We lived at the Ritz, Philibert and Jinny and I, and we were all at
sixes and sevens. Philibert’s world was in pieces. He would sit by the
window of our hotel salon that gave out on the Place de la Concorde,
twirling his thumbs and looking at the floor as if he saw the big
bright brittle thing that had been his world, lying about him in
fragments.
My world! I had glimpsed it during those four years in the open; it
had nothing to do with this profane ostentation of luxury, this coming
and going of discreet servants, this ordering of meals and of clothes.
The war had caught me up like a hurricane, had kept me suspended above
the earth in a region of thunder and lightning, had carried me a long
distance. Now that I had dropped to earth again, I could not get my
bearings. The objects about me, the shining motors, the ermine coats,
the jewelled clocks, the rich dandies, the smirkings and grimaces
looked silly, detestable. I had never liked them so very much, now
I hated them. I remembered the _poilus_ of France who had been my
comrades, dogged humble grimy heroes, who plodded to death across
fields of mud in clumsy coats of faded blue that were too big for them;
I thought of France, their France, a nation of men who had humbled me
to the dust and had left me weeping as a sister weeps who is bereft.
I belonged somehow with them, with those who had died, asking me to
send their pitiful treasures to their obscure homes, and with those who
still lived, who would have to begin again now the struggle for their
daily bread. And I felt akin to them in their toil, on the broad brown
life-giving earth under the open sky. I suffocated in Paris.
And the peace they had fought for became in the hands of diplomats and
politicians a tawdry thing. Their glib trivial lips talked of it as
if it were an annoying and exasperating, but still a rather amusing
puzzle; the peace a million men had died for had become the sport of
bureaucrats.
One asked oneself--what was the use?--No use--they had given their
lives in vain. But these were the men who had sent the nations to war.
Had this group of well-fed clerks and shopkeepers the right to condemn
a million innocent men to death? Would they, the men of France, have
gone, had they known, had they understood? Ah, the pity of it,--all the
young, all the strong, all the simple folk were gone. I heard talk of
Alsace-Lorraine, of the Rhine Provinces, of indemnities. Very difficult
it seemed to fix the boundaries of all the new nations that had come
into existence. Impossible to get enough money out of Germany to pay
for the war.
Reparation! Every one was talking of reparation! But how could they
hope to repair the irreparable. The war had been a gigantic crime
against the “people.” Who was responsible? I wanted to get out of this
crowd of jabbering diplomats. I wanted to get away and think things
out, but I couldn’t. Jinny kept me.
Jinny’s world, where was it? What was it to be? That was the immediate
question, the pressing problem. She had told me that she knew all about
Philibert and me. What did that mean? How much did she know? I could
not tell. Her mind was closed to me.
She eyed us, her parents, strangely. “What,” her eyes seemed to ask,
“are you going to do about me? You must do something. You may be done
for, both of you; you may have ruined your lives; I’ve a right to live.”
It was true. We both felt it. Our nerves on edge, we saw and with
exasperating clearness that we ought to join together, try to
understand each other for her sake, and set about the solution of her
future.
But we were strangers. The war had driven us in opposite directions.
We looked at each other across an immense distance. And the fact that
Jinny knew we were strangers to each other made us feel more strange.
It was as if the pretence we had made for her sake had really almost
become a reality; now that we need no longer keep it up, we felt
uncomfortable without it. And we knew further that there was going to
be a struggle between us about Jinny and we were both afraid to open
the subject of her future. And we were both afraid, a little, of her.
She stood there between us, lovely, aloof, mysterious, reading us,
divining our thoughts, judging us. Obscurely we felt this through the
lethargy that enveloped us.
Philibert was peevish. He kept asking me how much longer the Government
would want to keep our house as a hospital. When I said I didn’t know,
he snarled, scuffled his feet and said: “Well, can’t you tell them to
take their wounded away? I want to get back there. I want to reorganize
my existence. This, living like this makes me sick. Who knows what
state the pictures are in? Some may have been stolen. The Alfred
Stevens I’ve reason to believe were not properly packed. Everything
will be damaged. I feel it. I feel it. The Aubusson tapestries from the
blue salon--Janson you say, saw to them--a good firm, but I’m worried,
and any way, it will take months to get everything back. What a world,
what disorder! I detest disorder. Look out there at those American
soldiers on their motor bicycles--riding like mad men--Paris isn’t fit
to live in. It’s too bad--too bad--what is one to do? All these foreign
troops swarming about. One can’t call one’s soul one’s own.”
