her body was as heavy against me
as a corpse. Her head kept slipping from my arm. I held her across my
knees and gave her a sip of brandy now and then. Half way home she
began to shiver. Her body shook, her teeth chattered, grating against
each other. By the time we reached home, she was in a burning fever.
That night Philibert entertained his guests alone. I sat with Fan in
her room. About ten o’clock she stopped for a moment her terrible
exhausting tossing from one side of the bed to the other and said--
“I heard her laugh. She put her head out of the car window and laughed.”
“Who laughed, dear?”
“Bianca--she was with Micky in the train. They wouldn’t let me get on.
I had no ticket--”
She lay on her back now staring at the ceiling. Some one downstairs
was playing a waltz on the piano. The wind had fallen. Out of doors
the night was soft and still. Fan’s voice came from her dried lips,
distinct and harsh.
“I tried to get onto the steps of the train. The guard stopped me.
Bianca must have fixed him beforehand. Micky was drunk. She had fixed
him too, by making him drunk. He wouldn’t have done it if he hadn’t
been drunk. The railway carriage was very high, but I could see into
the lighted corridor. I saw Micky. His face was red and stupid. I
called ‘Micky--Micky, my ticket--quick; they won’t let me on without
it.’ But he didn’t seem to hear me. Some one was behind him in the
compartment.
“The _wagons-lits_ man asked me what I wanted. I screamed out--‘That
gentleman has my ticket.’ He half believed me. I saw him go in and
speak to Micky, and looking up--you know how high the carriages are--I
saw Micky shake his head. The attendant came back then and told me
that I was mistaken, the gentleman was expecting no one, there was no
place, the car was full. A whistle blew. The train started to move, I
grabbed the handle by the steps. The _wagons-lits_ man slammed the door
shut above me. The train moved faster, I ran along holding on. ‘Micky’
I called, ‘Micky.’ Some one pulled me back, wrenched my hand loose, I
stumbled, then I heard Bianca laugh, I saw her. She put her head out of
the window and laughed. I was on all fours, in the wet. It was raining.
I scrambled to my feet and ran down the platform. The train was moving
fast by this time. The last carriage passed me. I reached the end of
the platform. I saw the red light at the back of the train. They were
in the train together, Micky and Bianca. They were together, in the
little hot lighted compartment. They were going away together. She had
taken my place. I stood there. The red light disappeared. There seemed
to be no one about, it was very windy and cold. I don’t know what I did
after that. I remember the steel rails stretching out under the arc
light into the darkness. I wanted to run down the rails and catch the
train, but the train was gone, and I was afraid.”
They were dancing downstairs; I heard their feet scraping; the time was
changed to a fox trot--but Fan did not notice. She lay in a deep dark
empty place of her own, cut off from all the sights and sounds round
her, watching something, following something, the red lantern perhaps
at the end of a train going away in the dark.
I gave Philibert no explanation of Fan’s presence or of her illness.
The other people in the house thought that she had come for a visit
and had caught cold during a walk in the rain. I had told my maid to
suggest this explanation to the servants. She understood. They did
not give me away. Philibert never knew what had happened to Fan, but
he found out when he went back to Paris that Bianca had gone away
with the English boy. I remember wondering afterwards, how he liked
being the one who was left behind, but I wondered vaguely, without
any feeling for him. He mattered less than he had ever done. Nothing
mattered for the time being but Fan, very ill, with congestion of the
lungs, who wanted so much to die and end quickly what was already
ended. But she couldn’t manage dying. Death eluded her. Life was
unwilling to let her miserable body go. Like the remains of some
sticky poisonous substance left in a battered dish, it stuck to her.
Unwelcome, noisome, contaminated stuff of life, she couldn’t get rid
of it although the convulsing frame tried to eject it from her lips.
The horror of her coughing! the shaking of her pointed shoulders, the
sound of her wrenching stomach, the rattling of her breath in her poor
bony chest, the great deep resounding noises of pain in the fragile box
that held her wasted lungs! Her eyes would start out at me in terror.
She would clutch at me wildly and gasp--“Hold me. Hold me, Jane, I’m
shaking to pieces,” and I would hold her through the long spasm, and
then she would fall back exhausted and clammy with sweat. My heart
ached and ached and ached. I wanted so, for her to die. If she had
asked me to do it, I would have ended her life with an injection of
morphine, but she said nothing.
