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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..faa40a1 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #66568 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66568) diff --git a/old/66568-0.txt b/old/66568-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 72b6650..0000000 --- a/old/66568-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,12573 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of Jane--Our Stranger, by Mary Borden - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: Jane--Our Stranger - A Novel - -Author: Mary Borden - -Release Date: October 20, 2021 [eBook #66568] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Produced by: Tim Lindell, Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed - Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was - produced from images generously made available by The Internet - Archive/Canadian Libraries) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JANE--OUR STRANGER *** - -+-------------------------------------------------+ -|Transcriber’s note: | -| | -|Obvious typographic errors have been corrected. | -| | -+-------------------------------------------------+ - - -JANE--OUR STRANGER - - - - -_RECENT FICTION_ - - - THE WHITE MONKEY - By JOHN GALSWORTHY - - BALISAND - By JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER - - THREE PILGRIMS AND A TINKER - By MARY BORDEN - - THE LAW OF THE THRESHOLD - By FLORA A. STEEL - - SANDOVAL (A Romance of Bad Manners) - By THOMAS BEER - - THE _MAJESTIC_ MYSTERY - By DENIS MACKAIL - - THE FLORENTINE DAGGER - By BEN HECHT - - -_LONDON -WILLIAM HEINEMANN LTD._ - - - - -JANE--OUR STRANGER - -A NOVEL - -BY -MARY BORDEN - -AUTHOR OF “THE ROMANTIC WOMAN” - -[Illustration: Logo] - - -LONDON - -WILLIAM HEINEMANN LTD. - - - - -_First published, 1923_ -_New Impressions January, February, March, -April, August, 1924_ - - -_Printed in Great Britain by Woods & Sons, Ltd., London, N.1._ - - - - -PART I - - - - -I - - -It is a pity we do not die when our lives are finished. Jane may live -another twenty years--a long time to wait, alone between two worlds. -Jane is forty-three, I am five years older, Philibert is fifty-six, my -mother nearly eighty, we are all alive, and strangely enough _Maman_ -is the only one whose life is not yet ended. Hers will not end till -the moment of her death. She has been a wise artist. She is still -embroidering delicately the pattern of her days; she still holds the -many threads in her fingers. Quietly, exquisitely she will put in the -last stitches. They will be the most beautiful of all; they will be her -signature, the signature of a lady. Then she will close her eyes and -commend her soul to God and the perfect work of her worldly wisdom will -be finished. - -As for me, I see no reason why I should not live on indefinitely just -as I have done, and on the whole I am more comfortable here than in -Purgatory, a place that I imagine to be like the suburbs of London. I -see myself there, tapping with my crutch, along endless tramway lines -between interminable rows of dingy perky villas. This little street -in the Faubourg Saint Germain is much nicer. It is old and proud and -secretive; a good street for a cripple to live in; it shelters and -protects him. Once he has entered it he has no distance to go to get -home. It is usually deserted and the great pale houses show discreet -shuttered windows with no one behind the shutters to stare at him. I am -Philibert’s crippled brother. Something went wrong with me before I was -born. Nothing else of importance has ever happened to me, except Jane’s -marrying my brother. - -Jane loved this little street. She said that it told her the story of -France and conveyed to her all the charm of the Paris she loved best, -the proud gentle mysterious Paris of the 18th century that with all its -fine reserved grandeur assumes modestly the look of a small provincial -town. - -I came to live here when Philibert sold our house in the Rue de Varenne -that is just round the corner, and my mother went to her new apartment -near the Étoile. That was twenty years ago, and very little has changed -in the street since I came to these rooms at the bottom of this little -courtyard between Constantine’s big white house and the Embassy. The -little man who peddled bird-seed has vanished long ago, his voice is -no more to be heard chanting, but other street vendors still come by -with their sing-song calls. What indeed was there that could change, -save perhaps old Madame Barbier’s grocery shop at the corner, tucked -up against Constantine’s stable wall? But even Madame Barbier has -remained the same. Her hair is as smooth and glossy black, her tight -corsage as neat, and her trim window with its glass jars of honey and -the nice bright boxes of groceries is as it always has been. A thrifty -respectable woman is Madame Barbier, with a pleasant word for her -neighbours. For the rest, on the opposite side of the street there is -the convent, with its pointed roof and the chapel belfry showing above -the wall, and there are the five big houses with their great gates that -make up the whole length of the street. Not a long street--often when -I turn into it at one end, I recognize a familiar figure going out of -it at the other, the good Abbé perhaps going home after confessing the -sisters in the convent, or old Madame d’Avrécourt in her shabby black -jacket, her fine little withered face under her bonnet, wearing its -habitual enigmatic smile. Monsieur l’Abbé says that her voluminous -petticoats are heavy with the sacred charms she has sewn into the -hems, and that may well be; I know that her devotion is very great and -her interest in the outside world very small, and the sight of her is -comforting to me. - -It is so quiet here, and so confined. It is like a cloister--or a -prison--I am glad of that. - -Tonight, Good Friday night, I can hear the good sisters in the chapel -singing. The mysticism of their haunting chant penetrates the walls -of this old house, and tonight because of their lamenting, because of -their dread disciplined agony of supplication, the street is immensely -deep and high, whereas yesterday it was just small and dim and worldly, -with its houses blinking over its walls, a proud battered deceiving old -street, hiding the rare beauty of its dwellings, guarding the secrets -of its families behind mute shutters, till the day it should crumble -to pieces or an insolent government should turn it upside down like an -ash-bin. - -It never, of course, could get used to Jane. Who of us did get used -to Jane? Did I myself? Wasn’t she a big troubling problem to us all -till the very end? How could we not be afraid of her? Poor magnificent -Jane--fine timid innocent child--dangerous nature woman--dreadful -crying message from a new bellowing land--what was she? What was she -not? How could she fit in here? She was as strange here as a leopard -beautifully moving down the grey narrow pavement. How she used to -frighten the good Abbé. I have seen him scuttle into a neighbouring -doorway to let her pass, as if there were no room for him along the -stones she walked so grandly. It was true. There was no room for any -one but Jane when she came, and now that she is gone never to come back -again, the place is as dreary and empty as an abandoned cemetery and -the light is as insipidly pale as the half shadow in a sick room. She -has left a sickness in this place, because she came here sometimes to -see me--and won’t come any more. - -And yet I stay on here. I shall stay here always. I have no reason -to go anywhere now that I have been to America to see Jane, and have -come back with the accurate awful knowledge of the great distance -between us. Ah, that wide sea, that New York, a high cold gate into -a strange over-powering country, those immense prairies, and those -tiny farm houses, with tiny women watching the train; Jane, a tiny -woman, Jane a speck, in a town that is a dot on the map. I will write -down Jane’s story. I will remember it all, everything that she told -me and everything that I saw, and will put it all down exactly with -perfect precision and accuracy, and then, perhaps I shall understand -her. Poor Jane--she wanted to understand life. She believed always -that there was a reason for things, an ultimate reason and a purpose. -She was no philosopher, she was a woman of faith. She should have been -the wife of a pioneer, the wife of such a man as Isak, who went into -the wilderness with a sack over his shoulder. Jane was made for such -a man. I can see them together going out under the sky, he, grave, -deep-chested, long-limbed, “a barge of a man,” and beside him a woman -like a ship, moving proudly. And she married Philibert. Could any -one who has ever seen her with Philibert miss the meaning of their -extraordinary contrast? Philibert with his clever jaunty little body, -his exaggerated elegance, his cold blue eyes and his impudent charm. -She made him look like a toy man. She could have broken him in two with -her hands. Why didn’t she? It is a long story. People say that American -women are very adaptable, very imitative. Jane wasn’t. She never became -the least like us, except in looks and that meant nothing. Paquin and -Chéruit and Philibert did that for her almost at once, but her looks, -even without their aid, were always a disguise, never a revelation of -her self. Some women are all of a piece with their charming exteriors, -Jane was a child cased in armour. As she grew older she learned to -use it, she made it answer, but she used it to become something she -was not. I call up her image as I write. I evoke Jane as she was that -last year in Paris, the most elegant woman in Europe, the most stared -at, and the most indifferent. I remember the cold hard nonchalance -that so frightened people she did not like, and the brilliant metallic -grace that rippled over her like gleaming light when she was pleased. -I remember her excessive hauteur in public, the disdainful carriage -of her strange head that was like a coin fashioned by some morose -craftsman of Benvenuto Cellini’s time. I recall the sidelong glitter of -her little green eyes. I remember her in public places, towering above -other women like an idol, mute, glittering, enigmatic, her curious -profile with its protruding lower lip, the tight close bands of jewels -round her forehead. What a figure of splendour she was in those days, -when Philibert had done breaking her heart; and when at the age of -forty she had ceased to care and had reached the perfection of her -physical type. - -I think of her as she was when her mother brought her to Paris and -married her to Philibert; a great strapping girl with a beautiful body -and an ugly sullen face that deceived us all. How could one see behind -it? Can one blame them? I alone caught a glimpse. And she developed -slowly in our artificial soil. It took twenty years for her to become a -woman of the world, une grande dame. That was what they made of her. I -say they, but I suppose I mean primarily Philibert. It is horrible to -think of how much Philibert had to do with making her what she finally -was. And Bianca had a hand in it too. That is even worse. - -We had realized the moment of Jane’s apotheosis. We had seen her -beautifully and gravely spread her wings. We held our breath, waited -entranced, and then, just then, she disappeared. Suddenly we lost her. - -I refer, now, to our group, the little Bohemian group of kindred -spirits who loved Jane; Ludovic, Felix, Clémentine and the others. -Extraordinary that these friends of mine should have been the ones to -love Jane best. They were a gay lot of sinners, quite impossible judged -by any standard but their own. My mother only knew of their existence, -through Clémentine. She has always been in the habit of discussing -artists and writers as if they were dead. It was distressing to her -that Clémentine who was related to her by blood and had married a -Bourbon, should have held herself and her name so cheap as to consort -with men and women of obscure origin and problematical genius. As for -me, a man could do as he liked within measure, if he did not forget -to keep up appearances. She regarded my friendship for my wonderful -Ludovic and all the rest of them as a substitute for the more usual -and less troublesome clandestine affairs of the ordinary bachelor. As -I could never “_faire la noce_” like other men I was allowed these -dissipations of the mind, but _maman_ never forgave me for introducing -Ludovic to Jane. Dearest mother--it was no use telling her that Ludovic -was the greatest scholar of his day. I didn’t try to explain. After all -Ludovic needed no championing from me. I had wanted to do something -for Jane; I had wanted to relieve in some way the awful pressure of -her big bleak dazzling situation. Hemmed in by the complications of my -relationship to her, how many times had I not groaned over the fact -that she had been married by that awful mother of hers to the head of -our house and not to some one else’s devilish elder brother, instead -of to mine, I had pondered and tormented myself over a way of helping -her that would not give Philibert the chance of coming down on me and -shutting the big strong door of his house in my face, and at length -my opportunity had come. It had seemed to me that for her at last -the battle was over, and that she had achieved the desolate freedom -which we could turn into enjoyment. Fan Ivanoff was dead. Bianca had -disappeared. As for Philibert, he had grown tired of bothering her. -Her sufferings no longer amused him. Her loneliness was complete. -Although still to my eyes a figure of drama while we were essentially -merry prosy people, she appeared to me to have acquired that spiritual -mastery of events which made her one of us. I had reckoned without her -child, Geneviève. - -How could I have understood then the fear with which she contemplated -her daughter’s future? And even supposing that I had understood -everything, and had the gift of seeing into that future and had beheld -the shadow of that lovely monster Bianca swooping down on Jane again to -drive her to extremity, even supposing I had known what was going to -happen and how that would take her away from us forever, I still could -have done nothing more than I did do. It had seemed to me that we could -provide her with a refuge, and so we did for a time. If Paris were to -offer her any reward, any consolation, any comfort, then such a reward -and such comfort was, I felt sure, to be found in the sympathy of -these people who had gravitated to one another, out of the heavy mass -of humanity that populated the earth, like sparks flying upwards to -meet above the smoke and heat of the crowd in a clear lighted space of -mental freedom. I gave her the best I had; I gave her my friends; and -if they thought she had come to them to stay, well then so did I. Our -mistake lay in thinking that because we were sufficient to each other -we must be sufficient to Jane as well. I do not believe it occurred -to any one of us how little we really counted for her; I, at least -never knew it until the other day. Actually I had never realized that -her soul was always craving something more, something like a heavenly -certitude or a divine revelation. - -Conceited? I suppose we were; but then you see the world did knock at -our door for admittance. We had all literary and artistic Europe to -choose from, and we did realize the things we talked of. I mean that -we translated our thoughts into things people could see, ballets, -pictures, bits of music. We worked out our ideas for the mob to gape -at, and our success could be measured by the bitter hostility of such -people as Philibert, who fancied himself as a patron of the arts--a -kind of François I--and found us difficult to patronize. - -Jane realized our worth of course. She had a touching reverence for our -ability. She saw clearly the distinct worlds represented by my mother, -and Ludovic; the one exquisite and sterile, beautifully still as a -sealed room with panelled walls inhabited by wax figures; the other -disordered and merry, convulsed by riotous fancies, where daring people -indulged their caprices, scoffed at facts and respected intellect. - -What Jane did not realize was the humanity underlying this life of -ours. She thought us uncanny, but she could have trusted us in her -trouble. And we on our side did not know that we did not satisfy her. -After all, for the rest of us our deep feeling of well-being in one -another’s company was like a divine assurance, an absolute ultimate -promise. It was all the heavenly revelation we needed. When we gathered -round Clémentine’s dinner-table with the long windows opening out -of the high shabby room into the shadowy garden where we could hear -during the momentary hush of our voices the note of its flutey tinkling -fountain, or when we settled deep in those large worn friendly chairs -before Ludovic’s fire on a winter’s night, in the cosy gloom of his -overcharged bookshelves, it would come to us over and over again, like -the repeated sense of a divine conviction, that this exquisite essence -of human intercourse was nothing less than what we had been born for. - -Jane could never have had that feeling, but we thought she shared it -with us. We did not know about that deep relentless urge in Jane that -was as inevitable as the rising tide. We never took seriously enough -her fear of God. - -And so when she went away they thought--Ludovic and Clémentine and -the rest of them--“She will be here tomorrow, she will come back just -as she was, and she will find us just where she left us.” And they -continued to talk about her as if she had left them but an hour before -to go and show herself as she was often obliged to do in some great -bright hideous salon. Her chair was always there by Ludovic’s fireside, -and they took account in their discussions of her probable point of -view, as if she’d been there with them. There was something touching in -their expectancy. There was that in their manner to remind one of the -simple fidelity of peasants who lay the place of the absent one every -night at table. The truth did not occur to them, and I who wanted to be -deceived let their confidence communicate itself to me. I told myself -that they were right, that she was bound to come back, that they had -formed in her the habit of living humourously as they did, that they -had given her a taste for things she would not find elsewhere, and that -she would never be content to live now in that big blank new continent -across the Atlantic. The word Atlantic made me shiver. I must have had -a premonition; I must have known that I was going to cross it, urged -out upon that cold turbulent waste of horrid water by a forlorn hope -and an anguished desire to see her once more. - -I hugged to myself during those days of suspense my feeling of the -irresistible appeal of my city. Had Jane not told me, one day on -returning from Como, that in spite of the problems her life held for -her here, she experienced nevertheless each time she went away such -a poignant home-sickness for Paris, its streets, its sounds, its -river-banks and its buildings, that she invariably came back in a -tremor of fear, positively “jumpy” at the thought that perhaps during -her absence it had changed or disappeared off the map altogether? If -she felt like this after a month’s sojourn in Italy, what had I now -to fear I asked myself? Had we not initiated her into the very secret -heart of Paris? Was there a remnant of an old and lovely building that -we had not shown her, or a fragment of sculpture or a picture worth -looking at to which we had not introduced her? Had she not come to feel -with us the difference of the temperature and tone of the streets, the -excitement of the jangling boulevards, the bland oblivion of the Place -de la Concorde, the ghostliness of the Place des Vosges, the intimate -provincial secretiveness of our own old peaceable quarter? Had not -Ludovic called into being for her out of the embers of his fire the -historic scenes that had been enacted in all these and a hundred other -places? Had he not made the whole rich fantastic past of our city -unroll itself before her eyes? Was it a little thing to be allowed to -drink at the source of so much humanized knowledge? Where in that new -country of hers would she find so fanciful and patient and tender a -friend as this great scholar? - -So I piled up the evidence, and then when her letter came I knew that -I had foreseen the truth, and when I took them the news and they all -cried out to me--“Go and bring her back, and don’t come back without -her”--I knew while their high commanding voices were still sounding -in my ears that already I had made up my mind to go, and I knew too, -lastly and finally, that I would not be able to bring her back. - -She had enclosed in her letter to me a note for them which I gave -to Clémentine, who read it and passed it on. One after another they -scanned its meagre lines in silence. I saw that Ludovic’s hand was -shaking. When he had finished he closed his eyes for a moment and his -head jerked forward. I noticed in the light of the lamp how white he -had grown in the last year, and how the yellow tint of his pallor had -deepened. Clémentine said looking at me--“It is not intelligible. -Perhaps you can explain.” And I was given the sheet of paper covered -with Jane’s large careless scrawl: - - - “Dear Friends,” I read, “I am not coming back. I am here alone - with the ghost of my Aunt Patty in the house where I lived as a - child. It is a wooden house with a verandah at the back. There - are snow-drifts on the verandah. I am trying to find out what it - has all been about--my life, I mean. If I believed that I would - understand over there on the other side of death, then perhaps - I would not be bound to stay here now, but I know that Ludovic - is right, and that the hope of eternal punishment like that of - immortal bliss and satisfied knowledge is just the fiction of our - vanity. My punishment is on me now, since among other things I - have to give you up. - - “JANE.” - - -They had cried out at me when I told them, but after reading the letter -they were silent. It was as if they had been brushed by the wings of -some strange fearful messenger from another world, as if some departed -spirit were present. We might all have been sitting in the dark with -invisible clammy hands touching our hair, so nervous had we become. The -fall of a charred log in the fireplace made us jump. - -Felix forced a laugh. “The ghost of her Aunt Patty,” he mocked -dismally. “Now what does she mean by that?” - -“Her Aunt Patty was the person who took care of her as a child. Miss -Patience Forbes her name was. She seems to have been a remarkable -character. Jane often spoke of her.” - -My words only added to their mystification. An old maid in America, -dead now, a remarkable character. What had she to do with them? What -power had she over their brilliant courageous Jane? Were they nothing -that they could be replaced by the wraith of an old puritan spinster? - -The room seemed to grow chilly. Some one put a fresh log on the fire. -A little fitful wind was whimpering at the windows. Now and then a -gust of rain pattered against the glass with a light rapid sound like -finger-tips tapping. Felix had wandered away down the long dim room, -his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched as he stood with -his back to us, and his nose close to the packed shelves of books -against the farther wall. The tiny gilt letterings on the old bindings -glimmered faintly in the lamplight. He seemed to be searching among all -those little dim signs for an explanation. Far away beyond the network -of gardens and old muffling houses one heard from some distant street -the hoot of a motor. From the translucent depths of gleaming glass -cabinets the small mute mysterious figures of jewelled heathen gods and -little bronze Buddhas and curious carved jade monsters looked out at us -as if through sheets of water. - -Under the aged shadowy eaves of that room, full of strange old symbols -and rare books and still rarer manuscripts, where so many ideas and -faiths and records had been sifted, examined and relegated to dusty -recesses, its occupants remained silent, staring at the new disturbing -object of their mystification. Clémentine, tucked into a corner of the -sofa, her boyish head that she dyed such a bad colour, on her hand, -scrutinized the tip of her foot that she held high as if for better -observation, in one of her characteristic angular attitudes. Her -slipper dangled loose from her toe; now and then she gave it a jerk of -annoyance. - -They tried to take in the meaning of what they had read. The emotional -content of that scrawled page was so strange to them as to appear -almost shocking. They were rather frightened. Here indeed their -philosophy of laughter broke down, for they loved Jane and could not -make fun of her superstitions. - -“We were never hard on her. We treated her gently.” - -“Even when her seriousness bored us we were patient.” - -“She can’t have loved us. We have never really known her then, after -all.” - -Clémentine jerked about. “I was always wanting her to take lovers. She -wanted me to give up mine. Poor child--we were friends all the same.” - -Felix’s falsetto came down to us in a shrill wail of exasperation. - -“But we never attacked her religion. We left her alone. We were good to -her.” - -Clémentine nodded. “Yes, we were good.” - -I remembered the day I had first brought Jane to them, clothed in her -silks and sables, glittering with the garish light of her millions and -her high cold social activities. I had brought her straight from the -preposterous palace she had let Philibert build her to this deep dim -nook where we laughed and scoffed at the world she lived in. I had been -nervous then. I had been afraid they would find her impossible. But -they had seen through the barbarous trappings, intelligent souls that -they were. Hadn’t she realized how they had honoured her? Hadn’t she -known what dependable people they were? - -I heard Clémentine say it again. “We were good, but she thought we -were wicked because we broke the ten commandments. She thought a lot of -the ten commandments.” - -“It was the puritan spinster looking at us over her shoulder all the -time.” - -And still they pondered and puzzled, bewildered, depressed, at a loss, -annoyed by their incapacity to picture to themselves even so much as -the place where she was, alone at that moment. “St. Mary’s Plains, -Mohican County, Michigan” was the address she gave. What an address to -expect any one to take seriously. If it had been a joke the mixture of -images would perhaps have conveyed something to them, but as a serious -geographic sign they could do nothing with it. It had the character -of a new glazed billboard, of a big glaring advertisement for some -parvenu’s patent. To think of Jane sitting down away off there in -the middle of a desert under it was too much for them. But the very -outrageousness of the enigma helped them. - -“She couldn’t do it from inclination,” some one of them said at last. -“There must have been something terrible.” - -Then it was that Ludovic startled us. He spoke slowly as if to himself. - -“She was only beginning to learn how little conduct has to do with -life. For others she had come to understand that what one does has -little or no relation to what one is. I am convinced that she, poor -child, is persuaded that she has committed some dreadful crime.” - -But it was Clémentine who said the last word that I carried away with -me. - -“If she hadn’t married into your family,” she said, glaring out at me -from the door of her taxi, “she would have been all right. Why, she -should have chosen Philibert--” - -“But, _chérie amie_, she didn’t. It was her mother who did it all.” - -“Rubbish! She loved him. She loves him still.” - - - - -II - - -My mother was a Mirecourt. The family was of a prouder nobility than -my father’s. Her people were of the _Grand Chevaux de Lorraine_. They -fought with the English against the kings of France in the fourteenth -century. One reads about them as fighters during several hundreds of -years beginning with the Crusades. Sometimes they were on the right -side, sometimes on the wrong. Later generations were not proud of the -part they played in the siege of Orleans. But they were proud people -and acted on caprice or in self-interest with a sublime belief in -themselves. They did not like kings and were loth to give allegiance -to any one. When Louis XI took away their lands, they went over to the -king, but it is to be gathered from the letters of the time that they -considered no king their equal. Richelieu was too much for them. He -reduced them to poverty. To repair the damage the head of the family -made a bourgeois marriage. They were sure of themselves in those days. -Marrying money caused them no uneasiness nor fear of ridicule. My -mother said one day when talking of Philibert and Jane--“We have done -this sort of thing before but always with people of our own race who -had a proper attitude. With foreigners one never knows.” - -My father was a Breton. Anne of Brittany was the liege lady of his -people. His _aieux_ were worthy gentlemen who played an obscure but -on the whole respectable part in history. An occasional spendthrift -appeared now and then among them to add gaiety to their monotonous -lives. The spendthrifts being few and the tenacity of the others very -great, they amassed a considerable fortune and were ennobled by Louis -XIV: a fact of which my aunt Clothilde used occasionally to remind us. -Aunt Clothilde was my father’s sister. She had made a great match in -marrying the first Duke of France, but she seemed to think nothing of -that nor to have any consciousness of the obligations of her class. -She made fun of the legitimists, scoffed at the idea of a restoration -and despised the Duc d’Orleans for the way he behaved in England. She -and my mother did not get on. My mother thought her vulgar. She was, -but it didn’t detract from her being a very great lady. She was always -enormously fat, a greedy, wicked old thing, with a ribald mind, but -with a tremendous _chic_. Philibert called her _La Gargantua_. She was -Rabelaisian somehow. I liked her. She never seemed conscious of my -being different from other men, and she was kinder to Jane than the -others. - -There were a great many others. We made a large clan. It seemed strange -to Jane that half the people in Paris were our cousins or uncles or -aunts. But of course it is like that. One is related to everybody. - -As a family we had the reputation of having very nice manners. It was -thought that we knew very well how to make ourselves agreeable and what -was more characteristic, how to be disagreeable without giving offense. -My mother was reputed to be the only woman in Paris who could refuse an -invitation to dinner in the same house six times running without making -an enemy of its mistress. My mother was perpetually penning little -plaintive notes of regret. She was greatly sought after and stayed -very much at home. After my father’s death it became more and more -difficult to get her to go anywhere, but she liked being asked so that -she could refuse. The result was that she became something precious, -inapproachable, a legend of good form and grace and she remained this -always. I have on my table a miniature of her painted when she was -married, at the age of eighteen. She was never a beauty. A slip of a -thing, gentle and pale, with dark ringlets and very bright intelligent -eyes. Her power of seduction was a thing that emanated from her like -a perfume, indefinable and elusive. Claire, my sister, has the same -quality. - -One of my mother’s special pleasures as she grew older consisted in -having her dinner in bed on some grand gala evening, and telling -herself that she was the only lady of any importance in Paris who had -refused to be present. Sometimes on such evenings she would send for -me to come and sit with her for an hour. I would find her propped -up on her pillows, her eyes glowing with animation under the soft -old-fashioned frill of her voluminous boudoir cap, and presently I -would become aware that she was submitting me to all the play of her -wit and her charm, and I would know that out of a pure spirit of -contradiction she was giving me, her poor ugly duckling, the treat -that she had withheld from that brilliant gathering, whether to amuse -me most or herself it would be difficult to tell. We understand each -other. Her manner to me was always perfect. It was a beautiful and -elaborate denial of the fact that my deformity was unpleasant to -her. She went to a lot of trouble to pretend that she liked having -me about. If she wanted a cab called in the rain and there wasn’t a -servant handy--we didn’t have too many--it was a part of her delicacy -to ask me to do it rather than have me think that she had my infirmity -constantly on her mind. If she required an escort to some public place -she would choose me rather than Philibert, but she would not always -choose me, lest I should come to feel that she forced herself to do -so. She had the humblest way of asking my advice, and then when she -did not take it, went to the most childlike manœuvres to deceive me -and make me think she had. When I came back from school in England, I -remember wondering what she would do about me and her friends. She had -an evening a week and received on these occasions a number of stiff old -gentlemen and gossipy dowagers, a handful of priests and all the aunts -and uncles and cousins. The question for her was whether she should -inflict on me the penance of talking to these people in order to show -me that she liked to have me about, or whether she would let me off -attendance and trust to my superior understanding to assume that I was -in her eyes presentable. I believe she would have decided on the latter -bolder plan, had I not taken the matter out of her hands by asking her -to excuse me. Her answer was characteristic. - -“But naturally, _mon enfant_. You don’t suppose that I think these -old people fit company for you. Only if it’s not indiscreet, tell me -sometimes about your doings. I, at least, am not too old nor yet too -young to be told.” - -Dear mother. She would have gone to the length of imputing to me a -dozen mistresses if she had thought that would help me. And yet in -spite of it all, perhaps just because of it all, I knew that the sight -of me was intolerable to her. But this I feel sure was a thing that she -never knew that I knew. It was a part of my business in life never to -let her find it out. - -My being sent to England to school had been to me a proof. Though -my father had taken the decision I knew it was to get me out of my -mother’s way. It was not the habit of our family to send its sons -abroad for their education. Philibert had had tutors at home. None -of my cousins had gone away. We were as a clan not at all given to -travelling. In the extreme sensitiveness that engulfed me like an -illness during a certain period of my youth, I had told myself bitterly -that I was banished because they could not abide the sight of me, but -my bitterness did not last, thank God; and when after my father’s death -I came home to live, I set myself to matching my mother’s delicacy with -my own. I arranged to convey to her the impression of being always at -hand and yet I managed to be actually in her presence a minimum of -time. I did things for her that I could do without being aggravatingly -near her; such things as running errands and visiting her lawyer and -looking after her meagre investments, accumulating these duties while -at the same time I withdrew more and more from sharing in her social -activities. - -I had kept, for reasons of economy and in order to be near her, my -apartment in a wing of her house over the porter’s lodge, in that part -of the building that screened the house from the street. My windows -looked on the one side across the street into some gardens and on the -other side into our court yard. From my dressing-room I had a view of -my mother’s graceful front door with the wide shallow steps before it -and the gravel expanse of the inner carriage drive. Sometimes when I -came home in the evening, Madame Oui, the _concierge’s_ wife, would tap -on the glass in her door that was just opposite my own little entrance -behind the great double portals that barred us into our stronghold, and -would tell me that my mother had come in and would like to see me. Or I -would find a note bidding me come to her lying on my table. She wrote -me a great number of notes, sprightly amusing missives that reminded -one of the fact that Frenchwomen have been for centuries mistresses in -the art of letter-writing. They gave me the news, recounted the latest -family gossip, contained tips as to how to behave if I came across an -aunt who owed her money, or an uncle who had lent her some, warned me -against this or that person whom she did not want to see any more, -asked me to pay a call on one of her ancient followers who was in bed -with a cold, enclosed a tiresome bill that she hadn’t the money to pay -immediately, or implored me in witty phrases of complaint to use my -influence with Philibert and try to get him away from some woman: in -all of which matters I did my best to meet her wishes save as regarded -my brother. “My influence with Philibert” was one of my mother’s least -successful fictions. I wonder even now that she kept it up. I suppose -it would have seemed to her shocking to admit even tacitly that her -two sons never spoke to each other if they could help it. Yet she must -have known that although he lived nominally in my mother’s house up to -the time of his marriage I scarcely ever saw him unless at a distance -in some crowded salon. The few mutual friends we possessed never asked -us to dinner or lunch together, and strangely enough in the one place -where we might often have happened to come across one another, that -is in my mother’s own boudoir, we never did meet. My mother must have -managed this. She must have manœuvred to prevent such encounters. She -arranged to see us always separately and yet continued to talk to us, -each to the other, as if she supposed that beyond her door we were -amusing ourselves together, thick as thieves. - -She would say--“I hear this latest friend of Philibert’s whom he has so -made the mode this year, is really quite pretty. Tell me what she looks -like,”--assuming me to be perfectly aware of this affair. Or--“Your -brother’s new tailor is not successful at all. He gives him the most -exaggerated shoulders. Fifi is not tall enough to stand it. I wish you -would get him to go back to the old one.” Or even--“Tell me what your -brother is up to. I never see him.” As if I knew what Philibert was up -to. - -My rare meetings with him took place at my sister’s. She used sometimes -to have us at her house together. Her husband would bring him home to -lunch unexpectedly, or I would drop in unbidden and find him there. -Poor Claire had married the biggest automobile works in the country, -and had been taken to Neuilly and shut up there in a gigantic villa. -She was finding that it tasked her philosophical docility to the utmost -to meet the demands of the uxorious individual who paid all her bills -from his own cheque book and was generous only in the way of supplying -her with babies. She had had four in six years, and her health was a -source of anxiety to my mother, who was frankly exasperated by the turn -her daughter’s affairs had taken. - -“My dear,” she said to me one night on her return from Neuilly, “I -supposed that that man had married Claire to get into society, and now -that I’ve given her to him he has taken her off to the wilderness. -I don’t know what to make of it. The poor child is wasting away. He -simply never leaves her alone. They go to bed together every night at -ten o’clock. It is horrible.” - -Claire may have bemoaned her lot to my mother in those long -tête-à-têtes of theirs, but she never complained to me, nor did she, -I believe, to Philibert, who was in the habit of borrowing money from -her large, oily, sleek-headed husband. She had some of my mother’s -mannerisms, her little way of quickly moving her head backwards with -the slightest toss; the same light flexible utterance; the same sigh -and sudden droop of irrepressible languor. I believe her to be the -only person of whom Philibert was ever unselfishly fond. She pleased -him. Her physical frailty, appealed to his taste which was in reality -so fastidious, however vulgar some of his amusements might be, and her -mocking spirit was congenial to him. When one thought of Claire one -thought of her dark shadowed eyes with the deep circles under them -marking the tender cheeks, and her truly beautiful smile. She was -a collection of odd beauties combined in a way to make one’s heart -ache, but there was something sharp in her--something hurting. Lovely -Claire, cynical siren, how caressingly she spoke to me, how she drew -out of my heart its tenderness, and how often she disappointed me. Not -brave enough to be happy, far too intelligent not to know what she was -missing, she took refuge in self-mockery and when faced with a crisis -subsided into complete passivity. - -One evening in the early summer, more than twenty years ago now, I -found a note from my mother tucked in the crack of my door asking me to -come to her at once as she had news for me of the utmost importance. -I found my sister with her, and something in the attitude of the two -women, who were so closely akin as to reproduce each one the same -physical pose under the stress of a deep preoccupation, conveyed to -me a suspicion that Philibert had that moment skipped out through the -long open window. They sat, each in a high brocaded chair, their heads -thrown back against their respective cushions, their hands limp in -their laps and their eyes half-closed. I thought for an instant that -both had fainted. My mother was the first to make a sign. She lifted an -arm and in silence pointed a finger at a chair for me. - -“Your brother,” she said, when once I was seated, “has sold this house -over my head. He is going to be married.” - -“To a little American girl,” breathed Claire. - -“The fortune is immense,” added my mother. - -“The daughter of that awful smart Mrs. Carpenter,” said Claire, opening -wide her eyes the better to take in the horror. - -“She asked me three times to luncheon,” said my mother. “I have never -seen her.” - -I looked from one to the other--“But if the fortune is immense--” I -ventured. - -“It is all tied up,” wailed my mother. “Her trustees insist on his -debts being paid beforehand. I understand nothing--but nothing.” Her -head dropped forward. She pressed her thumb and forefinger against her -worn eyelids. She began to cry. - -Claire, with a strange sidelong look at her expressive of compassion -and exasperation and wonder, got up and walked to the window and stood -with her back to us looking out into the garden. - -“I should have thought my son-in-law would have saved me this -humiliation,” said my mother, fumbling with her left hand for her -handkerchief. “But Claire says he has already lent Philibert very -considerable sums.” I saw my sister’s slender figure stiffen. “What -curious people Americans are. It seems that the father made such a -will as passes belief. The child comes into the entire fortune but can -only dispose of the income. The mother has an annuity, Claire says -it must be a big one as she entertains a great deal. Why did you not -tell me your brother was getting so dreadfully into debt? The girl is -just eighteen. It appears that in America girls reach their majority -at eighteen. Her name is Jane. A most unpleasant name. Philibert says -she is not pretty. These _mésalliances_ are so tiresome. If only he -could have married that exquisite little Bianca. I shall be obliged to -receive the mother. I am sure she has a very strong accent.” - -My poor mother stretched out her hand to me. “What is to become of -us?” she wailed gently. I felt very sorry for her. I understood that -she was afraid of the invasion of a horde of big noisy strangers. I -tried to comfort her. She seemed to me for the first time pitiful, and -I saw that her youthfulness was after all, just one of the illusions -she cast by the exercise of her will. It fell from her that evening as -if it had been some gossamer veil destroyed by her tears. - -Claire remained silent. Only once during all my mother’s broken lament -did she speak, and then she said without turning--“I should have -thought one such marriage in a family was enough.” - -It transpired that Philibert needed five hundred thousand francs to put -him straight, that the house was being sold for a million and that the -remaining half was my mother’s, since they owned the property between -them. He had brought her the deed of sale to sign that afternoon, and -had gone away with the signature in his pocket. She said--“Naturally I -could not refuse. It is not as if he could have sold half the building.” - -I felt humiliated for my mother. It seemed to me that my brother had -injured her in a most offensive way. There was a kind of indecency -about the proceeding that made me ashamed. It was the kind of thing -I had hoped we were none of us capable of doing. He was taking away -from her not only her shelter and security, but a part of her own -personality. It was as outrageous as if he had forced her to cut off -her hair and had taken it round to a wigmaker to turn into a handful -of gold. I saw that without that fine old house, so like her own self -expressed in architecture, with its bland and graceful exterior and -delicate ornamented rooms, she would lose a vital part of her entity. -She was not one of those people whose public and private selves are -distinct. The proud little bright-eyed lady who drove out of those -stately doors in her brougham to dispense finely gradated smiles to the -meticulously selected people of her acquaintance, and the passionate -intriguing mother so given to subterfuges of kindness and ineffable -make-believe of disinterested affection, were one and the same -person. She had no special manner for the world. There was no homely -naturalness for her to subside into, no loose woolly dressing-gown of -conduct and no rough carpet slippers of laziness to don in the presence -of her family or by her lonely self. What she was when in attendance -on the Bourbons that she was in her own silent bedroom. Even about her -weeping there was a certain style. Her tears were pitiful but not ugly. -They had destroyed the illusion of her youthfulness, but they had not -marred her elegance. There was measure and appropriateness and dramatic -worth in her weeping. Her son had not broken her heart or her spirit; -he had merely dragged off some of her clothing. She stood denuded, -impoverished, a little shrunken in stature, that was all. It was that -that enraged me. I said--“What a brute.” My mother pulled me up sharply. - -“My son,” she said to me, with more of haughtiness than I had ever -seen in her manner to any one of us. “I have consented to do what your -brother has asked. I have approved of his conduct. That is sufficient.” - -I felt then the finality, the hopelessness. I believe I smiled. The -change was sudden. It had always been like that with mother. She might -complain of Philibert but no one could criticize him to her. - -“Ah, well,” I said, “if you have made up your mind to accept her--” - -Mother lifted her head quickly. “Whom?” - -“Your new daughter-in-law.” - -I am almost sure that she turned pale. I cannot have imagined it. Her -words too, gave me the same painful impression. - -“I have accepted it, not her, as yet.” - -And suddenly I thought of the girl, Jane Carpenter, whom I had not yet -laid eyes on, with an immense pity. - -“Yes,” said Claire, coming back to us, and looking at us with her -least charming, most bitterly mocking air. “We prepare a nice welcome -for her. I wonder how she will like us.” - -But my mother had the last word. - -“We shall, I presume, know how to make ourselves agreeable,” she said, -putting away her handkerchief into her little silk bag. I saw that she -would shed no more tears over the girl, Jane Carpenter. - - - - -III - - -Mrs. Carpenter was an American who apologized for her own country. She -had found it incapable of providing a sufficient field of activity for -her social talents and called it crude. The phrase on her lips was -funny. There was much about her that was funny, since one could not in -the face of her bright brisk self-satisfaction call her pathetic. - -The flattery of such migrations as hers is mystifying to Parisians -like myself, who know that our city is the most delightful place in -the world, but do not quite understand why so many foreigners like -Mrs. Carpenter should find it so. She seemed to derive an immense -satisfaction from the fact that she lived in Paris. But why? Where -lay the magic difference between her Paris and her New York? She had -established herself in a large bright apartment in the Avenue du Bois -de Bologne. Her rent was high, her furniture expensive, her table -lavish, her motor had pale grey cushions and silver trimmings. All -these things she could have had in New York. She might have paid a -little more for them over there, but that would only have added to her -pleasure. She liked to pay high prices for things. It may be that I -am doing her an injustice. There were moments when her indefatigable -pursuit of us all filled me with scornful pity and made me think that -she did hide under her breezy successful manner a wistful and romantic -admiration for things that were foreign and old, and a touching respect -for things she did not understand. She once told me that she had wanted -to take an old hotel in our quarter, something with atmosphere and a -history and old-world charm. But somehow she had not found what she -wanted. The houses she saw were dark and gloomy and insanitary. They -were wonderfully romantic but they had no bathrooms. She had wanted -one in particular, had wanted it awfully, but the owner had insisted -on staying on in little rooms under the roof, which meant his using -her front stairs, so at last she had given up the idea. Her apartment -was certainly not gloomy. It glittered with gold--golden walls, gold -plate, gilt chairs. She ended by liking it immensely, but was sometimes -a little ashamed of being so pleased with it. Perhaps, at odd moments, -she called it crude. - -I used to go there sometimes, long before Jane came to Paris. I am -sorry now that I did. Had I known Mrs. Carpenter was going to be, -for me, Jane’s mother, I would not have gone. It is not nice to -remember that I used to make fun of Jane’s mother, and accept her -hospitality with amused contempt. We all did. She was to us an object -of good-humoured derision. Poor old Izzy. She fed us so well; she -begged us so continually to come. She seemed to derive such pleasure -from hearing the butler announce our names. I am sure she believed that -awful flat of hers to be the social centre of a very distinguished -society. The more of a mixture the better to her mind:--Austrians, -Hungarians, Poles,--she liked having princes about, and their dark -furtive eyes and beautifully manicured hands filled her with joy. It -was only after Philibert got hold of her that she began to understand -that perhaps, after all, too cosmopolitan a salon was not quite the -thing. Philibert took her in hand. He had learned somehow about Jane. -He already had his idea. - -And now I come upon a curious problem. I find that two distinct Mrs. -Carpenters exist in my mind, and I cannot reconcile them. One was a -beautiful romantic creature whom Jane--far away in the Grey House in -St. Mary’s Plains--called mother and wrote to once a week and loved -with a pure flame of loyalty; the other was Izzy Carpenter, whose -loud voice and tall elastic fashionable figure was so well-known -in Paris: Busy Izzy, who was run by Philibert, and a group of young -ne’er-do-weels. I find it very difficult to realize that this jolly -slangy