“They helped to win the war.”
He flung off with a growl. He suspected me of not doing what I could to
help him get back to his house. He knew that had I wanted to I could
have got the wounded transferred at once, but he didn’t want to make
the move himself at the “_Service de Santé_”--for fear that his action
might seem unbecoming, and he was afraid to ask me point blank what my
idea was. I had no idea--I was waiting for something to happen.
I didn’t have to wait long. It is all so curious, the way it worked in
together. Bianca’s coming back. Why should she have come back? She was
a woman of no character. I had frightened her and she had crumpled up
and run away. But she hated me for humiliating her. She could never
forgive me for having broken up her surface of perfection. So under the
monstrous cloak of the war she had crawled back to get in my way, to
trip me up, to do me in, somehow, and she had stumbled on the way to do
it. She had come across Jinny.
And to a woman like Bianca, Jinny must have been like a spring in a
desert, a thing of a ravishing purity and freshness. Like a woman dying
of thirst, she flung herself at the child’s feet. I see it all now in
retrospect. Poisoned, diseased, tired to death, addled and excited by
drugs, sick of men, unutterably bored with herself, here was the one
thing to appeal to Bianca, the one charm capable of distracting her
from the nightmare that possessed her. It is the usual tale of such
women. The cycle is completed. They all end that way. And add to her
corrupt affection for the child the impetus of doing me a final and
deadly hurt and you have the situation before you.
By the time I came back from the front, she was sufficiently intimate
with Jinny to prevail upon the child, never to mention her name to me.
I knew nothing. I was unaware that they had ever spoken to each other.
It would have been better if the family had been frank with me about
their plans for marrying Jinny. It would have been better because it
would have been kinder, and when you want to get round a person it is
as well to try kindness. Also, it would have been more intelligent.
Surely they might have understood me, by this time. How is it that they
did not foresee what would happen? How is it that they did not know
that if they tried to force my hand I would see red? You can persuade
a savage to do almost anything, but if you frighten him, he smashes
things. I was the savage. They should have known better how to deal
with me.
It was foolish to plot and scheme behind my back and plan to put me in
the presence of a “_fait accompli_.”
I can see, nevertheless, why they did it. They were afraid of me. They
distrusted me. After twenty years among them, I remained for them the
“foreigner.” It is painful to me now to realize this, but it was so;
I had not succeeded in becoming one of them. True that during the war
they had admired my work, but alas, even that service now assumed a
strange aspect, for the war, it appeared, had left me very queer. I had
come back with very strange ideas. Once when they were all talking of
the Russian Revolution and the danger of Bolshevism spreading through
Europe, I had said,
“Well, what of it?” They had looked at me aghast. “But Jane,” some one
had cried, “it would be the end of civilization”; and I had, perhaps a
little abruptly, brought out,
“Surely our civilization hasn’t so much to recommend it.”
They tried to laugh it off, but they were really very much worried.
Aunt Clo again sent for me. “I hear you have turned socialist and are
consorting with strange violent men in red ties--”
“That, dear Aunt, is nonsense. I still see Ludovic if you call him
violent, and he has, at my request, presented to me some socialists.
Clémentine and I are interested you know in the strange ferment of
ideas that is the aftermath of the war. Frankly I find these people
more alive than those of my own class, but the socialist deputies don’t
really appeal to me,” and I added maliciously, “they don’t go far
enough. Lenin, now, he is consistent, he has an idea--”
Your Aunt Clo chuckled--“No wonder the family is in a fever about you.”
I was annoyed. “You must tranquillize them. Clem and I go to the
meetings of the third International, but I’m not going to do anything
you know. It’s only that I find it such a bore to go on talking as if
the world were or ever could be as it was before the war. Let me have
any little distractions. They’ll do no one any harm. As long as Jinny
exists, they can feel quite safe. I shan’t throw a bomb or take the vow
of poverty. Communism doesn’t appeal to me when I think of my child. I
want her to be safe.”
At the mention of Jinny your aunt’s face had grown serious, as serious
as such a round expanse of placid flesh could grow.
“Well, what are your ideas for Jinny,” she snapped.