Early in May she had a bad haemorrhage. All the scarlet blood of her
veins seemed to me to be staining the cloths that I held to her mouth.
And afterwards she lay at peace, and I thought “Thank God this is the
end,” but it wasn’t. She rallied. Some strength came back to her. The
doctors told me to take her to Switzerland. I did so, and did not
remember until we were installed in our chalet near the sanatorium that
we were within a few miles of the place where she had first met Micky,
but she seemed not to mind at all being there, and would lie on the
balcony in the sun looking across the valley at the mountains with a
smile on her face, while I read aloud to her. Sometimes she talked of
St. Mary’s Plains, sometimes of Paris, a great many people wrote to
her, women who had been unkind when she was happy, were sorry for her
now; sometimes she was gay, laughing and childishly pleased with new
chintzes and tea sets and cushions that I ordered from Paris but she
never spoke of Micky.
Gradually she grew smaller and smaller. Her face was disappearing.
There was nothing much left of it now, but a pointed nose with
painfully wide distended nostrils, and two sunken eyes. I took the hand
glass away from her dressing table one night when she was asleep--she
didn’t ask for it, but one day not long afterwards, she said suddenly
“I would like something, Jane.”
“What, my darling?”
“I would like some new clothes, especially hats. I would like six new
hats from Caroline Reboux”; and then she looked at me suspiciously like
a sharp little witch.
I said, of course, that I would write for them at once. She dictated
the letter. Caroline was asked to send us the newest and smartest
models she had. “She knows my style,” said Fan from her pillow, “she’ll
send something amusing, won’t she, Jane?”
“I’m sure they’ll be ravishing, my dear.”
“Do you think I’m silly, Jane? I’ve a feeling it will do me good to
have those hats--when they come we’ll try them on, we’ll go for a
drive. We’ll pick out the most becoming and drive to--but how long will
it be before they come?”
“Not more than ten days--I should think,” I said avoiding her strange
eager eyes.
The next day she was very tired, she asked if there were letters but
only looked at the envelopes, saying--“They don’t care a damn whether
I live or die,” and the next day and the next, she asked again for
letters only to fling them aside.
In the evening she said, “I’m a beast, Jane--and a fool. Why did we
write for those hats? I know I can’t wear them, but I’ve always wanted
to order hats like that, half a dozen at a time without thinking what
they cost. You won’t mind paying, I know--and I don’t mind now. I’ve
been a beast about you, Jane, I used to envy you so many things.”
“What for instance--?”
“Well, your ermine coat with the hundreds of little black tails, the
sable cape, and your jade necklace, and your pearls. I always adored
pearls. I believe I could have sold my soul for pearls like yours at
one time. Funny, isn’t it? Lucky no one ever offered me any--no one
ever did you know. I wasn’t the kind to have ropes of pearls given
me for the asking. If I had only been beautiful, Jane--I would have
gone to the dogs sure as fate, but oh, I’d have had a good time. As
it is, I don’t seem to have had much fun, now that I think of it.
My past is like a dingy deep pocket with a hole in it somewhere.
I’ve been dropping trinkets into it all my life, and now I find it’s
empty, just an empty dark pocket--that’s my past.” She gave her old
shrill laugh. “It’s damn funny isn’t it, Jane--life, I mean. We go on,
hoping, hoping, looking forward, looking for something, thinking always
there’s something nice ahead for us, being cheated all the time, never
admitting it, never giving in, always expecting--fooling ourselves,
being fooled--up to the very end. What makes us like that? What keeps
us going? Who invents the string of lies we believe in?”
She lay propped up on pillows, her head sunk between her pointed
shoulders, her knees sharp as pegs pushing up the bed-clothes, and her
skinny hands like birds’ claws picked at the lace on her sleeve.