woman, with curly grey hair and a blue eye that could give a -broad wink on occasion, was identical with the figure of poetry Jane -dreamed about night after night in her little restless cot at the -foot of her Aunt Patty’s four-poster bed. It is disturbing to think -that even about this decided hard-edged vivacious woman there should -have been such a difference of opinion, such a contrast of received -impressions as to make one wonder whether she had any corporeal -existence at all. I think of that stern humorous spinster Patience -Forbes comforting the child who was always asking questions about her -mother; I think of her taking the aching young thing on her gaunt knees -in the old rocking chair with its knitted worsted cushion, and lulling -that troubled eager mind to rest with stories of her mother’s childhood. - -I can see the grim face of Patience Forbes while she searches her -memory for pleasant things about her heartless prodigal sister. She -sits in a bay window looking out into the back garden where there is -a sleepy twittering of birds. The trams thunder past up Desmoine’s -Avenue. The milkman comes up the path; the white muslin curtains -billow into the peaceful room that smells of lavender and mint. There -is sunlight on the old mahogany. Jane’s great-grandmother, in an oval -frame, looks down insipidly, her eyes mildly shining between the low -bands of her parted hair. And Jane has her arms round her Aunt Patty, -and her face, so unlike the gentle portrait, is troubled and brooding, -a sullen ugly little face with something strange, half wild, that -recalls her father and frightens the good woman who holds her close and -goes on answering questions about her sister Isabel. And then I think -of Mrs. Carpenter not as Jane’s mother, but as the daughter of old Mrs. -Forbes of the Grey House, and I am again bewildered. Those people in -St. Mary’s Plains, Jane’s grandmother, her aunts and her uncle, were -people of sense and character and taste. Who that knew Izzy Carpenter -would have thought it? Who that knew Jane could deny it? I suspect Mrs. -Carpenter of having been ashamed of them. Jane’s loyalty saved her from -any such stupidity. - -When I went to St. Mary’s Plains the other day, Jane showed me, on the -wall of her uncle’s study, an old print representing the first log -cabin of the French settler who had come there across the Canadian -border in 1780. In the picture a Red Indian carrying a tomahawk and -capped with feathers skulks behind the trees at the edge of the -clearing, and in the foreground a group of Noah’s Ark cattle are -guarded by a man with a gun. Under the print is written--“St. Marie -les Plaines,” and the signature “Gilbert de Chevigné.” It was a -Monsieur de Chevigné from Quebec, Jane told me, who built the Grey -House. The name had been corrupted to Cheney; the Cheneys were her -grandmother’s people. Many of the families in St. Mary’s Plains traced -a similar history. The town in growing had cherished the story of -its French foundation and its social element had grown to believe -that it had a special sympathy with our country. Its well-to-do -people were constantly coming from and going to France. With an -indifference bordering on contempt, and an ease that suggested the -consciousness of special claims and opportunities, they would cross -the really tremendous expanse of territory that lay between their -thresholds and the Atlantic sea-board, ignoring the existence of -Chicago, Buffalo, Boston, Philadelphia and New York, and set sail for -Cherbourg. It was considered a perfectly natural occurrence and one -scarcely worthy of self-congratulation for a girl from St. Mary’s -Plains to marry a foreigner of real or supposed distinction, but those -who neither married abroad nor at home, but were led astray by the -vulgar attraction of some rich man from the far west or east were -the subject of pitying criticism. Such had been the case with Jane’s -mother. Silas Carpenter had come bearing down on St. Mary’s Plains, a -wild man from the great west; like a bison or a moose breaking into a -mild and pleasant paddock. Isabel Forbes, headstrong, discontented, -covetous, had fallen to his savage charm, his millions and the peculiar -oppressive magnetism of his silence, that seemed filled with the -memories of unspeakable experiences. The first rush to the goldfields -of California loomed in the background of his untutored childhood. -Later he had gone to the Klondike. Gold--he had dug it out of the -earth with his own great hands. Then he had taught himself oddly from -books. A speculator, a gambler, he had a passion for music, and played -the flute. A strange mixture. To please Isabel’s family he gave up -poker, went to church, was married in a frock-coat. People said he had -Indian blood in his veins. It seems possible. He had the long head and -slanting profile and the mild voice characteristic of the race. Society -in St. Mary’s Plains was genuinely sorry for Isabel’s family when she -married him. But she went away to New York to live and was forgotten -until on Silas’ sensational death her departure for Paris revived -interest in her doings. - -“The Grey House” as it was known in St. Mary’s Plains, had the -benevolent patriarchal air of a small provincial manor. Built sometime -in the seventies it had not had too many coats of paint during its -lifetime, and its calm exterior with the double row of comfortable -windows each flanked by a pair of shutters was weather-stained and worn -like the visage of some bland unconcerned person of distinction who -is not ashamed to look in his old age a little like a weather-beaten -peasant. It stood well back from the street in the centre of a wide -plot of ground not large enough to be called a park, though containing -a few nice trees. The lawn indeed merged in the most sociable way into -the grounds of other neighbouring houses and ran smoothly down in front -to the edge of the public side-walk where there was no wall or railing -of any kind. A scarcely noticeable sign beside the path that led from -the street to the front porch with its two wooden pillars said “Keep -off the grass.” - -There were only two storeys to the Grey House and a garret with dormer -windows in the grey shingled roof, the rooms of the ground floor being -raised only a foot or two from the level of the street, so that Jane’s -grandmother, sitting in her armchair by the living-room window could -look up over the tops of her spectacles and see and recognize her -acquaintances who often even at that comfortable distance would bow or -lift their hats to the little old lady as they passed. - -Every one in St. Mary’s Plains knew the Grey House. When one of the -Misses Forbes went shopping, she would say “Send it to the Grey -House, please,” and the young man in the dry goods’ store would -answer--“Certainly, Miss Forbes, it’ll be right along. Mrs. Forbes is -keeping well, I hope? Let me see, it’s ten years since I was in her -Sunday-school class.” And Miss Minnie--it was usually Minnie who did -the shopping--would smile kindly at the chatty young man who certainly -did not mean any harm. - -The occupants of that house were people content to stay at home, who -did not always know what day of the month it was, and who found a -deep source of well-being in the realization that tomorrow would be -like today. I imagine those gentlewomen doing the same thing in the -same way year after year, wearing the same clothes made by the same -family dressmaker, and opposing to the disturbing menace of events the -quiet obstinacy of their contentment. I watch them at night go up the -stairs together at ten o’clock, kiss one another at the door of their -mother’s room and go down the dim corridor, Patty staying behind like -a sentinel under the gas-jet, her bony arm lifted, waiting to turn the -light still lower once they were safe behind their own closed doors. -Jane in her bed used to hear their voices saying, “Good-night, mother -dear, pleasant dreams. Good-night, Minnie. Good-night.” And if the man -of the house, Jane’s Uncle Bradford, were at his club playing whist, -Beth, from the rosy interior of her cretonne chamber would be sure to -call out--“I left the front door on the latch for Brad. I suppose it’s -all right.” And Patience would say--“Who would burgle this house?” And -Minnie would add--“I put his glass of milk in his room.” And then there -would be silence disturbed only by the sound of footsteps moving to and -fro behind closed doors. And Jane would wait drowsily for Aunt Patty to -come in and say “Good gracious, child, not asleep yet? It’s past ten -o’clock.” - -To the Forbes family the doings of the outer world were a pleasant -distant spectacle that interested and amused but made them feel all the -happier to be where they were. When a letter arrived from Izzy bearing -its Paris postmark, they would read it together, become pleasantly -animated over the news and then settle down with relief at the thought -that they didn’t have to go over there and do all those things. The -letter would then be added to a package bound with an elastic band and -put away in the secretary until some one came to call and asked how -Isabel was getting on. - -I seem to see them all, on these occasions, sitting there in their -habitual attitudes. I imagine the little grandmother, with the letter -open in her black silk lap, adjusting her spectacles on the slender -bridge of her arched nose, and Jane on a footstool beside her, waiting -to listen once more with absorbing interest to the extracts from her -mother’s letter that she already knew by heart, and the two or three -friends sitting round rather primly on the old mahogany chairs, and -Aunt Beth with her embroidery on the horsehair sofa, and Aunt Minnie -making the tea, and Aunt Patty teaching one of her birds to eat from -her lips at the window, and perhaps Uncle Bradford, who has come home -from his office, visible across the hall through the door in his -study with some weighty volume on his knees, and a good cigar between -his lips. I seem to hear the purring song of the tea kettle and the -pleasant sound of voices calling one another intimate names. I see -the faded carpet with its dimmed white pattern and the stiff green -brocaded curtains in their high gilt cornices, and the pleasant mixture -of heterogeneous objects selected for use and comfort. I have in my -nostrils the perfume of roses opening out in the warmth of the room, -and of the newly baked cakes made for tea by Aunt Minnie, and still -another finer perfume, the faint fresh fragrance of the spirit of that -little old lady who ruled the house in gentleness and was beloved in -the town. A humourous little old lady who was not afraid of death, and -believed in the clemency of a Divine Father. She liked Jane to read -aloud to her while she knitted,--Trollope, Charles Lamb, Robert Burns, -were her favourites, and she enjoyed a good tune on the piano, and -would beat time with her knitting needles when Beth played a waltz. But -on Sundays Beth played hymns and the servants came in after supper to -sing with the family “Rock of Ages,” “Jesus Lover of my Soul,” “Abide -with Me.” Jane liked those Sunday evenings. They made her feel so safe, -was the way she put it. - -All the inmates of the Grey House were God-fearing but Minnie was -the most religious. She had a talent for cooking and a craving for -emotional religious experience. The kitchen of the Grey House was a -very pleasant place with a window that gave onto the back verandah, and -often on summer mornings Aunt Beth who was young and pretty, would take -her sewing out onto this back porch while Aunt Minnie in the kitchen -was making cakes, and they would talk through the open window with -Jane curled up in the hammock beside Beth’s work-table. Beth, would -call out in her very high small voice that expressed her plaintive -dependence and blissful confidence in the protected life she so utterly -loved--“Minnie, Minnie!” and the sound of the egg-beater in the kitchen -would cease, and Aunt Minnie would call through the open window in her -lower, deeper tone-- - -“Yes, what do you say?” - -“I forgot to tell you that Mrs. Blatchford asked me if I’d ask you to -make six cakes for the Woman’s Exchange Fourth of July Sale.” - -And Aunt Minnie would exclaim-- - -“Good gracious. Six angel cakes, that makes thirty-six eggs.” While -beating up the whites of eggs for her famous cakes Minnie would ponder -on the power of mind over matter, the healing of physical pain by -faith, and the ultimate purifying grace of the Divine Spirit. One day -she announced that she had joined the Christian Science Church. The -family took the news seriously. Jane’s grandmother turned very white. -She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes and whispered--“Oh, -Minnie dear, I’m so sorry.” Uncle Bradford brought his fist down on -a table with a crash and shouted--“Don’t you do it, Minnie. These -newfangled religions are no good.” Beth wept. Patience said “Hmph.” - -Jane didn’t like the new look on her Aunt Minnie’s face, but the -religious mystery behind it had a worrying fascination. She listened -to the talk of her elders hoping to learn about this new faith, but it -was characteristic of them not to argue or discuss things that affected -them deeply, so she learned little, and she was afraid to ask her Aunt -Patience who seemed somehow not at all patient with Minnie just now. So -she was reduced to talking it all over with Fan, her friend, who lived -next door. They would sit astride the fence that divided the two back -gardens and talk about God and their elders. - -“Aunt Minnie has got a new religion,” Jane announced. “Religions are -funny things. I don’t think I like them but they do do things to you.” - -“Pooh! I know. It’s not half so queer as Mormons and Theosophites and -Dowyites.” - -“What’s all that?” - -“The Mormons have lots of wives. They live in Salt Lake City and -practice bigamy. The Dowyites are in Chicago. There’s a big church -there full of crutches of all the lame people Dowy has cured by -miracle.” - -“Well, Aunt Minnie says there’s no such thing as being lame or sick, -and everything is a miracle.” - -“He-he! I’m not a miracle” - -“Yes, you are.” - -“No, I’m not.” - -“Who made you?” - -“My mother.” - -“How?” - -“I dunno.” - -“Well, that’s a miracle.” - -“Oh, Jane, you are a silly.” - -“I’m not silly. I know you’ve got to have a religion or you can’t be -good, but I don’t like it all the same.” - -“Who wants to be good?” - -“I do.” - -“Why?” - -“Because I’d be afraid to die.” - -Fan had a complete worldly wisdom that could cover most things, but she -was obliged to admit, though with her nose in the air, that she, too, -would be afraid to die if she went on being very bad up to the last -minute. - -Fan Hazeltine was an orphan. She lived with a stepfather who hated -her and sometimes didn’t speak to her for a week. She and Jane had -met on the back fence the day after Jane’s arrival in St. Mary’s -Plains. Jane was six years old then, Fan eight, but I imagine that Fan -was very much the same at that time, as when I met her twenty years -later. She was always a wisp of a thing no bigger than an elf with a -wizened face. Life gave her no leisure for expansion. She was one of -those people who never had a chance to blossom out, but could just -achieve the phenomenal business of continuing to exist by grit and -the determination not to be downed. What she was in her stepfather’s -inimical house that she remained in the larger inimical world, a -small under-nourished undaunted creature, consumed with a thirst for -happiness, hiding her hurts under an obstinate gaiety, a minute lonely -thing steering her bark cleverly through stormy waters, keeping afloat -somehow, sinking and struggling, her grim little heart hardening, her -laughter growing shriller and louder as the years went by. There is no -difficulty about understanding Fan. I can see her astride that fence, -screwing up her face while she told Jane what she was going to do in -the world, and I can see her set about doing it. - -“I’m going to have a good time. You wait. You just wait. I tell you I’m -going to have a good time--fun, fun, fun. That’s what I want.” - -But Jane did not say what she wanted from life. - - - - -IV - - -Patience Forbes was a woman of science, an ornithologist. When she -died years ago she was recognized in America as one of the foremost -authorities on birds. I remember her death. Jane got the news in Paris. -It was at the time of the final struggle over Geneviève’s marriage. She -showed me her Aunt Patience’s will. It read:--“To my beloved niece Jane -Carpenter now known by the name of the Marquise de Joigny, I leave the -Grey House and everything in it except my collections and manuscripts. -These I leave to the Museum of St. Mary’s Plains. But the house and all -the furniture I leave to Jane in case she may some day want some place -to go.” - -Jane looked at me with strange eyes that day. - -“Isn’t it queer,” she said. “How could she have known?” - -But I understand now that Patience Forbes was the only one who did -know. She must have been a shrewd woman. She must have followed Jane in -her mind all those years, with extraordinary accuracy considering the -little she had to go on. But she never betrayed her misgivings. There -is only that sentence in her will to indicate what she thought. - -She was an imposing woman, plain of face, careless of her appearance -and masculine in build. Her nose was crooked, her neck scrawny and her -hands large and bony. But she had an air of grandeur. When she tramped -through the woods or across the open country that surrounded St. Mary’s -Plains, her field glasses and her camera slung across her shoulder, she -had in spite of her quaint bonnet and long black clothes the look of a -grizzled amazon. She would walk twenty miles in a day and frequently -did so. Many of the farmers round about knew her. They called her “the -bird lady” and asked her in to their kitchens for a glass of milk and -a slice of apple-pie, and often while sitting there with her bonnet -strings untied and her dusty skirt turned up on her knees, she would -receive gifts from sun-burned urchins who, knowing the object of her -pilgrimages would bring to her in the battered straw crowns of their -hats, rare birds’ eggs that they had discovered in the high branches of -trees or the secret fastnesses of tangled thickets. - -She was the dominating personality in her own home. Her mother and -sisters were a little afraid of her. When her brother Bradford married -and she announced that she was going to hold classes in the parlour of -the Grey House and charge for them, they dared not object, although -they would have preferred going without the comforts that Bradford’s -shared income had provided rather than have a lot of strange people -invading the house. - -It was characteristic of the family that they never spoke to Jane of -money and never gave her any idea that she was or ever would be an -heiress. She made her own bed in the morning, and sometimes if she were -not in too much of a hurry to get off to school she helped Aunt Minnie -with the others. On Saturday mornings she darned her own stockings, -or tried to, sitting on a low chair beside her grandmother, but this -was by way of a lesson in keeping quiet. I am afraid she took it as a -matter of course that Aunt Beth and her grandmother should mend her -clothes for her. - -She gave a great deal of trouble. Not only was she always getting -into scrapes, but she was subject as well to storms of passion that -sometimes, as she realized later, seriously frightened her grandmother. -Her accidents--she had a great many little ones and one at least that -was serious--were episodes marked in her memory as rather pleasant -occasions that procured for her an extra amount of petting. There was a -high bookcase at the top of the stairs in a dark corner of the upper -hall, full of old and faded volumes. Here she spent hours together on -Sunday afternoons, sitting on the top of a step-ladder that she dragged -out of the housemaids’ cupboard. One day, finding among those dusty -little books a copy of Dante’s “Vita Nuova,” she became so absorbed -in the lovely poem, though it was only a lame translation in English -verse, that she began chanting the lines to herself, unconsciously -swaying backwards and forwards on her perch, until all at once the -ladder gave way beneath her, and she fell to the floor, breaking her -arm. The days that followed were among the happiest of her life. She -was installed in her Uncle Bradford’s room that gave out onto the -sunny back garden where a pear tree was in bloom. There, propped up in -the middle of the great white bed, her arm in a sling and not hurting -too much to spoil her voluptuous sense of her own importance, she -seemed to herself a romantic figure, and received Fan with benevolent -superiority, while deeply and deliciously she drank in with every -feverish throb of her passionate little heart the tender devotion -of the patient women who loved her. Her Aunt Patty slept on a cot -beside her at night; her Aunt Minnie brought her meals to her on the -daintiest of trays; her grandmother and her Aunt Beth came with their -sewing to sit with her in the afternoon. Often when she felt herself -dropping into a doze after lunch, before finally closing her eyes to -give herself up to the sleep that was creeping over her so softly, she -would for the pleasure of it open them again to look through her heavy -eyelids at her grandmother’s head that she could see above the foot -of the great bed outlined against the sunny light of the window; and -she would see the little old lady lift a finger to her pursed lips and -nod mysteriously smiling at Beth and glance towards the bed as much as -to say--“The child is dropping off, we mustn’t make a sound.” And the -child, with such a sense of security and peace as to convey to her in -after years the memory of a heavenly instant, would let herself float -blissfully out into the still waters of oblivion, knowing that she -would surely find them there when she awoke. - -She was given the book, “La Vita Nuova” for her own, and lay in bed -dreaming of a poet who would one day love her as Dante had loved his -Beatrice. - -It was about this time that Mrs. Carpenter began working out her -schemes with Philibert. - -Jane was according to her own testimony subject to fits of such violent -temper that she scarcely knew what she was doing. At such moments she -frightened every one round her and herself as well. One evening stands -out in her memory as peculiarly dreadful. The family were gathered in -the drawing room before supper waiting for her, when she burst in on -them, her face as white as a sheet, and flung herself on her Aunt Patty -with the words--“I’ve killed a boy. Come quick. He was torturing a -beast. He’s out in the garden lying quite still.” And shuddering from -head to foot she dragged her aunt out after her. The boy was not dead, -but lay as a matter-of-fact unconscious on the path near the back gate. -Jane had knocked him down and half throttled him. There had been three -boys shooting with sling shots at a lame cat to whose leg they had -tied a tin can so that the wretched beast could not get out of range. -Jane had seen them from the window and had rushed to the rescue. The -affair made something of a stir in the town. It got into the papers. -The boy had to be taken to a hospital. Jane’s Uncle Bradford needed all -his influence to avert a public scandal. Unfortunately it was not the -first case of Jane’s violence that had come to the knowledge of the -neighbours. People talked of her as “that savage girl of Izzy’s” and -told their children they were not to play with her any more. She was -taken out of school for a time. - -It is difficult to get at the exact meaning of this story. All that I -know is what Jane has told me herself, and she may have exaggerated -its social importance. At any rate, to her own mind it was an immense -and horrible disgrace. She felt herself a monstrosity, and for weeks -could not bear to go into the street. Her Aunt Patience too, had taken -a very serious view of the affair. She sent for Jane to come to her in -her study the next morning; the child was, I suppose, too nervous and -shaken that night to listen to anything in the way of reprimand, and -Aunt Patience showed her a riding whip on a peg in the corner against -the wall. It was a cowboy quirt, a braided leather thing with a long -lash. - -“Jane,” said her Aunt Patty, “that quirt belonged to your father. -He left it here once long ago. It is yours. I have put it there on -that peg for you. I am giving it to you for a special purpose. When -a dreadful act is committed against a human being, some one has to -suffer, to make things equal. Usually the one who does the evil deed -is punished, but I can’t, Jane, punish you like that.” And here Aunt -Patty’s stern voice quavered. “I can’t because I can’t bear to. You are -my child. I love you too much. I have lain awake all night thinking -about it. When God is angry he punishes people he loves. He has the -right. He is wise and perfect. But I am not in the place of God to you, -and I can’t do it. I am going to do something quite different. I am -going to do it because something has got to be done, some one has got -to suffer for what you have done. You are to take that whip down now -from that peg and give me three lashes with it across my shoulders. I -am going to take your punishment on me because I think that will make -you understand. Do as I say.” - -The child was terrified. In a kind of trance she took the leather -weapon in her shaking hands. Her aunt stood straight and still in the -middle of the room. “Do what I say, Jane,” she commanded again. Her -voice was awful. Jane advanced a step towards her as if hypnotized, -looked a long moment at the stern face, then suddenly collapsed in a -heap at those large plain feet in their worn flat slippers. - -“I can’t, Aunt Patty,” she whispered. “I can’t! It’s enough. It’s -enough.” - -After this Jane spent more and more time in her aunt’s company. The -dreadful experience drew them even closer together. Jane would almost -always accompany her aunt on her long tramps into the country, and -although as Patience so often said she never took any real interest -in the science of birds, she nevertheless became an adept at climbing -trees and going through thickets, and learned to imitate the songs of -birds in an astonishing way. This accomplishment indeed, she never -lost; even when she had long since forgotten all she learned about -Baltimore Orioles and Brown Thrushes and Scarlet Tanagers and the -migrations of birds in the spring time, and their marvellous intricate -manner of fabricating their nests, she could throw back her head and -fill the room wherever she might be with the most bewildering joyous -riot of warblings and twitterings and liquid trills. She became so -expert at this that sometimes she would play pranks on her aunt, and -climbing into the tree outside the study window, she would imitate -the song of some little feathered creature so perfectly that her Aunt -Patty would leave her work and tip-toe softly to the window only to be -greeted with a squeal of triumphant laughter. - -The classes in bird lore that were held in the parlour were for Jane -little more than a chance of giggling with Fan in a corner. The -lectures indoors went on during the winter, but in the spring and -early summer Miss Forbes took her followers by train to a village on -the edge of the forest, and there, in the leafy fastnesses of those -sunny enclosed spaces would give her pupils demonstrated lectures. -Jane has told me that when following the sound of a bird’s note heard -overhead at a distance, her aunt’s face would become transfigured; a -little mystic smile would come over her plain features; she would sign -to her throng to make not the slightest noise, and silently her head -bent sideways and upwards, she would lead the way, stopping now and -then, her finger on her lips, to listen for the clear note that guided -her, until at last she would catch sight of her beauty, high up on a -swaying leafy bough, and all her being would strain upward towards that -tiny creature, and her face would light up with even a brighter joy, -and she would point a gaunt finger mutely at the object of her worship -as if calling attention to some lovely little celestial being. Then -if some one, as was always the case, made a sound and the bird flew -away, a shadow would fall on her face, her pose would relax and she -would turn to the heavy human beings about her, a dull disappointed -glance, looking at them all for a moment in deep reproach before she -recollected what she was there for, and began to tell them of the -habits and customs of the songster who had just disappeared over the -treetops. - -On one occasion Fan went so far as to say these rambles were -ridiculous, and Jane flared up at once. - -“My Aunt Patty ridiculous?” she cried out. “How dare you? She’s the -greatest ornithologist in the world, and I love her, I love her more -than all the outside world together and everything in it.” - -When Jane was fifteen her grandmother died, and a year later her Aunt -Beth was married, and Jane, who was sixteen, had a white organdie -bridesmaid’s dress and carried a bouquet of pink roses, and after that -Aunt Minnie went away to be a Christian Science healer in New York, and -Jane was left alone in the Grey House with her Aunt Patty. - -Her grandmother’s death left her with no impression of horror. The -little old lady had gone to sleep one day quietly in her accustomed -place by the window and had not wakened again, that was all. Aunt -Patty at the funeral in a long black veil, looked like some grand and -austere monument of grief, reminding her vaguely of a statue she had -seen somewhere of emblematic and national importance, but she made no -fuss over her sorrow, and told the child that night of her own mother’s -imminent arrival from Paris. - -This was a piece of news sufficiently wonderful to offset completely -the effect of death in the house. Jane said to herself, “She is coming -to take me away to be with her at last.” And she went up and hid in her -room so that her Aunt Patty should not see how excited she was. - -But Jane was mistaken. Such was not Mrs. Carpenter’s intention. She -had come to America on receiving her sister’s telegram partly out -of deference to her mother’s memory, partly to consult her lawyers, -and partly for the purpose of putting Jane in a fashionable American -boarding school. The sadness in Jane’s memory long connected with -those days has little to do with her grandmother’s funeral, but is the -lasting indelible impression of the discovery she made then, that her -mother did not like her. - -Mrs. Carpenter came out with her ideas for her daughter abruptly on -the evening of her arrival. She had no idea that her daughter adored -her. Jane’s letters beginning “My darling Mummy” and ending “Your -loving daughter” had conveyed to her nothing of the writer’s emotion. -No doubt they bored her, and no doubt she supposed that they bored the -child who was obliged to write them. It would probably have seemed to -her incredible that a little girl who scarcely ever saw her should go -on wanting her for ten years from a distance of a couple of thousand -miles. If she justified herself to herself at all, I suppose she made -use of this argument: “Well, if I don’t care for her because she is -so dreadfully her father’s daughter, then that proves that I am too -different for her ever to care for me. The best thing for us both is -to leave her with people who won’t let her get on their nerves as she -would on mine.” - -Mrs. Carpenter was not subtle, and she hated wasting time, so she -opened the subject at once sitting with Patience in the back parlour, -her slim silk-stockinged legs crossed easily, one smart foot dangling, -her modish head tilted back above the trim cravat of black crêpe and -white tulle that her French maid had fabricated for her during the -crossing, and a jewelled hand playing with Jane’s long pigtail. Her -sister Patience sat opposite her at her table, her head in her hands, -her bony fingers poked up among her meagre locks, and Jane took in that -evening with a kind of anguish of loyalty the contrast between the -two women. It seemed to her somehow very pitiful that her Aunt Patty -should be so ugly when her mother was so beautiful. With a childish -absence of any vestige of a sense of humour, she felt at one moment -ashamed for her aunt and almost angry with her mother, and then ashamed -for her mother and angry with her aunt. - -“I wanted to tell you, Patty, that I think it would be a good thing now -for this big gawk of a girl to go to a finishing school in New York. -You’ll probably be giving up this house soon, and I don’t want her with -me yet awhile.” - -Jane in talking to me of this moment said that she felt as if her -mother’s hand that was playing affectionately with her hair an instant -before had suddenly picked up a hammer and hit her on the head. For an -interval everything was blurred and dark in the room, with sparks that -seemed to be shooting out of her brain. It was her Aunt Patty’s face -that brought her back to her senses. It was a suffering, angry face, -and presently she heard Patience say--“I am not going to give up this -house, but I think you ought to take Jane to live with you. She wants -to go, and she’s right. You are her mother.” - -But Izzy paid no attention to her older sister. - -“That’s nonsense! Paris is no place for a girl of her age. What in the -world should I do with her? She’d be dreadfully in the way. Besides -she must learn how to walk and manage her hands before I show her to -people.” - -The thing was done. Jane knew. She knew that her mother did not like -her and never had liked her, and she knew somehow that her mother did -not like her because she was ugly and reminded her of her father Silas -Carpenter. She knew too that her Aunt Patty had always known this, -and that her aunt loved her as her mother never would love her, and -that the mottled flush on her grim face was due in part to anger and -in part to the fear of losing her. She understood that her aunt had -determined to help her to attain her heart’s desire, even at the price -of losing herself the one thing more precious to her than anything in -the world. She dared not look at her mother and she could not speak, -and still she waited though incapable now of taking in the meaning of -their voices. She heard vaguely her aunt saying something about making -enough money by her lectures and publications to keep the house going, -but paid no attention. A question addressed directly to herself by her -mother at last roused her. - -“Well, Jane, what do you say? Would you rather stay here alone with -your Aunt Patty than go to boarding school with a lot of jolly girls of -your own age?” - -She did not hesitate then for an answer. - -“Oh yes, if you can’t have me let me stay here,” and turning she cried, -“Keep me, Aunt Patty, keep me,” and flung herself into those long -trembling arms. - -Mrs. Carpenter seems to have been mildly amused by this display of -affection. With her face buried in the black woollen stuff of her -aunt’s blouse, Jane heard her say-- - -“Well then, I leave it to you two. You can carry on as you like for the -next two or three years. When you are eighteen, Jane, you will make -your début in Paris society. You’ll want to bring Patty with you, I -suppose, when the time comes.” - -Mrs. Carpenter left three days later. The subject of Jane’s future was -not broached again in her presence, but she heard the two women talking -about professors of French and Italian and dancing classes, and the -advantages of a saddle-horse and a pony cart. Her mother’s last words -to her were-- - -“Now make the most of your time and don’t run about all over the -country in the sun. Your complexion is the best thing about you.” And -yet she didn’t hate her mother. Her idea of her mother had not even -undergone for her any fundamental change. It was all the other way -round. It was her opinion of herself that had suffered. With the dogged -loyalty that seemed at times positively a sign of stupidity and was -to influence every important decision of her life, she defended her -mother to her own heart. If her mother did not like her it was because -she was not likeable, because her father had been a dreadful man and -had handed down to her some secret dangerous element of his own nature -that made her antagonistic and unpleasant to brilliant happy people. -Her Aunt Patty loved her because she was sorry for her. Her Aunt Patty -was different from her mother. She, too, was ugly and a little queer; -that was the bond between them. Poor Patience Forbes! Jane was to do -her justice later, but for the moment she almost hated the sympathy -between them, while her mother’s image like some magic adamant statue -possessing a supernatural inviolability remained for her persistently -and brilliantly the same. And when she was gone the question Jane put -her aunt represented the result of hours of heart-broken weeping in -which no whisper of a reproach had mingled. - -“Aunt Patty,” she said, “how can I make my mother love me?” and her -Aunt Patty had replied rather grimly-- - -“By trying to be what she wants you to be, I suppose.” - -It was after this that Jane began sleeping at night with a strip of -adhesive plaster across her mouth from her chin to her upper lip. Her -aunt must have known but she did not interfere. I can imagine her -standing over her niece’s bed when she came up from her protracted -studies in the library, with a lamp in her hand, a tall grizzled -figure in long ungainly black clothes, looking down at that sleeping -face with the court-plaster pasted across the mouth, and I can see her -weather-beaten face twist and tears well up in those shrewd intelligent -eyes, and I seem to hear her utter--“Poor Jane, my poor lamb. If you -could only take some interest in science. I don’t know what is to -become of you.” - - - - -V - - -I begin to feel uncertain in telling this story. I am not at all sure -that I have a just feeling for that American life of Jane’s. I have put -down the facts as she told them to me and have described the people -there as they came into being for me, from her talk, but how am I to -know that they were really like that? Perhaps had I seen them with my -own eyes I should have found them quite different: narrow, dull people -with shrill twanging voices and queer American mannerisms. It may be -that they would have bored me as they bored Mrs. Carpenter. St. Mary’s -Plains I have seen for myself, but what did I see? A railway station, -a few streets, a deep wide muddy river flowing by full of ships and -barges. The town expressed nothing to me. It remained enigmatic. Of -the hidden life going on in all those houses I knew nothing. I did not -even understand what I saw. There were billboards all about the railway -station advertising American products. Enormous nigger babies three -times life-size stared from wooden fences. The Gold Dust Twins? Why -gold dust, why twins, why nigger babies? How should I know? There were -other garish things: I seem to remember flags and red, white and blue -streamers festooning telegraph poles, in celebration I suppose of some -national holiday. It was all too foreign. I could not translate it to -myself. It made me feel very tired, and now this effort to recreate the -atmosphere makes me weary. It is such a strain for the imagination. I -know that my picture is incomplete and therefore false. I have touched -on the gentleness and good breeding of Jane’s people, on the quiet of -their God-fearing lives, but that word God-fearing: it is strange; -it suggests something stern and uncompromising that is very different -from anything we know in Paris. It suggests a great seriousness, a -bare nakedness before the mystery of the unknown, a challenge of fate -and an exaltation, of virtue. It affects me like a bleak wind. I turn -away from it with relief. I look out of my window with a sigh. There -is the good Abbé coming out of the convent gate. He has been hearing -confessions; he has been taking away the sins from burdened hearts and -tying them up into neat little bundles to be dropped into the Seine. -God bless him, and thank God for our wise old priesthood and our -wonderful beautiful old compromises, and thank God again for the jaunty -swing of that black cassock. Ugh! I feel better. The little street is -dim this morning. It has been raining. Dear, weary little old street-- - -There is no room here for American Puritanism. Paris is too old, -too wise to harbour such things. Was it that that haunted Jane? Did -she always see herself measured up to a fixed fine standard like a -flagpole, the flagpole of American idealism, with a banner floating -over her head, casting a shadow, purity, honesty, fear of God, -written on it in shining letters? Payment, atonement, the wages of -sin is death--old Mrs. Forbes reading out the words, believing but -not worrying, but Jane making them terribly personal, questioning, -puzzling, burying them in her mind. Heaven and hell; realities! -Our actions leading us toward one or the other. Patience Forbes -saying one had to suffer for a bad deed. The mystery about Jane’s -father--something curious about his death. He was an unhappy man, his -silence, she remembered it, she remembered him. She knew she was like -him in some inexplicable way that frightened her. A world of stern -simple values, all smoothed over for her by the gentleness and kindness -of those people, the Forbes. Of course they were gentle and kind. They -loved her. It was all right as long as she had them, but it was a -curious preparation for life with Izzy in Paris. - -Izzy sent for Philibert on her return from America. She must have -talked to him about Jane. They must have had a curious conversation. -I am certain that it was then that they elaborated their plan. The -scheme was one of grand proportions. They became partners in a great -enterprise. Mrs. Carpenter was to supply her daughter, who had enough -money to realize even Philibert’s dreams, and he was to supply the -required knowledge, as well as the _billet d’entrée_ into the social -arena of Europe. These two suited each other perfectly. They knew what -they wanted and each saw in the other the means of getting it. Broadly -speaking they wanted the same thing, and if Philibert’s conception of -their common destiny was utterly beyond her that was just what made her -faith in him perfect. Audacious in her way, his audacity far outdid -hers: whatever her idea his was always much grander; he made her feel -beautifully humble by brushing away some of her most cherished hopes as -unworthy of their attention. - -“A palace in Venice?” I seem to hear him say, perched on one of her -little straight gilt chairs, nursing his foot that was tucked under his -knee. “But every one has palaces in Venice. Why not a Venetian palace -in Paris, the Doge’s Palace itself, reproduced stone for stone, if that -takes your fancy?” - -And she would catch her breath with the beauty of the idea. Not that -Philibert ever intended to do anything so silly as spoil a site in -Paris by such a freak of humour. He was a _farceur_ if you like, but -he had too much taste for that. He intended having his palace, and it -was to be of such supreme beauty as to draw pilgrims from all over -the world, but it was to be in harmony with its surroundings. The -allusion to the House of the Doges was just his little happy joke. -He was very cheerful in those days. People used to say--“Fifi does -have luck. Look at him. Who is it now that adores him? Was ever a man -so blatantly successful in his love affairs?” I must say he did have -the look of being happily in love. His smooth cheeks were pink, his -eyes, usually as expressionless as bits of blue enamel, were suffused -with light, and the soft flaxen fuzz that grew round the bald spot -on his head like the down on a little yellow gosling, seemed to -send off electricity. Never in all his immaculate dandyism had he -been so immaculate, his linen was superlative and the shine on his -little pointed boots was visible halfway down the street. There was a -giddy swing to his hurrying coat-tails, and he carried his shoulders -superbly. Almost, but not quite, he achieved the look of being taller. -And his contempt for the rest of us was of course greater than ever. -Born with a gnawing consciousness of his own genius, he had for years -been as exasperated as a Michael Angelo or a Paul Veronese forced by -lack of space and a sufficiency of paints to spend his time doing -little water-colour sketches: but he now saw himself on the way to -realizing his inspirations in all their splendid amplitude, and of -displaying before the eyes of men the finished gigantic masterpiece -of his art. For Philibert was an artist: even Ludovic and Felix and -Clémentine recognized that. He was an artist in life on a grand scale. -He dealt with men and women and clothes and string orchestras and food -and polished floors and marble staircases as a painter deals with the -colours on his palette, or perhaps more exactly as the theatrical -producer deals with stage properties. His stage was the world itself; -he produced his plays and his pageants and his _tableaux vivants_ in -the midst of the activities of society, and his actors, reversing the -method of our modern stage where the players come down across the -footlights to mingle with the audience, were selected by him from the -general public without their knowing it, and found themselves playing -a part in a scene he had created round them and for them as if by -magic. Audacious? Ah, but who could be more so? Who but Fifi would -have had the impertinence to take a real live king and make him, all -unconscious, play the principal part in a pantomime before a handful of -spectators? Mrs. Carpenter had dreamed of entertaining kings. Philibert -entertained them, but he did something much more extraordinary; he put -them into his play and made them entertain him. - -Who in Paris will ever forget the night he threw open his door for the -Czar of all the Russias? Who does not remember how he stage-managed -the crowd outside, how troops of singers from the Opera mingled with -the mob far down the street and sang hymns of acclamation as the royal -guest approached his fairy palace, so illumined as to shine like a -single rosy jewel? And the golden carpet thrown down on the marble -stairs, and Jane standing alone at the top of that fantastic staircase, -like an emerald column, her train arranged by Philibert’s own clever -hands sweeping down the steps beneath her to add supernaturally to her -height, her strange face under its diadem of jewels looking as small -in the distance as the carved image cut out of a coin. Do people not -talk even now of that night, and allude to Philibert as the last of the -benevolent despots? “He was unique,” you can still hear them say it, -“there will never be any one like him. No one can amuse the world as he -did.” And no one ever will. The War has changed all that. François I. -was his father; the Medici were his forerunners; he was the last of his -kind. - -But he refined on this sensational achievement. He went farther. Only -a few realized quite how far he did go. In his most brilliant days, -I was on the point of saying during the most brilliant period of his -reign, he played plays at which he himself was the sole spectator. -I remember the occasion when a certain popular Prince, heir at that -time to one of the most solid thrones in Europe, expressed a desire to -come and shoot at the Château de Ste. Clothilde. Mrs. Carpenter had -been all of a tremble with pleasure. It was the first royal visitor -to sleep under his roof. Philibert had restored our old place in the -country, and had in five years managed by a miracle to have there the -best partridge shooting in France. “You will have a large party for His -Royal Highness, I suppose?” Mrs. Carpenter had ventured timidly. How -humble and self-effacing she had grown by that time, poor thing. “Not -at all,” replied Philibert. “There will be no women and not more than -six guns.” And he added then with a sublime simplicity unequalled, I -believe, by any monarch or any court jester in history, “When royalty -comes to Ste. Clothilde for the shooting, there is another place laid -at table, that is all.” - -Poor Izzy, she was completely at a loss. No longer could she attempt -to follow him. It was Jane who understood. She looked at him curiously -through her gleaming half-closed eyes; I remember the look, while she -breathed in a whisper--“Take care, you will have nothing left to live -for.” I remember the tone of that remark. - -But I am anticipating too much. I meant to speak here merely of his -matrimonial expectations. These hopes gave his person an added lustre -and his fine family nose an accentuated sneer. Nevertheless he kept -them secret: no one knew that Mrs. Carpenter even had a daughter. She -never mentioned her to any of us. On the other hand she never mentioned -Philibert in her letters to Jane. It was part of the scheme. They had -worked it out completely between them to its smallest details. Jane -would be dangerously independent. She would be in no way answerable to -her mother for all that immense lot of money. It was best then that she -should suspect nothing. She would arrive, the Marquis de Joigny would -be presented to her and would fall in love with her at first sight. -Her mother would leave her free to choose for herself. Philibert made -himself responsible for the rest. - -And, in the meantime, while these two master minds were at work, Jane -still waited in the Grey House for her mother to come and fetch her, -waited as the appointed time drew near with little of the old exultant -expectancy, but instead with nervous misgiving. She was afraid of not -pleasing her mother, she was in an agony at the thought of leaving her -Aunt Patience. - -And I find myself now, as I sit here, painfully counting with suspended -breath the last days of Jane’s girlhood in St. Mary’s Plains. I see -them silently slipping by over her unconscious head as she sat in the -back garden among her Aunt Patty’s hollyhocks, or walked with her -French governess along the homely streets, swinging her school books -by a strap, humming a tune under her breath, her neat modest clothes -swinging to the rhythm of her beautiful young body, her strange little -ugly ardent face lifted to the sweet air in frank animal enjoyment. -Patience Forbes stands on the front stoop between the two wooden -pillars waiting for her to come running up the path, waiting for the -generous clasp of those strong young arms, waiting to feel once more -the contact of all that pure vital youthfulness, and I hear as they sit -down to supper opposite each other, with the tall candles lighted on -the old mahogany table and the hot muffins steaming under the folded -white napkin, the sound of the grandfather clock in the hall, ticking -out the last precious fleeting moments of their time together. - -This is very painful, I will not linger over it. I bring myself back, -I falter, what then am I to think of? Where turn my attention? So much -is ugly. Ah, but Jane, why go any further? Is it not enough? Is it not -clear to you as it is to me? Is there any need to say more? Was it -not all just as I say? Now that you are back there at last alone, now -that we have lost you for ever, now that you have gone, irresistibly -drawn out of your splendour to the little shabby place you loved, what -is there to torment you? Philibert, Bianca? What have they to do with -you now? They hated you. How can you be beholden to people who did you -nothing but harm? But Jane, there were some of us who adored you, and -if you had told us everything, as you at last told me, we would have -loved you only the more. - - * * * * * * * * * - -I sometimes wonder whether Mrs. Carpenter ever suspected what a narrow -shave she had towards the end, and how all her plans very nearly came -to nothing at the moment of their fruition because of Bianca. It is -probable that she had little more idea of the danger than a vague -uneasy suspicion that Philibert for a time was distraught by some -influence whose source she ignored. She had met Bianca but did not -connect her with Philibert; knowing almost nothing in those days of -what she would have called Philibert’s family life. There was no one to -tell her that Philibert had once wanted to marry Bianca and that old -François had refused him as a suitor for his daughter’s hand because -of his lack of fortune. Izzy knew nothing about the strange intimacy -of these two. How should she? Philibert was not likely to tell her and -certainly none of the rest of us were in the habit of discussing with -her the private affairs of our families. My mother knew of course; she -doted on Bianca, and Claire, and all the family. They had all desired -the match. Bianca was a pearl that they collectively coveted, and when -things went wrong they had all been annoyed with the old rake her -father. Aunt Clothilde had gone so far as to rap him over the knuckles -with her fan one day when he took her out to dinner, and to say in -her best rude manner--“You’ve done a pretty thing, spoiling the lives -of those two children. And what’s Bianca got from her mother? Five -hundred thousand francs a year. Just so, and you will leave her the -same when you die, which will be before long at the pace you are going. -And Philibert has nothing but his debts, but then, who knows, I might -have given him something. I’m not so in love with him as some, but -still he’s my nephew, and the two of them were made for each other. Now -you’ll see, they’ll both turn out badly.” But François only laughed as -if he were enjoying a wicked joke that he was not going to share with -her. He was always like that, chuckling to himself in a sly sort of way -that made you creep and roused the curiosity of women. Sometimes he -would stare at me with his pale, red-rimmed, half-closed eyes and that -smile on his face as if my deformity was very amusing. I hated him. I -could have told them what kind of a father he was to Bianca. - -In any case she was married a year later to her well-to-do nonentity, -and we all went to the wedding, and Aunt Clo, being a near relative, -walked in the _cortège_ with François and made faces behind her prayer -book. But Philibert was white as a sheet and kicked a wretched dog out -of the way as he came down the church steps with such violence that he -broke its paw. Bianca was, I remember, as lovely and serene as a lily. -She didn’t speak to Philibert at all the day she was married. She just -kept him standing there near her, not too near, during the reception, -as if he belonged to her, as if he were a flunkey of some sort, and -never once so much as looked at him. But she spoke to me. She asked -me why I had not proposed for her hand. “I might have accepted you, -you know” she said in that small reedy penetratingly sweet voice of -hers--“just to spite them all,”--and there wasn’t a trace of a smile on -her clear curving lips. Devil--she meant it for Philibert, of course, -and of course he heard. - -My mother used to say that Bianca reminded her of a very young Sir -Galahad. Claire suggested half-mockingly St. Sebastian. I thought she -was like a fox, quick and cruel with a poisonous bite. As a matter -of fact, in those days she looked a harmless little thing. Her small -snow-white square face was sweetly modelled and framed as it was by a -cap of short black hair that was cut _à la Jeanne d’Arc_, it had the -look of a mediaeval Italian angel. Only her enormous eyes very blue and -deep and her voice gave her away. If one watched closely one caught -glimpses in those eyes of the invisible monster locked up in that light -smooth body; if one listened to her voice one heard it. She seemed to -know this, and much of the time she kept her eyes lowered. Cool and -aloof and monosyllabic she hid herself, her real self, calculating her -power and economical of it, deceptive, waiting till it should be worth -her while to disengage the magic that lurked in the smooth complexity -of her little person. Her voice was not a pure single note, but a -double reedy sound that had a penetrating harmony. One remembered it -with a haunting exasperation. It was rather high in pitch, and the -words it carried did not punctuate the sound of it, but seemed to be -strung like beads on a sustained vibrating chord as if on some double -coppery wire. Each word was distinct and beautifully enunciated by -her lips without interfering with the sound that flowed through them. -There was nothing guttural or emotional about Bianca’s voice, but it -was disturbing; it irritated and seemed to correspond to some secret -nerve-centre of pleasure in the listener’s brain. - -I have watched her sometimes using her voice for special purposes of -her own, but for the most part in company she tried to subdue it, and -would often stop herself in the middle of one of her rapid speeches -with a little annoyed laugh. She would then look down and move away, -but even her floating stiffly off like a rigid little broomstick with a -pair of wings or wheels on the end of it had a strange charm. - -Her gestures were very restrained. She had a way of holding attention -so closely when apparently doing nothing, that when she did make the -slightest movement it conveyed exactly what she intended it to convey. - -Philibert was a connoisseur fit to appreciate her, and she knew it. -They had in their precocious youth recognized each in the other a -rare complementary quality, but even in the days when Bianca with -abbreviated skirts had let me make love to her, the affinity between -Philibert and herself had made her hate him. It was a curious -attraction I thought that made them constantly want to hurt each -other. I knew well enough that Bianca was only sweet to me in order to -make Philibert angry. Sometimes in the garden of our house, where we -played while François paid his respects of my mother, she would kiss -me, looking sideways at Philibert all the time, and he would pirouette -on one toe and pretend not to care, and would yell with laughter at -me and call out--“Don’t think she loves you. You’re crooked. You will -never be any better. You can’t do this. Look at me. She loves me.” And -Bianca would turn away from us and look at him as he told her to, and -say to him--“I don’t like you at all,” and then stalk away into the -drawing room where she would wheedle from her father a succession of -lumps of sugar soaked in cognac, and if we followed we would find her -rubbing her smooth little cheek up and down against François’ whiskers -and making little gurgling noises of pleasure. François was certainly -a queer kind of father. Philibert and I could have told tales about -that.--If it had only been lumps of sugar dipped in brandy--. We took -note with a kind of shocked envy. Once she took us down to the pantry -and showed us a bottle of “Triple Sec.” “That’s the nicest,” she said, -“it’s like honey fire.” - -When she was ten he turned her loose in his library, or at any rate -finding her there with some dreadful book in her lap, only laughed. -Every one knows what that library contained. Rare editions, old -bindings, a priceless collection; bibliophiles came from far to finger -those volumes. François was a discriminating collector. But for -Bianca--no one discriminated for her. One can see her like a little -greedy white lamb browsing in the poisonous herbage of that field of -knowledge. She began with the memoirs of Casanova. She had picked it -out because it was by an Italian. She was always dreaming about Italy, -her mother’s country. Her mother had died while she was a baby, but -Bianca seemed to remember her. She often spoke about her, and every -Friday went with her governess to light a candle in St. Sulpice for -the repose of her spirit. As for her literary discoveries, Philibert -alone was aware of what she was up to, and even he didn’t know much -about it. Occasionally she would drop a hint, or lend a book. She would -never have admitted even to him that she read all the books she did -read. She understood Philibert perfectly. As she grew older she allowed -him to suspect that she was wise, but not too wise. She was willing to -be for him an object of mystification, but never of vulgar curiosity. -Gradually she grew conscious of a purpose in regard to Philibert, and -I believe that this purpose had something to do with her refusing to -marry him. For, after all, she could have brought her father round had -she tried to. No, it was not her idea to marry the man she liked. Her -idea was far more amusing than that. - -What happened just before Jane’s arrival in Paris was simple enough. -Bianca had been married two years. She had been to Italy and had come -back to find Philibert thick as thieves with a great grey-headed -American, and she had asked herself what this meant. It didn’t take her -long to find out. She had a way of knowing what he was up to. Probably -he told her outright, and she was not pleased. For the moment she -did not like the idea of Philibert’s marrying any one, least of all -a colossal American fortune. She was far too clever to make a scene. -She had other means of getting her own way, and now out of caprice she -exerted them. I imagine her opening her monstrous eyes just a little -wider than usual and allowing Philibert to look into them. I can see -her move ever so slightly with a small jerk of the hips and upward -undulation of her slim body, and I watch her lean forward to allow the -faint suggestion of that magic essence of hers to disengage itself from -her person, through her lifted eyelids, through her sweet parted lips, -through the tips of her long delicate fingers, and I see Philibert -falter in his talk about the American girl, and silently watch her, and -get to his feet like a man in a dream and come close but not too close. -For a fortnight she kept him like that, in a trance; everywhere he -followed her. - -Mrs. Carpenter lost him. It was during the month of May. Bianca went -about a good deal that Spring and was very much admired. It was at a -big afternoon affair that I saw her, standing with Philibert looking -out at the crowded gardens. She was very young still; she was nothing -more than a very thin slip of a thing with pretty little sticks of -legs and a pair of long delicate arms hanging close to her sides, the -fingers pressed against the folds of her slinky muslin frock. She -stood very still and rather stiff, her heels together and her lovely -head just tilted very slightly away from Philibert as if she had -drawn it back quickly and gently at the sound of a disturbing murmur, -or as if perhaps she were enticing that murmur, as yet unuttered, -from his lips. I watched them. They did not look at each other. Their -eyes traced parallel lines of vision before them over the heads of -the crowd. Nothing betrayed their deep communion save this common -stillness. I did not hear them speak or see their lips move, but I know -that Philibert was speaking; I learnt afterwards what it was he was -saying. - -He was asking her to bolt with him. - -It was the moment of supreme danger for Izzy Carpenter. The marvellous -edifice she had so carefully fashioned with Philibert hung suspended -by a thread. Like some great gorgeous glittering chandelier with a -thousand candles hoisted into the air by Bianca’s little finger, it -hung there swaying in space, held up to the ceiling of heaven by the -thread of her hesitation. Philibert, his hands behind him holding his -top hat and gloves against the neat back of his morning coat, watched -it. Through closed teeth he had spoken without looking at his companion -and now he waited in silence. If she assented the whole thing would be -dashed to the ground in a million pieces. He took in all that it meant -for him. Like one of those drunkards whose faculties are most keen -when they are under the influence of liquor, he saw with excruciating -clearness, through the superlative excitation of Bianca’s fascination -that was working upon him, the beauty and magnitude of the thing he was -sacrificing. And yet if she had said it, the word he awaited, he would -have turned away from all that débris with a sneer, so perfectly had -Bianca made him feel that she was worth it, worth anything, worth more -than even he, with his formidable imagination could conceive of. - -She didn’t say it. She didn’t say anything. She merely lowered her -head after an instant’s utter stillness and floated away from him. I -wonder if there was the slightest of smiles on her lovely averted lips. -Perhaps not. Her smile was deep down in the well of her abysmal being. -She had had an inspiration. She had thought of something much more -amusing than what he proposed. She would reveal it to him later; there -was plenty of time. Or perhaps she would never reveal it to him at all, -but just make him do as she wished without letting him know that she -had thought of it long before. In any case she would leave him alone -now. - -And so Mrs. Carpenter was saved and went to America to fetch Jane. - - - - -VI - - -Philibert had given himself a month in which to win Jane’s hand, and it -took him five. I don’t know why I find any comfort in this fact, but -I do. I am glad she kept him waiting. I am glad the two conspirators -were uncomfortable, even for so short a time, and there is no doubt -that they were uncomfortable. Jane paid no attention to her mother’s -funny little friend, who wore corsets and high heels and used scent. -She sized him up in a long grave glance that covered him from tip to -toe and then seemed to forget about him. The truth was that she was -absorbed in her mother. To her great delight she had found in that -quarter an unexpected cordiality. It almost seemed as if her mother had -decided to like her. She had never been half so nice. - -And she fell in love with Paris. - -Wonderful enchantress city, queen woman of cities! It had assumed -to greet her its most charming and gentle aspect. She arrived one -evening in June. She held her breath as she drove across the Place de -la Concorde, where the light was silver and blue, and up the Champs -Elysées towards the Arc de Triomphe that stood out against the sunset -glow like a great and lovely gate into Heaven. She thought, so she told -me afterwards, of the magic city under the sea in the poem by Edgar -Allen Poe. The following morning she was up with the milkman and had -slipped out of the house alone before any one was awake, and had walked -from the Avenue du Bois down to the Tuileries Gardens and back again -as the newsvenders were taking down the shutters of their kiosks. They -smiled at her and nodded. A little morning breeze laughed in the trees. -A woman came by wheeling a cart full of flowers. She filled her arms -and arrived at her mother’s doorway breathless with pleasure. Mrs. -Carpenter had the sense not to scold her, but she was obliged during -the days that followed to engage a special duenna who could walk far -enough and fast enough to keep up with her daughter. It appeared that -Jane had read a good deal of French history. She visited churches, -monuments and museums and made excursions to Versailles, la Malmaison, -Fontainebleau. The Rue de la Paix amused her, she liked the clothes -her mother bought her; but after a long morning at the dressmaker’s, -standing to let little kneeling women drape silks on her young body, -she would gulp down her lunch and start out again to explore, on foot, -refusing to take the motor. - -One day she turned into this little street. I saw her. I thought at -first that she was a Russian, some young Cossack princess perhaps. Her -dog, a Great Dane, walked beside her, his head close to her splendidly -moving limbs. I had never seen any one walk like that. She came on, her -head up, her arms down along her sides, and the wind, or was it the -force of her own swift movement, made her garments flow back from her. -It was the _Victoire de Samothrace_ walking through the sunlit streets -of Paris. I watched her approach with a strange excitement. Behind -her trotted her valiant duenna, a hurrying little woman in black. -And as the radiant white figure came nearer I saw that she was very -young, scarcely more than a great glorious child, and her strange ugly -face under her close white hat shaped like a helmet seemed to me, all -glowing though it was with health, to be half asleep. When she was gone -I turned back to my rooms and sat with my head in my hands thinking of -how curious it was, the regal carriage of that fine free controlled -body, and that face that did not know itself. I felt oppressed and -exhilarated and somehow full of pity. It was dangerous to be like that, -so young, so brave, so unknowing. Yes, an ugly face, but her walk was -the most beautiful I had ever seen. - -Through July Philibert made no progress with his suit. It was a -puzzling problem for him and for Izzy. Mrs. Carpenter found herself the -all too successful rival of the man she had selected for her daughter. -Jane’s attitude was simple enough. She enjoyed everything immensely -and felt that this was just what she had hoped to find. Her wonderful -mother who had appeared at one time not to care for her was now giving -her daily proofs of affection. And so she was happy. Mrs. Carpenter -must have been nonplussed. The connection was obvious, for the more -contented Jane was the less sign did she make of wanting anything else. -She was delighted at being with her mother: how could it occur to her -to want to get married? - -And Philibert’s artfulness with women was of no use to him here. His -professional tricks were wasted. He could only hold her attention by -telling her about the things she looked at; histories, anecdotes, -dissertations on art and architecture she would listen to with profound -interest. She kept him for hours in the galleries of the Louvre -discoursing on the great masters, and occasionally she would say with -a sigh while he mopped his exhausted head--“How much you know.” It was -the only tribute he got from her. - -For August they went to Trouville. Monsieur Cornuché had not yet -invented Deauville. The trip was very nearly Philibert’s undoing. -He was very hard put to it, was our Philibert, during that month of -August. And how he must have hated it. Nothing but sheer grit kept him -going, nothing less than the most enormous prize would have induced him -to put up with so much misery. - -She rode, she swam, she played tennis, she hired a yacht and sailed -it. He was most of the time quite literally out of breath with running -after tennis balls, carrying golf clubs, galloping down the sands -after her vanishing figure; and to add to his discomfiture some of his -friends, those whom he could not be seen with under the circumstances, -saw him all too often and laughed behind the screen of the little red -and white bathing tents. I enjoy in retrospect his discomfiture. Such -as it was it constituted for Jane an unconscious revenge. For a month -she kept her mother and Philibert on pins and needles, and I believe -that if her mother had not been constantly at hand to dress him up -again and again in all the trappings of romance, that Jane would have -found him finally and irretrievably ridiculous, just a poor exasperated -absurd little man who was no good at games and got blue with cold in -the water. For of course what saved Philibert in the end was Jane’s -desire to please her mother. - -Mrs. Carpenter was obliged to take a definite line. It had not been her -intention to do so, but she found that she must if the plan were to -come off at all. I don’t truly believe the woman was more double-faced -than most. She would if one hauled her out of the grave to make her -defence, put up, I suppose, a respectable argument. She would say that -she had done what thousands of mothers do every day, and what all -of them should do. She had picked out a husband whom she considered -a brilliant match for her daughter and had married her to him. The -only reason that obliged her to resort to subterfuge, and hers, she -would say, was of the vaguest and slightest, was the girl’s complete -financial independence. Her own extraordinary husband had given her -no hold over her daughter, but had put everything into the hands of -a trio of bumptious bigoted American citizens. What she really was -doing when she had made her plans for Jane and then got her to fulfil -them without knowing it, was not bamboozling the child, but getting -the best of those horrid trustees. If it had not been for them and the -grotesque will they kept waving in her face, she would have said to -Jane simply, “Here, my darling, is the man I have chosen for you. You -will be married in a month’s time.” But she couldn’t do that. She was -forced to make her daughter take him of her own free choice, and so she -would go on, briskly explaining that she had done it all for the best. -Was it not a creditable desire on her part to see her child the leader -of French society? And had not Jane subsequently become even more -than that? Was there a town in America that did not read with envy the -newspaper accounts of her triumphs? Did it not all come out quite as -she had foreseen? If the two were not happy what did that prove? Just -nothing at all beyond the tiresome truism that marriages always ended -in making people hate each other. - -Mrs. Carpenter had adopted a jocular easy manner with her daughter on -bringing the girl to Europe that seemed to express her happy sense of -their being comrades and equals. The rôle she assumed was that of an -elder sister who was ready to give any amount of good-natured advice -when asked for, but would in no way interfere with the freedom of the -fortunate youngster. This was Izzy’s way of being careful and of making -it impossible for Jane ever to turn round and say--“It was my mother -who urged me to do it.” Fortunately for her peace of mind Jane hid -nothing from her and was constantly asking for guidance. - -It was Mrs. Carpenter’s habit to have her morning coffee in bed at -nine o’clock after an hour’s massage, and to let Jane come and talk to -her while she sipped it and ran through her letters. The girl would -come in from an early ride, plunge into a cold bath, and all aglow and -smelling of soap and youth would run to her mother’s wonderful scented -bedroom where, draped in her dressing-gown, she would stretch herself -out on a chaise-longue; and Izzy, under her lace coverlet, enjoying -the sensation of her willowy figure rubbed down once more to smooth -well-being, would encourage Jane to talk. It was her hour for getting -together the data that she would hand on later in the day to Philibert. - -Jane would say--“Our little Marquis was riding this morning. He joined -me. His eyes looked puffy. They had funny little pouches under them.” -And Mrs. Carpenter, who, with a languid finger turning the page of a -letter, had pricked up her ears, would sigh inwardly and say aloud-- - -“The poor man must be tired. He has so many demands on him.” And then -secretly irritated but maintaining a bland countenance, she would -listen to the girl telling how she had given her would-be suitor a -lesson in riding. - -“You know, Mummy, he was really hurting that horse’s mouth dreadfully, -and he didn’t seem to be sorry when I showed him. Do you think he is -just a tiny bit cruel?” - -And again Izzy would reply mildly, in defense of the absent one--“My -darling, I know him to be the kindest man in the world.” - -But Jane did not always by any means show interest in the Marquis de -Joigny, and much as it annoyed Mrs. Carpenter to hear him criticized, -it disturbed her even more when he was not mentioned at all for days -together. Jane would bring with her a letter from her Aunt Patty and -read aloud long extracts about St. Mary’s Plains and its tiresome -doings, about Patience’s rheumatism and Patience’s bird lectures, and -Uncle Bradford’s last new case, and the Mohican bank’s new building on -Pawamak Street, and Aunt Beth’s housekeeping adventures in Seattle, -until poor Izzy was bored to tears; or she would be full of the -problems of Fan’s life with her Polish husband. She saw Fan much more -often than her mother could have wished. One day she said--“I don’t -think Fan is happy. I suppose it’s because she has married a Roman -Catholic. It doesn’t seem to work very well, changing your religion.” -And Izzy in alarm scribbled a note of warning and sent it to Philibert -by a special messenger. She usually wrote to him on the days she -couldn’t manage to see him. Somehow or other he must be kept every day, -_au courant_. I can imagine these messages. - -“The child’s head is full of Fan and her wretched Pole, and the effect -of religion on marriage. Don’t for anything touch on the subject in -talk. You had better keep away from churches when you take her out. She -is disturbed by Fan’s money troubles and Ivanoff’s gambling. Don’t for -heaven’s sake go near the Casino while we are here.” - -It would be comic if it were not something else. I see my elder -brother perusing these missives with fervour and tossing them away with -exasperated petulance. - -Go near the Casino? Had he done so? Was he not the perfect nursemaid? - -It was Fan who told me about all this afterwards. She had been in Paris -three years before Jane, had got herself brought over by some chance -acquaintances who had paid her passage across the Atlantic, and had -allowed her to benefit by their loose indifferent chaperonage once -she got here. It was all she needed. In six months she had married -Ivanoff and knew everybody in Paris who from her point of view was -worth knowing. Mrs. Carpenter had been civil to her, but not friendly. -Nevertheless it was in Izzy’s drawing room that she had met Ivanoff. - -Ivanoff was one of Izzy’s satellites. She was one of the people he -lived on. He could expect to win twenty thousand francs from her -at Bridge during a winter. Besides that she gave him many meals -and introduced him to other people who could be fleeced for more -substantial sums. We all knew Ivanoff. His title was supposed not -to bear too much looking into, and his estates in Poland were not, -I believe, to be found on the map of that country, but he was very -presentable and was renowned for his success with women. Fan fell in -love with him promptly. He was big, he was dark, his brown face with -its mongolian cast of feature, slanting eyes and thick sleek black hair -seemed to her beautiful, and she believed that he had a deep romantic -soul. Moreover he was a prince and he was like wax in her hands. She -could not and did not resist him. Her stepfather made her an allowance -of twenty-five thousand francs a year and showed no interest in what -she did with it. There was no one to enquire into Ivanoff’s affairs -or habits on Fan’s behalf. She was alone in the world and must make -her own way. Life with Ivanoff would be a continual stream of parties; -Monte Carlo, Paris, Biarritz, Deauville. The prospect glittered before -her. Where could she have a good time if not in these gay haunts of -pleasure? The thought of going back to St. Mary’s Plains made her feel -sick. - -She had been married a year or so when Jane joined her mother. Ivanoff -was her slave. She could do anything with him except keep him from -the gaming table. Her one worry was money, but she did not allow this -to worry her much. Jane exasperated her that first summer. Fan felt -herself much the wiser and years the older. Jane’s lamblike devotion -to her mother “gave her fits.” And Jane seemed utterly indifferent -to the enormous power of her money, she was too stupid, the way she -let her mother and Philibert manage her. But Fan thought Philibert -a great catch. She knew her Paris well enough to know that if Jane -became Philibert’s wife her position would be immense. So she didn’t -interfere, merely watched and laughed and thought Jane a fool not to -see what Philibert was after. - -October saw them all in Paris and Philibert not appreciably nearer -his goal. Jane no longer ignored him, she now took him for granted, -which was almost worse. He determined to be personal. It was not easy -with Jane, but he must risk being thought impudent. One day he asked -her what kind of a man she wanted to marry. She hesitated, thinking a -moment. “A hero or a friend,” she answered. But when he said that he -hoped he was her friend she smiled, refusing to take him seriously. -The word hero however, gave him his cue. He had too much sense to try -and pose as one himself, but the thought occurred to him that perhaps -by telling her of other heroes who had belonged to his family and -his country, some of the glamour of the past would touch him with a -reflected brilliance for those candid romantic eyes. And the task was -not uncongenial to him. He had a gift for story-telling and could -gossip endlessly about historic personages. Where history was meagre -he could rely upon his imagination. He began with the lovely story -of Bayard and Du Guesclin and she listened with glowing eyes as he -talked of those chivalrous knights. He had found the key. It was -easy now to hold her attention. There followed hours and days filled -with legend and anecdote, tales of brave chivalry and quaint custom. -_Philippe le Beau_ and _Jeanne la Folle_, _Saint Louis_, _Henri IV_, -_Clothilde de Joigny_, the saintly lady whose name was still honoured -in the family, _Monseigneur de B----_ who had had his tongue cut out -during the _Massacres de Septembre_; it was a rich field, and one where -he knew his way about, and to supplement his talk he gave her little -books of folklore and poetry, and songs of the Troubadours, the poems -of Ronsard, and found for her an old parchment copy in script of that -charming anonymous ballad that begins “Gentils Galants de France.” - -And Jane, delighted, treated him with a new attentive kindness. He -had gained her confidence and had touched her imagination, but there -again his success seemed to end. He could get no further. It did not -occur to her to ask why he took such pains to supply her eager mind -with lovely legends. And so he fretted and fumed once more. I can -imagine him wracking his brains for a solution. The problem would have -presented itself to him with simple brutality. How rouse the girl’s -emotions without frightening her? He hit on a plan. Mrs. Carpenter took -a box at the Opera. There under cover of the music Philibert whispered -adroitly to romantic youth, told her on every note of the scale that -she was young and wonderful, that life was full of magic mystery, that -the throbbing of her heart was its response to the summons of love, and -that some day a man would come to her and beg her to allow him to carry -her up and out on the surging torrent of that inspiration into a heaven -of pure delight. - -It worked. Under the hypnotic influence of the orchestra with its -disturbing rhythm and moving harmonies, ravished by the seeming beauty -of those sentimental voices, soaring, floating, dropping deep to caress -and moan and shiver, all unconscious of the mediocrity, the coarseness, -the bold sensuality, her little being stirred, and her senses, waking -slowly in their chaste prison responded to the appeal of the man -behind her in the shadow, who took on a little the romantic look of -the hero on the stage. She did not know what was happening to her. She -would come out of the theatre in a daze and walk silently between her -mother and Philibert to the carriage and sink back into her corner, -her head throbbing, and through half-closed eyelids would gaze with -confusion and fear and vague painful pleasure at the tall hat and white -shirt-bosom of the man facing her in the intimate gloom, and as though -the smoothly moving carriage were just another box for the continuation -of the performance she would hear the same voice speaking to her that -had mingled with all that music, and she would find it impossible to -distinguish between her companion’s reality and the magic charm of the -glorious fiction. - -One night when he left them at their door after an evening of -this kind, she heard him say to her mother who had lingered -behind--“_C’était très réussi ce soir_,” and give a little dry laugh. -She did not ask herself what he meant, but his tone struck her ear as -discordant and she remembered it afterwards. It was one of the things -that flashed up out of her memory when Philibert, some years later, -wanting once and for all to answer her questions as to why he had -married her, told her with his incomparable lucidity all about the -way he and her mother had used her. He put it to her completely then, -explaining to her the details of their method and summing it all up -with the words--“At least half the credit was your Mamma’s. Though -she did not seem to be doing much she was working all the same like a -galley-slave. Of course it was not her duty to make love to you, but -it was she who prepared your mind for the seed I sowed in it, and it -was she who kept me informed of your mental progress. I say mental; -you know what I mean. Call it anything you like, but give full credit -to your charming mother for what she did for you. She showed signs of -positive genius.” - -Thus it was that they put their heads together, and after the -successful experiment of the Opera evenings had run its course for a -month, Jane’s manner began to change. She no longer came rollicking -into the room of a morning like a great roystering puppy. She no longer -talked so much or so freely, and sometimes, heavy-eyed and pale, as -if she had not slept well, she would lie silently on her back staring -at the ceiling, and blush crimson when asked what her thoughts were. -These facts were reported faithfully to Philibert of course, also the -incidents of the morning, when Jane got up with a bound and placed -herself abruptly before her mother’s long mirror and cried with the -accent of despair--“Am I always to be so ugly?” - -But I imagine Mrs. Carpenter in telling Philibert did not finish the -story. She had said to Jane--“No, my child, you can be considered a -beauty if you want to. With that body your face doesn’t matter. Men -will admire you, never fear; in fact I know one that does already.” - -Jane at that had turned away from the glass and had come to the foot -of her mother’s bed and had said earnestly, with a flood of crimson -mantling her face and throat--“But it’s not a man’s admiration I’m -thinking of, mother dear, it’s yours.” The child had then become -speechless and had gulped strangely with the effort not to break down -and had given it up and gone quickly out of the room. - -If Mrs. Carpenter was touched she did not say so, and she never -referred to the incident in her subsequent talks with Jane, limiting -her remarks on the girl’s appearance to a voluble flow of worldly -advice. - -“Never go in for curls or ribbons or fluffiness. That’s not your style. -If you must look like a Chinese mummy then look it even more than you -do. Make the most of your queerness. People won’t know whether you -are ugly or handsome, but they’ll be bound to look at you. That’s all -that’s necessary. Anything is better than being unnoticed. That you -never will be. Nonsense, you must get used to being stared at. Most -girls like it. Wear your hair straight back and close to your head. -Never mind your lower lip. Don’t make faces trying to draw it in. Stick -it out rather. Carry your head high. Look as if you were proud of your -profile. Your dresses should always be straight and stiff like an -oblong box. That one you’ve got on is too soft, and there’s too much -trimming. You will be able to wear any amount of jewellery later, but -never let yourself be tempted by lace. You walk well, and your back, -thank God, is as flat as a board. You’ll never need to wear corsets if -you’re careful, but you must learn what to do with your hands. You’re -always clenching your fists as if you were going to hit somebody. And I -don’t like those boys’ pumps you wear; they’re too round at the toe.” -And so on and so on. And Jane, rather bewildered, would try to make -out from all this whether her mother herself liked the person she was -giving advice to or not. - -But in the end, in spite of all her cautiousness, Izzy was obliged -to commit herself. Jane didn’t let her off. On the contrary she went -straight to her one evening with the proposal Philibert had made her. -It was late and Mrs. Carpenter was sitting in front of her fire, -wondering whether she had been right in leaving the two alone together -for so long in the drawing room. She had never left them alone before. -It had been Philibert’s suggestion and she had agreed with some slight -misgiving. It had occurred to her of a sudden that perhaps he would -not have dared to make such a proposal to one of his own people, and -she felt a flush of annoyance. Strange inconsistency on the part of a -woman who had so thrown to the winds the spiritual decencies, but there -you are; she was worried and mortified, and when Jane entered, turned -to her with a warmer gesture than was her habit. The girl responded -by kneeling at her side and winding her arms round the slim waist and -saying-- - -“Do you really want me to do it, Mother dear?” - -The question put in that way, suggesting as it did a keener insight on -Jane’s part into her mother’s heart than had even been imagined by the -latter, must have been startling. Mrs. Carpenter hesitated, hedged, was -at a loss. - -“What do you mean, child?” - -But Jane was not to be put off. - -“You know what I mean, Mummy darling. The question is, do you really -want it? I told him that I would do what you said, and I mean it.” -And then rather quaintly she added--“I don’t suppose Aunt Patty would -approve of me. She likes independence. But I have made up my mind to do -as you wish.” - -There it was. Mrs. Carpenter was forced into it. Jane, all unknowingly, -had her. It was no use asking the girl if she liked him: she only said -she felt she undoubtedly would if she made up her mind to, and so at -last after some more hesitating Izzy was obliged to say-- - -“Well, darling, since you will have it so, I must tell you that your -acceptance of this distinguished man would make me very happy.” And -Jane, still uncommunicative and by some marvellous instinct of profound -youth hiding at last the tumultuous feelings of her heart, accepted her -mother’s decision sweetly and calmly and went away to her room. - -If she saw there in her mirror, as we are told girls do on such -occasions, a new strange creature, the difference was in her case less -fictitious than most. A very rapid transformation does seem to have -come over her after this. It was as if in accepting Philibert she had -walked bravely up to him and had given him the secret key to her soul, -and as if in turn he had thrown a handful of dust in her eyes. The -effect of the interchange was instantaneous. Philibert had seemed to -her in the beginning, an old man, excessively foreign and occasionally -ridiculous; he was now a hero. I cannot explain the change. I only know -that it was so. The mystery of her girlhood remains to me a mystery. -Who am I to understand her love for my detestable brother? Who am I to -understand the love of any innocent girl for any man? I only know that -Jane’s passion was derived from her own romantic nature and not from -him. I have a feeling that had she once made up her mind to love an -iron poker, she would have loved it with the same fire and the same -ecstasy. At that period of her life the object of her affection was -scarcely more real than a symbol. Philibert represented for her not -himself but her dreams. It may be so with most young people. I do not -know. But what Jane meant when she said to her mother that she was -sure she would come to like him if she made up her mind to, was really -that she knew she would adore him if with her mother’s approval, she -let herself go, i. e., let her imagination control her feelings. What -she wanted from her mother was not only an indication but a guarantee. -Her mother’s consent to her marriage she took as a sign that she could -gloriously give her heart its freedom. - -And Jane’s heart now that he had won it was a surprise to Philibert. -He had gone a-hunting for a dove or some timid sparrow, and he found -himself with an eagle on his hands. He was expected to soar with this -young companion that he had captured. There was no hesitation about -Jane. Spreading wide the wings of her beautiful belief, she flew, she -was making for heaven. - -Poor, wonderful, ignorant Jane. It was to her of a simplicity. Since -she knew now, because her mother had said so, that he was worth -marrying, then he was worthy of all her confidence. Shyly but bravely -she told him so. She spoke to him of God, of life with him after death, -of sharing with him all her thoughts. She unbared to him her ideals, -confessed her dreams, faltered out her fear of her own wild impulses, -recounting to him simply the affair of the boy in St. Mary’s Plains -she had almost killed. She told him all about the Grey House and her -Aunt Patty and her grandmother’s death and her Aunt Minnie’s religious -fanaticism. It is dreadful to think of. He has said that he was never -so bored in his life. I have heard him say so, and of course he would -have been. After a rubber or two at the Jockey, he would turn up at -Izzy’s flat for tea and find Jane waiting for him, her face charged -with grave confident sweetness. She would put a hand on each of his -shoulders and kiss his lips, and then drawing him to a sofa beside her -would hold his hand in both of hers and pour out to him the secrets of -her heart, and he, beside himself with boredom, would listen and make -his responses to the clear chant of her young voice singing its joy. - -“We will be everything to each other, Philibert.” - -“Yes, dear.” - -“We will share each other’s thoughts.” - -“Of course.” - -“You will teach me how to love you.” - -“I will.” - -“And be worthy of you.” - -“My darling.” - -“Love is very wonderful, Philibert.” - -“Yes, dear.” - -“I feel one should be very much alone to understand. You and I alone. -We must keep ourselves free to be alone together.” - -“Yes.” - -“Sometimes I am sorry that we have so much money.” - -“Why, my darling?” - -“It will create obligations. We shall be expected to see so many people -and do so many things. But I am glad to have it if you like it. I -am proud to bring you something. I would give you everything in the -world if I could. I am yours, and what I have is yours, to do with -as you like. But you must never feel indebted to me, for there is no -indebtedness. I can’t quite explain what I mean, but it humiliates me -even to think of giving between you and me. The money is ours, that is -all, and therefore yours. You will control it and give me an allowance -for dresses. I say this now because I don’t want to speak of it again. -You understand, don’t you, Philibert? Let’s not talk of it any more, -ever.” - -Such was her attitude, such was her idea, and all he had to do was to -let himself be loved. - -But I don’t like to think about Philibert in his relation to Jane. I -wish I could leave him out of the story altogether. - -In the meantime Mrs. Carpenter, while highly gratified that her plans -had worked out so well, was nevertheless a little taken aback at the -extravagant turn they were taking. She may well have been more then -a little worried at Jane’s going ahead at such a pace. There was no -comfort for Izzy now in conferring with Philibert. The shape of the -triangle had changed. The coveted man had drawn away from her and was -as close now to her daughter as he had once been to her. She found -herself no longer the strong base that held them together. They could -exist now without her. And Philibert began very delicately to make her -feel this. His manner conveyed--“You have done your part, and very well -on the whole, but still you know it’s finished. You’re really no use to -me now. I shan’t of course go back on my bargain. You shall have your -share of the fun. Only don’t bother me by continually making mysterious -signs. You will only succeed in awakening her suspicions and wearing -out my patience.” - -Poor Jane, it would have taken more than her mother’s irritable gaiety -to rouse her suspicions. If any one in those days had come to her with -a full recital of the truth, she would not have believed a word of it. -And when her Uncle Bradford did come in his capacity of trustee to have -a look at the fiancé, she flew into a rage with the good man at the -first sign of his disapproval. I did not see Bradford Forbes. I never -saw him. Jane tells me that he was a large heavy man with a strong -American accent, a rosy face and a pince-nez. I should like to have -seen him. I should like to have seen the image of Philibert reflected -in those eyeglasses. The sight would have been edifying. - -Mr. Forbes had said to Jane--“Well, I don’t think much of your little -Dude. I’d rather you had taken some one more your own size. I guess he -can’t come much higher than your shoulder.” And Jane had flown at him -like a wild cat and had told him that he had no business to make fun -of her lover, who was the most important man in Paris and a million -times cleverer than anybody from their home town. If her Uncle Bradford -had had any hope of dissuading her from the step she was about to take -he seems to have abandoned it then and there. He could find out nothing -positively wrong with the head of the house of Joigny. The little -Marquis proved satisfactorily that though his income was pitiful he -had no debts. And when Mr. Forbes pointed out to him that there could -be nothing in the way of a marriage settlement, Silas Carpenter’s -will making such an alienation of property impossible, Philibert had -taken his breath away by the graceful ease with which he accepted -the situation. How was the kind shrewd American citizen to know that -Philibert already had the will by heart, and long ago had accepted -the inconvenience and risk of hanging on to his wife’s property by -hanging on to her? He made a better impression in their hour’s talk -than Jane’s uncle wanted to admit to himself. The good man was obliged -to fade away as he had come, and float off like some wistful porpoise -across the Atlantic leaving behind him only light ephemeral bubbles of -amused disapproval. All the same he had done enough to make Jane very -angry and obstinate and produce from her hand a long letter to her Aunt -Patty in which she inveighed against the obtuse narrow-mindedness of -the entire American nation. Patience Forbes seems not to have answered -this letter. She had sent Jane a note by her uncle of terse affection -and grim good wishes, but her correspondence with her niece during the -months preceding and following the marriage almost entirely ceased. -I imagine that after listening to her brother’s account of the man -in Paris who was to claim her Jane, she was filled with foreboding, -and being powerless chose to remain silent. And Jane was too happy to -wonder why her aunt did not write to her. She did not often think of -the Grey House during those days. - - - - -VII - - -My family, as I think I have already mentioned, had a way of doing -disagreeable things gracefully. They could even when necessary carry -off affairs disagreeable to themselves with every appearance of -special pleasure. When Philibert asked my mother to gather together -the clan, all the uncles and aunts and cousins on my mother’s side and -my father’s, so that he might present to them his fiancée, my mother -apparently felt obliged to meet his wishes, not quite understanding the -need for so much fuss, suspecting perhaps the truth that the ceremony -was a concession to that tiresome Mrs. Carpenter, yet determining once -she had decided to do it, to do it nicely. Our relations in their turn -recognized with the best possible grace the obligation she gently -laid upon them in a series of little plaintive invitations to tea, -and turned up smiling. Their smiles were various, there was plenty of -variety in the family: we went in for cultivating our personalities; -but there was nevertheless in the light of their expressive -countenances a pleasant family resemblance, the stamp of a kinship that -was cherished and valued. They all conveyed that it was for them at -any time and without ulterior purpose an honour and a pleasure to be -received by my mother, and that, however important the present occasion -might be, the agreeable importance lay for them much more in finding -her well than in meeting a stranger, her prospective daughter-in-law. - -My mother, in marrying my father, had married a second cousin, so -that the two sides of the family were representative of but one after -all, and if within our own circle we admitted that the Joignys had in -the last half century shown a more progressive spirit, had taken a -more active interest in the affairs of the Republic, and had rubbed -shoulders more freely with industrials and politicians than had the -Mirecourts, the resulting difference felt was so slight, the nuance of -manner and bearing so delicate, as to pass unperceived by the outer -circle of society. We did not criticize each other. Some of the Joignys -had made money, and one or two had married it. My father had been a -royalist deputy, my Uncle Bertrand had been a Senator; on the other -hand the Mirecourts had had an occasional relapse into the army and -numbered even now a couple of cavalry officers. If there was among -us a tacit understanding that the only thing worthy of us was to do -nothing for the government we detested, we never said so, and never -blamed any one of our members for succumbing to the temptation of -seeking an occupation. We were privileged people who could afford to -amuse ourselves with modern affairs if it so pleased us, and at the -expense of society if this took our fancy. Our philosophy was vaguely -speaking to live as we had always lived under the Kings of France, and -yet to keep intellectually very much abreast of the times. We had an -abundance of ideas about everything. Modernism in art did not displease -the younger members. On the contrary it was one of our characteristics -to keep our old customs and discover at the same time new movements -in music, painting and literature. We considered ourselves not in -the least musty or moth-eaten. On the afternoon that I speak of we -produced an effect the reverse of dingy or dreary, an effect of subdued -brightness, of sprightly gentleness of unmodish elegance. We looked -and were sure of ourselves. Republican France beyond our doors did not -disturb us. We knew that we were clever enough to get the best of it -for another generation or two anyway. We had clung to our lands, our -forests and our meadows. We would cling to them still. We trusted to -our wits to preserve us from the clumsy clutch of democracy. In the -pleasant sanctuary of our family mansion we made fun of the outside -world. - -My mother, looking very nice with a black lace scarf round her -shoulders and her dark hair arranged in an elaborate pattern of close -little waves and puffs, received the homage of my aunts, uncles and -cousins with wistful vivacity, asking them all with little gusts of -enthusiasm about their affairs, and then tenderly sighing as if to -convey to them how sympathetic was her appreciation of all their -rich activities, in which she asked their indulgence for playing so -passive a part. It was the last occasion in which she was to receive -in the house that had been already sold to allow Philibert to marry -the girl who was to be on view that day, but my mother gave no sign of -appreciating any irony or any sadness in the situation. If the little -gathering represented for her a trial of some cruelty, she kept her -sense of this perfectly disguised. With her boxes actually packed and -her new modest apartment already cleansed and garnished preparatory -to her arrival, she sat calmly and sweetly by the little wood fire -at the end of the long suite of drearily august salons where she had -known so many seasons of secluded temperate grandeur, holding a small -embroidered screen between her face and the modest blaze of crackling -birch logs. It was a cold November day. The rooms that had been thrown -open were chilly. Not magnificent in size or in richness, but sparsely -furnished, they were sufficiently vast to seem with