“Happiness--Jane? I was happy once, you know. It made me good, at least
I thought so. I felt good. I tried to be good. Everything dropped away;
it was like moulting. I came out a plucked chicken, no fine feathers
left. What was the use? I was too far gone I suppose, when it came--”
She stared up at me, her cheek bones flushed, her wide nostrils, great
black holes in her small face, palpitating. “Love came--now death--and
I’m not good enough for that either. What’s death to me? Nothing. I
can’t rise to meet it. I want some new hats. That’s all I can think
about, all I can bear to think about. My death Jane, like my life, is
empty. I fill up the emptiness with things, little things.” She held
her two hands against her side as if the emptiness were there, hurting
her. “Jane,” she said suddenly, “I wonder--” Her eyes widened, and in
them I saw the shadow of the great terror that gets us all in the end.
She stared, her dreadful gaping nostrils dilating, her mouth open, her
hands out in front of her, pushing against the air. Then suddenly she
laughed. “No, no, damn it all, let’s be frivolous up to the end. It’s
as good a way as another of seeing the business through.”
She died the end of July, with all her new hats strewn round the room
and a piece of wonderful lace in her hands. “Lovely, lovely lace, isn’t
it, Jane?” she had said a minute before, and then there was a tearing
sound in her chest and the scarlet blood flowing from her mouth, and
one choking cry as I sprang to her side.
“Jane--Jane--I’m going now and I’ve not seen him. Jane, tell him,
tell Micky I hoped--” Her eyes were agonized. The blood choked her.
She couldn’t speak, but I saw in her eyes what she meant--terribly I
saw--how she had believed up to the end that Micky would come back to
her.
It was Ivanoff who came and Ivanoff, great hulking shameful pitiable
creature who wept over her poor lonely coffin. We brought her back
to Paris, Ivanoff and I, and buried her in _Père-Lachaise_ one rainy
afternoon and then he disappeared again for the last time.
I went straight to Deauville. Philibert was there with his mother and
Jinny, but I went to find Bianca. I had seen in the paper that she was
at the Normandy.
I may have been out of my mind, I don’t know. I remember that I thought
I had Fan’s disease, but that does not prove that I was off my head.
The smell of it was in my breath, the dry sound of its hacking cough
in my ears, and constantly I saw before me, Fan herself, pallid,
shiny with sweat, two black holes in her face opening, panting for
breath--and behind her, looking over her dank head I saw Bianca, her
pointed lips smiling, cruel as only she in all heaven and earth could
be cruel.
It is true that I took a revolver with me to the Casino that night.
I remember putting it in my silk bag and pretending at dinner that I
had a lot of gold pieces by me, for luck. I had. I was going to the
Casino to gamble. I would find a place opposite Bianca and sit her
out. You remember the scene. People talked of it enough Heaven knows.
One would have supposed women never had played high before. A crowd
gathered round us--half Paris was there. I remember the Tobacco King, a
very fat man with a red face. It pleased him at first, he swelled with
importance. By three in the morning he had lost five hundred thousand
francs. His place was taken by the Brazilian millionaire--Chenal, the
opera star, was opposite. A number of men accustomed to playing in the
men’s rooms, joined our table. They half realized there was more in it
than just a game. Bianca opposite me, was white as a sheet. Her face
was like a white moon among all those red bloated faces. I watched
her. I watched her long carmine finger nails glinting as she handled
her piles of folded notes. We played against each other. The luck was
against me after the Tobacco King left. I was losing heavily. The fact
made no impression on me. I wasn’t playing with Bianca for money. The
little wads of thousand franc notes were symbols. The game was a blind.
I went _Banco_ against her as a matter of course, automatically, but
all the time I was playing another game. I was repeating silently to
myself, words that were meant for her. Your psycho-therapists would
say I was trying to hypnotize her, to subject her to my suggestion.
Well, I was; I was attacking her brain with all the power of my will.
I was concentrated on her to break her down. I was determined to
frighten her, to fill her with dread, with frantic dread of my hatred,
my loathing, my determination to make her pay for what she had done.
I succeeded. At four o’clock she began to show signs; attendants
kept bringing her whiskey, liqueurs, champagne; her face had turned
blueish, she went on. She was still winning. But she knew now, that
that wouldn’t help her. At five I saw her waver. She started to scrape
together her winnings. I did the same. She looked into my face; it was
evident to her that if she left the table I would follow her. She went
on playing. We sat there as you know till six o’clock. We left the
Casino as the doors closed--we left together.
“I am going with you, Bianca--don’t hurry, there is no hurry”--I
kept her by my side. The sun was rising as we crossed towards the
Normandy. “No--” I objected, “not there--come out on the beach.” It
was low tide. The sea was still. A light mist hung along the horizon.