their fifty odd -occupants comparatively empty, and presented to the eye polished vistas -of waxed parquet, bland expanses of delicate panelling and high, dimly -gilded cornices that were multiplied in numerous long mirrors. The -rooms, as I say, were cold, and they looked cold. The dull day was -darkening rapidly beyond the long windows. The lighted candles on the -chimney-pieces left about them wide vague pools of shadow and made -pockets of gloom behind important pieces of furniture. - -I remember feeling, while we waited for Jane, how beautifully all -my relatives were behaving. There was in their modulated gaiety an -absolute denial of discomfort or curiosity or suspense. Their gestures, -their chatter, their light laughter, expressed a perfect oblivion -of the lowness of the temperature round them, or the imminence of an -ordeal for my mother, or the general consciousness that Philibert -had done something unusual and was about to ask for their approval. -They had put on frock-coats, some of them, and others had put on silk -dresses, but their way of greeting each other signified that any little -extra effort of toilet was made simply out of courtesy to the family. I -remember thinking, as I observed them, that there was perhaps no other -family in France that took so much pains to be pleasant within its own -circle, and that really on the whole we succeeded very well. It came to -me too, looking at _Tante_ Clothilde, _Tante_ Belle and _Tante_ Alice, -and _Oncle_ Louis and old Stanislas and Jean and Paul and Sigismond, -that it was comparatively easy for us because we were gifted. Yes, I -admitted, we were certainly gifted. We understood music and some of -us were very passable musicians ourselves; and then there was _Tante_ -Suze who had translated Keats into French, and saintly _Tante_ Alice -who restored Cathedrals and Jean who wrote plays and Sigismond who did -bacteriological research. Our gifts and our occupations, quite apart -from our amusements, gave us plenty to talk about. Actually it was not -a charming make-believe; we did enjoy meeting. And of all this give -and take of affectionate recognition, Claire my sister was the centre. -The aunts and uncles and cousins adored Claire. She was the perfect -product of their blood, and they understood her, and loving her they -appreciated themselves and were conscious of the solidarity of their -indestructible social unity. She meant even more to them than my mother -because she was young, and since her unfortunate marriage she had for -them the added charm of a martyr. If they had ever been willing to -criticize my mother they would have blamed her for giving her daughter -to such a man as my brother-in-law. There was not a man in the room who -did not dislike him and who would not have taken up the cudgels for -Claire at the slightest sign of her finger. The unpopular outsider was -not there. He had perhaps understood that he was expected to stay away. -Even an automobile merchant can be made to feel when he is not wanted. -The poor brute’s skin was perhaps not as thick as they thought. No one, -however, remarked on his absence. No one asked after him or mentioned -his name. Had he behaved as he had been expected to behave, and had -Claire wished it, they would have been kind to him, but he had made one -or two mistakes, and Claire had shown no signs of wanting them to take -him into their circle. He had taken her away to Neuilly, had almost -literally locked her up there, and had offered to lend several of them -money, at a high rate of interest. Also he had asked Bianca’s father, -(who was there by the way that day, though Bianca was not), to get him -into the Jockey Club. It had been impossible not to snub him. They all -felt very sorry for Claire. - -Philibert’s affairs were different. A man need never be the slave of -his _ménage_. Philibert they knew could quite well look after himself. -They had heard that the fortune of the young American was gigantic. -Philibert would know beautifully how to spend millions, they said to -themselves. That was one of the things that we, as a family, had always -known how to do. They admitted willingly that Philibert was in his way -eminently worthy of themselves. His faults were in keeping with their -traditions; he had never made any of them blush. They trusted he was -not about to do so now. They hoped the young American girl would not be -too impossible. Some Americans whom they knew were charming, but it was -not always the richest who were the nicest. Alas, one could not have -everything. They would be kind to the child, however awful she might -be. It was always worth while being kind, and besides did one really -know how to be anything else to a woman? Had one, as a matter of fact, -any bad manners tucked away anywhere to bring out on any occasion? - -But of course, none of this appeared in their conversation, and as I -say, no one could have detected in their manner any sign of curiosity -or nervousness. And when at last the butler announced at the far end -of the _Grand Salon_ “Madame Carpenter et Mademoiselle Carpenter,” it -was with a scarcely perceptible shifting of positions and straightening -of attention that they made a kind of circle extending out on either -side of my mother, who rose from her chair by the fire in the inner -apartment and advanced two steps towards the distant figures that -appeared in the far doorway of the outer room. - -I recognized Jane at once as the girl who has walked down my street, my -cossack princess, my wild crowned creature of the steppes. She had a -long way to go and she came on slowly and smoothly, with a lightness in -her gait that had about it a certain grandeur and a dignity that seemed -at the same time somehow rather shy and timid. She reminded me of some -nervous creature who was accustomed to traversing vast tracks of open -country and who might be frightened away by the stir of a twig. I saw -in another moment that she was not frightened. She gave my mother the -slightest and most correct of courtseys, and then stood quite still -while her own mother talked to the lady who had so persistently and -gently snubbed her. It was, however, to strike me very soon as one of -the interesting things about Jane that, although she was not frightened -when she first came in, she was beginning to feel so ten minutes later. -I put this down as the first proof she gave me of being intelligent. - -Mrs. Carpenter may have drained from that hour in our paternal mansion -some deep draught of pleasure; I do not know. It is possible that she -regarded her entry into our chilly drawing room as a social triumph; if -so she betrayed no such feeling. She, too, as well as my mother, was -capable of elegant dissimulation. Her rich black figure, marvellously -moulded into its lustrous garment, was of a dignity that surpassed -everything that quite put my gentle mother in the shade. I can imagine -her full, bright consciousness of this. There was something in the -poise of her high modish grey head that expressed astonishment as she -shook hands with her little hostess. It was as if she marvelled that so -unimpressive a woman, with really no pretensions at all to a figure, -should hold such sway in the world. A good many of the others she knew. -Some had eaten from her golden plates, others had left cards but not -eaten, a few had invited her to “evenings.” She greeted them with an -easy security of manner that was quite sufficiently a match for their -own shriller effusiveness. If they were not inordinately pleased, well -they seemed so, and if she was, then she did not show it. The comedy -was well played by both sides. - -She had dressed her daughter rather cleverly for the occasion. Jane had -on a straight close-fitting costume of some mouse-grey material that -had the texture of a suede glove. As I remember it, it was cut like a -Russian jacket, trimmed with bands of grey fur, and topped by a close -grey fur hat with a green cockade that matched her eyes. That was all; -the dress was warm and plain, well adapted to the weather and to the -girl’s age, and gave her no look of wealth. The most it did was to set -off with severe modesty the splendid proportions of her strong young -body. - -What I think we all felt when Jane entered was the warmth and vitality -of her youth. She was so very much more alive than all the rest of us -that we could not help noticing it. We felt cold and dry beside her, -and rather small. We were literally, almost all of us, smaller than -she was. This was disconcerting: I caught actually on my mother’s -face after the first presentation had taken place an almost comic -expression, and could not make out what she was after as she looked -quickly from one to the other, until I discovered that she was simply -looking for some one to put next the girl who was tall enough to look -well beside her. My mother had an eye for _tableaux vivants_; she did -not like to see a woman towering above men. Not finding any one she was -reduced to sitting down herself, and motioning the great long child -to a stool at her knee. It was then that I realized Jane was growing -frightened, and was struck by the keenness of her perceptions. There -was nothing obvious to frighten her, and yet there was something in the -air for a fine sensitive nostril to sniff at in alarm if it were fine -enough; just the faintest whiff of antagonism, an antagonism tempered -and mingled with curiosity, surprise and humour. - -My family saw possibilities in Jane. Of that I became growingly -conscious. It was evident in the way they eyed her with rapid sidelong -glances, appraising tilts of the head, steps to the side to get a -closer or different view, and in their murmured undertones. They did -not discuss her then and there, they did not whisper, they were not -rude, God forbid, but they showed that they were struck. She engaged -their attention and was more of a person than they had bargained for. -They looked from her to her mother and back again with lifted eyebrows. -They were surprised to find that Mrs. Carpenter had such a daughter. It -was clear to them that something could be made out of Jane. - -The girl sat on her low seat quite still, one hand in her lap, the -other hanging down by her side, and while she answered my mother’s -questions, shot an occasional clear glance from under her eyebrows at -the people around her. I saw that she was nervous, but not too nervous -to take in a great deal. I was impressed by the amount she did seem to -take in. - -Philibert all this time hung off in a corner and watched her. She -never once looked at him. She seemed determined not to do so. If -he were putting her to some sort of a test she was obviously going -to go through the ordeal without an appeal for aid. It was a fine -performance; unfortunately no one but myself appeared to appreciate it. - -Her nervousness evidently had something to do with her deep desire -to please, and her increasing realization that these relations of -Philibert’s were not people easily pleased with anything or any one. -She felt that she was the object of a finer scrutiny than she had ever -before undergone. Her eyes searched rapidly one face then another, and -veiled themselves again under lowered lids. The one thing that might -have consoled her in her sense of their superlative fastidiousness was, -however, just the thing that she could not divine. She didn’t know that -they none of them cared a fig for pretty doll faces and found her ugly -strangeness a very good substitute. It had not yet dawned on her, in -spite of her mother’s preaching, that her countenance was just the sort -of thing that would have worth for sophisticated people. - -I don’t remember just how long this part of the show lasted, or just -how Philibert suddenly changed its character and made the whole thing -seem like a circus performance with himself as ringmaster and his -fiancée as the high-stepper whom he was showing off to the spectators, -but that is nevertheless what happened. - -I had taken a long look at my brother that day. It had come to me, -watching the attention and respect with which my august uncles treated -him, that perhaps I had never done him justice. It was obvious that -they liked him and that he not only amused them vastly, but imposed -himself on them. He had talked to them with even more than his usual -brilliance, and all Paris knows what that means, and I had listened -to his talk marvelling at the power of words. Paris can never resist -words; France succumbs inevitably to talk. No one, I was forced to -admit, was such a talker as Philibert. Like a consummate juggler -keeping half a dozen ivory balls in the air, he played with ideas -and phrases. Gaily he tossed up epigrams and paradoxes, let fly a -challenge, caught it with a counter-challenge, argued two sides of a -question, flung wide a generality, chopped it into bits in a second, -was serious for two minutes, mimicked a public character, gave a sketch -of the political situation, recounted a recent scandal. The faces of -his auditors were a study. They were the faces of delighted spectators -at a play. Positively I expected them now and then to applaud. My -Aunt Suze was wiping her eyes, weeping with laughter. Uncle Louis -was waving his handkerchief excitedly and ejaculating “_Parfaitement, -parfaitement. Je vois cela d’ici._” Bianca’s father, his rubicund face -wrinkled into a masque of comedy, was watching out of the corner of -his sporting eye and muttering affectionately--“_Ah, le coquin, ah -quel comédien._” And my dear little mother from her place by the fire -was smiling shyly over her fire screen, her eyes filled with gentle -adoration. - -I have heard women rave about the fineness of Philibert’s features, the -nobility of his nose, which was certainly a good and generous example -of our high type, signs of the race in the drawing of his head. I -suppose it is true that he had something special about his head. It was -the same head after all that had hung on our walls for generations, -capped by Cardinals’ bonnets and courtiers’ wigs. Nevertheless, when -he called to Jane he looked suddenly like a ringmaster in a circus. -With his little waxed moustache and his little perky coat-tails and -his lightly gesturing hand positively creating in space the image and -sound of a delicate long-lashed whip, he put Jane through her paces. -He had her beautifully trained. He had done it all in a month. She was -perfectly in hand. - -At the sound of his voice she had sprung to her feet. Yes, it was a -spring, quite sufficiently quick to startle my mother. Ha, but that -was a mistake at the very beginning. She was made to turn and mutely -apologize. Whist! she obeyed the sign and crossed to the venerable -and monstrous Aunt Clothilde who sat like a large brown Buddha by the -window. “A lower curtsey this time and kiss the plump old hand. Step -backward now and smile at these gentlemen. Hold up your head. Right -about turn, straight across the ring. Not too fast--proudly do it--show -them how you can walk. Aha, what made you do that? No stumbling, mind -you. High-steppers don’t look at their feet. Flip--just a flick of the -lash to put more life into you.” - -I watched fascinated. I watched till I could bear it no longer. I said -to Claire--“Lead the way into the dining-room. Tea’s been ready this -hour.” And Claire went forward gracefully and put an arm through the -trembling creature’s and led her away from her master; but I saw the -girl’s eyes ask for leave, and I saw him condescendingly grant it. By -the tea-table I joined her, and heard the rattle of the cup in her hand -against the saucer. She greeted me with a smile of extreme youthfulness -that tried to conceal nothing. Looking down at me timidly from her -splendid height, her pale countenance made me the frankest fullest -confession and asked wistfully for help, and seemed presently to find -relief. - -“Philibert did not tell me there were so many of you,” she said -quaintly in French. - -“We are all here, every one of us,” I rejoined. “We rushed to welcome -you.” - -She accepted this in silence, and I saw her gaze travel across to my -sister who stood in the window, and rest there with vivid interest. - -“You admire my sister?” I asked in English. - -“Immensely. I hope she will like me. If only she did I wouldn’t mind.” - -“The others? But they all will.” - -“Do you think so?” - -“I am sure of it.” - -She sighed and looked at me gravely. She seemed to be thinking deeply, -and she seemed very very young. - -“There are so many differences,” she said after a moment’s hesitation. - -“Not so many as you imagine,” I protested. - -“I don’t always understand what they mean,” and then with a quick -lighting up of her expression--“You will interpret.” - -“But you speak very excellent French,” I again objected. - -“Ah, it wasn’t the language I meant,” was the reply that came from -those grave parted lips. - -Philibert at that moment approached and laid a finger on my shoulder. -His words, however, were not addressed to me. - -“Don’t you think,” he said lightly, “that such an absorbing tête-à-tête -might be postponed to another day? It’s not very polite to your elders.” - -I saw the poor girl quiver. I saw the slow flood of crimson mantle her -face and forehead and flush to the tips of her ears. I saw her stare at -my brother humbly, and then I watched her slink off at his side, like a -great dog that he led by a chain and to whom he had given a whipping. -The sight filled me with disgusting pain. I turned on my heel and -joined Claire in her window. - -“A pretty sight, isn’t it?” I spluttered. - -“But, _mon cher_, she adores him.” - -“Just so.” - -My sister eyed me a little strangely. - -“You don’t like that?” she asked. - -“Do you?” I retorted. - -She shrugged her shoulders and gave a little laugh. “Of course it would -be still nicer,” she mocked lightly, “if he adored her as well. But -what will you? Such is life?” - -I felt how hopeless it was. I had a foretaste of how my sympathy for -Jane was to isolate me. - -“She admires you any way extravagantly,” I persisted with petulance. -Claire only laughed. - -“I should think she would do everything extravagantly,” was her reply -as she floated away. - -“Do be a little kind to the child,” I cried out after her, and she just -nodded at me over her shoulder. How charming her face was seen thus, -framed in her dark drooping hat and black furs, the slender glowing -olive oval, the sombre eyes, the lovely teeth, how charming, how -teasing, how elusive; and her slim figure with its trailing draperies, -how easily it slipped away from all effort, all responsibility. - -Jane was gone when I re-entered the drawing room. I gathered that she -had made a favourable impression. Aunts and uncles and cousins were -taking leave of my mother with phrases of congratulation. - -“_Elle est charmante._” - -“_Une taille superbe._” - -“Philibert will dress her beautifully.” - -“So young, so healthy.” - -“Such nice manners.” - -“And how she adores him, it’s quite touching.” - -“Fifi always was lucky.” - -The masculine element was almost vociferous. - -“_Sapristi_, an enormous fortune, and a fine young creature like that.” - -One by one they bowed over my mother’s hand, and went away. My mother -looked very tired. She motioned me to remain. Claire hung over her -tenderly. - -“_Pauvre petite mère_,” she said, kissing the top of her head. “You -must go straight to bed. All these emotions have been too much for you. -I will come in the morning to see to the packing of the last things. -Don’t stir. Just stay quiet. All the same, it’s too bad, her turning -you out of your own house.” - -I said nothing. Something warned me not to take up Jane’s defence -just then, and I, too, felt sorry for my mother. When we were alone, -she laid her head against the back of the chair and closed her eyes. -Presently, however, without opening them she spoke with surprising -energy. - -“I have had to promise to dine with that woman,” was what she said. - - - - -VIII - - -Jane had made no impression on my mother. Mrs. Carpenter had made -too much of one. She had deflected my mother’s attention from Jane -to herself and this, with unfortunate consequences. Mrs. Carpenter -affected my mother like a loud and unpleasant noise, and my mother -hated noises more than anything in the world. I am not trying to be -witty. I mean this literally. I have seen my mother grow pale with a -sort of nervous nausea and close her eyes in a desperate effort to -control the faintness that came over her at the sound of a harsh ugly -voice raised in anger. There was something about Mrs. Carpenter that -set her nerves on edge in the same way. Her metallic jingling clothes, -her loose easy swagger, her wiry grey curls, her humorous rolling eye, -made up an _ensemble_ that though to most people not seemingly at all -“loud” gave my mother sensations of clashing and clanging. When she -was about it was impossible for _Maman_ to think of or listen to any -one else. All the effort of her hypersensitive nervous organism was -concentrated on just simply bearing her, and she was obliged now to -bear her often and for hours at a time. Mrs. Carpenter didn’t let her -off. She had wanted to know my mother; she knew her now and she made -the most of her. - -During the weeks that preceded the wedding, Izzy was incessantly -with my mother. She was in the highest of gay good humours. A big -fashionable wedding to prepare for, she was in her element. Having -achieved her ambition she professed to take it all as a joke. She -treated the approaching marriage of her daughter as a great lark and -wanted my mother to have her share of the fun. She consulted her about -everything, submitted lists and samples of engraved invitations, -dragged her to dressmakers who were preparing the trousseau and -made her come and help open presents. I have a picture of my mother -in a corner of Mrs. Carpenter’s drawing room, limp and pale in her -black clothes, submerged in cardboard and tissue paper, while the -indefatigable Izzy on her knees in the middle of the floor held up -one object after another and gave vent to shouts of indiscriminate -rapture or groans of unenlightened contempt. Poor, dreadful Izzy. She -had such definite ideas about things. Her ignorance was confident -and documented. She had priced every marble and bronze in Paris. No -jeweller’s shop held any secrets for her. She was a connoisseur in -lace. But the little tarnished faded treasures sent by some of our -relatives to Philibert’s bride belonged to no such category, and were -viewed with bewildered disdain. Antique furniture had never been seen -in her own apartment, but she knew that cracked lacquer and tarnished -gilding was respectable in tables and chairs. Beyond that she could not -go. Her instinct had stood in the way of her desire to learn. She clung -irresistibly to baubles and coveted with passion the massive silver tea -service sent by Aunt Clo. I know that Aunt Clo hesitated between this -and an exquisite Ingres drawing. I remember Izzy weighing the monstrous -kettle in her hands, her face a study of shrewd gloating apprisal and -her knee planted firmly on the face of a poor little Louis XV doll that -had come from Aunt Marianne’s cabinet of XVIII century toys. - -It was unfortunate that my mother was forced to assist at these -séances, and that Jane herself was so often absent trying on clothes. -The absence of the one and the ignorance of the other were proofs to my -mother that neither knew how to behave. She judged Izzy as if she were -a Frenchwoman and supposed that because the noisy creature did not know -a treasure of art when she saw it that she most probably put her knife -in her mouth. And so during those days that would have exhausted a much -more robust woman than my mother, Izzy did, I believe, at the very -beginning of Jane’s life with us, use up all the vitality that _Maman_ -could dispose of on behalf of Philibert’s American family. - -The dinner she was obliged to attend for which Mrs. Carpenter had -collected two ambassadors and a slangy Duchess was the last straw. My -mother had never been to such a dinner in her life, and I confess to -a complete sympathy with her when she gasped out afterwards that it -was incredible that she should have been preserved from such ordeals -throughout her youth when she had enough energy to bear them, only -to be subjected to them in her old age when she hadn’t. That dinner, -with its ten courses, was the funeral feast of a relationship not -yet born, but that might truly have come into being and flowered to -full sweetness between the grave awkward girl in the straight white -frock, and the little quivering lady whose twitching eyebrows and -frightened hurried glances alone testified to her acute agony of soul. -Poor _Maman_, poor Jane, poor Izzy. I was there. I saw, and I did not -realize the full meaning. I did not realize how lasting the effect -would be. I was on the contrary absurdly reassured because of Jane -herself. I saw in her silence, her gravity, her perfect timid deference -to my mother, a promise of future felicity. I gathered that she would -never be guilty of publicly blushing for her own parent, but that she -would and did appreciate mine. I was right in this, but I was wrong -in believing that my mother would appreciate in her turn the tender -tribute. I reckoned without her nerves, her weariness, her discouraged -sense of being victimized and exposed, all the accumulations of her -years of abhorrence of the thing that was now thrust upon her. She -had complained so little that I had failed to understand how deeply -humiliating to her were the circumstances of her son’s marriage. She -considered it indisputably a _mésalliance_, and yet she was forced to -appear to rejoice in it with indecent exhibitions of familiarity. Mrs. -Carpenter not only had disregarded her request for a little family -gathering but had evidently succumbed to the desire to show her to just -those people who, not having yet seen her, would especially relish the -sight. “Just as if, _mon cher_,” my mother wailed afterwards, “I were -anything to look at. Fancy wanting to show me, a skimpy bundle of black -clothes.” She had done violence to herself in going to that dreadful -apartment in the Avenue du Bois, and the effort was too much for her. -The place was too much for her. She never forgot it and, I believe she -never looked at Jane without remembering those golden plates, those -loud nasal voices, those large glasses full of crushed ice and green -peppermint, those horrid scraping fiddles. To my mother such an evening -was a souvenir to last her the rest of her days. The most she could -do after that was not actively to dislike her daughter-in-law, and -she seemed to achieve this by cultivating in all that concerned that -young person a consistent vagueness. When people talked of Jane she -only half listened and answered irrelevantly. Her phrase was always the -same--“_Mais oui, elle est si gentille._” When Jane herself was there -she would look absent-mindedly beyond her and put her phrase in another -form and murmur--“_Comme vous êtes gentille._” Jane could never get -any further than that. It constituted a barrier, graceful and light as -gossamer, impenetrable as steel armour. All the girl’s longing to be -loved and to please, all her naïve attentions, all her thoughtful plans -for the older woman’s comfort, were met with the same sweet gentle -vagueness. When she brought flowers, when she asked advice, when she -put her motor at the other’s disposal, when she asked her to come to -her, it was always--“_Comme vous êtes gentille_,” followed by a little -plaintive sigh that the girl gradually came to understand. Even when -she worked out and carried through all on her own, a scheme for adding -considerably to my mother’s material ease, the formula was merely -changed to “_Vous êtes vraiment trop gentille_” and finally when Jane’s -baby was born, and she believed that at last her mother-in-law would -show some warmth of feeling, the words that greeted her when she opened -her eyes and saw the latter leaning over the bassinet, were--“Comme -elle est gentille,” this time addressed to the slumbering infant. - -I know that my mother tried to be kind to Jane, and I believe that she -was never positively unkind, never at least during those first years -of her marriage, but aside from the unpleasant pressure Mrs. Carpenter -had brought upon her and that had given her a kind of chronic nervous -depression in all that concerned Jane, there was also the fact that -Jane was not the sort of person who would ever have appealed to her. -My mother liked Bianca and had wanted her for a daughter-in-law; how -then could she love Jane who was the antithesis of Bianca, and who -by usurping Bianca’s place, so my mother put it to herself, brought -the contrast constantly to her mind? I have heard my mother say that -she liked people to be more interesting than they looked, and found -it amusing to be with people whom she was led on by some subtle -provocative charm to discover. She recognized this charm in Bianca -without ever discovering the sinister meaning of it, and she felt that -Jane showed too much and therefore promised too little. Jane was too -big and too striking to please her. She made, to my mother’s eyes, too -much of a display. My mother liked above everything “_mesure_.” Her -favourite form of condemnation was to call a thing “_exagéré_.” What -at bottom she cared most for in a person was their being “_comme il -faut_.” I don’t believe that she ever went so far as to consider her -daughter-in-law vulgar, but there were things about her that she would -have called “_outré_.” If she had ever allowed herself to depart from -the vague affectionate affability that she preserved so consistently -and so bafflingly, she would have said, (perhaps she did say something -of the kind to Claire, I know they discussed Jane between them) that -there was something almost shocking in a young woman with such an ugly -face having such a beautiful figure. They, Claire and _Maman_, would -have liked the ugliness of the face better if it had not been held so -high on such splendid shoulders. They would have forgiven Jane her -profile if it had not been for her really marvellous hands and feet. In -the same way they would have known better how to deal with the whole -striking physical being if it had not gone with such shyness and such -humility. What they could not make out, and found it hard to put up -with, were her incongruities. Such looks should aesthetically have been -combined with audacity and hardness. Instead they found on their hands -a poor quaking creature of a pathetic docility who seemed to present to -them on her lovely palms an exposed and visibly pulsating heart, that -they didn’t know what to do with, didn’t want to touch, were positively -afraid of. It seems strange, but it was nevertheless true that Jane -frightened them. Her need of them exposed there quite simply to their -gaze, her simple, inarticulate but all too visible desire to love them -and be loved, made them turn away in a kind of flurry that was partly -delicacy and partly fear. There was an intensity about her that opened -dangerous and wearying vistas of emotion which they wished at all costs -to avoid. Claire said to me one day-- - -“Mother is afraid Jane will crush her, throw herself on her, I mean, -literally, and hug and squeeze her, and she doesn’t like physical -contact of that sort, you know that.” - -Of course I knew. We all knew. From our earliest years we had always -approached _Maman_ as it were on tiptoe, delicately, as if she were -made of some precious perishable stuff that would be broken at a rude -touch. Our sense of this had been for us one of her subtlest charms. -When she allowed us to kiss her we did so lightly and quietly. The -touch of our lips on her hair or her soft worn cheek, was the fleeting -pleasure of a winged instant, yet it was a pleasure; she had a way of -conveying to it a quality, a fine quick elusive meaning. We never felt -that we had been cheated, on the contrary, her kisses were rare and -might have been deemed meagre, but they were beautiful. There was a -grace in the way she laid her hand on one’s arm and drew one down that -was more than artistry; it conveyed a sense of something precious that -had never been vulgarized by handling and mauling. I do not remember -her ever folding any of us in her arms, and if my memory of her -demonstrations is particularly acute because they were more often for -Claire or for Philibert than for me, that only proves that I know what -I mean and in no way diminished the beauty of what I was so often able -to observe from my distance. The act of opening wide her arms would -have been extraordinary in my mother. I never saw it. With Claire who -was the person in the world to whom she was closest, I often noticed -how delicate and restrained was her manner, and yet somehow with -scarce any demonstrations of affection, they conveyed to each other -an infinite tenderness. They were constantly together, they talked -everything over. Claire had, I believe, no secrets from _Maman_. They -depended on each other. Together they tasted the ineffable sweetness -of almost perfect communion. And yet I never saw them cling together, -I never surprised them in each other’s arms. So strangely alike, so -perfectly in harmony, they reminded me sometimes of characters on the -stage, two figures in some graceful pantomime who had been drilled to -make the same gestures in time to the same music and who moved always -through the close articulate measure of their parts in perfect unison, -tracing parallel patterns in the space round them, mysteriously united -yet never touching and scarcely ever looking at each other. - -Such an impression I sometimes had in the old days when I still lived -in the bosom of the family, and now, as a kind of moral outcast, -looking back I find even more in it than I did then. I see them not -so much as actors who had learned a part, but almost as hypnotized -beings who, whether they wished it or not, were bound to move and -act and speak in a certain way. What it all comes to, I suppose, is -that they were the fine perfect products of a system that held their -individualities chained. So perfectly representative of their class, of -their race, of the discriminative intolerant idea of their forebears, -as to have been born with a complete set of gestures and prejudices -and preferences and vocal intonations all ready for them, existing in -them regardless of their own volition. I see them as the slaves of a -hyper-sensitive, super-subtle inheritance, and I understand that with -them many things were more truly impossible than with most people. It -was impossible for them to make an ugly abrupt movement. The strong -occult force of their breeding controlled their limbs and gave them a -kind of grace that if one watched carefully was reminiscent of heavy -powdered wigs and unwieldy panniers. It was impossible for them to -mingle in crowds or walk along the street or take an interest in public -affairs. It was impossible for them to look at the public without scorn -or subject themselves to the physical contact of poor people in crowded -trains. Instinctively they manœuvred to hide themselves from the eyes -of the public. It was really as if they had lived under another régime -and could not quite realize this one. - -How could I not understand what Claire meant when she said that _Maman_ -was afraid that Jane would crush her? Jane was no reincarnation of some -spoiled beauty of another century. If she represented any one but her -glorious healthy self, it was more likely a Red Indian princess or a -blond Norse amazon. Jane had not learned in a previous existence how -to conceal one set of feelings and delicately convey another. She did -not even know that such feats were expected of her. She would learn, -but it would take time. For the moment she was just obviously what she -seemed, a brave ardent young thing, capable of all sorts of mistakes. -She would come in with her long beautiful stride and tower over my -mother and sweep down to her; to Claire it seemed like swooping not -sweeping, and my mother would huddle in her chair and struggle against -the inclination to shut her eyes, and then the confused, intimidated, -glowing creature in the marvellous clothes of Philibert’s designing, -would sit dumbly, wistfully, waiting and wanting something, anything in -the way of a crumb of comfort; would watch for any sign of unstudied -natural joy at her presence and would accept in its place the pleasant -flow of my mother’s vague affability, and would go away humbly, to -come back the next day with an offering, flowers or a book or some -precious little gift, and always my mother would say--“_Comme vous êtes -gentille._” - -And besides all this the things that Jane and Philibert did were not -calculated to amuse my mother in the least. She had never cared about -public shows, and had always considered the fine art of entertaining -to exist in the number of people one eliminated. Philibert’s enormous -parties, his balls, his dinners of a hundred couples, his fantastic -“_Fêtes Champêtres_,” dismayed her. She thought they were Jane’s -parties. It was Jane whom she held responsible for all that was -spectacular in the brilliant existence of her son; it was Jane she -blamed for the phenomenal marble Paris mansion. It would have been -impossible to have explained to her that Jane had scarcely glanced -at the plans of the house when Philibert presented them to her. She -refused to go to any of their parties. Her dislike of magnificence -was a part of her deep absolute view of what was “_comme il faut_.” -Magnificence was suitable to crowned heads, and though she would not -have admitted that anything was too good for her son, she did not -like to see him playing at being a king, and perhaps because all her -life she had cherished a loyal personal sentiment for the destitute -Orleans family, taking their political mourning for her own, it filled -her with horror to find her son surrounded by all the trappings of -an actor monarch and scattering largesse to the rabble, in a way her -impoverished, unrecognized, exiled sovereign could not do. His enormous -house, which she persisted in believing to be Jane’s, depressed her. -The really phenomenal harmony of its richness escaped her. The regal -vistas of its apartments, all warmed and glowing and made by her son’s -consummate artistry habitable left her cold. The fine tapestries, the -riot of blended colour, the audacious effects of light and shadow, the -profusion of precious lustrous silks and gleaming brocades, wearied -her gaze. Knowing well enough, who better, good things when she saw -them, there were here too many to look at. I have pathetic memories of -her shrunken black figure tripping through those immense chambers on -Philibert’s arm. I see her pass with little pattering steps across the -endless expanse of polished floor, her lorgnon to her eyes, her head -turning this way and that with quick bird-like movements, pretending to -look at everything while refusing to see anything at all. The size of -the place oppressed her and made her suspicious. She could not believe -that such enormous rooms could be full of fine little treasures. Her -experience told her that fine pieces were rare and were kept under -glass, and were not to be bought, save at a price. Even Jane’s fortune, -which she had been so often made to feel was too much for good taste, -could not in her opinion have filled that house with genuine things. -Her son had been led astray. He was guilty of imitation. If he took her -straight up to a gem of a cabinet and made her scrutinize it, well, she -admitted its existence, but what was one cabinet in a room where there -were twenty? She was in her way incorrigible. She did not believe in -miracles, and while the rest of Paris was gaping it only made her feel -dreadfully tired to be so put upon. That was her real feeling about the -gigantic mansion. It made her feel tired. She was obliged to take the -grand staircase slowly and stop on each landing. With her hand on the -polished marble balustrade she toiled up it panting, gently catching -her breath in the presence of mocking marble fauns and disdainful -goddesses. Dear little fragile figure, growing smaller and more bent -with time in her unmodish garments and simple black bonnet, fine proud -gentle lady, I believe in the bottom of her heart she was sometimes -afraid one of the army of constantly changing footmen would mistake her -identity and show her to the housekeeper’s room. It was the sort of -thing she would have taken as a horrid joke with a dreadful moral. - -I find that I am taking a vast deal of trouble and time in explaining -my own family, and seem to be getting absolutely no nearer my goal, -that is the heart of Jane’s own problem. And yet I am sure it was all a -part of it. In going into my mother’s feelings in such detail, I do so -because of what happened later, and I sometimes wonder whether perhaps -my mother foresaw what was going to happen and knowing whichever way -it turned out that she was going to take Philibert’s part, made up -her mind at the outset that it would all be much simpler if she never -gave Jane any encouragement to expect anything else. Her attitude of -increasing aloofness as time went on becomes more explicable if one -interprets it as an anticipation of trouble. Heaven knows trouble -was obvious enough to anybody who was interested. Weren’t there bets -on at the club as to how long Philibert would stand it, that is, his -enforced conjugal felicity? And other bets as to how long it would -take his wife to find out certain things that every one else knew? It -required no special prophetic gift to foresee that some day something -was bound to happen, and I am sure my mother foresaw it. But I am a -little puzzled as to why Philibert himself chose to make matters worse -by keeping his wife and mother estranged, for I am perfectly sure that -if Philibert had wanted my mother to love Jane, she would have done it, -simply because she always did what he asked her. And again, if _Maman_ -had brought herself to care for Jane, she would have influenced her -and guided her; she might even have prevented her from precipitating a -crisis. One would have thought Philibert would have availed himself of -such aid. But no, that was not his idea. His idea was quite other. He -wanted his mother to dislike his wife for reasons of his own, or, at -any rate, he did not want any understanding intimacy to exist between -the two. On the other hand he asked Claire to make friends with her and -help him with her education. And he seemed content that Jane and Bianca -should be friends. Was this because he knew Claire would never care for -Jane, however much she saw of her, and was afraid my mother might? I -don’t know, I am not sure. There are aspects of the case that grow more -obscure the more I think of them. - -As for Bianca--and Jane--that I learned about afterwards. - - - - -IX - - -Claire was a person who attracted people to her in spite of herself, -even those people whom she did not like. It had been so in the case -of Jane. My sister charmed more often than not without wanting to do -so. People in general were to her uninteresting and indiscriminate -admiration annoyed her. She was constantly worried by having to -snub would-be admirers who bored her. It was generally accepted in -the family that she was the victim of her own charm, and we often -half-laughingly commiserated with her. My mother once quite seriously -said, “_Cette pauvre_ Claire, with whom every one is in love and who -cares for no one, it is really very tiring for her.” - -Jane’s devotion was to her from the first unwelcome, though for a year -or two she put up with it kindly enough. When Philibert asked her to -help him with Jane’s education, she replied that she already had four -children of her own to bring up, but she nevertheless let Jane go -about with her, gave her advice about people and clothes, let her do -errands for her; and in a mild way returned the girl’s demonstrations -of affection, but it all bored and worried her. There was for her no -pleasure in being adored by a young woman whom she found to be stupid. -She did not on the whole care much for women, and often said she did -not believe in their friendship. Her need of affection was abundantly -supplied to her in her own family. Between her mother and her children -she found all the tenderness she required; in society she asked merely -to be amused. At bottom she was a confirmed cynic. Human nature -appeared to her unsympathetic and pitiable. Her family represented for -her a refuge from a world that disgusted her more than it interested. -There was for her something ultimate and absolute in the ties of blood -that gave to the members of a family, all of them mere ordinary human -beings, a special precious significance for each other. If she had ever -analyzed it she would have said--“But of course I know that _Maman_ -and Philibert and Blaise and _Tante_ Marianne are no different from -other people, but that does not matter, they are different for me. -It’s not that I believe in my brothers as men, it’s that I believe in -their relationship to me, and that, is the only thing I do believe in. -Philibert may be the most selfish man in Paris; nevertheless he would -not be selfish to me. That’s all, and that is enough. I don’t believe -in men. I don’t believe in women. I don’t believe in myself or in love -or happiness, but I believe in my family.” But of course she never did -so express herself. She was not given to talking about herself. - -Philibert realized from the first that Claire was necessary to his -scheme, and somehow or other he prevailed upon her to exert herself -on his behalf. She was constantly at his house and became its chief -ornament, and one of its most potent attractions. Jane had her place, -usually at the top of the staircase, but Claire’s corner was the -corner people looked for. Always more quietly dressed than any one -else, (and I believe that Philibert planned the contrast of Jane’s -gorgeous brocades with an eye to the dramatic effect of the two -women) my sister created about her an atmosphere, a hush, a kind of -breathless attention. I have seen her often appear in one of those -great doorways, a slim, shadowy figure, in trailing grey draperies, -and stand there silently while gradually her presence made itself -felt, drew all eyes to her and created a feeling among the assembled -people that a new charm, a finer quality, had been conveyed to the -atmosphere by her being there. Wonderful Claire, clever Philibert; -they played beautifully into each other’s hands. I do not mean that -they were coldly calculating in regard to each other. On the contrary, -their mutual admiration gave them, each one, the warmest affectionate -glow. They rejoiced each in the rare qualities of the other, and -Claire, knowing that in Philibert’s house she would find men worthy -of appreciating her, knowing too, that no artist could so set off her -full value as her brother, seemed unlike my mother to derive a certain -amount of half-cynical amusement from what went on in that mansion. -It is, of course, possible that at bottom she was no more averse to -lunching “_dans l’intimité_” with royalties than was Mrs. Carpenter. -In any event, princes of royal blood paid court to her in Philibert’s -salons. And Philibert was right when he placed her beside him in -that house. She made it _comme il faut_. Her presence was to it a -benediction. - -It had taken three years to build Philibert’s palace, and by the time -it was finished, Claire had prevailed upon her husband to move into -Paris and buy there a very nice house of his own. On the whole, things -had turned out for her better than any of us had expected. Six years -of what he would have called I suppose conjugal bliss had tempered the -ardour of my brother-in-law, who had to his wife’s immense relief begun -to look elsewhere than in his home for his pleasures. Though she had -never complained of her slavery and now never spoke of her freedom, we -all knew what had happened and were relieved. My mother was delighted. -“_Enfin_, he hasn’t killed her,” was her way of expressing it to me. -“The poor child is prettier than ever, and she manages so as not to be -talked about.” What it was that she managed I had no reason for asking. -If Claire was happy, if at last she had selected some one from among -her numerous admirers whom she could love and who was beautifying her -life for her, then all was well. I had no fault to find with her there. -My mother’s reading of the case seemed to me the true one. My mother -had suffered over her daughter’s marriage, and was glad to have some -one make up to her child some part of the joy of life she deserved. - -All this was quite satisfactory. It never occurred to any one of us -to disapprove of Claire. How could we? Why should we? Had she done -anything preposterous like running away with a footman we should still -have stood by her. As it was she remained one of the most admired women -in Paris, and the least talked about, and her sentimental life was -for us a vague rather romantic secret realm which we took for granted -and respected. We never pryed into her affairs, and when one day -Philibert, in my mother’s drawing room, twitted Claire with the fact -that her beauty increased in proportion to her husband’s infidelities, -she merely laughed shyly and said nothing, knowing well enough that -we expected no explanation. The episode would certainly have passed -unnoticed, if Jane’s face had not shown it to be for her a moment of -quite terrible revelation. It was, I remember, on a Sunday afternoon. -We had all been lunching with my mother, Philibert, Jane, Claire and -I, and were sitting by the fire with our coffee cups. Philibert, with -his coat-tails over his arms, standing on the hearthrug, had been -quizzing me. He was in excellent spirits, having just brought off some -one of his social coups--I think it was the Prince of Wales that week -who had dined with him, and Philibert was particularly pleased with -Claire. His little sally had been meant and received as a token of -affection. Unfortunately he had forgotten Jane; or it may be that he -had not forgotten her and had spoken deliberately. It is possible that -he thought the time had come to carry her education a step further. -He probably felt it tiresome to be always on his guard as to what he -said in her presence for all the world as if she were a _jeune fille_. -She had heard and continued to hear in the houses she frequented, -enough talk of all kinds, heaven knows, to enlighten her as to the -habits of our world, but for all that we had instinctively all of us -in her presence been careful of what we said to each other. It was, -I suppose, our tribute to her innocence, or perhaps even to our fear -of her judgments. More than once I, for one, had stammered under the -gaze of her candid eyes and had swallowed the words that were on the -tip of my tongue. On this occasion the phrase spoken would not have -struck me as dangerous. I did not look at Jane to see how she took -it. I merely happened to be facing her on the sofa and couldn’t help -seeing the pallor that mantelled her face like a coating of wax. It -was like that, not as if she had grown pale because of the ebbing of -blood from her face, but as if a kind of coating of misery and fear had -visibly enveloped her in whiteness. For a moment I did not understand, -and failed to connect Philibert’s words with her aspect. “But, Jane,” -I exclaimed, “what is it? Are you ill?” Fiercely she motioned me to -be silent, gripping my arm with her strong hand so as to hurt me, and -conveying somehow without speaking, for she could not speak, that she -wanted me not to attract the attention of the others. Unfortunately -Philibert had taken it all in. He may have been watching for the effect -of his speech. His next words and his general behaviour give colour to -such a theory. He literally jumped forward toward her across the carpet. - -“But, my poor child,” he cried out derisively, “don’t make up a face -like that. It’s most unpleasant. _Voyons_, what a way to behave in your -mother-in-law’s drawing-room. If I had known you were so stupid, I -should have left you at home.” - -Those were his words. They were uttered with animation, with an almost -ferocious gaiety, and to accompany them he tweaked her playfully but -not gently by the ear. I got up from my place beside her, feeling -myself flush to my hair. I turned my back to get away from the sight of -that cowering creature huddling back from the hand that held her. - -Exaggerated? Certainly she was exaggerated. Idiotic? Perhaps so. -Understand her? Of course I didn’t. It was not until long after that -I began to understand her. It was enough for me at that moment to -understand Philibert and perceive that never, even if she lived with -him for twenty years and maintained intact the dignity of her honesty, -would he respect her. - -Claire had been a passive spectator of this little passage between -husband and wife. A slight flush had mounted to her cheek, a flush I -took to be of annoyance, for she rose a moment later with more than -usual abruptness and kissed my mother good-bye, ignoring completely the -other two, not so much as looking at them as she made for the door. -Jane, however, was too quick for her, and wrenching herself free from -Philibert, was upon her before she turned the door knob. - -“Don’t go like that,” she cried, “don’t be annoyed. I know he was -joking. I know he did not mean it.” She seemed to be trying to grasp -Claire in her arms, to get hold of her, to cling to her. I had a -confused impression of something almost like a scuffle taking place -between the two women, and of Claire actually throwing her off. I may -be wrong. It may have been merely the expression on Claire’s face and -the tone of her voice that sent Jane backwards. I don’t know, but it -was quite pitifully horrid, and again I turned away my eyes, and with -my back to them heard Claire say in her coldest tone, and God knows how -cold her lovely voice can be-- - -“Ne soyez pas grotesque, je vous en prie. Laissez-moi partir.” - -I do not mean to suggest that I sympathized with Jane that afternoon, -for I did not. It was all too absurdly out of proportion. She had -created out of nothing, out of the blue, a scene in my mother’s -drawing-room, and one had only to look at the little delicate crowded -place to know that scenes were abhorrent there. I believe actually that -a small table full of trinkets had been overturned in Jane’s rush for -the door, and I know that a coffee-cup was broken. It was the sort of -thing one simply never had conceived of. My mother’s nerves were very -much upset, and when Jane turned to her after Claire had shut the door -in her face, wanting to beg her pardon, _Maman_ could only wave her -hands before a twitching face and say, “No, no, my child. Don’t say any -more, it is enough for today.” - -After that I did not see Jane for some weeks. Neither she nor Philibert -came to lunch with my mother the following Sunday, nor the Sunday -after. On the third Sunday Philibert came alone and explained briefly -that Jane was indisposed. He seemed preoccupied. He talked little, -ate nothing, and drank a number of glasses of wine as if he were very -thirsty. His lips twitched constantly, forming themselves into a kind -of snarl, and he was continually jerking the ends of his moustaches. -I remember thinking that he looked for all the world as if he wanted -to bite some one. He had never appeared more cruel. I began to have a -sickening foreboding. Claire eyed him strangely. I wondered if she had -something of my feeling. How I wished she had! - -It all came out after luncheon. He could not contain himself. He was -beside himself with exasperation. Jane’s stupidity was too colossal. -He could not put up with being loved like that any longer. She had -made him a scene after the absurd affair of the other day and had -asked him to swear that he would never be unfaithful to her. Here he -raised his eyebrows, hunched his shoulders and threw out his hands. -It was incredible how she had gone on. She had said that she had been -thinking over his remark to Claire and was frightened by it, that when -he had spoken so lightly of his brother-in-law’s infidelities it had -come to her as a tremendous shock that such a thing was possible. An -abyss had opened before her--that was her word. How could Claire go on -living with a man who was unfaithful? She could not understand. What -did he mean by her sister’s growing more beautiful in proportion to her -husband’s infidelities? Had he meant anything, or was it only a joke? -Did Claire know her husband made love to other women? She loved Claire, -she thought her wonderful, but she didn’t understand. And so on and so -on. - -Philibert recited it all to us. His voice grew shriller and shriller. -He piled up phrase after phrase in a crescendo of exasperation until he -burst into a loud laugh with the words--“She talks, she talks of our -marriage being made in Heaven.” He grasped his head in his hands. - -Claire’s face wore a sneer. - -“She professes not to know then, how it was her mother made it?” she -asked. - -Philibert came as it were to a halt. He looked at us all one after -another. His face was of a sudden impudent, cool, smooth. He began to -explain lucidly. - -“Imagine to yourself, she really did not know it. She believed it was -a love match. She believed it till yesterday, I mean last night, or -it may be it was this morning, I don’t remember looking at the time. -Anyhow, as she wouldn’t let me sleep I told her. I told her all about -it.” - -“I don’t believe she didn’t know,” said Claire. - -He took her up quickly. “There, my dear, you are wrong, and you miss -the whole meaning of her boring character.” He was enjoying himself -now, was my brother, dissecting a human being was one of his favourite -pastimes. In the pleasure it now afforded him to analyze Jane, he -forgot for the moment his personal annoyance. - -“One must remember,” he mused, “that she is a savage, with the -mentality of a Huguenot minister. If you could hear her talk of the -sacrament of marriage! She is of a solemnity, and her ideals, _Mon -Dieu!_ what ideals! She once said to me that her grandfather loved her -grandmother at the day of his death just in the same way that he loved -her on the day of her wedding. When I replied ‘How very disgusting’ she -merely stared and left the room. She is always quoting her grandmother -and her Aunt Patty. What a background--I ask you? St. Mary’s Plains! -It would appear that in St. Mary’s Plains they always marry for love -and live together in endless monotony. Faithfulness--she is in love -with faithfulness; purity too, she thinks a great deal of purity. In -fact she has a most unpleasant set of theories. They fill up her -brain. There is no room for reality. What goes on before her eyes means -nothing to her. No, Claire, you are wrong. She knew nothing of her -mother’s bargaining with me for her little life. Believe it or not, it -is true. She married me for myself and believed the good God sent me -to her, and my revelations were a shock. Impossible she should have -simulated the emotion they caused her. The finest actress in the world -could not have done it. I admit that as a piece of acting it would have -been a fine performance. On the stage I would have enjoyed it, but in -one’s own bedroom, the conjugal bedroom--ugh! no.” - -“What did she do?” asked Claire. - -“She leaned up against the wall, face to the wall, I mean, flattened -against it, her hands high above her head, palms on the wall, too, as -if she were reaching up to the ceiling.” - -“I don’t see anything wonderful in that.” - -“It was a fine picture,” said Philibert. “But she stayed there too -long. She stayed like that some minutes. In fact I went on talking for -a long time to that image, that long back and those outstretched arms. -It reminded one of a crucifixion, modern interpretation. I was not sure -that she was not dying and expected her to fall backwards.” - -My mother had been fussing nervously with her shawl, her sleeves, her -hair, giving herself little pats and tugs and looking this way and -that. Her face was drawn and working. She kept moistening her lips and -saying--“Is it possible? Is it possible?” She now broke in and cried -plaintively-- - -“But, my son, all this is terrible. I do not understand. What was it -you told her?” - -“I told her quite simply, mother dear, that I had married her for her -money, that I had managed it all with Mrs. Carpenter before I had ever -seen her; (Old Izzy is done for with Jane now, I am afraid, but that -can’t be helped) that I was tired of making love to her and would be -grateful if she would become less exacting.” - -“_Mon Dieu, Mon Dieu!_” wailed my mother. “Was it necessary to do -anything so definite? Couldn’t you have gradually--_enfin_, does one -say such things?” - -“No, one does not, not in a civilized world, but Jane isn’t civilized. -You’ve no idea what it is with her.” - -Claire had risen and wandered away to the window with her usual -drifting nonchalance. - -“_Et après?_” she asked over her shoulder. “What did she say -afterwards, when you had finished?” - -“She said nothing, she fell down in a swoon.” - -“Backwards?” - -“No, she had turned and was standing with her back to the wall and her -hands against it, leaning forward and glaring, rather like a tiger, -ready to spring when I had finished. But she didn’t spring. When I -mentioned a certain evening before our marriage on which I had taken -her to the Opera, the queer light went out of her eyes. It was like -snuffing out a candle. Then she fainted. I had to call her maid. It -was two hours before she came round. She faints as she does everything -else, too much, too much. _Quel tempérament, tout de même._ You have no -idea what it is to live with her--and at the same time so fastidious. -Certain things she won’t put up with. Professes a horror of--of the -refinements of sentiment. A prude and a _passionnée_. Ah, it is all too -difficult. Anyhow, it is finished, thank God for that.” - -At this _Maman_ wailed out--“Finished? What do you mean, finished?” - -Philibert laughed. “I only mean that she won’t bother me any more; not -that she’ll leave me. Ah, no, she won’t leave me.” He ruminated; after -a moment he sighed. “And I may be wrong, she may bother me after all, -in a new way, in a new way. She is very obstinate. She may try to make -me love her, now that she knows I don’t. It all depends on whether -she hates me or not. One never can tell. And, of course, she knows -nothing but what I have told you. It never occurs to her that I could -be like other men. Even now she doesn’t suppose that her husband is -unfaithful, and even now I imagine that fact will be of some importance -to her. It is all very curious. I have told you in order to warn you. -It is quite possible that she will come to you for help.” - -He pulled down his cuffs, twisted his moustaches into place, looked at -himself in the glass over the chimney piece, and bent over my mother, -kissing the top of her head. - -“_Au revoir, Maman chérie._ Don’t let her worry you. Just quiet her -down a little. But if it tires you to see her, of course you needn’t. I -only suggest it for her sake, and for us all. She will settle down. Au -revoir.” - -He went to Claire and spoke to her in an undertone. I saw her shake her -head. “_Non_,” I heard her say. “_Je ne peux pas. Tout cela mécœure._ -Elle est vraiment trop bête.” He shrugged his shoulders. For me he had -no word of instruction, nor any of good-bye. From the window I watched -him cross the pavement to his limousine. For a moment he stood, one -patent leather foot on the step of the car, talking to his footman and -arranging as he did so the white camelia in his buttonhole. His face -was bland. His top-hat had a wonderful sheen. We all knew where he was -going. Bianca had returned to Paris after a six months sojourn in Italy -and had refused to go back to her husband. The connection for us was -obvious. We had been aware for some time of the renewed intimacy of -these two. - -Philibert waved his gloves at me through the window of his limousine -and grinned. A new light dawned on me. It had all been a comedy. He -had done it on purpose. Bianca had put him up to it. If it had not -been for Bianca, he would never have precipitated a crisis with Jane. -All that about her affection being insufferable was nonsense. It was -in his interest that his wife should adore him, and no one when left -to himself could look after his own interests so well as Philibert. -In quarelling with Jane he had done something from his own point of -view incredibly foolish. Had Bianca not interfered he would never have -done it. But what was she up to? That was the question. How should I -know? Who on earth could ever tell what Bianca had hidden away in that -intriguing Italian mind of hers? That she meant no good to any one, of -that I was certain. - -When I turned away from the window, Claire was stroking my mother’s -hand. She looked at me inimically. Something in my face must have -betrayed me, though I said nothing. “Don’t ask me to sympathize with -Jane,” she brought out, “for I can’t. I wash my hands of the whole -affair.” - -My mother’s look was kinder than Claire’s. Her eyes held that proud -plaintive sweetness that denied all passion, either of anger, reproach, -or pity. Her face was very white and her eyelids reddened, but her -remark was characteristic. - -“She has her own mother to go to, and her own mother to thank if she is -unhappy.” - -And with that she drew me down to her with one of her beautiful -gestures, and kissed me. I must have been in a highly excited and -unnatural state of mind by this time, for the rare caress, so often -awaited in vain, aroused in me at that moment a vague suspicion. Was -she too, I remember asking myself, afraid I would try to get her to -help poor Jane? If so her fears were unnecessary. Jane did not go to -them. Philibert had been mistaken in thinking that she would rush to -them for help. The time was to come when they would go to her, but of -that later. She spoke to no one of her trouble, and neither Claire nor -my mother laid eyes on her for months. We heard later that she had gone -to Joigny with Geneviève, her little girl. She stayed at the Château -de _Sainte Clothilde_ all summer alone. Long afterwards I found out -that she had not even so much as spoken to her own mother. Jane never -reproached Mrs. Carpenter, never opened her lips on the subject to any -one, until the other day when she told me everything. Poor old Izzy -died the following winter, in ignorance of what her daughter thought -about it all. - - - - -X - - -I am no fatalist. I do not believe that the good God has ordered -to be written down in a book what all the millions of little souls -on the earth are to be doing this day a year hence. He, no doubt, -in his wisdom has a general idea of such coming events as famines, -earthquakes, wars and pestilences, but man must remain full of -surprises for his Maker; his activities are incalculable, and tiny -circumstances, the effect of his minute will, have a way of spoiling -the fine large trend of the great cumulative power of the past that -we call fate. It is true that such characters as Bianca and Philibert -have about them the quality of the inevitable. Certainly, as compared -to Jane, they were not free people. They were the children of an old -and elaborate civilization, and impelled by obscure impulses that they -themselves never recognized and that had their source in some dim dark -poisonous pocket of the past. - -Bianca, more than any women I have ever known, seemed fated to be what -she was and to do as she did. She appears to me now as I remember her -as the little white slave of the powers of darkness. But she liked her -darkness. She dipped into it deeper and deeper. She sank of her own -will and because of her own morbid and insatiable curiosity. - -But Jane was free. One had only to be in her presence to feel it. No -morbid complexes in her, one would have said. Compared to her we were -like so many pigmies in chains, and Bianca beside Jane was like a -ghost or a woman walking in her sleep. Of course Bianca hated Jane. I -don’t believe in their friendship. As it was, I found it disgusting -of Philibert to let Jane go about with Bianca. And Bianca must have -been pretending to care for Jane out of perversity. Their natures were -as antipathetic as their looks were opposed. Bianca with her little -snow-white vicious face, so white that it showed pale bluish lights and -shadows, her eccentric emaciated elegance of body, her enormous blue -eyes fringed by their thick eyelashes that were like bushes and that -she plastered with black till they stuck together: Jane, magnificent -young animal, strong child amazon, towering shyly above us, looking -down on us with her serious wistful gaze, holding out her marvellous -hands to Bianca, suspicious of nothing, wanting to be friends--Jane -insists that they cared for each other--I can’t admit it. Of course -Bianca hated her, and the fact that until she saw Jane’s hands she had -seen no others so beautiful as her own made it no easier for Jane, for -Bianca may have been a priestess of the occult powers of darkness, she -was as well a vain and envious young woman. A cat, Fan Ivanoff called -her simply. - -On the other hand I believe that if Paris had not mixed itself up -in the long duel between these two women it might have ended less -tragically, at any rate less tragically for Jane. Had they lived in -London or Moscow or New York it would have been different. They would -not have been so conspicuous. The vast and impersonal life of a great -community would have absorbed them. But Paris held them close and -watched them. It held them for twenty years. If they went away for a -time they always came back and met face to face and could not get away -from each other, for Paris is small and Paris is more personal than -any city in the world. It is a spoiled beauty, excessively interested -in personalities. I speak now of Paris, the lovely capricious -creature that has existed for centuries, that has kept the special -quality of its bland sparkling beauty through invasions, revolutions -and massacres, and is still elegant under the dominion of the most -bourgeois of governments. I speak of the Paris that seems to me to -possess a soul, the soul of an immortal yet mortal woman, seductive -pliable, submissive and indestructible. Do I sound fantastic? I have -communed with my city for years, at night and in the morning and at -mid-day. I have been a lonely man wandering through its streets and -it has confided to me its secrets. Most often at night, when all the -little people that inhabit its houses are asleep, I have listened, -and like a sigh breathing up from its silvery bosom, I have heard its -voice and understood its whispered confidences that carry a lament -for days that are gone and are full of the tales of its many amours. -Ah, my worldly-wise beauty, mistress of a hemisphere, what you do -not know of men is indeed not worth knowing. And still they come, -covetous, lustful, enamoured. What crimes have they not committed, what -birthrights not denied, what fortunes not wasted, what fatherlands not -repudiated, to win your favour? - -It was this Paris that took part in the affair of Jane and Bianca. Why -not? How could it have done otherwise? It has always been attracted by -intrigue. It has a taste for drama. I repeat it dotes on personality; -any personality that is striking, that catches its attention. The type -matters little. Having long ago substituted taste for morals it has no -ethical prejudices. It does not dislike a bandit; it adores a _farceur_ -such as Philibert. It delights in demagogues and artists and men of -intelligence whether they are criminals or saints. Once in a hundred -years, like a woman surfeited with pleasure and sensation, it will -respect a person of character. - -Bianca and Philibert were true children of Paris. They were its spoiled -and petted darlings and they knew this and laid store by it. At bottom -it was Paris that Philibert was continually making love to. He had a -quite inordinate liking for his city, a jealous proprietory affection. -I believe that had he been exiled from it, he would have died, and I -believe that his desire to curry favour with it was the motive of most -of his actions. It was for Paris that he gave his wonderful parties and -concocted his fanciful amusements. He treated it literally as if it -were his mistress. He cajoled, he flattered, he bullied, he caressed, -and he spent on it millions, Jane’s millions. It was not merely an -ordinary vanity that impelled him. He saw himself as the benevolent -despot of Paris, its favourite lover and its protector. To add to its -brilliance he enticed to it princes and celebrities from every country -of Europe. Europe was to him nothing more than a field to be exploited -for the amusement of Paris. He would have beheld every city in Germany, -Austria, Russia or Italy razed to the ground without a twinge of regret -or horror, but when in 1914 the Germans were marching on Paris, then -he was like a man possessed. I can remember him, white to the lips, -rushing in from Army Headquarters to see the Archbishop. He had had -long before any one else the idea of piling sandbags round Notre Dame -to protect the stained glass windows. He was like a maniac. - -As for Bianca, she was unique and Paris wore her like a jewel. The -fact that she was half Italian seemed strangely enough not to mitigate -against her, though her mother, the wonderful bacchante who had become -in memory a legendary figure, had found it at first none too easy to -please, according to Aunt Clothilde. The Venetian had been a woman of -quick passions and child-like humours. She was remembered for her many -love affairs, the garlands of bright flowers she wore in her hair, and -the habit she had of sticking pins into little wax effigies of people -she wished would die. An impulsive, playful, improvident creature, with -the beauty of a peasant and the naïveté of a child. She had died when -Bianca was a child of six, died of home-sickness so they said, for her -beloved Italy. I don’t know, I imagine that François her husband had -something to answer for there. It was said that he had found a wax -effigy of himself in her room, containing no less than three hundred -pins, and had laughed delightedly. He was a cynical devil. Aunt Clo -says that he used to lock up his wife in their dismal château in -Provence and keep her on bread and water for days at a time. In any -case he did not lock up Bianca, nor did Bianca seem to have inherited -any of her mother’s aptitude for getting into scrapes. One could not -easily detect in her the Italian strain, one only noticed that she was -a little different from French women, with a different timbre of voice -and an occasional mannerism evocative of something foreign, something -lazy and sly and mysterious, and if she had inherited secret affinities -with that warm romantic southern country of intrigue and superstition, -she kept them hidden, together with all manner of other things, strange -things, violent obsessions, curious tastes, dark obscure desires, and -knowledge of a dangerous kind. She chose to appear at this time, I -allude to the period covering the first years of Jane’s marriage to -Philibert, as merely the supreme expression of the elegant world of -Paris. - -It is curious to watch the rise and fall of women in society. Women -loom on the horizon; suddenly for no apparent reason. A gold mine, a -rubber plantation, a motor-industry, suddenly looms into prominence. -It takes the fancy, it is advertised, it becomes popular, people -buy shares in it, the shares go higher and higher, the rush to buy -becomes a scramble, and then perhaps a fraud is discovered, there is a -collapse, and a large number of people find they have been expensively -fooled. So it is in society. Women loom on the horizon; suddenly -for no apparent reason they take the popular fancy. Comparatively -plain women or women we have all known for years and have considered -insignificant, become all at once conspicuous and important. Some one -calls her, the plain woman, a beauty. Some one else repeats it. People -become curious. They look at her with a new interest. A number of men -who were before indifferent to her charms begin to pay her marked -attention. The boom begins. Every one agrees that they have heretofore -been mistaken. Her nose is not a snub nose. She is a beauty. It is -whispered that so-and-so is _très emballé_. She is the success of the -season. And after, when her day is over, she still retains something, -once having been acclaimed a beauty she remains a beauty. Only the men -who dubbed her nose Grecian look at it now with the same indifference -that it inspired when they called it “snub.” They have been engaged in -a little flurry in the social stock market. They do not admit having -been fooled, but being inveterate gamblers they turn their attention -elsewhere. The boom of the gold-mine is over, they go in for rubber. -The men, i. e. the gamblers, are always the same in these affairs; it -is the women who come and go. - -Bianca was not one of these. She was no shooting star in the social -heaven, she was a fixture, the little central shining constellation in -a firmament of lesser planets. As a child she had been an institution. -Strangers were taken to the Bois to look at the beautiful little girl, -who, all in white, white fur coat and white gaiters, and followed by a -white pom, walked there with her governess. She never sought the favour -of Paris. She laid her will upon it and it submitted. As she grew older -she made few women friends and tolerated no rivals. She was nice to old -men and old ladies, people like my mother adored her, but most young -women were afraid of her. Jane was an exception. Jane loved her. The -two as I say used to go about together. The intimacy was shocking to -me--I loathed Philibert for allowing it. - -Jane had no suspicions. Her confidence in Philibert was such as to make -us as a family quite nervous. What would she do, we asked ourselves, -when she found out? Paris took little account of Jane. After the -first flurry of excitement over her wedding, it lost sight of her. -She disappeared behind Philibert. Curious how such a little man could -hide from view a woman so much bigger than himself. It was a case of -perspective. He stood in the foreground. To the more distant public she -was invisible; to those who came nearer she appeared as nothing more -interesting than a large fine piece of furniture. Philibert sometimes -in moments of good humour alluded to her as his Byzantine Madonna. - -I should defeat my own object in telling this story if I did not do -Philibert justice. Yet how do him justice? If he were a centipede or a -rare species of bird my task would be easier. But he lived on the earth -in the guise of a human being, and he was not quite a human being. And -it is difficult to be just to a brother such as Philibert. He always -loathed the sight of me. I don’t blame him for that. I loathe the -sight of myself. I am an ugly object. But Philibert found it amusing -to hate me and to make me constantly aware of my deformity. My twisted -frame seemed to produce in him a kind of itching frenzy, to tickle him -to dreadful laughter, to irritate him to nervous cruelty. And I was -unfortunately never able to grow a thick enough skin to protect me from -him. - -I suppose that I have always been jealous of Philibert. I loved -life, but it pushed me aside. I wanted it, I wanted it in all its -fulness, but it was Philibert who had it. And my incapacity to taste -so many of its pleasures has only made me regard it with a closer, -more wistful attention. I was like a ragamuffin in the street with -his nose plastered against the pastry-cook’s window, a ragamuffin -who dreamed that his pockets were full of gold, but who always found -that the bright coins he jingled so lovingly in his fingers were not -accepted over the counter. After repeated rebuffs, I gave up trying -to get anything, but I could not take my eyes from the feast and so, -even in my childhood, I resorted to the fiction of considering myself -an invisible spectator of other people’s doings, and I helped along -this little game by sitting as much as possible in dark corners or -behind the kindly screen of some large piece of furniture such as the -schoolroom piano. All that I asked of the world that so prodigiously -attracted my interest was that it should not notice me, and thus leave -me free to notice it, and I came at last to feel when some one out of -kindness or cruelty dragged me out of my corner, a sense of outrage. -So it was when Philibert, taking me by my collar, exposed me to kicks -and to laughter. So it was years later when Jane, taking me by the -hand, exposed me to the responsibilities of a friendship that demanded -action. I used to dodge Philibert when I could. I would have avoided -Jane’s confidence had I been able. Philibert’s tormenting in no way -involved me. I could just let him kick and was when he finished as free -as before to subside into my corner; with Jane it was different. Jane -involved me in everything. - -And now that I am obliged to think of my own personal relation to Jane, -I have as I do so, a feeling of pain that is like the throbbing of some -old hurt or the recurrence of an illness. Jane was magnificent and -healthy and whole. She was half a head taller than I. I am cursed with -a visualizing mind. As I set myself to the business of remembering her -life, I see her constantly moving before my eyes, visibly acting out -her drama, and I see myself, a wizened little man looking up at her -from a distance. I have an acute sense of an opportunity lost for ever, -of precious time wasted. For years I refused to sympathize with her as -her friend. For years I would not talk to her because I was afraid she -would complain to me of my family. How little I knew her! - -Slowly she imposed herself. Like a woman coming towards me in a fog, I -saw her grow more clear and more definite, until at last I recognized -her for what she was. - -Was I merely in love with her? Was it that? Was that all? If so she -never suspected it. If so I did not recognize the feeling. It is, of -course, the accusation my brother brought against me. He spoke of my -criminal passion for his wife. It is very curious. The cleverest men -are sometimes very obtuse. Philibert’s intelligence was of the kind -that made it impossible for him to understand simple things. - -In love with Jane? I find that I have no idea what the phrase means -and cannot apply it. It is as if I were trying to fit a little paper -pattern to a cloud floating off there in the heaven. My tenderness -for Jane does remind me a little of a cloud. It has changed so -often in shape and hue. At times it has seemed to me a little white -floating thing of celestial brightness, at others it has enveloped me -in darkness and always it has been intangible, vague, unlinked to the -earth. - -And yet, even to me, she did seem at first very queer. It seemed to -me that she was really too different to be innocent of all desire to -make trouble. She often annoyed me by remaining so silent when any one -else would have burst out with a flood of protest, and by going pale as -death when a moderate flush ought to have expressed a sufficient sense -of disturbance. The excessive emotional restraint evidenced by those -sudden mute pallors of hers used to worry me with their exaggeration. -I understood how this sort of thing, displeased my mother. I can -remember moments when I expected to see her bound across the room and -go crushing through the mirror, so tense was her physical stillness. -Claire used to look at her then with lifted eyebrows and turn away with -a nervous shrug of impatient disdain. I felt with Claire. I understood -this sort of thing little better than she did. We were accustomed to -people whose gestures were used to enhance the fine finished meaning of -spoken phrases, not to dumb creatures whose eyes and quivering nostrils -and long strong contracted fingers betrayed them in drawing rooms. I, -caught up in the fine web of my family’s prejudices, had found myself -from the midst of those delicate meshes seeing her as they saw her, -as some gorgeous dangerous animal who was tearing the very fabric of -their system to pieces with its many gyrations. As I say, I doubted her -innocence. I suppose like every one else in the family I was affected -by the glare Mrs. Carpenter’s obvious ambition threw over her. It -didn’t seem to me possible that Jane had married Philibert simply and -solely because he fascinated her. Not that I didn’t know Philibert -to be capable of fascinating any one he wanted to, but because such -fascinations had never seemed to me to contain in themselves any -basis for marriage. The truth involved too great a stretch for my -imagination. I had to find it out gradually. It necessitated too, -the admission on my part that for Jane the name of Joigny counted for -absolutely nothing. I couldn’t be supposed to know that Jane didn’t -care a straw about marrying our family, when her mother so obviously -laid great store by her doing so. - -But I started to explain Philibert, and suddenly it comes to me; I -believe that at the bottom of everything he did was the controlling -impulse of his hatred of life. Undeniably he despised humanity. It -exasperated him to tears. Its stupidity put him in a nervous frenzy. -He was animated by a kind of rage of mockery. Everything that humanity -cherished was to him anathema. He had been born with a distaste for all -that men as a rule called goodness, and was nervously impelled towards -that which they called evil. And yet the evil he courted didn’t do him -any harm. I mean that it didn’t wear him out or spoil his digestion or -stupefy his intelligence. On the contrary it agreed with him. He had -begun to taste of life with the palate of a worn out old man. The good -bread and butter and milk of the sweetness of life was repulsive to him -and disagreed with him. He could live to be a hundred on a moral diet -that would have killed in a week a child of nature. Sophistication can -go no further. His equipment was complete, and he had, I suppose, no -choice. His nature was imposed on him at birth. His punishment was that -he lived alone in a world that bored him to extinction. - -Seriously, he appears to me now, as I think of him, as a man living -under a curse. I believe him to have been haunted by a sense of -unreality. To get in contact with something and feel it up against -him, that was one of the objects that obscurely impelled him. His -extravagances of conduct were efforts to arrive at the primitive -sensation of being alive. He did not know this. He only knew that -he hated everything sooner or later. He was conscious merely of an -irritating desire for sensation and amusement. His fear was that he -would run through all pleasure before he died and find nothing left for -him to do. It may have occurred to him at times that the world minus -human interest did not provide endless sources of amusement. The things -one could do to distract oneself were not after all so very many. Even -vice has alas, its limitations, and it was not as if he were really in -himself vicious. He had an absolute incapacity for forming habits good -or bad. Could he have saddled himself with one or two the problem would -have been simpler. Could he have become a drunkard how many hours would -have been accounted for! If women had only had an indisputable power -over him, what a relief to let himself go. But no. He was the victim -of no malady and no craving. Drink as he might, his head remained -excruciatingly clear, debauch himself as much as he would, he remained -master of his passions, and day after day, year after year, he was -obliged to plan what he would do with himself. - -He found in the world only one kindred spirit. Bianca was the one -creature on earth who was a match for him. She was more, and he knew -it; she was in his own line his superior. Many people have been -astonished at Philibert’s _liaison_ with Bianca. They have considered -the intimacy of these two people strange. I believe that Philibert’s -feeling for Bianca was as simple as the feeling of a good man for a -good woman, and as inevitable as if he and she were the only two white -people in a world of black men. I believe that Philibert turned to -Bianca in despair and clung to her out of loneliness. He and she were -alone on the earth, as alone as if they had been gods condemned to live -among men. She was his mate, moulded in the marvellous infernal mould -that suited him. _Voilà tout._ - -But she was a more refined instrument than he was. She filtered -experience through a finer sieve. She had a steadier hand. Hers was -the great advantage of being able to wait for her amusement and her -effects. She was economical of her material. Philibert was afraid of -running through the whole of experience and exhausting too soon the -resources of life. Bianca was not afraid of anything, not even of -being bored. She meted out pleasure with deliberation. She calculated -her capital with fine precision, she measured the future with a -centimetre rule, and poured out sensation into a spoon, sipping it -slowly. - -Philibert was a spendthrift. Bianca was as close as a peasant woman. -And on the whole Philibert was honest. He did not try to deceive the -world. He was too impatient and despised it too much. When he fooled -it he did so openly and if people found him out he laughed. But Bianca -was deep as a well and as secretive as death. What Philibert was so he -appeared, but no one knew what Bianca was. - -During the summer that Jane spent alone at Joigny with her child, -Philibert and Bianca saw a great deal of each other. Bianca had musical -evenings that summer, in her garden, and little midnight suppers that -were quite another variety of gathering. Philibert never drank too much -at these suppers, neither did Bianca; as much cannot be said of some -of the others, if Philibert’s own account of these graceful orgies was -true. It was at one of them that poor Fan Ivanoff’s husband threw a -glass of champagne in her face, cutting her cheek. Neither Fan nor her -wretched Russian were asked again. Bianca did not like that sort of -thing. - -Jane has told me that she did not go to America that summer because -she hoped that Philibert would come to her at Joigny. She had found it -impossible after the first shock of his revelations to believe that -they were true. She told herself that he had been carried away by one -of his fine frenzies of talk and had said things he had not meant. It -was incredible to her that he should really mean that he cared nothing -for her. He had, to her mind, given her during those years of marriage -too many proofs to the contrary. Thinking it over alone she came to the -conclusion that there was some mystery here that only time would make -clear to her, and she therefore determined to wait. For a month, for -two months, for three, she believed he would come and if not explain, -at least put things on some decent footing, but he did not come for -the simple reason that Bianca wouldn’t let him. - -One has only to stop a moment and remember what he had at stake -to realize the extent of Bianca’s power over him. He was entirely -dependent on Jane for money. There was no settlement of any kind and -he had none of his own. With her enormous income pouring through his -hands, he had not a penny to show if she left him, and when people -accused him later, as some did, of having put aside a portion of that -revenue for himself they were wrong. His code of ethics, morals, -what you will, his idea anyway, of what was permitted and what was -not, allowed him to spend all her income and even run into debt; but -not keep any of it for the future. It did not shock him in the least -to spend Jane’s dollars on his various mistresses but it would have -disgusted him to find any of these coins sticking to his palms. As long -as he poured them out he was satisfied with himself; had he hoarded it -he would have been ashamed. - -In any case he knew the risk he ran, for he understood Jane, and knew -that the fear of scandal would not keep her if she once decided to -break with him. Nor could he have diminished the magnitude of the -catastrophe that this would mean. His sensational reign had only -begun, but it had already become vital to his happiness--I use the -word happiness, for lack of another. He had done great things, but -nothing as yet to compare with what he intended to do. The fame of his -entertainments had already reached the different capitals of Europe, -he had seen to that, but this was mere advertisement, preparatory -work necessary to the realization of his ultimate purpose. He was in -the position of a company promoter who had sent out his circulars and -gathered in a certain amount of capital, but had not yet founded his -business, and was still far from holding the monopoly he aimed at. He -was certain of success but he must have time. If his plans miscarried -now he would be his own swindler. - -Jane, he realized perfectly, felt little interest in his schemes. It -was one of the grudges he had against her. Her attitude from the -first had been galling in its simplicity. When on the eve of their -marriage he had proposed to her building a house, she had suggested -that perhaps one of the beautiful old ones already existing in Paris -might do, but on his insisting that none could compare with the image -he had in his mind, she had given in with a sweetness and promptness -that had taken his breath away. It is characteristic of him, in this -connection, that though he wanted his own way and intended to get it, -his pleasure in doing so would have been very much greater had she made -it more difficult. Her pliability seemed to him stupid and when she -merely said, looking over the plans he proudly spread out before her, -some weeks later, “It’s dreadfully big, but if you like it I shall,” he -came near to gnashing his teeth. It was equally galling to him neither -to impress her nor to anger her, but he was obliged to contain himself, -for after all, as he put it to Claire, he couldn’t go and tear the -thing up just to spite himself. She would calmly have put the bits in -the waste-paper basket. - -When it came to arranging the house she had said--“I want one room at -the top for my own. No one is to go there. I shall arrange it myself,” -and the rest she left to him. I believe he never entered that room and -never knew what she had done to it. If he thought about it at all, -he doubtless thought she had arranged it as a chapel. He probably -imagined an altar and candles and photographs of the dead. Jane never -told him about it. Some obscure instinct of mistrust must have been at -the bottom of her shyness. She had furnished it quite simply like a -room in the Grey House in St. Mary’s Plains. Her Aunt Patty had sent -her a rocking chair, an old mahogany dresser, the window curtains from -her old room, and some of her special belongings that she had left -behind when she came away. It was the strangest room at the top of that -mansion. I remember well the day Jane took me to it. She had come in -from some function and was looking more worldly than usual. I remember -gazing beyond her outstretched silken arm with its jade bracelets -into what seemed to me the most pathetic of sanctuaries. The window -curtains were of faded cretonne. The worn rocking chair had a knitted -antimacassar. Two battered rag dolls sat on an old spindle-legged -dresser against the wall. A spirit dwelt there that I did not know. - -But I am wandering away from my subject. What I started to say was that -Philibert’s life hung by the thread of Jane’s belief in him and he -knew it. If he thought that thread was an iron cable then that fatuous -belief alone might explain his putting such a strain upon it, but I -don’t believe it was so. However far he thought he could try Jane, -there was no sense in doing so, and he wouldn’t have done so had he -followed the dictates of his own wisdom. It would have been so easy -to have gone for a week to Joigny. Two days would have sufficed. A -three hours’ journey in the train, two days away from Bianca, and Jane -would have been reassured and his own future secure. So he would have -reasoned it out had he been left alone, but Bianca did not leave him -alone. - -Her motive was quite simply to make mischief. She wanted Jane to -suffer. She loved Philibert but she wanted him to suffer as well. There -was nothing more in it than that. The most subtle people have sometimes -the simplest purposes. Bianca’s subtlety often consisted in doing very -ordinary things in a way that made them appear extraordinary. Her -cleverness in this instance lay in the fact that Philibert did not -suspect her motive. It is even doubtful whether he knew that it was she -who prevented his going. Certainly she never did anything so stupid -as to tell him not to go. It was rather the other way round. If they -discussed it at all it was Bianca who urged upon him the advisability -of his doing his duty as a husband. I can imagine her lying back on her -divan with her lovely little spindly arms over her head and saying with -a yawn, that really he was too negligent of his wife. His wife adored -him. She was ready to fall into his arms. She was probably very sulky -now, but once he appeared she would welcome him with all the ardour -she was saving up during her _villégiature_. I can see Bianca looking -at Philibert through half-closed eyes, while she touched up for him a -portrait of Jane calculated to make him shudder. - -Bianca herself was going yachting in the Mediterranean. She wanted to -be hot, to soak in enough sunlight to keep her warm for next winter. -They were to laze about the Grecian islands. G---- the historian was to -be one of the party. While she was giving her body a prolonged Turkish -Bath and taking a course in Greek history, he would be free to bring -in the cows with Jane. No, he couldn’t come with her, it would be too -compromising for him. American women began divorce proceedings on the -least provocation. - -And Philibert, of course, did go on that yacht to the Grecian isles, -but to judge from his humour when he returned, he did not get out of -the trip what he had expected. Bianca having lured him out there seemed -to forget that he had come at her invitation. She left the party at -the first opportunity and went off inland on a donkey, and didn’t come -back, merely sent a message for her maid and her boxes to meet her at -Athens. - -Nor did Philibert find Jane waiting for him in Paris as he had -expected, nor any message from her. It was the butler who informed him -that Madame had gone to Biarritz with the Prince and Princess Ivanoff, -and it was to Biarritz that Philibert was obliged to go to fetch her -home. - - - - -XI - - -Things had been going very badly with the Ivanoffs. Their combined -resources left them poorer than either had been before. Ivanoff’s -resources consisted in debts, but debts that he never was obliged to -pay, because he couldn’t. His creditors, those I mean who were in -the business of money-lending, became more hopeful when he married -and approached Fan without delay believing of course, that being an -American she was rich. Poor Fan with her few meagre thousands a year -meted them out bravely enough at first, paying here and there, the -minimum that was nevertheless her maximum. Ivanoff had a small rather -shabby flat on the Isle St. Louis, with one big room. It could be said -of it that the place had atmosphere and would attract their friends -if they made the most of its Bohemian charm. So they decided to live -there, thinking thus to keep down their expenses. But Fan needed -many things that had been unnecessary to the existence of Ivanoff. -She required cleanliness, a bathroom with a hot-water installation, -cupboards to hold her clothes, a lace coverlet for her bed, and enough -wood and coal to keep the place warm. Ivanoff had never realized the -damp and cold; when he was cold he drank vodka or brandy. He had not -been over fond of washing; he took his baths at the club or in a public -bath house. Fan’s maid was a complication. There was no proper room for -her. She was constantly grumbling about Fan’s discomfort and served -her little mistress with grim disapproval, making continual scenes -with the Prince for the way he failed to look after the Princess, and -going out herself on the sly to buy things for the house that she felt -were wanted. The one department in the _ménage_ that ran well was the -kitchen. Ivanoff had a gift for cooking. He could train any youngster -and turn him in three months into an excellent cook. When they gave -parties he would go into the kitchen, put on an apron, roll up his -sleeves and cook the dinner. He did his own marketing, going out with -a basket on his arm. One ate better at his table than anywhere else -in Paris. He used to make a bit now and then by passing one of his -cooks on to a friend. He bought his wines in out of the way corners -of France, and got them cheap, and these too, he sometimes sold at a -profit. Nevertheless their expenses during the first year of their -marriage were more than double their income. They had many friends; -a great number of Russians, French, Italians, and Spanish and a few -Americans came to their suppers, that were served in the big living -room. People ate reclining or squatting on cushions with little tables -before them. When the tables were carried out, some as yet undiscovered -artist from a distant country turned up with a violin under his arm, or -Ivanoff himself with his guitar on his knees would sing the folksongs -of his country, with the long window open to the moonlit river and -the dimly-looming towers of Notre Dame. All this was very gay and -pleasant, but they could not keep it up unless they did something to -make money. For a year Fan tried to find a respectable employment -for her husband, but she was met everywhere with polite, but to her, -mystifying refusals. Even the antique dealers refused to employ him to -buy for them. Yes, they admitted, he had an exceptional “flair,” but -he had no idea of money, and if he fell in love with a piece was as -likely as not, in a burst of enthusiasm, to pay the owner more than he -asked. And Ivanoff himself said that he had no capacity for steady work -of any kind. She would send him to interview some financier or banker; -he would go and talk charmingly about all manner of things save the -business in hand, and then say “You know the Princess my wife wants -you to do something for me. I have come to please her, but of course -you and I understand that it is no use. It wouldn’t last a month, and -I might make some mistake that would anger you.” And he would come -away happily, to report to Fan that there was nothing he could do -in that line. She was obliged to admit him to be incorrigible. The -only thing he could do to make money was play cards. He played Bridge -superlatively well. If he played enough he could count on making a -hundred thousand francs a year. - -I believe, because Jane has insisted that it was so, that Fan was for -a long time unaware of the fact that Ivanoff made a living at cards, -and I know that when she discovered that his stories about rents from -properties in Russia were fairy tales and that the sums he turned over -to her were really his winnings at little green baize tables, that -she took it very hard for a time, and made him stop playing, but how -could they then pay their bills? For six months she held out and he -obediently stayed away from his clubs, spent his time wandering along -the quays, twanging his guitar on his sofa, and cooking the dinner, -while Fan’s little wizened face grew sharper and her laugh shriller and -her cough more troublesome. - -The inevitable happened. She caught cold. There was no coal to heat -the flat. The maid, Margot, flew at Ivanoff, in a paroxysm. Ivanoff -wept and tore his hair, fell at the foot of Fan’s bed, implored her -forgiveness and rushed off to the Club. One is obliged to accept -the inevitable. Fan asked no questions after that. I thought that I -detected a furtive look in her eyes