The little waves glinted in the first sun rays. We went out across
the wet sand, Bianca’s turquoise blue cape trailing behind her in the
little pools where crabs scuttled out of the way of our high satin
heels. The sunlight bathed us. It showed her pallid as a corpse. What
I looked to her, I do not know. Our two long shadows moved ahead of us
to the edge of the water. There was no one near. Behind us stretched
the sands--in front of us the sea--afar out, was a ship, minute white
sails, sea birds darted in the blue--space--sunlight--silence. We
faced each other, and I told her very briefly what was in my mind. I
told her that the earth must be rid of her, at any rate that part of
the earth which held me, that I had a revolver in my bag and was quite
prepared if necessary to put an end to her life, or give it to her,
and leave her to do it herself. On the other hand I saw no particular
point in suffering the consequences of her death, and would be content
if she disappeared for ever from the world that I knew, from Paris,
from France, from the civilized places where ordinary men and women
like myself were in the habit of living. I told her that I would not
allow her to live anywhere any longer where I was--that she could
choose--either she would go--take herself off--disappear for ever--or
shoot herself there in my presence--If she didn’t, I would kill her the
next time I came across her.
It sounds extraordinarily silly and puerile as I relate this but
it did not sound silly to Bianca. You must remember that I knew
Bianca and knew just how that sort of thing might affect her--and
knew that physically she had always been afraid of me. I counted on
her superstition, her morbidness, her lassitude. I counted on the
stillness, the wide mysterious dawn, the still sea, the cold sky--and
I counted on her lack of character--on her “_manque d’équilibre_.” I
was right. I told her that she was loathesome and that at bottom she
loathed herself; I told her that she was sick of loving herself and in
fact, couldn’t go on much longer even pretending to herself that she
wasn’t vile. I told her that her vanity was strained to the breaking
point, that any day it might snap and that she would collapse. When
she could no longer keep up the fiction of her own interest to herself
what could she do? Nothing. She would be a drivelling idiot--she would
go insane as she had feared. Coldly I repeated it, over and over. She
was diseased; she was a maniac--an egotistical maniac and she would one
day become a raving lunatic. She could take her choice. End it now--or
go off and develop her lunacy elsewhere in some far country where the
curse of her presence would affect no one that mattered to me.
I can see her now--as she was that morning--standing in the sunlight
in her evening dress, her feet wet, her cloak trailing on the sand,
her face working. I had never seen her face twist before. That morning
in the glaring sun, it twitched and jerked and pulled, until almost I
thought that her mind had snapped and that she was already the idiot
I had prophesied, but she pulled herself together to some extent and
managed after a while to speak. What she said was trivial.
“It is your fault, Jane--you wouldn’t do what I wanted so I had to
hurt you again--you shouldn’t blame me--you know that I am possessed
of devils--Well, have it your own way--I’ll go. Don’t look at me like
that--I’ll go, I tell you. Stop looking, you frighten me--Yes, I’m
afraid of you--I admit it. Your look is a curse in itself--Wasn’t
I cursed enough when I was born--what have I done after all--Fan’s
death--? Pooh! She’d have died any way.”
But at that I gripped her. I must have twisted her arms. She gave a
shriek, then a whimper as I let her go, and staggered away from me,
back towards the shore. I followed her as far as the bathing boxes;
all the way she made little noises like a wounded animal, whimpering,
sniffing, almost growling. It was horrid. Her long swaying staggering
figure, her head hanging forward, her hands twisting her clothes round
her, clutching her sides--her shoulders twitching; she was, I suppose,
on the verge of hysterics. I felt no pity for her. The sight of her was
shocking and disgusting. She had gone to pieces as I thought she would
do. She had no character.
I watched her go--From the wooden walk I watched her stumble towards
the hotel, break into a run, turn to look back, disappear. It was
seven o’clock. An attendant opened a cabin for me. I stripped and swam
out--out--a mile, two miles, three, I don’t know. When I got back to
the villa Jinny was at breakfast. I felt hungry. We laughed over our
honey and rolls. At twelve I was told that Bianca had left Deauville by
motor.
That was in 1913, the year before the war.