and a note of high bravado in -her gaiety, when she staggered out of bed to go about again amusing -herself. I imagined that she was ashamed. I may be wrong. In any case -though every one knew their circumstances, she remained enormously -popular. - -The strange thing was that Ivanoff could always find people to play -with him. The certain knowledge that they stood to lose heavily, -irresistibly attracted men to his table, rich men, of course, he only -played with rich men. He couldn’t afford Bridge as a pastime. And I -know for certain that he derived from it no amusement. If his victims -approached that square of green baize with pleasurable shivers of -excitement, it was not so with him. Winning money at cards was no -more interesting to him than is the breaking of stones to an Italian -labourer. He played with what seemed to most people an exaggerated -pretence of boredom, but his boredom was no pretence. Ivanoff never -pretended in his life. He was a child of nature, a great dark abysmal -child of the Slavic race. People liked him, they couldn’t help it. He -was considered rather mad and utterly undependable. He had a way of -disappearing mysteriously, and of reappearing again suddenly, and he -never attempted to account for these absences. “Where have you been -this time Ivanoff,” some one at the club would ask him, and he would -smile his wide mongolian smile that narrowed his eyes to slits making -him look like a chinaman, and then a worried wistful look would come -over his sallow face and he would smooth carefully his heavy black -hair--“I don’t know,” he would say, “I really can’t remember,” and -somehow one believed him. He drank heavily, and when he was drunk -he would talk about God, and the soul of the Russian people that -was a deep pure soul besotted with despair, and would say that God -in His wisdom must put an end to human misery very soon. He had an -extraordinary gift for languages. Indeed he had many gifts and no -capacity and no ambition. It never seemed to occur to him that he ought -to provide for his wife, or look after her. For the most part, between -his disappearances he followed her about like a great tame bear. He -had an immense respect for her. “What a head she has,” he would say. -“What a head for figures, and what a will. She can make me do anything, -anything, except the things for which I am incurably incapacitated. I -am like wax in her hands.” - -Poor Fan! If he had had a little more respect for himself and a little -less for her, it would have been easier for her. He drank more and -more heavily as time went on. Night after night he would come home -to her drunk and lie in a stupor wherever he happened to fall. Again -and again he would beg her forgiveness, throw himself at her feet, -kissing them and weeping like a heart-broken child. And because she -found him beautiful, and because she believed he loved her, she did, -over and over again forgive him, but she was worried half out of her -mind. It began to dawn on her that his card-playing wasn’t enough; -that he borrowed money of everybody. She foresaw that the day would -soon dawn when every one of his men friends was a creditor. It didn’t -occur to her at this time that he borrowed money from women as well. -Nor did it occur to her as a possible solution to cut down her expenses -by changing her mode of life. She and Ivanoff, and a lot of their -friends for that matter, lived on the principle that, as Montesquieu -said, it was bad enough not to have money, but, if in addition one -had to deprive oneself of the things one wanted, then life would be -intolerable. She had married Ivanoff to be a princess and to have -a good time. She was still pleased with being a princess and more -determined than ever to enjoy herself. Pleasure, noisy, distracting -absorbing pleasure was becoming more and more necessary to her. As her -troubles thickened, her craving for excitement grew. The more she was -worried the more she needed to laugh. Her life became a staccato tune -of laughter and hurting throbs and petulant crescendoes of gaiety. It -was a tinkling dance with a drumming accompaniment of worry, the rhythm -of it moving faster and faster as her problem deepened. - -And people as I say liked her. Even Claire continued to see much -of her. She was considered original and very plucky. Her parties -were amusing, and she herself could be trusted to make any dinner a -success. Her very shrill yell of laughter came to have a definite -social value. She talked with a hard gay abandon that affected people -like a spray of hot salt water. Fagged and blasé spirits turned to -her for refreshment. She would enter a drawing-room on the run, and -call out some extravagant yet neat phrase, and every one would become -perky and animated. Always she had had some amusing and extraordinary -adventure five minutes before her arrival. Her taxi had dumped her -into the street, or a man had tried to abduct her or she had found a -bill of a thousand francs lying on the doorstep. One never questioned -her veracity. Nobody cared whether these things really happened or -whether she made them up for the general amusement. It was all the -more to her credit if she took the trouble to invent them. And enough -things did happen to her, heaven knows, dreadful things. She was always -in trouble. Her health was execrable. People mentioned phthisis. She -had a way of fainting in the street and waking up in strange houses -from which she had miraculous escapes. Decorated by her amusing gift -of description, made entertaining by her contagious laughter, her -miseries and her unfortunate adventures came to be an endless source of -amusement in society. Her misfortune was her social capital; she turned -it all to account. - -Jane alone was not amused. Jane alone took Fan’s troubles seriously as -if they had been her own, and watched her with concern and tried to -reason with her. But Fan didn’t want any one to reason with her and was -annoyed by Jane’s anxiety. At bottom I believe, during this period of -their existence, that Jane bored her. She loved her, of course, in a -way, because of their childhood, she knew that she could count on her -in any crisis, but she preferred talking to Philibert. When she lunched -in Jane’s house, she and Philibert would sit together after lunch and -scream with laughter, and then, when she was about to leave, her little -face would suddenly turn grey with fatigue, and she would say to Jane’s -anxious enquiry--“Yes, my dear, I’m as sick as a dog. I haven’t slept -for a month. I’m living on _piqûres_,” and then, tearing herself out -of Jane’s embrace she would go away coughing, coughing terribly all -the way down the stairs. Jane gave her a good many clothes. Fan told -me so herself. “My dear,” she said, “I’m not going with Jane any more -to her dressmaker’s. She insists on my taking too many things, and if -I don’t she’s hurt. I escaped from Chéruit’s this morning with nothing -more than a chinchilla coat. What do you think of that? I shall send it -back when it comes, and there’ll be a scene.” And she did send it back, -and there was I suppose, what she would call a scene. Jane spoke of it -too, for she had overheard. She said--“Of course I’d rather give Fan -blankets and coals, but as I can’t do anything sensible for her, why -shouldn’t she let me do something foolish?” - -I will say for Fan that she did not sponge, neither on Jane nor on any -one else. She left that part of it to Ivanoff. And again Jane insisted -that she didn’t know about Ivanoff. In any case it was Ivanoff who gave -Jane her opportunity, as she believed, to help Fan. He came to see her -one afternoon in a high state of excitement, made her swear she would -never tell Fan a word of what had passed between them, and then asked -her for fifty thousand francs. He said that they would be turned out -into the street if he couldn’t get the money in two days, and that -every stick of their furniture would be sold. It was unnecessary for -him to explain to Jane why Fan should not be told. Jane knew, at least -she thought she knew, that Fan would refuse the money. So she gave -Ivanoff a cheque payable to herself and endorsed it and felt happy to -have been able to help them. Ivanoff had pointed out that it would be -best for her not to make out a cheque in his name. This was the thin -end of the wedge. - -Ivanoff having been well received, came back six months later and -again after that. He had from Jane all told about two hundred thousand -francs during a period of two or three years, not a large sum to Jane -certainly. She easily enough hid the payments from Philibert by paying -the amounts out of her personal account for clothes, travelling, -flowers, trinkets, and so on. Occasionally she would countermand an -order for a fur coat and feel that she was making a personal sacrifice -for Fan, and this added a very real element of joy to her pleasure. And -there was no doubt in her mind that this money did go to help Fan. -Ivanoff always had some tale of Fan’s illnesses, her doctors’ bills, -her need to go to some watering place for a cure, her last unfortunate -venture in the stock market. Nevertheless Jane was worried. She was -worried, God help her, because she was deceiving Philibert. The subject -was heavy on her mind. At times she felt she must tell Philibert all -about it, but Philibert did not like Ivanoff. She was afraid to tell -him for fear he should put a stop to her doing anything more in that -quarter. Philibert tolerated Fan because she was amusing and helped to -occupy Jane, but he would not tolerate Ivanoff, and refused to have -the Russian in his house. He was unaware of the latter’s quarterly -afternoon visits. This, too, Jane had been obliged to keep from him. -If she told Philibert that Ivanoff had been to call and had been -received, she would have to explain why. Philibert seldom showed any -interest in the people she received on her day in the afternoon, but -he did occasionally ask her who had been there, and suggest that -one or another was really too stupid or too ugly to be welcomed -under his roof. He did not wish his house to be invaded by touring -Americans or by the halt, the lame and the blind, so he exercised a -sort of censorship over his wife’s calling list. Ivanoff was one of -the people who to Philibert were beyond the pale. Up to the night of -Bianca’s supper party he had forced himself to greet the big Russian -with civility when he met him in other people’s houses, but after the -beastly exhibition the latter had made of himself there, he had let it -be known that he did not wish to find himself again anywhere in the -same room with him. - -It was therefore extremely unpleasant to Philibert to learn from his -butler that Jane had gone to Biarritz with the Ivanoffs. Nothing, -indeed, that Jane could have done could have been so disagreeable to -him. Had she planned it on purpose as a revenge, she could not have -calculated better, and he believed she had done so. He had come to his -senses. He had perceived during the train journey north that he had -been very foolish to take such risks. It occurred to him that he had -not heard from Jane for two months, and that he did not know where -she was. She might have gone to America, she might be there with the -intention of not coming back. She was capable of anything. The news -he received on arrival was a relief that left him free to enjoy his -exasperation. He was not in a desperate fix after all, it was Jane who -was in a fix. She had at last given him a definite cause of complaint -and had incurred his displeasure in a way that made it easy for him to -act against her. If this were her way of taking a line of her own and -paying him back, she had played beautifully into his hands. He took the -train for Biarritz, smiling and revolving pleasantly in his heart the -things he would say. - -But Jane had had no ulterior motive in what she had done. She had come -back to Paris at the end of September and had found Fan lying exhausted -by haemorrhage in an untidy bed with a bowl of blood beside her, and -Ivanoff on the floor, his head in his hands, sobbing, while Margot -stormed at him for his uselessness. Jane had simply picked Fan up in -her arms, and had carried her away, and Ivanoff like an unhappy dog had -followed, his tail between his legs. The haemorrhage had thoroughly -frightened him. It was a fortnight later that Philibert, one brilliant -afternoon announced himself at the Palace Hotel Biarritz. Fan was -better and Ivanoff had recovered from his terror. Philibert found the -two women in an upstairs sitting-room overlooking the sea. Fan was on -a couch, her little wizened face screwed into a smile of bravado under -her lace bonnet, and a cigarette between her rouged lips. Jane looked -the more ill of the two. Her usual glowing pallor had turned to the -whitish-grey of ashes, there were purple circles under her eyes. She -was looking out of the window, her hands clasped behind her head, and -when Philibert entered she wheeled at the sound of his voice, and then -stood silently trembling. - -Fan cried out at him, gaily impertinent. “Hullo, Fifi, you didn’t come -too soon, did you?” - -He didn’t answer her. “Come with me,” he said to Jane briefly, and she -followed him out of the room. He had passed Ivanoff below in the bar. -The sight had added nothing pleasant to his humour. - -What he said to her was what he had intended to say. Her wasted face -made no impression in her favour, on the contrary. He read in her -agitation signs of guilt and seemed to have forgotten that he had -abandoned her during six months on the pretext that she loved him too -much. - -As for Jane, she listened to him in a silence that she tried to make -natural and easy. - -Telling me about it afterwards she said, “I had determined this time to -give him no opportunity of laughing at me. I made scarcely a movement. -Though I was trembling, I managed to sit down in a comfortable chair -and cross my legs and lean back, as if he had come to tell me something -pleasant.” - -He expressed without preamble his displeasure at finding her in the -company of the Ivanoffs. He was surprised to find that she cared for -such people. She knew, that he loathed Ivanoff and considered him -an unfit companion for any respectable woman. He saw no reason why -his wife should make his name a by-word in the glaring publicity of -such a place as Biarritz. Here she was in the centre of a dissolute -set of cosmopolitan adventurers, behaving like a common woman of -light character, or at least giving the impression to the world of -so behaving. He presumed that the Ivanoffs were her guests and were -costing her a pretty penny. That was a side issue. The Russian was a -dissolute ruffian who lived not alone on his winning at cards but on -women. He was a man kept by women. As for Ivanoff’s wife, she knew what -her husband was up to and profitted by his earnings. Jane, with white -lips interrupted him here. - -“I don’t believe you,” she said quietly. And then more sharply, “You -forget that Fan is my best friend.” - -He sneered. “I do not forget. I am merely unable to congratulate you -on your taste. As for Ivanoff’s habits I can give you precise details. -There is a woman in this hotel--” Something in Jane’s face stopped -him. She did not speak at once, but leaning slightly forward, one arm -on the table before her, looked at him calmly and smiled. She had done -a good deal of thinking during those lonely months at Joigny. Alone -and unobserved she had passed through her crisis. She was no longer -the same person. Day after day, tramping the country, she had passed -in review the years of her marriage and had scrutinized their every -content, discovering slowly their meaning. She had learned a great many -things. She was beginning to understand more than she had ever dreamed -existed, of complication and danger in her surroundings, and she had -determined if Philibert came back to her to put up a fight for her -life, she meant her life with him: for the one thing she had not yet -learned was to despise him. She still blamed herself for not having -made him love her. She still cared for him. But she had learned a great -deal, and among other things she had found out that she was alone. -There was no one for her to turn to. His family, with one possible -exception, myself, she realized now disliked her. - -So she met him calmly. His attack had actually been a relief to her. -Her agitation had been due just simply to the marvellous fact of his -having come back to her, and she read in his annoyance a proof of his -not being after all as indifferent to herself as he tried to make her -believe. She voiced this. - -“I was not aware,” she said quietly, “that you in the least cared -what I did.” Her words and her tone startled him. He looked at her -quickly. It was clear to him that she was older and wiser and would be -more difficult to deal with than he had supposed. A gleam shot out at -her from his eyes. It met an answering gleam. In silence their wills -clashed. They were both aware that a struggle had begun. It was she -who, after a moment, continued-- - -“I do not believe what you say about Fan and Ivanoff. I know that your -worst accusation is untrue. Fan is incapable of accepting such money.” -She paused as if to calculate her effect and added deliberately. “As -for Ivanoff, if he lives on women then I am one of them. I have lent -him money myself.” - -He had turned away from her, but at this he whirled round like a top, -his face contorted. - -“What? What do you say? You? You have given him--?” - -“Yes, I have given him money on several occasions.” - -Her immobility had its effect. He hung over her speechless, his lips -twitching, and she continued to look at him. At last she spoke. - -“What do you think I gave him money for, Philibert?” - -He saw instantly his danger. Her tone conveyed it to him. If he voiced -a suspicion of anything so horrible he destroyed himself for ever in -her eyes. His brain worked quickly enough to save him. Marvellously and -lucidly he knew she would never forgive him for suspecting her, and -suddenly he knew that she could not be accused. Her virtue that had so -bored him was unassailable and her pride frightened him. Whether he -liked it or not there it was before him, and as if he couldn’t bear -the sight of it he whirled away from her and stalked to the window, -muttering peevishly something about his not knowing why or what she had -been up to. But she didn’t let him off. Her voice followed him across -the room. - -“I gave Ivanoff money for Fan. You understand that, don’t you, -Philibert. You don’t suggest for a moment anything else, do you?” - -He remained with his back to her, and she remained where she was, -waiting, watching his nervous hands that twisted his coat-tails, and -his foot kicking the window-sill, watching her image of him shrinking, -wavering, changing. At last she rose. She was afraid now, afraid of -despising him, afraid to watch him any longer. She moved to the door -and from her further distance spoke again. - -“I have given Ivanoff in all two hundred and fifty thousand francs. -If you have anything to say about my doing so, please speak now. I am -waiting.” - -And he, at last, found the words with which to meet her. - -“I don’t believe Fan ever got a penny of it.” - -At that she faltered a moment, but only a moment. Her tone when she -spoke was smooth and light. - -“Well, if she didn’t it’s lost.” She could take it as high as that. -She gave a little shrug, just the slightest shrug. It may be that -she really did strike him as almost coming up to his own standard at -that moment. In any case he chose the instant for his own recovery. -He had seemed not to know what to do. He had made a very painful -impression. His indecision had humiliated her more than his violence. -She felt ashamed for him now, and all the pent-up passion in her -surged uncomfortably, hurtingly, against the shock her opinion of -him had received, sending hot waves of blood pounding through her -veins, that gave her a feeling of sickness. He divined something of -this. It was time that he recovered himself, and his recovery was -beautiful. It shows him, I maintain, an artist. He went up to her -deliberately and took her hand, and looking into her eyes said--“You -are astounding,” then watching his effect he added, “You are superb. I -do not understand, but I admire.” And then deliberately with consummate -gallantry he kissed her hand. - -And poor Jane was pleased. On top of all her deep misery she was -conscious of a little silvery ripple of pleasure. Though it would never -be the same with her again she thought that she had won a battle, and -made an impression, and with a kind of anguish of renunciation she -accepted his offering. She knew now that he would never give her what -she wanted, but she believed that he was prepared at last to give her -something, and she was bound to allow him to do so. - -They left Biarritz the next day, having agreed between them on a -number of things. Jane was to inform the Ivanoffs that their rooms -were retained for a fortnight longer. Philibert promised that he would -never allow Ivanoff to know that he knew Jane had given him money. Jane -in return agreed not to repeat the experiment and to have no further -dealings with Ivanoff of any kind. She refused, however, to give up -seeing Fan as she had always done. - - - - -XII - - -One day toward the middle of the winter of that year, Claire said to -me; “What has happened to Philibert? He acts as if he were in love with -his wife.” It was true. We had all noticed it. I mean Claire and my -mother and myself, but gradually we came to notice something else as -well, namely that Philibert’s increased attentions did not seem to be -making Jane happy. She was strangely preoccupied and for her, strangely -languid. Her old buoyancy was gone, and with it the impression she had -so often conveyed of an over-powering awkward energy. _Maman_ need -never fear now that Jane would fall on her and crush her. Claire need -not worry about being pushed into corners. When Jane did join our -family parties, and she came much less frequently than in the early -days, she was almost always so absent-minded as to seem scarcely to -realize where she was. She would come in with Philibert and the child -Geneviève, kiss my mother gently on the forehead and then sink into -a chair and forget us. We might now have said anything preposterous -that came into our heads. She would not have noticed us. She did not -listen to our talk, and when we addressed her directly would give a -little start and say--“_Je vous demande pardon, je n’ai pas compris._” -Sometimes I caught Philibert watching her as if he too were mystified -and troubled. He would drag her into the conversation. “_Mais, mon -amie, écoutes donc, quand on vous parle_,” he would exclaim in -affectionate remonstrance, and she would flush a little and make a very -obvious effort to pay attention. My mother felt there was something -wrong. It may have seemed to her that she was herself responsible. She -may have felt a certain contrition about Jane, or she may merely have -found it intolerable that any one should derive from her drawing room -circle so little apparent interest. In any case she made on her part an -effort and talked to Jane much more, and in a different more intimate -way than she had ever done before. And, of course, when actually -talking directly to _Maman_ Jane was perfectly attentive and perfectly -courteously sweet-tempered. But when my mother turned her head toward -some one else, Jane, as if released from the end of some invisible -string that had held her erect in her chair, would slip back and lean -her cheek on her hand, and the light in her eyes would be veiled by -that invisible glaze that means an inward gazing. Such are the eyes of -the blind. One could at such moment have waved one’s fingers an inch -from Jane’s face, and she would not have blinked, at least that was my -impression. - -And she was incredibly thin. Many people thought this becoming to her, -but to me it was painful. I had no wish to find Jane beautiful if I -felt that she was going to die, and there were days when I did feel she -was, as one says, going into a decline. She had been so harmoniously -big that one would never have supposed she carried much superfluous -flesh, until one saw it wasting away and found her still alive, and not -a hideous skeleton. Her marvellous hands and feet were now, I suppose, -even more marvellous, but to me their beautiful exposed structure of -lovely bones was a source of pain. Her wrists and ankles were so slim -that one felt if she made a wrong movement they would snap, and her -rich lustrous clothes seemed to find round her waist and bust nothing -to cling to. Only her broad shoulders and narrow hips seemed to support -them. One could not tell where her waist was. Sometimes under the -silken fabric of her skirt one saw the shape of a sharp knee bone. -Her face seemed to have grown much smaller. The cheeks hollowed in -under prominent cheek-bones, and her small green eyes were sunk into -her head--that was more than ever like some carved antique coin and -had taken on a quite terrifying beauty; I mean that the charm of her -ugliness had received its special ordained stamp, the mark that the god -or imp who made it had meant it to have. She reddened her lips a little -now; otherwise her face was untouched by powder or rouge. The skin -was of the palest ivory colour, a close smooth dull surface, without -a blemish, soft and pure and dead. There was about the texture of her -skin something curious. It made one dream of a contact so cold that -if a butterfly brushed against it the little living thing would fall -lifeless to the ground. - -And a new charm disengaged itself from her person. She seemed possessed -of a hitherto-unused and undiscovered magnetism, and she dwelt with it -silently, wrapped in a kind of gentle gloom that she tried now and then -to throw off as one throws off a wet clinging garment. I do not want -to give the impression that she was moody, for that would be untrue. -She was, on the contrary, of an uncanny equanimity, and when she smiled -her smile crept slowly and softly over her face and as softly faded -away. There was no jerk of nerves about it. Nervous was the last word -one could apply to her. She was superlatively quiet, unnaturally calm, -and yet at times she looked at me like a haunted woman, a woman haunted -not by a ghost but by an idea, perhaps by some profoundly disturbing -knowledge. - -We were increasingly troubled. We wondered if at last she had found -out things about Philibert, particularly about Philibert and Bianca, -and somehow the fact that we knew he was devoting himself more to Jane -and less to Bianca did not console us. What indeed was it but just the -most disturbing thing of all that Philibert’s new devotion to Jane -produced in her no flush of responsive joy? My mother was very worried -indeed, and we were affected by her anxiety. Even Claire began to watch -Jane with a questioning puzzled attention. Often I found Claire’s dark -eyes travelling from Jane to Philibert, from Philibert to my mother, -from my mother back to Jane. And simultaneously my mother’s eyes moved -from one to the other, and so did Philibert’s and so did mine. We -were all looking from one to the other, watching, referring, puzzling, -comparing. Jane alone looked at no one. - -I should have felt this to be humorous had it not humiliated and -annoyed. It seemed to me that we were slightly ridiculous at times, -and at other times lacking in delicacy. The last impression irked -me exceedingly. For my mother and sister to be guilty of indelicacy -was strangely unpleasant, I knew they were not impelled in their new -interest by affection. They did not even now care for Jane. She had -become to them an enigma; that of course was something more than she -had been; there was a shade of admiration now in their wondering, but -no genuine feeling for her and no sympathy. Their sympathy was for -Philibert, and perhaps, a little for themselves. In any case they -were afraid for Philibert. They saw his great social edifice swaying. -They were holding their breath. And Jane gave them no sign. Had she -calculated her effect with consummate art her manner could not have -been more perfectly tuned to the high fine note of suspense. And they -dared not to ask her anything. - -But as the weeks passed, they gave way to asking each other. In her -absence they constantly talked of her. It was curious how much of their -attention she took up by staying so much away. Claire and my mother -could now often be heard to say--“Have you seen Jane? What is the child -doing with herself? I find her looking very unwell. Has she complained -to you of feeling ill?” and now and again with a sigh of reproach -either my mother or Claire would say to the other--“What a pity you -never won her confidence. She tells us nothing, but absolutely nothing. -It’s as if she didn’t trust us.” - -And Philibert seemed as much at a loss as they. He could enlighten them -very little. Gradually as their nervousness made them less discreet -they took to questioning him. “But what is the matter with her?” they -would ask, and he would shrug his shoulders. He didn’t know. Did he -think she was ill? No, she wasn’t ill, she had never been so active. -Was she then unhappy? Ah, who could say? She was now and then very -gay, much gayer at moments than he had ever known her. She went out -constantly. She had ideas of her own about receiving. She was arranging -a series of musical evenings for the audition of unpublished works of -young French composers. She was multiplying her activities. Sometimes -he did not see her alone for days together. And here my mother gently -and timidly interrupted him. “_Mais mon enfant_, when she is alone -with you, is she amiable, is she kind? _Enfin_, is she gracious?” -And Philibert again, but this time with a more exaggerated movement, -shrugged his shoulders--“_Comme cela._ I have no right to complain.” - -And then quickly I saw them all look at each other and saw the same -thought flit from one mind to the other and dodge away out of sight, -and the spectacle of those intelligent evasive glances exasperated me. - -“Yes, it’s a different story now, isn’t it?” I didn’t care for their -combined shocked stare, now centred on myself, and continued to -Philibert--“After all, you’ve got what you wanted, haven’t you? You -remember you told her not to love you so much.” - -“Blaise!” My mother’s exclamation was a check. I had a sensation of -shaking myself free. “Well, isn’t it so? Weren’t you all awfully bored -with her caring too much for you, and now that she doesn’t, now that -she has withdrawn, is leading a life of her own, you are troubled, you -wonder. How can you wonder? Isn’t it all quite simple?” But I knew that -it was not so simple after all, so I stopped. - -“You think then,” put in my sister gravely, “that she no longer -cares for us?” Her tone made me stare in my turn. It was earnest and -enquiring, and I heard Philibert to my astonishment echoing her words. -“Ah, you believe she no longer cares?” And most wonderful of all my -mother’s phrase. “Tell us, Blaise, what she does feel. I believe that -you understand her better than we do.” - -It was quite extraordinary. I had the strangest feeling for a moment -of pride and power. They had all turned to me. They had all recognized -simultaneously that I possessed something valuable. And for a moment I -enjoyed the novel sensation. They wanted something from me, that was -pleasant, but what they wanted was Jane’s secret. They believed she had -confided in me, and they believed I would tell them. I felt again weary -and impatient and humiliated, and I brought out the truth abruptly. “I -know no more than you do what is going on in Jane’s mind, she has told -me nothing.” But I saw that they did not believe me. - -The room, my mother’s room, seemed to shrink visibly. It appeared very -small and trivial. Its innumerable bibelots and souvenirs winked and -glinted, mischievous and precious, minute tokens of delicate prejudice, -obstinate and conventional and colourless. It all looked small and -meaningless and pale. I could have laughed. I was important there at -last. But it was a tiny place to me now. I pitied it. I felt suddenly -free and alone. I thought--“Jane has told me nothing, it is true, -nevertheless she trusts me,” and I felt them reading my mind and it -didn’t matter. They might know for all I cared that I knew nothing, -they would feel all the same that I knew Jane as they would never know -her. But what they would never know was, that knowing Jane as I did, I -knew many other things, wonderful things. I felt a lift, a lightening, -a widening of space, a fresh rush of wind as if I was being blown upon -by the breath of those wide American forests. Somewhere in my mind -vistas opened. I heard the murmuring of a free wind in high branches. -And all the time I saw my frail little mother in her damask chair, in -her little crowded silken room, and I loved her with tenderness and -compassion. An impulse seized me. I went over to her. I took her hand. - -“If only you would love her,” I said, “everything would be all right.” -Then I saw that I had blundered. How could I have been so stupid as to -have imagined that they had been with me for that moment in those wide -high spaces where I knew Jane lived? My words sounded grotesque and -fatuous. I saw a shade come over my mother’s face. I heard Claire’s -swish of impatient drapery. Philibert snorted. I felt myself blushing. -My face tingled. I had made myself ridiculous. My mother’s hand kept -me off. Its nervous clasp pushed me from her while she murmured -plaintively--“_Mais je l’aime bien, mais je l’aime bien._” - -Claire followed me out of the room. In the little dark hall we stood -close together. She had closed the door of the drawing room after her. -Beyond it we heard Philibert’s high nasal voice arguing. “What do you -really think, Blaise?” My sister’s voice was low and confidential. I -felt her mind pressing upon me with gentle insistence. - -“I don’t know.” - -“But you see a great deal of her, she talks to you.” - -“Yes, but not about herself.” - -“Come, Blaise.” - -“Not about the present, only of the past, her home over there.” - -She made an impatient gesture. - -“Does she never mention Philibert?” - -“Never in any way that matters. How can you think--? Do you imagine -then that she is vulgar?” - -But Claire’s eyes, tranquil and dark with their usual mournful depths -of mystery, looked at me deeply as if she had not heard. - -“I am afraid,” she said, “of Bianca.” - -I was startled. The idea that Claire was afraid, so afraid as to voice -her fear to me in that low tone of secret confidence, seemed to make -everything worse, much more miserable. - -“Why?” I asked, searching her face that so often evaded me with its -mockery and now was so grave and deliberate. - -“She may do something.” - -“What?” - -“I don’t know, but she’s jealous.” - -“Jealous of Jane?” - -“Yes, hadn’t you noticed? She follows her about?” - -“Bianca follows Jane about?” - -“Just that.” - -I thought how strange women are, seeing things that we none of us -notice. I followed Bianca, Jane and Claire in imagination, moving -about Paris in smooth rapid motors, slipping in and out of crowded -streets, shops, drawing-rooms, theatres, watching each other. But how -could Claire see one pursuing the other with all those people round -them, all the music, the waiters, the footmen, the lights scattered -along dinner-tables, the obstructing tables and chairs, the endless -engagements? My mind wavered, I felt dizzy. I saw each one of the three -women stepping out of her car, going into her house, the door closing -upon her, hiding her from the world. - -I came back to Claire’s delicate face and brooding eyes. - -“But why should Bianca be jealous?” - -“But why not?” - -“You mean she thinks Philibert is escaping her?” - -“And isn’t he?” - -“I don’t know.” Suddenly I felt at the end of my strength, as if I had -been undergoing a great nervous strain. “How should I know anything -about Philibert? You all seem to think I know what Philibert is up to.” -I felt strangely exasperated. “And what, _mon dieu_, is there exactly -between Bianca and Philibert?” - -“Ah,” my sister smiled faintly, “that I cannot tell you, but whatever -it is, it is enough.” - -“Enough to make trouble, you mean?” - -“Yes, enough to make trouble.” - -“Well, if you really want my opinion, it is that Jane does not bother -at all about Bianca.” And I began irritably to get into my coat. But -Claire, helping me on with it, still pressed me and said over my -shoulder-- - -“So you don’t think Jane in her turn is jealous?” - -“I don’t think anything about it. What I think is that it is none of -my business.” And I grabbed my hat and left her, but looking back as I -went down the few steps to the outer door, I saw her looking after me -with an inscrutable smile, as if she had learned something from me that -she had wanted to know, and I determined to keep away from such family -talks in future. - -I had my theory about Jane during those days, of course, but according -to Clémentine I was wrong. Clémentine thinks that Jane loves Philibert -even now, even now over there in that dreary little house. I can’t -believe it. But what does Clémentine mean by love, anyway? Clémentine -is a Latin, the smooth willing exponent and devotee of her senses. She -has known love--“_elle a rencontré l’amour plusieurs fois_.” If she -means anything, if there’s anything in what she says about Jane, it is -that Philibert still has the power to affect Jane, to make her pulse -beat quicker, even now. I wonder, but I don’t want to think about it. - -I believed that winter that Jane had ceased to care for Philibert, and -that that was the explanation of her strangeness, that made her appear -so often like a sleep-walker. I argued that to a person like Jane it -would be more terrible to no longer love than to be no longer loved. -There were moments when alone in my room with her image before me, I -was certain that she was beginning to despise him. How could she help -it I would ask myself, and be filled with an exulting bitterness. I see -now what it was. I wanted her to despise him, and so believed it. But -it was not so much that I fiendishly wanted Philibert to suffer, for I -did not believe he would suffer. I wanted Jane to right herself. That -was it. I wanted her to get loose from her bonds that seemed to me to -expose her in an attitude humiliating and pitiful. I couldn’t bear to -contemplate her as Philibert’s slave. It was this thought that sent -me out at night to walk the streets in a fever. Ridiculous? Perhaps. -But haven’t I a phrase of Jane’s sounding in my brain even now that -justifies all my sickening suspicions of the past, one phrase, the only -one that she ever let fall that threw any light on her relations with -her husband. - -It was only the other day in St. Mary’s Plains. Time had made it -possible for her to speak as she did. Ten years, fifteen, had passed, -but she spoke with an icy distinctness as if controlling a shudder. - -“Bianca,” she said, “was jealous of that process of corruption that she -called my happiness.” But this is all too painful. I must stick to the -facts of my story. - -Claire’s fear was all too well founded. Bianca was jealous and Bianca -was going to intervene. Philibert was slipping away from her and -falling in love with his stupid wife. That could not be tolerated. -She stirred uneasily. Moreover Paris was beginning to take account of -Jane. People were talking about her wherever one went. They argued -about whether she was ugly or just the most beautiful woman in Europe. -Sides were equally divided. But what did it matter whether one called -it beauty or ugliness, once her appearance had made its impression upon -the receptive mind of Paris? The Byzantine Madonna or the Egyptian -mummy or whatever it was that she had been said to resemble had come -to life. Paris recognized her as singular, and that was all that was -necessary. Soon she would be the rage. Some one would set the ball -rolling. Bianca saw it all quite clearly. Like a little witch bending -over a boiling pot she made her preparations. It would be funny to -think of if it had not come off just as she intended. The sorceress -was again on the move astride her broomstick. She was chanting her -incantations that were meant to bring a woman to the dust and a man to -her side. But first she sent for Fan and told her all about Ivanoff and -Jane and about Philibert’s interference in Biarritz. She had got the -whole story from Philibert and used it now with just the effect she -wished. She began lamenting the fact that she saw so little of Jane, -Jane was dropping her old friends. Hadn’t Fan noticed a difference? -No, Fan hadn’t. But Ivanoff--surely Jane didn’t see anything much of -Ivanoff these days, not at any rate as she used to? Fan laughed. If -Bianca thought Jane capable of flirting--. But Bianca meant nothing so -silly. Bianca meant simply that Jane had been very foolish and that -Philibert was angry with Ivanoff and wouldn’t have anything to do with -him because of Jane’s foolishness. Fan at this, had grown suddenly -serious. The rest was easy. It all came out. Ivanoff had had large sums -of money from Jane. Philibert had found out, and Jane had made him -swear to do nothing about it so that Fan should never know. This, of -course had been most unfair to Ivanoff as the latter had been given no -chance to clear himself with Philibert. Ivanoff might have been able to -explain many things that remained obscure. - -The result of this conversation was all that Bianca would wish for. -Poor Fan rushed home to her dilapidated attic on the Isle St. Louis and -flung it all at Ivanoff’s great sleek meek head. He had been taking -money from Jane. How much money? When? Why? Where was it? How could he? -How had he come to think of such a thing? Didn’t he have any sense of -honour? Didn’t he have any shame? Ivanoff bowed his head. Meekly and -humbly he let her rave at him until exhausted, she flung herself on -the bed in a torrent of tears, and all that night he sat on the floor -beside her bed, extravagantly ashamed, thinking vague dark hopeless -thoughts, and now and then heaving a sigh. - -It didn’t occur to him, the next day or the next or any day after that -to explain anything. Probably he was unaware that Fan’s second thoughts -were more poisoning and disturbing to her than the first. Ivanoff was -no psychologist. If he noticed that Fan was strained and looked at him -queerly, he remained passive and mute, and no light of curiosity seemed -to strike down into his abysmal calm. When suddenly Fan flashed out the -question--“Did you make love to her?” he merely shook his head, and -when at last after a week of fidgetting she announced that she had -written to Jane to tell her that they couldn’t pay the money back and -that she would understand the wisdom of their not seeing each other -any more, he stared vacantly, then frowned and sat down in a heap on -the divan for the rest of the day. Judging by his fantastic subsequent -behaviour, he must have been pondering upon the question. He probably -thought--“Women are worthless cattle. Jane has told. She has given away -the secret. She has hurt Fan. I am getting tired of Fan. Some day I -will go away, but Jane hurt her and made her tiresome and she must be -hurt too, before I go. But how? But how?” That was the difficulty. He -must think of some way. And all the time he was sitting there thinking, -he could hear Fan coughing and tossing in her room, and he could see -her little tame chaffinches jumping about in their cage in the window. -Fan was often like that, like a neat little bird flitting and hopping -about, but now she was sick and ruffled and not gay and chirpy at all. - - - - -XIII - - -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. - - - - -PART II - - - - -I - - -That was long ago. We were young then. What a haunting annoying phrase. -One meets it everywhere, in books, on people’s lips, or unspoken in -their eyes. The other day in the Grey House, sitting opposite Jane -in the shabby little parlour, there it was again. She spoke it, but -not wistfully, more with relief than regret. I stayed ten days in St. -Mary’s Plains and during those days she told me the rest of the story, -bit by bit, till she came to the end--I put it down now as she told -it--what follows are her own words as I remember them. - - * * * * * * * * - -That was the end of my youth and the beginning of life. Until then I -had been made use of, but after that I acted and I became responsible -for myself. - -Fifteen years ago, we sat till morning waiting for Philibert. I no -longer remember what I felt. Have you tried to recall sensations of -pain, and by thinking very closely about all the little circumstances -surrounding them, to experience again the stab or the ache? One can’t. -I can’t feel again that agony. I suppose it was agony. You remember -it better than I do, for you saw it. One remembers things one has -seen and things one did, but not what went on inside one’s own dark, -impenetrable body and soul, invisibly. I remember what I did at -that time and what I said and what other people said and looked. I -remember your face, and Jinny’s fear of me, and her fretting for her -father, and Fan’s coming and saying that I looked like a mad woman, -and from these facts I deduce the other fact that I was suffering, -but I have forgotten the feeling. That is very strange when you come -to think of it, for how, then, can I know that it was so? I don’t -know. It is all merely conjecture. One would have thought, from the -way I behaved and the way it changed everything that my emotion of -that time was tremendous; was immensely important. But it wasn’t. It -had no substance. It didn’t stand the test of time. It has vanished -completely. Other things have lasted. - -What are these feelings, emotions, passions that we make such a fuss -about? Nothing but sparks struck from an impact, a collision of some -kind. They seem to burn us up, to consume us for a moment, then they -vanish. They have no body, no staying power, no reality, but we mould -our lives by them. - -I am a woman. My life has always centred about people. In tracing the -course of events, I find that their causes were invariably personal--My -life is a long strong twisted rope made up of a number of human -relationships, nothing more. There was first my mother, and my Aunt -Patience, then Philibert, Bianca and Geneviève. Philibert went away. I -did without him. One can do without anything,--everything. I am proving -it now. But Bianca kept coming back; I never got rid of her. - -My life is a failure. It is finished. It is there in its dreadful, -unchangeable completeness spread out before me. I look at it, as I -would look at a map, and when I think that it is I who made it, this -thing called a human life, I am bewildered and ashamed. How did it come -about that I made so many mistakes, and did so much that was harmful to -others? There was no desire in my heart to hurt, no will to do wrong. -On the contrary I wanted to make people happy, I wanted to do right. -It is very strange. It is almost as if the intensity of my will to do -right forced me to do the wrong thing. Is there some explanation? Is -there a key to the problem of living that I never found? Or was it all -simply due to Bianca? My Aunt Beth used to say that the only way to -live rightly was to do the will of God. But what does that mean? How is -one to know what the will of God is? Often I wonder whether my failure -is due to my never having found out about God. Most of my people here -in America would not hesitate to say yes--but I am not sure. It seems -to me that I was even more eager to do His will than I would have been -if I had been certain of His existence. It would have been an immense -relief to me to have known that God was in His Heaven and that I did -not have to bother about my own soul. “Put your troubles on the Lord,” -our parson used to say in St. Mary’s Plains. Well--I don’t know. That -is a solution for many. If they do that--just shelve everything and go -by texts in the Bible for their order of daily conduct, living must be -very much simplified--but I couldn’t do that. Something stiff and hard -and honest in me wouldn’t allow it. I couldn’t believe that I could -talk to God and ask His opinion. I used to try--when I was a child and -when I was a woman. Praying was like whispering into a chasm, a void, -an echoing emptiness. My questions came back to me, unanswered, mocking -echoes of my own tormented soul. - -So I floundered along. - -I do not excuse myself. I am to blame. I am responsible. I know that. -I lived among charming people. I had, as people say, almost everything -heart can desire. My husband did not love me, but beyond that what had -I to complain of? I had money, health, power, friends. I was one of the -fortunate. Hundreds of women, no doubt, envied me. - -I hadn’t the gift of living. Your mother has it, so has your sister. It -is common among French people, they are artists in life, but I was for -ever looking beyond life for its purpose, and thus missing its savour -and its meaning. The people I loved were too important to me and the -people I hated--but I can see now that Bianca wasn’t as interesting or -as important as she seemed. She was only a vain and selfish woman after -all. But she was for twenty years my obsession. - -I must talk about Bianca. It was really in order to talk about Bianca -that I asked you to come, for I am not yet rid of her. She haunts me -here in this innocent old house. Enigmatic in death as she was in life, -her personality persists, exquisite and depraved and relentless. She -comes to accuse me. Having ruined my life, she accuses me of her death. - -I did not kill her. Some of you thought that I did. You didn’t mind. -You didn’t blame me, but you thought so. Ludovic, I am sure, is -convinced of it, and if he does not precisely approve, he at least -accepts the fact as the inevitable outcome of our long exhausting -duel. More than once he told me that until I could rid myself of -the obsession of Bianca, I should be unable to understand the first -little thing about life. He was the one person who understood my -feeling for her and hers for me. In his uncanny wisdom, so devoid -of all prejudice, he knew that our hatred was based upon an intense -mutual attraction, and that we hounded each other to death because -under other circumstances we would have loved each other. The long and -dreary spectacle of two women hating each other for years with intense -sympathy, or if you like, loving each other with an exasperating -antagonism and hatred, was to him pitiful and contemptible. He would -have had me put an end to it somehow, anyhow, at any cost. Taking -another’s life is to him no crime compared to ruining one’s own. Well, -it is at an end now. Bianca is dead, and I am buried alive. We did each -other in, but it took twenty years, and I never touched her with my -hands, or did anything to bring about her death, save will her to die. - -And her death came too late to do me or mine any good. Philibert was -finished. My life was in pieces. There was nothing left to patch up. -She had come between me and my husband and child, while living, but -her death cut me off from them, more absolutely than anything she -could have done alive. And, fiendishly, as if with consummate cunning, -she died mysteriously leaving with me the unanswerable question, as -to whether or not, I had made her kill herself. I go over and over it -all, day after day, week in, week out. I remember my last view of her -alive, in that hotel corridor, the look she gave me over her drooping -shoulder, leaning against the half open door, her hand on the door -knob, her long languid weight on it, one pointed foot trailing, and on -her grey face, a desperate vindictive longing, a wistful cruelty, a -question, a threat, a prayer. Was she at last imploring me? Did she in -that moment remember everything? Was she mutely and bitterly asking me -to come and hear her confession? Would it all have been put right by -some miracle had I gone to her before it was too late? I don’t know--I -shall never know. I only know that our wills clashed again for the -last time, that for the last time I resisted her, and let her drag the -incredible weight of her diseased and disappointed spirit out of my -sight, for ever. - -And how am I to know that her death wasn’t an accident, and that her -look of desperate appeal wasn’t just such a piece of acting as she had -treated me to, at intervals for twenty years? Over and over again, -she had done the same trick. Invariably, after one of her pieces of -devilry, she would approach me with that wistful penitent masque, and -stir me to forgiveness and compassion. Repeatedly, she fooled me. -I could save her--I could influence her for good. I was strong and -balanced and sane. If only I would give her what she needed, what she -lacked, some relief from herself in some external thing, some faith, -some definite obstinate purpose, beyond the gratification of her own -vanity. - -And each time I believed, each time I forgave, each time looking into -her wonderful face, I thought I saw there, a spiritual meaning. It -is enough to make one scream with laughter. It was all acting. It -must have been. It was all done for the purpose of tormenting me more -exquisitely afterwards. For years she fooled me--for years I wouldn’t -believe she was what she was, a woman of immense personality and no -character, but I am at last certain that this was so. Ludovic says -that it takes as strong a character to be really wicked as really -good. He used to rave over Bianca, to anger me, I suppose, call her -perversely--“_une femme admirable--la plus courageuse damnée qu’il -avait jamais vue_.” I don’t agree with him. I do not mean that Bianca -had a weak character. I mean literally that she had no character at -all. Where one feels in the average human being, the strong resisting -kernel, the stern spiritual centre that contains identity there in -Bianca there was nothing. At the middle centre of her being there -was emptiness. She had, morally, no core. She was as formless as -one of those genii in the Arabian Nights who came out of Ali Baba’s -earthenware pots. - -I ought to know, for I loved her. She was my friend during the happiest -years of my life, when I believed in Philibert, and was confident. -I say it again, we were friends. I believe even now, in our early -friendship, in those days, Bianca was actually, and much to her own -surprise, fond of me. That she began being nice to me out of a spirit -of mischief is no doubt true. The idea of making Philibert’s wife, her -intimate, was the sort of thing likely to appeal to her but having -made the advances out of perversity, she found herself interested and -attracted. Why did she like me? It is difficult to say. Perhaps because -I was a new type and one that wouldn’t in the ordinary course of -events come her way. I puzzled her. To her I was something primitive, -savage, and dangerous. She used to call me her “_Peau Rouge_.” She -said I made her think of Buffaloes and Bison and prehistoric animals, -of black men round camp fires in jungles, of snake dancers and deserts -and the infantile magic of savage races. She wove stories about me and -hunted up old prints of queer outlandish people who she insisted had -my type of head. I was, she asserted, only half-tame, and being with -me gave her the same kind of pleasure as having a leopard about. She -was physically afraid of me. Not only at the beginning, but always to -the very end, but in those days, my losing my temper, she found, “_un -très beau spectacle_.” Her blue eyes would shine, her lips part in -amazement, and timidly she would stroke my shoulder, murmuring--“How -wonderful you are. What a volcano.” - -She used to ask me endless questions about my childhood and appeared -greatly intrigued by my obstinate attachment to what she affectionately -termed, my ridiculous impossible background. She would make me tell -her about life in the Grey House, the baking of cakes in the kitchen, -the hymn singing on Sunday evenings, and the summer trips to the -wilderness, to the woods of Canada, or across the prairies of Omaha, -Dakota, and Arizona. She would lie on her couch in her boudoir making -patterns in the air with her lovely fingers and purring like a pleased -little cat while I described the plains, stretching endlessly under the -sky to the white horizon, the lonely wooden shacks blistered in the -sun, and infested with flies, the lazy cowboys on indefatigable loping -broncos--and she would murmur--“_Ah, je comprends cela--c’est grand, -c’est monstrueux, c’est beau._” - -As for me, need I explain why I loved her? Who has not felt the quality -of her beauty? What man or woman that ever saw Bianca, failed to -respond to the peculiar penetrating charm of her personality? I see her -in memory, a vivid creature, perfect, compact, clear in the midst of a -crowd of blurred and colourless shadows. Her beauty was incisive, keen. -It cut into one’s consciousness sharp as a stab. It stamped itself on -one’s brain, indelible and certain. I see her face as clearly today as -I saw it the day I first laid eyes on her when she came up to me in -your mother’s salon and said--“You must like me, I insist.” It is there -close to me, rising out of the grave as pure, as firm, as precisely -drawn as if I held the perfect indestructible masque in my hand. - -I see her eyes open lazily, wider and wider, and shine out suddenly, -bluest blue, so blue that they seem to send out a blue light through -their black lashes. Ah, how lovely she was! How could I not believe in -that loveliness? Blue, brilliant fire-blue eyes set far apart under -a fringe of black hair and pointed curving thin red lips. I could -model her now exactly--the cup of her small chin, her long round white -throat, flat bosom and shoulders flowing down thin arms to her narrow -beautiful hands. Her body was a fragile thing, strong as steel. - -And women of Bianca’s breeding never give themselves away in ordinary -life. They are closed and secret books, open only to those who have -the key. No one can read them who is not of the initiated. I did not -know the language. There was nothing about her to convey to me that -she was anything more than she seemed, a remarkable and gifted woman -of great distinction, a creature so refined as to seem to me to belong -to another planet from the one on which I had been born. It seemed to -me extraordinary that such a person should notice me at all. I was -filled with gratitude. I was humble, devoted, flattered, and Philibert -gave no sign. If not actually enthusiastic about our friendship, he -still seemed content enough, and I was happy in the thought, that this -wonderful woman who had been his comrade from childhood was now, my -friend too. - -And she was careful, as we grew more intimate, to show me, only those -aspects of herself that she knew would flatter and delight me. Never -did she mention subjects likely to frighten me. Her talk was all of -art shows and music and books and the ridiculous absurdities of “_le -monde_” and those things in her life that I couldn’t help noticing -with concern, she explained in a way to enlist my sympathy. She was -desperately unhappy, she told me, in her marriage, her husband’s -immorality was a great grief to her; the sorrow of her life was, -that she could have no children and so on, and so on. Once she even -confided to me that there was insanity in her family, and that she was -constantly haunted by the fear of going insane. I was, at this, in a -tumult of sympathy. I was prepared to forgive her a far greater number -of eccentricities than she ever showed me. - -She was, she told me, of a mixed strain of southern blood, a Venetian -on her mother’s side, on her father’s a _Provençale_. From her I learnt -that the old Duke, her father, was descended from the _Comtes de -Provence_ of a line that had numbered kings in the middle ages. For -many generations they had been _Seigneurs_ of a wild and mountainous -region north of Avignon. Their fortress, the “_Château des Trois -Maries_” stands high against the sky on a spur of rock that reaches -out from the ragged hills, above the wide valley of the Rhône. This -was Bianca’s home. There in that sad and wonderful country of brown -sunlight, she was as nearly happy as she could ever be on earth. I went -to Provence with her one summer. And now that she is dead, I think of -her, not as she was in Paris, languid, perverse, and irritable, but as -she was in her own country. I see her against the swarthy background -of those ruined hills scarred by the hordes of invading Saracens. Her -little person seems to ride above that sunbaked land of blistered -roads and dry river beds, on the wings of legend through a burning -and sanguinary past of repeated invasions; of Barbary pirates from -across the sea to the south, and Visigoths from the north, of wandering -Bohemians, of steady marching Roman armies, of Popes flying from Italy -for refuge, of gentle saints stranded in tiny boats on the desolate -marshy shores of the _Camargue_ and I see her as she ought to have been -and as she was sometimes, down there, her face brown, her blue eyes -flashing, and her thin body, lean and hard, mounted on one of the small -fleet horses of the country, galloping at the head of the thundering -fighting bulls towards the arenas of Nimes or Arles. This was her -proper setting. It was here at the _Château des Trois Maries_ that she -showed herself to me, as she would have been had she not been accursed. - -I remember one day in her room in the west tower of the Castle, -her talking of herself, as she never talked to me before or since, -honestly, as honestly as she could, and with light laughter breaking -into her short light biting phrases. From the high window we could see -the white dust of the road whirling down the valley before the hot -scurrying wind, groves of poplars bending their plumed heads, little -brown houses surrounded by close vineyards huddled behind screens of -cypress trees. - -“I was born here,” she said, “of a woman who loathed her husband and -hated this country--but I wasn’t really born--I was made by witches -one hot windy midsummer day. They made me out of the burning sun and -the shrieking mistral and the hot white dust, in the black shade -of cypresses, and they added to the hot mixture, ice water from -that mountain stream; then they each laid on me a curse. One said, -the oldest and wickedest--‘She will covet the earth, but only love -herself.’ The second said ‘She will be haunted by the evil spirits of -dead men.’ The third said--‘Since the people of this country are fond -of wild jokes and pranks,--they are you know, _très blagueurs, les -Provençaux_, she will be much given to playing mischievous jokes that -will do others harm.’ Then they left me in the dark cypress grove, -where my mother who was wandering about and longing for the laughter -and music of her Italy, found me. She, poor darling, invoked the three -Marys for my protection, _les Saintes Maries de la Mer_ who are carved -in the stone over the great door, _Marie Salomé_, _Marie Jacobé_ and -_Marie Madeleine_; their shrine is in the grotto behind the house--but -they had been shipwrecked themselves and were too inefficient to cope -with my witches--and so that you see is what I am--burning hot and -icy cold, and with a dry wind, shrieking in my heart, and three times -accursed. I feel it. I know it. I have known it since I was a child--At -first I struggled, then gave in, took my curses in my arms and made -them mine, made them, I tell you--my religion--” She gave her dry -laugh. Her voice was high and sweet and careless. She spoke, without -passion, in her dry conversational tone. “If I could never love any -one but myself, never forget myself, try as I might in excesses of -every kind, then I would love myself utterly. If I was to be haunted -by the unfulfilled ideas of men and women long dead, then I would give -myself up to those ideas, and if my pranks were fated to do people -harm, well--what business was it of mine? I would enjoy doing people -harm--idiots that they are, why should I care for their thin silly -feelings? - -“You think I am talking nonsense. If you believed me, you would be -horrified--_eh, bien_--be horrified--but you will never understand. You -will never believe that I am as bad as I am. That is the reason I like -you--that is the reason I talk to you. You are obstinate and faithful -and strong--and beside that you have demons too--I see them in your -awful sullen face that I like. - -“I tell you--that I am used by ideas that are not my own--that do not -come out of my own head, that come to me from I know not where. They -come persistently--out of the sky, circling back again and again like -black birds coming out of the sky to this tower. For instance; an idea -comes to me that I must go to Nimes and see a certain matador and send -for him and make him love me--I know he will be stupid and coarse and -disgusting, and I refuse. Then things happen. Every day lines appear in -the papers--his name is everywhere, in every village on every stable -wall--I laugh--and give in--and it is all stale and horrid before it -begins, but the idea had to be carried out. That you will say is just -the stupid giving into caprice of any idle woman--but it is not always -so ordinary. Suppose that some day the idea comes to me that I must -entice my husband into the oubliette. I laugh at the idea and chase it -away. Six months later it comes back more insistent, a thing with a -voice. It says ‘Get him into the north tower. He is a mean creature. He -will fall down the oubliette’--and I say peevishly--‘But I don’t mind -his being alive--he doesn’t bother me, I am not interested in killing -him’ and again I drive away the idea--but it will come back, it will -keep coming back till it is satisfied. There have been many ideas like -that demanding of me to be satisfied. Sooner or later I carry them -out--do their bidding. Often in hours of lucidity I see how dangerous -they are. I fight against them, distract myself with some idiocy or -run away--take the train, go in the opposite direction--but almost -always I give in, in the end.” She stopped. I see her now against the -stone coping of the window, leaning out--her head in the sun--looking -down--the wall fell sheer--a hundred feet of masonry and rock. -“Sometimes I think I will throw myself down to get rid of them, these -ideas of men and women whose restless bones are the hot dust of these -mountains--but why should I--why give myself as a sacrifice? It would -be silly--the people I will hurt if I live aren’t worth it--” - -She jerked back into the room and came to my side, laying a hand on my -shoulder, and standing so that I could not see her, a little behind -me, her lips close to my ear. “There are other things,” she whispered, -“worse things--ideas--that I couldn’t tell--” Her fingers clutched my -shoulder, tightening until they hurt me--“You help me, but sometimes -I am angry with you for being what you are and want to hurt you. Some -day, who knows, the idea may come to me to do you harm. You are safe -now because I don’t understand you, and feel you are stronger than -I--but if I ever detected a weakness in you--or if you ever bored me, -then I should hate you, then I would certainly do you a hurt. It’s a -warning--” she broke off with a laugh, kissed lightly the tip of my ear -and left me. - -I was not afraid of her then--what she said did not disturb me. I -laughed at it; I was happy and confident. I had everything in the world -I wanted, and I lived in a daze of joy and excitement--Europe, Paris, -the miracles produced by my wealth, still dazzled and amazed me; going -to bull-fights with Bianca, or hunting wild boar, with the old Duke, -or attending the Courts of Rome, Vienna, Berlin or St. James’s with -Philibert, everything was marvellous. I had no time to worry, and no -reason to do so that I knew of. - -But I remembered what Bianca had said, and in the light of what -happened, I understood that she had been speaking the truth. It was -simply her way of admitting that she was a supreme egotist. Put simply, -it meant that the one motive power in her, was her vanity. It was her -vanity that held her together and gave her an outline. And as she grew -older she developed it as other women develop a gift for music. She -worshipped herself, and she made of her egotism an elaborate religion. -Her adoration of herself grew into a passion and burned with the ardour -of a saint’s miraculously revealed inspiration. She would have gone to -the stake for it. It incased her in complete armour. No one and nothing -could touch her through it. She was the only woman I have ever known -who lived consistently and exclusively for herself, and she did so with -the sustained passion of a religious maniac. One can only compare her -to a Savanorola. - -Her vanity was her power and her curse. It was an ogre. It had to be -fed. Human beings were thrown to it as to the devouring dragons in -fairy tales. We were all victims. I was, and you were, and Philibert -and Jinny, and Micky and Fan and all the others. Insatiable vanity, -that was all there was to Bianca in the last analysis. That was all the -meaning of her, but its manifestations, its results, its devious ways -of arriving at its own ends, these were infinite, would fill volumes. - -You can see how the curse would operate. It operated through her -intelligence. Had she been stupid, all would have been well, but -concentrated on the study and care of herself, elaborating year after -year her attentions to herself, nursing her body, her face, her senses, -supplying to herself stimulants and soothing preparations, searching -for curious new sensations, she was aware of her own limited power to -please herself. Distinctly she perceived something beyond her reach, -a quality of experience outside her range, a beauty she could not -attain. She would have liked best to have been a queen of love, whom -all men adored, like the radiant Simonetta--fairy queen of Florence, -beautifully worshipped by an entire population, and she only succeeded -in being _la femme fatale_. With no gladness in her soul, she could -not inspire gladness--always in the faces of her victims she saw a -reflection of her own darkness. If occasionally, in the lurid light -of the excitement she could so easily evoke, she saw in a man’s face -a flash that resembled joy, ecstacy, delight, she as often saw it -fade to a dismal stupidity, or rage or disgust. Impossible for her to -create anything more than an imitation of bliss. Her egoism spoiled -its own gratification. It contained poison. Her touch was magical and -deadly. This, in the end, bored her. She used to complain exasperatedly -of people being afraid of her. The care with which they succumbed -disgusted her. Men grovelling at her feet, men writing sentimental -verses, men touching her with clumsy hands; she came to loathe them. -There was nothing in it; she wanted something else, something out of -the ordinary, something continually surprising, unexpected, dramatic. -Alas! Humanity goes its stolid way comfortably enough in spite of the -Biancas of the world. Men will “play up” to a certain point. They will -pretend to be dying of love to please a beautiful lady’s caprice, but -they won’t really die. One of the things Bianca longed for was to have -a crop of suicides laid to her account. She would have been pleased had -some of her victims blown their brains out, but somehow they didn’t. -They only threatened to do so. Once out of her sight, they recovered -the normal and sallied forth from her boudoir to enjoy fat beefsteaks. - -Her tragedy lay in understanding what she missed. She observed that -inferior people experienced a range of feeling of which she was -incapable. Insignificant women inspired the passions she longed to -inspire. She envied and despised them. She envied every happy woman -her happiness, every lover his love; her eyes watched them all, with -curiosity, disdain and exasperation. - -What in me began, after our three years of harmony, to get on her -nerves, was my monotonous and exclusive feeling for Philibert. That -such a sentiment should continue to absorb me and satisfy me, after -five years of marriage was too much for her. She became irritable and -teasing. She began to make fun of my love for my husband. She called it -stupid, vulgar, grotesque, indecent. I lost my temper, she grovelled, -enjoying that, but when next we met she began again, professing an -extraordinary merriment at the sight of my mawkish sentimentality. -With a sudden flash of insight I accused her of envy. She grew livid. -In a choking whisper, she told me that Philibert for his part was no -such idiot and that all I had to do was to look about me to find out -the truth. I left her in a rage and stayed away. I did not see her -again until the night of her ball, some months later, to which I went, -knowing that she had determined to take Philibert away from me. It was -the fact that Philibert as she believed had begun to care for me, that -made her finally act. She simply couldn’t bear to think that Philibert -and I should come to understand and truly care equally for each other. - -I went to her ball to make a scene, to frighten her into giving him -back to me, but I did nothing. I didn’t speak to her. I didn’t go -near her. I simply stood and watched her. The sight of her paralysed -me. I realized that no man who had ever known and loved Bianca, could -care for me. And I came away, knowing that between me and Philibert, -everything was ended, and I came away terrified. As I left the house, I -remember muttering to myself “I must escape”--“I must escape.” Escape -from what? I don’t know. From them both, from what they had done, from -what they stood for, from the world of treachery and deadly pleasure to -which they belonged. - -But I did not get away. I never got away. I never escaped from Bianca. -I never got out of range of the sense of her presence and of her -infernal charm. I still cared for her. Hating her, I still wondered -that she could have hurt me, still wept and called out to her in the -dark at night to know why she had done it, still felt her to be the -most fascinating woman I had ever known, and it was this that made -my jealousy of Philibert unbearable and fiendish. I had been twice -betrayed and I knew loving them both, and knowing them both, precisely -the quality of the delight they had in each other. - -And I knew too, that Bianca was acting as she did because of me--even -more than because of Philibert. I was conscious and I was convinced -that she was conscious that the real meaning of the whole thing lay -in her feeling for me. There was between us, a relationship that had -become hateful, but that was still going on, a thing that was going to -endure, a mutual sympathy outraged and hideous now, but persisting. If -she had only wanted Philibert--well, she had him already. No--what she -wanted was to hurt me. And making all allowances for the attraction -between them, had it not been for me, he would not have inspired her -with a sufficient energy to bolt with him. The situation would have -lacked that something peculiar and curious which she wanted, had she -not felt as she did about me. - -But I may be confused between what I knew then and what I know now. -It may be that I did not understand it all so well, then--I forget--I -cannot recall my actual state of mind. I give less importance to -my preoccupation with Philibert than I should do, and lay too much -emphasis on Bianca, because you see, I have got over Philibert, the -hurt he did me is long since past and I no longer care about it, but -from Bianca--I have never recovered. She never let me go--she never -finished with me. It wasn’t just one thing--it was a series of things -stretching over years, a continual coming back. You see--in the last -analysis it was because of me that she ran away with Philibert, broke -Fan’s heart and laid schemes for corrupting Jinny--and these things -took fifteen years to accomplish. There was war between us for fifteen -years. - -The story of my life is the story of my duel with Bianca. Other people -played a part, other feelings absorbed me for long periods, other -relationships endured, but my relationship to Bianca was the long -strong rope that hanged me. You will see how it was. - -Why did she go on with it? I don’t know. Unless it was that I never -gave in. Had I collapsed after Philibert left me, she might have been -satisfied--and satisfied, she would have lost interest in me--and I -should have been saved. - - - - -II - - -It is very difficult for me to recall my state of mind during the days -that followed Philibert’s going off with her. - -I’ve an idea that I was in a kind of stupor, not much noticing -anything. I must have given orders that no one was to be admitted, for -I learned afterwards that Claire and your mother both called, and a -number of other relatives. I think I remained in my room for a day or -two lying on the bed with my clothes on and refusing to open the door -to my maid. It was Jinny who roused me. The servants were frightened. -The nurse brought her down and she pounded on the door with her little -fists till I opened it, but when she saw me she gave a shriek and ran -away from me and hid in her nurse’s petticoats. That brought me to -my senses, my child’s fear and the servants’ faces. I had a bath and -something to eat. They brought me my letters obsequiously, and with -furtive curiosity. I could hear the servants hanging about whispering. -I imagined them talking, talking, endlessly talking it over downstairs. -They were strangers to me, Philibert’s servants, servants of that -great, horrible house that I disliked. I had no reason to stay there -now. Nothing kept me--I would go home to St. Mary’s Plains. - -I started a letter to my Aunt Patience, what was I to say to her? “My -husband has run away with another woman. He never loved me. My mother -married me to him for her own purposes. Now that she is dead there is -no more reason to go on with this horrible farce. I am coming home.” -Something of that kind? No, I couldn’t. I stared at the words I had -written--“My dearest Aunt Patty.” I seemed to see her sitting off -there, at the end of that great distance, adjusting her spectacles, -opening my letter with expectant fingers. I saw the shabby room, the -sunlight on the worn carpet, the littered writing desk, the piles of -books, the stuffed birds in their glass cases. I saw my aunt an old -woman, facing old age alone, with equanimity, following year after -year the pursuit of knowledge, not afraid of time, not oppressed by -solitude, going up to bed night after night in the empty house and -kneeling down in her flannel dressing-gown beside her narrow white -counterpane to pray to God, and remembering me always, never forgetting -me, never leaving me alone. - -Once she had said, “When you’re in a hole, Jane, and don’t know what to -do, you can always do the thing you hate doing most and you’ll probably -not be far wrong.” - -Looking out of the window I became aware of Paris and I thought of -those words. Paris! There it was streaming by, to the races. Was it -aware of what had happened to me? I wondered. Did people know that -Bianca and Philibert had run away together like a couple of actors, -like a pair of quite common people? I imagined society agog with the -scandal. I saw them gloating pitying. I heard women saying--“_Cette -pauvre femme, elle était vraiment trop bête._” It seemed to me that -every one in the street must be looking up at my windows with curiosity -and derision. They were invading my privacy, pulling off from me the -last decent covering of my dignity. Well, why sit there and bear it? -Why suffer public humiliation? My eyes fell on my engagement book. I -observed that Philibert and I were due for dinner that night at your -Aunt Clothilde’s. I rang for my maid and told her to telephone _Madame -la Duchesse_ and say that although Monsieur, having been called out of -town, would not be able to present himself at her dinner, I would come -with pleasure, as had been arranged. My face in the glass seemed much -as usual. I had done all my weeping with you, my poor Blaise, three -nights before. Having made up my mind to go out I now experienced a -certain relief. The coiffeur was summoned and the manicurist. Aunt -Clo’s dinners were very special affairs, so I chose a nice dress, -white, and put on an extra rope of pearls. As you know, my appearance -created something of a sensation. I saw that at once. They had thought -me already dead and buried, and were gossiping as I suspected, over my -remains. My business for the moment was to show them that I was alive. - -Ah, but how dreary and trivial it all seems now. Why? Why? What earthly -difference did it make what they said or thought? But I am telling -you about it, just as it was. I wanted, I needed desperately at that -moment, the sense of my own dignity. It was all I had left. So I went -out to that dinner party and defended it. - -Aunt Clo was nice. She was pleased with me and put me opposite her. It -was a vatican dinner, semi-political. I had, I remember, the Italian -Ambassador on my right and the Foreign Minister on my left. Your aunt -was between the Archbishop and the Duc de B---- recently arrived -from Rome. The talk was brilliant, I believe. I heard it in a daze, -but managed to keep my end up somehow. Clémentine was there, at her -best, in wonderful form. She must have known all about Philibert, -for she came up to me after dinner and said--“Blaise de Joigny is my -great friend. You must come to see me. We have much in common.” Our -friendship dates from that night. - -But when I reached home I felt more tired than I had thought it -possible to be. I went up to the nursery. Jinny was asleep in her cot, -hugging a white woolly dog. I knelt beside her and sent out my spirit -in search of God, but I did not find Him. I could not pray. I heard my -baby’s breathing, blissful, trustful breathing. I knelt listening. She -was so small and sweet. Above her was an immense blackness. She made -now and then happy little sounds in her sleep, and lying there so still -I saw her moving on and on, invisibly, into the future to the ticking -of the nursery clock, carried along as she lay there on the current of -life, life that was an enormous dupery, an ugliness and a lie. - -The days passed, separate and distinct, moving in a procession, each -one to be watched and endured separately, moving by their own volition, -taking no account of me, having nothing to do with me, answerable to -some mysterious power that started each one rolling like a bead dropped -from the end of a string, and in each one, as in a crystal, I saw the -pageant of Paris revolving, but I was outside, drifting in empty space. - -The longing to get away from it all was unbearable. I would go--I -would go--I must go--Patience Forbes was the only person in the world -who could help me--and yet I went on working out my idea that took me -about among people, and you, dear Blaise, went with me. Your attitude -was of a delicacy rare even in your world of delicate adjustments -and sympathies. You understood, you constituted yourself my escort. -Do you remember those days, how we went from one place to another, -luncheons, dinners, private views, official receptions, and how we -tacitly agreed on just the amount we were bound to do for our purpose? -I scarcely realized at the time all that it meant for you to do this, -and how the family would resent your attitude. I know now that they -never quite trusted you after this. As I remember we talked nothing -over and did not, I think, mention Philibert save once, when I asked -you if you knew where he was. You did know, of course. Every one knew, -I suppose, except myself. They had been seen, those two, boarding -the Simplon express. They were in Venice, you told me, I had wanted -to know for convenience. Having adopted a line, it seemed best to -follow it consistently. One was to assume that my husband had gone -away for a holiday. I was there to make his excuses to suffering -hostesses deprived of his society. The note to be struck was light and -commonplace, as if his absence were like any other of his many past -absences. The pretence deceived no one, but then the consistent lying -made for decency. I was marking time. It was particularly difficult -because I was not acting in accord with my nature. Had I been natural -at that time I should have been horrible; I should have smashed -things. But I was not behaving like myself. I see now what it was; -I was behaving like one of you, behaving as Claire, for instance, -would have behaved in my place. I was adopting your methods and your -standards. Not to give myself away, not to let any one suspect what -I was feeling and thinking, not to make a false step, not to make -above all a public fuss, that seems to have been my idea. To preserve -appearances as beautifully as possible, that was what you and I were -working at, as we trailed drearily round from one place to another -saying suave things with smooth faces. - -And there was another influence working on me, even more subtle and -far more pervasive. You will smile, perhaps, when I tell you that my -quiet behaviour came from looking every day across the Place de la -Concorde to the austere and reserved façade of the Madeleine, or across -a silver distance of pale houses to the far alabaster pinnacle of the -Sacré Coeur high above the city, but it was so. Paris exercises upon -its inhabitants a fine discipline of taste. Those who love it change -unconsciously. The long, wide, symmetrical avenues, the formal gardens, -with their slim fountains, single waving sprays of crystal water, the -calm façades of long rows of narrow, uniform houses, palest yellow in -sunlight, pearl white towards evening, these things have an effect upon -one’s manners that is imperceptible and profound. They spelt to me -harmony and restraint and Plato’s idea of beauty. My high falsity was -at the best only less futile than a good, noisy bout of hysterics. What -comforted me in these hours of doubt was that I knew you were no more -certain than I. You did not represent your family. You were neither -a go-between nor a spy nor a jailor, you were a friend. Positively I -believe there were moments when you wanted me to break out, break away, -throw caution and carefulness to the winds. Sometimes there was so much -compassion in your face that I almost cried out to you not to care so -much. I wanted to warn you that it was only for the moment that I was -keeping my head up, that I wouldn’t be able and didn’t intend to go on -with it indefinitely and that the thought behind all my smooth social -words was; “He has gone for ever. Soon I’ll be free to say so.” - -I did really believe Philibert had left me for good. It never occurred -to me that he would ever come back, and that belief was in a way -my refuge. I was rid of them both; Bianca, I told myself, would be -satisfied now and would leave me alone. She would carry on her mischief -elsewhere, not in my life. My life was, I believed, my own, separated -for always from hers and from Philibert. - -Then one day Fan turned up. She came in jauntily, her head in the air, -as if nothing had happened. She looked very smart, her hat set at a -rakish angle, her short, pleated skirt flippant above her neat ankles. -From across the room she called out “Well,--Jane, we’ve married a nice -pair of men. Here’s Philibert’s skipped and I’ve had to send Ivanoff -packing. He’d taken to beating me, I’m black and blue all over. Some -people like it--I don’t.” She gave me a peck on the cheek. “Poor old -Jane, you’re taking it hard, I suppose.” She turned back the sleeve -of her dress. Her arm had welts on it. “You should see my back.” I -shuddered, but at sight of my emotion she twitched away from me with a -nervous laugh. “Between my Slav and your Frenchman I don’t know that -there’s much to choose. God, if it were only an occasional beating I -shouldn’t mind.” She did a waltz step across the room, twirled round on -her tiny feet, lit a cigarette standing on tiptoe, and collapsed into a -chair in a spasm of coughing. - -“I had it out with Ivanoff, my dear, about you, and I know all about -it--just the exact sums you gave him for me, bless your baby heart, -and everything. At first I doubted you. I was a fool. I’m sorry. -Unfortunately I found out other things. There are other women in the -world who don’t love me at all, but who pay for my shoes. Do you hear? -Do you get what I mean? I find I’ve been paying my bills with their -money. What do you say to that? I ask you simply. And we’re on the -streets now--at least he’s gone--I’m staying with Madeleine de Greux, -and the bailiffs have got our furniture.” And she went off into a wild -scream of laughter. It was incredibly painful. She sat there as neat -and smart as a pin. Her small cocked hat on one side of her head, her -pretty little legs crossed, one high-heeled patent leather slipper -dangling in the air, the other tapping the floor, she puffed smoke -through her little tilted nose and looked at me desperately out of her -hard, level eyes, while she yelled with laughter just as if some one -were tickling her till she screamed with pain. - -I went to my desk and got out my cheque book. “Let’s pay off the -furniture first,” I said as prosaically as I could, but she jumped up -irritably. - -“God! Jane, what a fool you are. Put that cheque book away. Do you -think I’d touch another penny of yours? There--don’t be hurt. Of course -I would if I needed it, but what good will money do? I can’t go and -hunt out Ivo’s mistresses and pay them back, can I? Oh, God! Oh, God! -Oh, God!--I did like him. Men are devils. Even now I’m worried about -him. I imagine him locked up somewhere or dead drunk in the gutter -lying out in the dark--whereas he’s probably at Monte having a high old -time. By the way, your French family is in a great state about you. -Claire says their position as regards you is very delicate. I suppose -it is. They don’t know whether to come here or to leave you alone. They -wonder what you’re going to do. They’re frightfully cut up about Fifi, -and they’re afraid you’ll do something final like getting a divorce.” - -“Well, my dear, that’s just what I do think of doing.” - -“I see.” She ruminated, chewing her cigarette that had gone out. -“They’ll never forgive you if you do.” - -“I suppose not, but I don’t see that that matters.” - -“Oh, but it does. They’re so perfectly charming. They’d make Paris -impossible for you.” - -“That sounds charming, I must say.” - -“Don’t be stupid, Jane. You know what I mean. You know how clever they -are. They’re the most attractive people on earth. But if you set them -against you, the whole clan, you’ll find life here very different.” - -“I don’t propose to live here.” - -“Where then?” - -“In St. Mary’s Plains.” - -“Heaven help you, my poor misguided lamb.” - -“I’m homesick,” I persisted obstinately. - -“Of course, for the moment, because you’re unhappy.” - -“No, not only because I’m unhappy. I like the Grey House. I belong -there. It’s quiet, it’s safe, it’s real, it’s the place I know best in -the world.” - -“Nonsense. It’s a dingy little shanty.” - -“You can call it names if you like. I don’t care what you say. I’m -going back there.” - -“For good?” - -“I don’t know--perhaps.” - -“Well, you won’t stay, so you’d better not risk it.” - -“Risk what?” - -“Having to eat humble pie and come back to be forgiven.” - -It was my turn to get up with a fling of exasperation and walk about. -She followed me with her bright, piercing gaze. - -“Think a little, Jane. Use your brains, if you can. Think of the -difference between your life here and your life at home in that -Godforsaken hole of St. Mary’s Plains. Look at this room. Look out -of the window and remember. Don’t I remember? Wooden sidewalks with -weeds growing between the boards, boys playing marbles in the street, -women hanging out their washing in backyards, Sunday clothes, oh, -those best Sunday clothes, revival meetings, Moody and Sankey in tents -on the lake shore, picnics, bicycle rides, dances at the Country -Club, freckled youths kissing you on the verandah, great news--Ethel -Barrymore is coming in her new play that’s been running a year in New -York. Excursions on the lake, fifty cents a round trip and soft drinks, -sarsaparilla, ginger ale, buggy rides, shopping down town, talking to -old women--cats who gossip about somebody’s new red silk petticoat, -too flighty, indecent. All going to church and shouting ‘Hallaleluja’ -and eating blueberry pie afterwards till their mouths are all black -inside.” - -“Well,” I said. She wriggled about as if sitting on pins. - -“You want to give up Paris, this house, your position here, for that? -You’ve got Europe at your feet. You’ve only got to sit tight and every -one in Paris will be on your side. Fifi will come back and be as good -as gold. You’ll be able to do what you like with him after this.” - -I stopped her. - -“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.” - - - - -III - - -Philibert’s family had shown up to this point, a remarkable restraint. -As long as I went about as if nothing had happened, they left me alone, -but after my scene with Fan I allowed myself a revulsion of feeling. I -stopped going out. I shut myself up and sent for my lawyer. Philibert -had been gone two months. I saw no reason to put off any longer, the -action that I was determined on; I would start divorce proceedings, -leave things in professional hands and go home. What else could I do? - -July was drawing to a close. The season was ending in a languid dribble -of belated garden parties. Fan, with a characteristic spurt of energy, -had recovered and gone off to the Austrian Tyrol with the de Greux, -leaving me with a last bit of reiterated advice about not being a fool. -I observed that I had no place to go, and nothing to do. Biarritz, -Trouville, Dinard, would mean carrying on the sickening pretence under -an even closer scrutiny than in Paris. The Château de Ste. Clothilde -had no charms for me now. I had liked the place, but Philibert had -spoiled it with his endless improvements. It was now, his creation -stamped with him. Sitting alone in my room at the top of the house with -the shabby relics of the Grey House, I thought of him as he had been -there in the country, strutting about directing his army of workmen, -cutting down trees, pulling up whole lawns to replace them with -gravelled terraces, and sinking into the reluctant earth marble basins -for the lovely vagrant waters of the park. He had always professed to -be the enemy of nature. It was true. What he called--“_Les bêtises de -la nature_,” filled him with disgust. Spreading trees and green fields -dotted with buttercups and bubbling streams tumbling through thickets -got on his nerves. “_Regardez donc le laissez-aller de tout cela_,” -he would cry. “How ugly it is. How stupid. It has no form, no design.” -Clumps of trees in a meadow he would liken to pimples on hairy faces. -He called grass the hair of the earth, and couldn’t endure it unless it -was close cut. He never saw a stream of water without wanting to use it -up in elaborate fountains. Gardens he regarded as “salons” in the open -air. One should use the shrubs and trees and flowers as one used silks -and brocades in an interior. Everything in a garden must be “_voulu_.” -Nothing must be left to go its own way, not a vine, not a rosebush, not -a tree should be allowed a movement of its own. Nature must be bound -and twisted into a work of art. “Ah,” he would exclaim, “how it amuses -me to torture nature.” You know what he did. The result was very fine -of its kind, certainly very grandiose. He would lead people out on the -terrace and, standing a minute, a shiny dapper little manikin, five -foot four in high heels above that great design of gravel walks and -fountains and squares of water, with their little parquets of green -grass closed in by hedges, like a series of drawing-rooms, he would -sparkle with enthusiasm. “You see,” he would say, “what I have done, -you see how these gardens _s’accrochent au château_, how it is all a -part of the house. The château could not exist without the garden, -nor the garden without the château. One would have no sense without -the other. Before I restored the grounds and elaborated on the old -designs of Lenôtre, the house was horrible.” He had placed complicated -machinery under his fountains that made the waters when they were in -play take a dozen varied successive shapes. Nothing amused him more -than watching all those waters playing, twisting, turning, tracing -strange designs in the sunlight, designs that he himself had imagined. -It gave him a peculiar joy to see his own idea produced in crystal -drops of water. He had worked in sunlight and limpid flowing water as -a painter works in colours, and had in a way produced for himself the -illusion of the miraculous. - -He couldn’t understand why I suffered when he had all those magnificent -trees uprooted and when later on I complained that there was no shade -anywhere and no place to lie down with a book: “But, my poor child, -you’ve your bed for that, or your ‘_chaise longue_.’ This garden is -neither a bedroom nor a boudoir, it is a ‘_salle de fêtes_’.” - -I remembered all this. Certainly for many reasons Ste. Clothilde was -out of the question. I would take Jinny home with me to St. Mary’s -Plains. The moment had come. A strange excitement came over me as I at -last wrote out the cablegram to Patience Forbes announcing our sailing -on the first of August. On the same day I had a talk with my solicitor. -_Maître_ Baudoin was a jaded, dry man, I believe honest, and rather -dull. He was eager for a holiday and very bored, I could see, at the -idea of being kept in town. He gave me little sympathy. - -I wished to divorce my husband. That might or might not be possible. -It depended, of course, to a certain extent, to a limited extent, on -whether I had sufficient grounds, and whether _Monsieur le Marquis_ -contested the suit. I intimated briefly that I believed I had -sufficient grounds. He eyed me gravely through half-shut deferential -and sleepy eyes. Did I think my husband would defend the suit, because -if he did, no matter what my grounds were, the case might last five -years. He told me this as a matter of conscience. Such a case would -be lucrative to him, of course, but it might prove fatiguing to the -parties more directly concerned. Five years? Yes, or even ten. That -was the way in France. A divorce against a man who fought it was very -difficult to obtain, and of course the Church did not recognize it. -That was not his affair save in so far as if I had the intention of -re-marrying, such a marriage would of necessity be considered bigamous -by all good Catholics. I had, I said, no intention of marrying a second -time. He seemed at that rather mystified. I desired, then, nothing more -than legal separation? That was much simpler. It was all a question of -property. Was there a settlement? He supposed I wished “_séparation -des biens_.” I told him that I had no wish to leave _Monsieur de -Joigny_ in financial difficulties and that that question might be left -until later, but he proved obstinate and kept on talking on the same -subject till my head ached. Finally I gathered that he was suggesting -as delicately as he could that Philibert might be bribed. “But I can’t -settle on him a large sum,” I objected wearily, “the fortune is tied up -for my daughter.” - -“Ah, a trust?” - -“Yes.” - -“It all goes to your child on your death?” - -“Yes, to my children or child, by my father’s will.” - -“I see. She becomes, then, the important factor.” - -“What do you mean?” - -“You would lose her.” - -“Why?” - -“The law courts would not deprive her father of her custody.” - -“But if he doesn’t care for her?” - -“Are you sure he doesn’t?” - -“He has left her.” - -“For a time, perhaps, but she is his, and if, which would be most -unnatural, he did not care for her, he might still care for what she -represented.” - -It was on the tip of my tongue to say that he cared for nothing but -his mistress, but I left the vulgar words unspoken. After all, I was -not sure that Philibert did not care for Geneviève. His moods of a -doting father might be genuine. He might indeed fight for her. My will -hardened as I wearily dismissed the tiresome discouraging man of law. -It was all more complicated than I had thought. - -He had scarcely got out of the house before it was invaded by -relatives. With a startling promptitude, they bore down on me. They -must have had spies in the house. My secretary must have telephoned the -alarm, or the Governess or the Butler, any one, or all of the staff -may have been keeping them informed. In any case, there they were, -miraculously ushered into my presence without warning one by one, -or two by two, or in groups, aunts, uncles, cousins, first, second, -third cousins, cousins by marriage once removed, some of them people -whom I scarcely knew, strange old women in wigs with withered faces -and ragged feather boas, unearthed for the occasion out of their old -grand sealed houses; shrivelled old men with stiff knees and watery -eyes; it would have seemed funny, had my nerves not been on edge, had -their visits not appeared to me so exceedingly misplaced. I soon found -that no hinting on my part would make them take this view. They meant -business. They were the family. They were acting for the family and as -a family. Some of them constituted that sacred thing the “_conseil de -famille_” and they were acting in accordance with the rights and duties -of a French family in harmony with and under the protection of the law -of the French state. With correct and concise politeness they gave me -to understand that I was not free to do as I liked, that I was one of -them, bound as they were bound, and that if I chose to go against their -will, and defy my obligations, then I would do so at my own peril and -at the cost of what I held most dear. I saw what they were driving at. -They meant to keep Jinny whatever happened. If I declared war, I would -lose my child. - -I put it brutally. They didn’t. They were charming. They beat round the -bush. They asked after my health. They drank tea and smoked cigarettes -and patted Jinny’s head and said charming things to her and gave her -bonbons but they made their meaning clear and the more diplomatic they -were, the angrier I became. - -This kind of thing went on for three days. I remained obdurate. I -refused to commit myself, but gradually I was becoming frightened. -What frightened me was that I saw that they all, every one of them, -even those that I had thought most human, even your Aunt Alice who -was a saint and your Uncle Stanislas all sided with Philibert, all -stood solid behind him, all would stick to him no matter what he did, -before the world and against the foreigner who threatened the close -fabric of their community; and I took it as a sinister portent that -those of the immediate family, whom I knew best, your mother and Claire -and Aunt Clothilde, stayed away. In despair I went to Aunt Clothilde. -What, I asked her, did it all mean? She gave me no comfort. It meant -simply that things were so in France. French families were like that. -They clung together, and they did not admit divorce. If I tried to -divorce Philibert I would fail and would in the attempt lose my child. -Philibert, of course, was a rascal, but what would you, I ought to -have known it from the beginning. American women thought too much of -themselves. There was no modesty in the way I was behaving. Why should -I suppose that the whole scheme of the social state should be upset -because my husband liked another woman better than he did me? She -liked me, of course she liked me--for that reason she had refused to -take part in the family’s councils of war. But she was disappointed -in me, she had thought I had pluck. Here I was, behaving like a fish -wife who has been knocked into the gutter, screaming for my rights, -for vengeance. I had better go home and say my prayers. I went, and -as if in answer to the dreadful old woman’s bidding found a bishop in -the drawing-room. My nerves by that time were in such a state that the -suave and polished prelate soon had me in tears. He mistook them for -tears of repentance. He talked a long time about the consolation of -religion and the comfort of confession and rejoiced to find that I was -less inimical to the benign influence of Rome, than he had thought. I -scarcely heard what he said, but his fine ivory face and glowing eyes -and thin set mouth, gave me a feeling of uncanny power. I remembered -that I belonged to his Church, that I had been solemnly married at the -High Altar of Rome, that there I had taken vows, had professed beliefs, -and I felt a sudden superstitious terror. What if it were true, their -truth? What could they do to me, these mysterious ministers of the -Pope? What could they not do? In my fever, I saw myself tracked to -St. Mary’s Plains, followed up the steps of the Grey House by sallow -figures in black cassocks, and suffering, labouring for the rest of my -days, under the mysterious blight of an ecclesiastical curse. - -When one lives in a country that is not one’s own, among strange -people whom one knows only superficially, surrounded by customs and -conventions that one does not understand, one finds it difficult to -decide moral issues. I felt bewildered and at a loss. It still seemed -to me at moments inevitable and right to divorce Philibert. At other -moments I felt less sure. The disapproval of the organized compact -community was having its effect. The antagonism of the family acted on -me with incessant pressure, however obstinately I repeated to myself -the words “I don’t care.” I did care. I was alone. I could not even be -certain that my Aunt Patience would approve. She might say in her terse -way, “Quite right, Jane. He’s forfeited your respect, get rid of him,” -or she might say, “You married him before God, you can’t undo that,” I -did not know what she would say. And the problem of Geneviève tortured -me. The fear of losing her if I divorced her father was no greater -than the fear of seeing her gradually slipping from me as the years -passed, if I remained his wife. No one knew better than I how charming -he could be if he chose. I watched him in anticipation stealing her -heart from me, turning her against her own mother. I saw her becoming -more and more like him, becoming his pupil, his work of art. Philibert -made things his own so easily. He had a genius for conquest. Everything -that he touched became his. How different from me! There was nothing -in Philibert’s house that belonged to me, except the few sticks of -furniture that I had hidden away in that room upstairs. The lovely -things in the great rooms troubled me. They affected my nerves as if -a chorus of small muffled voices were calling out to me in strange -tongues that I could not understand. I realized their beauty, but was -conscious of not appreciating them as they deserved. There was no -sympathy between us. They affected me but I did not affect them. I -could never make them look as if they were a part of my life. I was -loath to handle them, but no amount of touching with my fingers would -have given them a familiar look; the tables and chairs and tapestries -remained there around me, enigmatic, permanent, unresponsive. My life -spent itself, throbbing out among them, beating against their calm, -smooth surfaces without reaching them. There was no trace in that house -of the tumult of my own life. It continued cold, inexorable and strange. - -It remained for your mother to seek me out in my loneliness and show me -what I should do. I thought at the time that I recognized her words as -words of truth. I do not know now whether I was right or wrong. - -Claire never came. She sent her husband instead, not so much as a -messenger, more as an object lesson, a mute reminder--I caught her -idea--I was to look at him and realize what she was putting up with -and draw from the spectacle of his awfulness the moral. Unexpectedly, -his awfulness, appealed to me. There was something about this keen -little stolid French bounder that was a relief. His oily head, his fat -brown face, his monstrous nose and little bright beady eyes, these -unattractive things made up a hard compact entity. He was solid and -complete, round paunch, tight trousers, plump hands fingering a gold -watch chain, smell of bayrum and soap, aura of success, of materialism, -of industrial jubilance and all the rest of it. But he showed me -for the first time that day something more, himself smarting under -his thick skin with the innumerable de Joigny slights stinging him, -controlled enough not to let on, determined to get out of them in -exchange what they could give him, but not counting it much, a shrewd -downright kind little rascal, with a good old middle-class self-respect -strong in him, strong enough to make him feel himself their superior. - -It didn’t take him long to make his point. He talked quickly and neatly. - -Claire was unwell, she had sent him to add his voice to the family -howl. Claire never howled. When there was trouble, she withdrew. It -wasn’t her _genre_, to mix herself up in a fuss. Well--he wasn’t at all -sure that he had anything to say. Firstly because, after all, it was -none of his business. He wasn’t a member of the de Joigny family and -never would be. They had made that perfectly clear, years ago. So why -should he interfere? - -I smiled. “Why indeed?” He smiled back, his hands crossed on his -stomach; his smile took a cynically humorous curve. - -“If on the other hand, Madame, my sister-in-law, you want an outsider’s -opinion, it is at your disposal.” - -“Two outsiders, confabing together,” I ventured. - -“No,” he spoke abruptly, in a light sharp staccato, a nasal voice, -not unpleasant, the voice of the phenomenally intelligent French -bourgeoisie. “You are not as I am. You are a woman. They won’t let you -in--but they won’t let you out. You belong to them. I don’t--beside -I am of their people. I am French--I have my own backing. They don’t -like what I represent but they are obliged to admit its importance. It -is the backbone of France that I represent, the bread they eat, the -stones they walk on, the nation they ground under their heels in the -old days. They stamp on me now, but only in play, only to save their -faces--not seriously--they can’t. You, Madame, are different. You are a -foreigner, and ‘_sans défense_.’ _La famille de Joigny_ have a contempt -for foreigners. Your protectors are in America. They snap their fingers -at them. You are helpless--” - -It was true. Well then? - -He eyed me, humorously. “It depends on what you want out of them. I -take it they can’t give you much of anything. You didn’t marry one -of them, as I did, to ameliorate your situation in society. Putting -aside the charm of the son and daughter, why did we do it? I did it -as a bit of business. For me it was ‘_une affaire_--’ how it turned -out is neither here nor there. I can look after myself. For you it is -different, I repeat you are helpless. They are too many for you.” He -chuckled good-naturedly. - -Again it was true; I assented meekly. - -“Ah ha--_Voilà_, you see it. Then, my advice is--‘_Filez_’--get out.” - -“And Geneviève?” - -“Bribe them.” - -“You think--?” - -He ruminated, his nose in the air--“Yes, I think--if you make it -enough.” He laughed again, rose briskly, took up his hat, his -cream-coloured gloves, his gold-headed cane. For an instant his bright -little eyes scrutinized me--he seemed about to speak, his thick lips -formed, I saw them there, grave words, a confidence perhaps, a lament, -a plea for sympathy, I know not what. He didn’t speak them; he was very -intelligent; he had a delicacy as fine as theirs, when he cared to show -it. There was a nicer compliment to me in this clever little bounder’s -attempting no understanding with me, than any I had received in many a -long day. - -He left with me a pleasant feeling of my own independence, he left me -invigorated and more sane than I had been, but your mother wiped out -the impression he had made, with one wave of her hand. - -I remember the sight of her in my doorway. I was so little expecting -her that I had a chance to see her quite clearly during one instant, -before I realized who she was. A small black figure in a stiff little -ugly black hat and short cape, a dumpy forlorn little figure of no -grace or elegance, and a worn nervous face, out of which stared a -pair of very bright determined dark eyes. She might have been a very -hard-driven gentle woman, determined to brave insults and apply for -the post of housekeeper. This in the flash before all that I knew of -her covered her like a veil, and before she spoke. - -I did not want to see her. I knew in an instant why she had come. I -remember wondering if I could get out of the other door before she -spoke, before I really looked at her, and all the time I was looking -and she was looking, we were staring at each other. - -I had always had a deep regard for her. The fact that she did not like -me, made no difference. That was where Claire’s husband had fallen -short in his putting of the case. He didn’t know that I cared for -Madame de Joigny; he didn’t know that I wanted the family to love -me, because I loved them. Now in your mother’s presence, I felt the -immense disadvantage of this. She cared nothing for me and I was bound -to give in to her. I knew I would give in. I knew that I was about to -make one last attempt to win her. I tried to rouse myself. I recalled -and went over in my mind the opinion I knew she had of me. I knew that -physically I was repulsive to her. Often when I approached her, I had -seen her shudder. She thought me _outrée_. Once she had said, “Why is -it Jane, that you can never look like other people? Everything you put -on becomes gorgeous and exaggerated. It is most unfortunate.” And she -was afraid of my feelings, my violent enthusiasms and my deep longings. -Oh, I knew, I knew quite well. Instinctively she felt my hot blood -pounding in my veins--and recoiled from contact. - -Most of all she hated me because of what I had done to Philibert. I -had made him nouveau riche; I had made him ridiculous; I had made him -unhappy, and worst of all, I had made him appear to her, cruel and -vulgar. When he was unkind to me, she hated me for being the cause of -his unkindness. You thought her love for Philibert a blind adoration -but it was not blind. She understood him, she knew him to his bones, -and she spent her life in shielding him from her own scrutiny. Her -relief was in submitting herself to his charm. She delighted in him, -but she hated his conduct. It seemed to her that he was a victim -of what she most hated. She accused him in her own heart of being -faithless to her faith, the faith of his ancestors. She saw on him the -stains and distorting marks of the vulgar world that amused him, but -she was continually falling in love with him and losing herself in -his charm, seeking solace, suffering, being disappointed. I believe -Philibert made your mother suffer more than he made me suffer, far, far -more, for you see she couldn’t stop loving him, she could never be free -from him. He was her own, her first-born, the child of her passionate -youth. He was her self that she had projected beyond herself, he was -her great adventure, he was the gauge she had thrown down at the feet -of fate, and it took all her courage to face calmly the travesty he -made of her miracle. - -My existence, you see, added immeasurably to the difficulty of her -task. If he had married Bianca, Bianca, she believed, would have kept -him in order and would have presented him to her soothed eyes in the -light of a gallant gentleman. In marrying me he committed a serious -error in taste to begin with, and having married me he behaved to -me like a brute, and this was almost more than she could bear. The -interesting thing to notice was that though she suffered horribly she -made no attempt to remedy matters, did not try, I mean, to help us, and -never gave me even as much as a hint as to how I should wisely have -treated him, but limited her energy to just bearing her mortification -without giving a sign of it. It did not seem to her worth while -interfering to try and put things right when they were bound to go -wrong, but it did seem necessary to keep up the make-believe that they -were not going wrong. Almost everything in the world was going wrong. -One couldn’t face it. One must shut oneself up. One must ignore ugly -facts. - -Philibert’s going off with Bianca in that spectacular fashion did, -I know, very deeply hurt your mother. The horror of it to her must -have been unspeakable. Here, at last, was an ugly fact of monstrous -proportions that she could not ignore. She was bound at last to do -something. She saw her son disgraced, her name dragged through the -divorce court, she heard her world echoing with the clanging noise of -scandal. She felt around her the brutal heaving of the foundation of -her life. In her little tufted silken drawing-room that reminded me -always of the inside of a jewel case, she had sat listening, shivering -with apprehension. News came to her of the runaways. They were in -Bianca’s palace in Venice giving themselves up to curious orgies of -pleasure. People told strange tales of their doings. They seemed to -have gone mad. News came then from another quarter. I had consulted -my solicitor. Claire was thoroughly frightened. Your mother did not -hesitate then. She was old, she was tired, she was without hope or -illusions. She saw her son as he was, and she saw Bianca at last as -she was, and she believed that for her there was no happiness to be -derived ever again from those two people. But she loved Philibert, she -loved him with anger and contempt and a breaking heart, and she was -determined to save him the last final ignominy, and so she put on her -bonnet and came to me. And as I thought of these things I was drawn out -of my chair toward her in spite of myself. - -I begged her to be seated. I told her that I was touched and distressed -by her coming to me, and that had she sent me word I would have gone -to her. She smiled wanly with her old infinite sweetness. That smile -was the most consummate bit of artistry I have ever beheld. It denied -everything. It assumed everything. It fixed the pitch of our talk, it -indicated a direction and a limit. It outlined before me the space -in which I was to be allowed to move. It gave her the leading rôle -in the little drama that was about to be played out between us, and -it established her position once and for all as that of a great lady -calling upon an awkward young woman. But I saw beyond her smile. I saw -what she had been through, and was suffering. The combined play of -her terrible reddened eyes and that lovely unreal smile impressed me -profoundly. - -For any other woman the beginning of such a conversation would have -been difficult, but your mother, opened up the subject that lay before -us with ease and delicacy. Her phrase was finely pointed. She used it -as she might have used a silver knife to lift the edge of a box that -contained something ugly. - -“I do not know,” she said, “whether or not you have ever loved my son, -but I have felt that his sudden departure must have seemed to you very -shocking, so I have come to reassure you.” - -I recoiled at this. It seemed to me that I was being attacked and that -was the last thing I expected. I was startled and puzzled by those -opening words. What difference did it make whether or not I had loved -her son? For a moment I felt angry. After all it was he that had left -me; why then, should I be accused? As for reassurance, I did not want -any. This was no time for reassurance. An ugly spirit stirred in me. I -was about to answer abruptly, when I saw that the purple-veined hand -that lay across the table before me was trembling. It was animated by -some painful agitation that shook it even resting as it did on that -strong surface. The withered palm was rubbing and quivering against the -polished wood, the worn finger tips were tapping spasmodically. My eyes -smarted at the sight of it. I spoke gently. - -“Yes, _belle-maman_, I thank you for coming.” - -“Ah, my poor child--and the family--I hear the family has been at you.” - -“They have been here.” - -“You must not mind them. They do not understand. In our world women, -you know, take things differently, they do not expect what you expect.” - -There was a pause. What could I say? She seemed very reasonable and -very kind. I had never felt her so near to me before. - -When she spoke again it was even more simply. “I have had no news of -Philibert,” she said sadly. “Have you?” The tone of her voice was -intimate and more natural than I had ever heard it when addressed to -me. It implied that we were both unfortunate together. I responded to -it with a flicker of hope. - -“No,” I replied, “I have no news, but I have reason to believe that he -will not come back.” - -“Ah,” she cried. “What makes you think that? But it is impossible.” - -“No,” I continued, “it is not impossible. It is true. He gave me to -understand that himself.” - -I felt her watching me closely. - -“You mean?” she breathed. - -“I mean that I must now take measures to live my own life. It is -impossible for me to live in his house any longer.” - -It was then that she made one of her quick, characteristic mental turns. - -“Yes,” she said. “It’s a monstrous house. I don’t wonder you detest it.” - -I almost smiled, but I was determined to get to the point. “Dear -_Belle-Mère_,” I insisted, “that is neither here nor there. What I mean -is that I must be legally free from Philibert.” I hesitated, I saw her -face whiten, but I pressed the point. “It is best for me to tell you -that I have decided to divorce your son.” - -I don’t know what effect I had expected and feared to produce. It may -be that I thought she would break down or faint dead away, or something -of that kind. She had seemed so frail that I had been really afraid of -the effect of my words. But nothing of this sort happened. The blow I -had dealt seemed to spend its force in the air. It glanced off and went -shivering into the rich, cold atmosphere of the room. - -“My dear,” she said, enunciating her words very precisely, “_on ne -divorce pas dans notre monde_.” And she looked away from me, coolly -taking in the room with its priceless objects as if summoning them -to witness to the truth of her statement. She was right to look round -that room. It was her room, not mine. It understood her, not me. She -had called it a moment before a detestable house, but that made no -difference. Its magnificence was to be made use of all the same. We -were in the room that Philibert always referred to when he took people -over the house as “_le salon de Madame de Joigny_,” or “_le boudoir de -ma femme_.” It was the nicest room in the house. You remember it well, -with its pearly grey boiseries fine as lace, its Frangonard panels, -its green lacquer furniture, the three windows on the garden where a -stone fountain lifted its fine sculptured figures from the lawn. The -light in the room was silvery green and translucent as the light seen -beneath the surface of clear water, and in that dim radiance the fine -precious objects floated above the polished floor as if even the laws -of gravitation had been circumvented in the fine enclosed space. The -boiseries had been in the Trianon--you remember Philibert had procured -them after much bargaining. They had been designed and executed for -Madame de Montespan. Their perfect beauty constituted a document, a -testimony to the marvellous taste and finished craftsmanship of an -epoch. France, in all its delicate dignity, existed in that room. It -is no wonder that your mother looked about her for moral support. The -rest of the immense house might have belied her, here she could place -her faith without hesitation. I opposed to it the profession of my own -faith. - -“In my country,” I said dully, for I was beginning to feel baffled and -confused, “we are not afraid to admit errors, to put away the past and -begin something new.” - -“But this, my dear child, is your country,” she said more gently. “You -are a Frenchwoman now.” - -I smiled. “Do you really think so?” I asked her. She drew a sharp -breath. “Ah, if you only were,” she cried softly, “you would know how -impossible it is to do what you want to do, and how useless.” - -My attention closed sullenly like a clamp on the words “impossible,” -“useless.” I stared at the floor. Why impossible? Why useless? Why -did I listen to this woman who did not love me, and who told me that -my longing to live was useless? How was it she made me listen to her? -Where was her advantage? She was certain and I was uncertain, that -was it. I was not quite sure, but she was sure. Her definite idea was -projected out at me and into me like a hook. It took hold of me. I -felt myself wriggling on it, and I heard, through the confusion of my -own ideas that seemed to buzz audibly in my head, your mother’s voice -talking. - -“You are young,” it said. “You come of a young people. You believe -in miracles. You seek perfection on earth. Believe me, I am old and -wise, ideals are all very well, but one must be practical about life. -Philibert has behaved very badly. He has made a scandal, but you can -remedy that and maintain your dignity by disregarding his escapade, or -at any rate treating it as nothing more than an escapade. And such it -is, nothing more, believe me. The acts of men are never anything more. -_Mon Dieu_, if we took what they did seriously, where should we be, we -women? We must take them for what they are. _Il le faut bien._ We must -never count on them. We must count on ourselves.” - -But I seemed gradually to lose track of her words. It was strange, -but the sound of her voice was conveying a meaning more profound and -more direct than her spoken phrases. The sound of her voice rang in -my ears like a light, mournful, warning bell, high metallic, hollow -and sweet. It was old, an old sound much older than the lips through -which it issued. It seemed to come from a far distance, from the -distant past. Hollow and sweet and measured, its monotony insisted on -the fine tried truths of the past, it called up proud, faded images -of old resignations and compromises and lost illusions, and sounded -constantly the note of the persistent obstinacy of pride. The words “we -women” reached me. I was a woman, she was a woman. We were together. -There were men in the world and women. When one reduced things to their -last simplicity all women were bound together in the same bundle, -dealing with the same problem. She, the older woman, was wise, I was -foolish; but we were sisters in disappointment, we were weak, we must -be proud. We had both loved Philibert, but even I had never loved him -as she loved him. And he had broken her heart. The dignity of our -life depended on our pride, to hide our hurt, to make no sound, no -complaint, to arrange silently to make things bearable, to influence -men without their knowing it. Our advantage lay in our clairvoyance. -We could see through them when they could not see into us beyond our -skins. We were weak if we treated them as they treated us, but we were -strong if we remained mysterious, mute, proud. The children were ours. -Everything we did was for our children. Philibert was her child. She -must remember, she could not forget, he was her son. If we destroyed -the family we destroyed our children. Even when the men destroyed it -we must hold it together. We must pretend, for our children. When the -man was gone we must pretend he was still there. Truth and beauty -and dignity lay behind the pretence. We must pretend obstinately. If -we pretended well enough it became true. We must not endanger our -children’s lives, anything but that. - -Little Geneviève came dancing into my vision, her hair flying, her -little skirts blowing, her toes dancing; a shadow fell on her, she -stopped her gay jumping about. She was all at once pale. Her eyes gazed -at me reproachfully, mournful eyes of a child, suffering. Something -about her was wrong, twisted, maimed. I shuddered. Your mother’s voice -was still going on. The words she spoke were concise, delicate little -pieces of sound strung together close like beads, they made a long, -pale, shining chain that reached from the beginning of time out into -the future. Over and over again I heard the same words. It seemed to me -that she was endlessly repeating the same thing as if it were a bit -of magic, of hoodoo. I wondered if she were hypnotizing me. Women must -pretend--women, the protectors--the strong foundation--the family the -basis of life. Women must keep the family intact. If we destroyed the -family we destroyed our children--Philibert her child--Geneviève my -child. - -I looked up and saw your mother as I had never seen her before--she was -bare--she was stark naked--she was fighting for her child, for her son, -for what he was to her, for him as he must and should be to her and to -the world, for his safety, and his dignity. There was nothing between -us. We were together, two women. She was appealing to me as a woman -like herself. Philibert was her child. Even if she were deceiving me, -pretending to care for me, what did it matter? I understood her--she -was there in the great simplicity of her pretence assuming me to be -like herself, proud, gentle, sure, a woman like herself. Vulgar! I was -vulgar; my struggling for freedom was coarse; I was making an ugly -disgusting fuss; I was ashamed. - -A sensation of warmth and delight crept over me--and I knew that I had -decided to do what she wanted. It seemed to me that she became my own -then, and that I belonged to her and she to me. It was impossible to -wound her. The most important thing in the world was not to disappoint -her. She expected something of me, renouncement. She expected me to -spare her son. She asked for my life, my freedom, two little things I -could give her, so that she would not be disappointed. I must give them -to her. It would be beautiful to make her happy. That was wonderful. -Whatever happened she would always know. There would be something fine -between us. We would be together. I would belong to her and she to me: -two women who had understood something together. - -I touched her hand. I saw that her eyes were filled with tears. Her -fingers clutched mine. “_Ma pauvre enfant, ayez pitié de moi_,” she -quavered. - -“There dear, don’t think of it any more.” - -“Wait, at least, until I am dead,” she whispered. I knelt beside her, -just touching her hand. I was weeping, too, now, silently as she was, -gently, mute tears. - -“I will never do it,” I said. It seemed to me wonderful to give her my -freedom, gently, like that, in a whisper, kneeling close to her, not -frightening her, asking nothing, putting things right, easily, at the -cost of all my life. - - - - -IV - - -I did not go to America until the following year, and then I went -alone, leaving Jinny with your mother. You remember about that, how -after all they made me leave my child behind as a hostage. We won’t -dwell on it now. It was only significant in so far as it showed me that -my new intimacy with your mother was not quite what I had believed it -to be. - -As for St. Mary’s Plains, it gave me a different welcome from the one -I had expected. It disapproved of me and showed it. My people went -for me. They greeted me with the proprietary affection that claims -the right to outspoken criticism. On the whole, I liked that. It was -a relief. Although at first I was bewildered, amused and occasionally -annoyed by their vigorous upbraiding, I was glad that they felt -entitled to treat me as they did: their scolding gave me a feeling of -their solidarity with me. And it was refreshing to find myself among -a group of people who had no respect for my fortune but blamed me -honestly for being so disgustingly rich and doing so little good with -my money. - -Paris gossip had reached St. Mary’s Plains. I had thought it so far -away, so safe. I was mistaken. Many acquaintances had been going back -and forth across the Atlantic carrying information, more or less -correct, of my doings. The fact that my husband was no longer living -with me was variously interpreted. Had I come rushing home for refuge -that first summer they would have been on my side, but I had not. I -seemed to have cynically accepted his liaison with another woman and -was brazenly continuing my worldly life. - -My Aunt Patience, as I came gradually to realize, had been the person -least affected by these tales. She lived the life of a hermit, wrapped -up in her studies, and had refused to listen to gossip. “I guess Jane -herself tells me what she wants me to know,” she had said to more than -one busybody, but of course I suspected nothing of all this on arrival. -I had gone to America because of an unquenchable longing to be with my -own people, but I was not without a certain feeling of pride. I was -scarcely fatuous enough to consider myself as a martyr, but it did seem -to me that I had suffered through no fault of my own and had taken -my troubles with a respectable calm. Philibert was still wandering -about Europe with Bianca. I had heard nothing from him directly. An -occasional message reached me through his solicitors, that was all. I -had continued to carry on. I was keeping my promise to your mother. - -My Aunt Patty came to New York to meet my steamer. I saw her from -the deck, before the ship was in dock, a powerful figure, something -elemental about her, reducing others to insignificance; I waved. She -looked at me but made no sign; she did not recognize me. As I came -down the gangway I saw her peering about in the crowd still searching, -and when I walked up to her and said “Aunt Patty, it’s me, Jane,” she -dropped her large black handbag and gave a gasp. She of course was -the same, only more so, bigger and grander, with her black mackintosh -flapping, her bonnet askew and wisps of grey hair hanging down, a -grand old scarecrow. How she hugged me, her long arms round me, people -jostling us. That was a blissful moment. I was perfectly happy for that -moment, a child at rest and comforted. - -Then she said, “Where’s your baby?” - -“I didn’t bring her, Aunt.” - -“Oh!” Her face fell. - -“I couldn’t, Aunt, such a long trip for such a short visit, and her -father wouldn’t let her come.” - -“I see.” She shut her grim lips. It was clear that she was very -disappointed. - -We were to take the train that night for St. Mary’s Plains. There was -some confusion about my luggage and trouble about getting it across -the city. I seemed to have a great deal. A great deal too much, my -Aunt said. Celestine had a difference of opinion with the porters and -scolded them in her high, voluble, native tongue. My Aunt did not know -what to make of Celestine. - -I was ridiculously excited when we arrived at St. Mary’s Plains and -drove up Desmoisnes Avenue, and then as our taxi stopped and I looked -across the grass to that modest old house I had a feeling of immense -relief. This was my home. - -The Grey House welcomed me kindly. It had shrunk in size. It had grown -shabby and ugly, but it had the charm of an old glove or shoe, much -worn. I loved it with gratitude and pity and an ache of regret. - -Standing in the front hall I knew that its spirit was unchanged. My -mind reached out comfortably to its furthest corners, to the cupboards -on the back stairs and the pantry sink that I knew as I knew my own -hand. I remembered the smell of the carpet on the dark stairs and the -way the Welsbach burner sizzled on the landing, spreading a round of -light on the stained wall. My room was just as I had left it twelve -years before. The white counterpane on the narrow bed, the flat pillow, -the rag rug on the waxed floor that my Aunt Beth had made for me when I -broke my arm falling off the stepladder. - -Patience changed for dinner into a black silk blouse and serge skirt. -Her high collar was fastened with an oval brooch of gold, the only -ornament I ever saw her wear. There were two servants in the house, -a cook and a housemaid. I suspected that one had been got in for my -visit. It was clear to me that she was poor, even poorer than she had -been. The house was not too clean and very shabby. Patience Forbes -was no housekeeper. She never cared what she had to eat or poked into -corners to find dust. The drawing-room looked forlorn in the pale gas -light. I gathered that she never sat there but spent all her time in -the museum among her precious specimens. The drawing-room made me feel -dismal. In the days when my Aunt Beth kept house it had been a cosy -room. Now the old mahogany sofas and chairs, covered in frayed black -horsehair, were pushed back against the wall in ungainly attitudes. -They seemed to watch me reproachfully. I loved their austere, proud -forlornness, but I felt uncomfortable. The place did not disappoint me, -but I felt that I disappointed it. The blurred and misty mirrors that -held mysteriously behind their marred surfaces the invisible reflection -of my little grandmother’s sweet face and prim figure showed me myself, -large, bright and vulgar, a great outlandish creature in an exaggerated -dress, glittering, hard and horrible. I was profoundly disturbed. If I -looked like that to myself, how must I look to my Aunt Patience? I soon -found out. She was not a person to mince matters. She told me plainly -that I looked wicked. - -“Wicked, Aunt?” - -“Yes, Jane, that’s just about it.” - -“But, Aunt, this is terrible. What is it? What shall I do about it?” - -She stared at me grimly. “I don’t know. I guess it’s everything--your -clothes, that thick bang across your eyes, those ear-rings, that red -stuff on your lips. It looks bad. It makes you look like an ungodly -woman.” - -I rubbed off the lip salve and took off the ear-rings. “Is that better?” - -“Humph. A little.” Suddenly I saw her face quiver, her mouth twist. I -crossed to her and knelt on the floor beside her, put my arms round her -and looked into her working face. - -“Aunt, tell me, what’s the matter? Tell--” - -“There, Jane, I’m an old fool.” She tried to laugh but failed. Her -voice cracked. “I can’t help it. You’re so different that I’m scared. -Janey, Janey, you’ve no call to be so different.” She put her large -worn hands on my shoulders. - -“I’m not changed in my heart, Aunt.” - -“Are you sure?” - -“I am sure.” - -“There ain’t nothing real wrong with you, Jane?” - -“No, Aunt.” - -“You can tell me solemnly that your heart’s not changed, that you’ve -come to no harm?” - -I looked into her eyes. Humbly, I knelt and looked into those honest -eyes, not beautiful, with blistered, opaque irises, the whites yellow -now with age. I knew what she meant, and I knew what would put things -right between us. If I told her everything, all about Philibert and -Bianca and my own loneliness she would give me the sympathy I wanted. -Then all her criticism and disappointment would be swallowed up in -pity. I hesitated. I did not believe that she knew anything of my -troubles with Philibert. I had never written her one word about being -unhappy. My happiness, I knew, was the most precious thing on earth to -her. How, then, tell her now, and why? Break her old heart so that she -might comfort me? Sadden the remaining years of her life that I might -enjoy the luxury of being understood? And how explain? What could she -ever understand of such things? She was an innocent woman. - -So I lied. I chose my words in order to keep as near to truthfulness as -I could. - -“No, Aunt, I have come to no harm. I am just the same as the girl -who left you twelve years ago. My looks, why should they matter to -you, Aunt? They are not my own. All that is just dressmakers and -hairdressers and the people round me. I have grown to look like them -there, but I am more like you and yours than you think. I have been so -home-sick, Aunt. I have longed so longingly for this, just this, Aunt, -just to come home.” - -Her face had changed, her eyes searched mine wistfully now. - -“You are unhappy, child.” - -“No, Aunt.” - -“Your husband?” - -I felt myself turn pale as she held my head between her hands. What -could I safely say? There was a look in her face that frightened me. -Did she know after all? Had she heard? - -“Aunt, he is a Frenchman, different from us.” - -“But is he a good man?” - -“Yes.” - -“True to you as you are to him?” - -“Yes.” - -For a moment longer she looked at me closely, then with a sigh of -relief leaned back. “I believe you, Jane, I always said it wasn’t true. -I couldn’t believe my girl wouldn’t tell me.” - -I buried my head in her knees. I felt sick and guilty, and as I knelt -there I saw that long ago I had thrown over my Aunt Patience for your -mother, though I loved Patience Forbes better than any one in the world. - -Presently she said humorously with her slow American twang--“Well, I -guess I’ll have to get used to your looks, Jane, and not be silly, but -I reckon it would be easier if your voice weren’t so French. You’ve got -a queer sort of accent. I don’t know what all your aunts and uncles -will say when they see you. I expect if you explain it’s just the -effect of the world you’ve come from they’ll think it’s a pretty queer -world.” - -But I had no intention of explaining myself to my relatives. Aunt Patty -had the right to bring me to book, but no one else had. It seemed to me -that night, lying awake in my cool, puritan bed, rather funny to think -of the people of St. Mary’s Plains holding me to account. What had I -done, after all, to come in for a scolding? I had told my aunt I was -unchanged. In a sense it was true. If I had not been the same I should -not have wanted to come. - -I could hear Celestine fussing about in the next room. Celestine was -going to be a thorn in the side of the Grey House. She was out of -place. There she was surrounded by my clothes. My clothes looked -horribly gawdy littered all over that room. Presently her light was -extinguished. I lay in the dark between the sheets that smelled of -lavender, my eyes open in the kind familiar darkness, and told myself -that it was true, that I was unchanged, the same--the very same -person that had lain in that bed in that same homely safe obscurity -years before--and for a time, the sounds and the unseen but palpable -presences round me, seemed to agree, to reassure me. - -I heard the tram rumbling by up the Avenue, I could see in my mind’s -eye, the arc light above the street shining on the high branches of -the elm trees, the comfortable houses set back in their grass plots, -shrouded in shadow, lighted windows showing here and there, and beyond -them to the West, I knew was the river, filled with the dark hulls of -ships, lumber schooners from the great lakes, pleasure boats, tugs, -their red lights riding high above the black water. From the side of -my bed my mind could move surely out through the night among known -objects, along familiar and friendly streets, past houses and shops -and churches, all acquainted with me as I was with them. And I felt -the furniture of the room was kindly, sedate and prim, taking me -for granted, assuming that all was well, that I belonged there--but -did I? Was it true? The years seemed to have been rolled up, as if -the intervening time were a parchment scroll, put away in a corner, -but there was something else, something different that could not be -put away. It was in me. It existed in my blood, in my body. It was -restless and it gnawed me. No--no--it was not true. I was not the -same. No miracle could undo what had been done to me. No relief could -obliterate from my mind what I had learned. I was old--I was tired and -corrupt--something irrevocable had happened to me--something final and -fatal, that no longing and no prayers could ever exorcise. - -St. Mary’s Plains had “got a move on” during my absence, so my -relatives told me. I saw as much. It had entered upon one of those -sensational periods of industrial success that come to American towns -so unexpectedly. Some one had invented a stove, some one else a -motor car. Former modest citizens were making millions and building -factories. Down town was encroaching on the pleasant shady districts of -up town. The lots on either side of the Grey House had been bought by a -syndicate who proposed to put there a hotel and an apartment building. -The Grey House would be sandwiched in between them. It would become a -little dark building at the bottom of a well, but Patience Forbes had -refused to sell, though the price offered her would have left her more -than comfortably off for the rest of her life. I asked leave to buy the -Grey House from her for greater security, but she refused. “I’m safe -enough, Jane, because I don’t want money. No man alive can make me sell -if I don’t want to. You’ve no call to worry about me.” - -My Uncle Bradford was not in town but there were a great many other -family connections who came to see us and asked us to come to them for -large hospitable succulent meals. They greeted me with hearty kisses -and handshakes. “Well, Jane, glad to see you home at last. Hope you -left your husband well.” And then we settled down into chairs. - -“You certainly have changed. You’re real French, aren’t you? We’ve -heard a lot about your doings. It sounds pretty funny to us, giving -parties all the time to crowned heads, aren’t you?” This from the men, -or from the women more gently-- - -“Dear, couldn’t you have brought your baby? We’re so disappointed. Yes, -you do seem different, but we hope you’re happy. We can’t imagine your -life, you know. It seems so empty, so artificial. The papers give such -strange accounts. All those gambling places, your cousin fighting a -duel, it sounds so strange. France seems to be turning to atheism with -terrible rapidity. The separation of Church and State might be good if -it led to a spiritual revival, but they don’t keep Sunday at all, do -they? All the theatres are open Sundays they say.” - -The elders were gentle but positive in their disapproval, the younger -generation frankly intolerant. They had been struck by various -religious and emotional disturbances that had swept the country, -evangelical revivals, a thing called the “Student Movement,” and a -university type of socialism. I felt myself being measured up to a -certain high standard and found lamentably wanting. Had I forgotten -their standards, I asked myself, or was this something new? When they -asked me what I was doing with my life I said I didn’t know, that it -took me about all my time just to live it. Wasn’t I interested in -anything? Oh, yes, a great many things, music especially, and old -enamels. They didn’t mean that, they meant causes. I didn’t understand. -What causes, I asked, did they refer to? Women’s suffrage, the negro -question, sweated labour. No, I was obliged to admit that women’s -suffrage had not interested me and that there being no negro question -in France I hadn’t thought about the subject. As for sweated labour, -I supposed it did exist in Paris, but that its evils had never been -brought to my notice. All the young people were espousing causes. They -quite took my breath away. They believed so hard in so many things, -and they talked so much about the things they believed in. Really they -were violent talkers. Their fresh young lips uttered with ease the -most astounding phrases. They were fond of big words. Their talk was a -curious mixture of undigested literature and startling slang. Some of -the things they believed in were love, democracy, the greatness of the -American people and the equality of the sexes. What they didn’t believe -in they condemned off-hand. There was for them no quiet region where -interesting questions were left pleasantly unanswered. They abhorred an -unanswered question as nature abhors a vacuum. Every topic was a bull -to be taken by the horns. Everything concerned them. There was nothing -that was not their business. They were crusaders, at war with idleness -and cynicism, vowed to the regeneration of the world. They went for -me, but how they went for me! I was a renegade, a back-slider, a poor, -misguided victim of an effete and vicious foreign country. I had -nothing to give them of any value. When I talked of the charm of Paris -they yawned. When I mentioned my friends they called me a snob. When -I spoke of my activities they laughed in gay derision. On the whole I -didn’t mind. I was too tired to mind. They were so young, so keen, so -good to look at, so full of hope. I wouldn’t have stopped their talking -for the world, and I liked them for despising my money. - -I envied them. They were happy, they were free. Deep in my heart I -suspected that they were right to despise my life. In the evenings when -they gathered on the shadowy verandahs of their comfortable countrified -houses, the young men with mandolins, the girls in billowy muslin -dresses, I listened to their laughter and their tinkling music, feeling -so old, so very old. On those summer nights Aunt Patty and I would -sometimes sit on the front steps of the Grey House as the custom was in -the town, and all the street would seem to be charged with romance and -joy and mystery. Through the trees one could see young forms flitting -from house to house where lights streamed from hospitable windows down -across the plots of grass, while on the shadowed verandahs young hearts -whispered to young hearts, whispered of dreams that must come true, -gallant, innocent dreams. - -And there was the difficulty of religion. They couldn’t swallow my -having become a Catholic. On the first Sunday morning I asked my Aunt -Patience if she would like me to go to church with her. - -“Why, yes, Jane, but I thought you’d be going to the Catholic Church.” - -“I’d rather go with you, Aunt.” - -“Come, then.” But I saw that she was troubled. - -“You see, Aunt, I don’t really care what church I go to; I’m only a -Catholic for social convenience.” - -“That’s too bad, isn’t it?” She was putting on her bonnet. - -“I don’t know, I don’t seem to have any feeling about it one way or -another. I never could seem to learn much about God, Aunt, don’t you -remember?” - -“But don’t you believe in Him, Jane?” - -“Honestly, Aunt, I don’t know. Sometimes I wish I could, but that’s -when I’m in trouble and only because I want some one to help me out. -That’s not believing, is it? It’s just cowardice.” - -My aunt grunted. “Religion mostly is, but there’s something else, like -what your grandmother had.” - -“Yes, I know.” - -She said no more, and I was grateful to her for taking it like that. We -were companions in spite of everything. - -But when my Aunt Beth came with her husband to visit us things became -more difficult. She had taken my turning Roman Catholic as a dreadful -personal problem of her own, and felt, dear little soul, that she -must try to bring me back to the fold. The result was painful. She -came armed with tracts and pamphlets, a whole bag full of appalling -literature. I was greatly astonished, for I remembered her as a very -gentle little creature. With age she had grown militant in the cause of -evangelical truth. She took me to camp meetings and prayer meetings. -She would come into my room at night in her pink flannel dressing gown, -her little middle-aged face aglow with ecstatic resolve, and would -press into my hand just one more message, a dreadful booklet, “The -Murder of God’s Word,” or something of that kind. I was at last driven -to appeal to my Aunt Patience for protection. She took up the cudgels -for me. - -“I guess Jane’s all right, Beth, I wouldn’t worry. God’s the same, -whatever your Church.” - -“But Patty, it’s heathen idolatry, worshipping the Virgin Mary. The -Virgin Mary was just a woman like you and me.” - -“Well, dear, what does it matter? Perhaps Jane doesn’t worship her in a -heathen spirit, do you, Jane?” - -“No, Aunt, I’m afraid I don’t worship her at all.” - -“But think of the Jesuits,” wailed Aunt Beth. - -“I don’t,” snapped Aunt Patty. - -“Patty, I believe you’re in danger of losing your faith.” - -“No, I’m not, Beth, don’t you fret about me. I’ve a good conscience -before my God and my Saviour. Now just you leave Jane in peace and -trust her to God. That’s what you’re told to do in the Bible. Just you -trust the Lord. He’ll look after Jane.” - -And Beth would be momentarily silenced more by the sense of her elder -sister’s family authority than by any respect for her arguments. - -Aunt Patty and I were happiest when we were left alone. - -In July it became very hot. The back garden was ablaze with flowers. -Rows of hollyhocks lined the wooden fences at either side. Butterflies -fluttered in the sun. The bee-hives at the bottom of the garden were -all a-murmur. We spent long hours on the back verandah, and Aunt Patty, -her knitting needles moving swiftly (she knitted a good deal, but -always had a book open on her lap), would question me about my life -in Paris, and I would tell her as much of the truth as I could. Her -conclusions were characteristic. - -“Your set over there doesn’t seem to have too much sense,” she would -say. “You sound a very giddy lot. You take no interest in science, do -you? I don’t suppose you’ve any of you an idea of what’s being written -and done.” - -“Oh, come, Aunt, some of us are awfully clever. Fan knows all about art -and music. My sister-in-law paints and embroiders quite beautifully, -and all our relatives are gifted.” - -“Humph, art is all very well, but do you keep up with the times?” - -“How do you mean, ‘keep up’?” - -“I mean, child, with what’s going on in the world of thought, -intellectual progress. They’re making great strides in medicine in -Germany. France is doing most in mathematics. But I daresay you never -heard of Professor Lautrand. He lives in Paris. Ever met him? Ever -heard of him?” - -“I’m afraid not, Aunt.” - -“Well, there you are, one of the great spirits of the age.” And she -rubbed her nose with her knitting needle. “A noble intellect. His books -have opened up for me a new world. To think you could talk to him and -don’t even know he’s there! Why, landsakes, Jane, if I were in your -shoes I’d wait on his doorstep till my bones cracked under me.” She -laughed. - -“Come and visit me, dear, do, and we’ll have him to lunch every day,” -I urged. At which she laughed again her young, hearty laugh, but with -a wistful look in her eyes as if the light of a lovely dream glowed a -moment before her. - -“No, Jane, no. I’m too old to go gallivanting about Europe, but I do -wish you’d take my advice. You never did take any interest in science. -If you did you’d not be so dependent upon mere human beings. If you’d -only study geology and biology and the history of races, you’d see -that human beings are no great shakes, anyhow, and don’t count for -much, save that they’ve the power of thought. Has it ever occurred -to you to stop and consider how wonderful it is that you can think, -and how little you avail yourself of the privilege? Go one day to the -_Bibliothèque Nationale_, that’s what it’s called, they’ve got one of -my books there, and just think for a moment that all that building is -crammed full of the records of man’s thought. Stupid, most of it, you’d -say, too dull to read, all those books. Well, that may be their fault -and it may be yours, but it’s neither here nor there. The fact is that -the recording of knowledge is a miracle.” - -Wonderful Patience Forbes, taking me to task for the frivolity of my -world, sitting on the back verandah, her spectacles on the end of -her nose, her knitting on her lap, her heelless slippers comfortably -crossed, her little modest volume tucked away on a shelf in the -_Bibliothèque Nationale_. She seemed to me very remarkable, and she -seems even more so now. Time for most of us is just a process of -disintegration, old age is often pitiful and ugly, but at the age of -sixty-five Patience Forbes had the heart of a child and the robust -enthusiasm of a student. She had been persuaded by the State Board of -Education to write a series of text-books on birds, and in the evenings -she would work in the room she called the museum, and I would sit -watching her while she chewed her pen, rapped irritably with her hard -old fingers on the desk, or went down on her knees before a shelf of -books to look up some reference. Sometimes she would walk the floor and -grumble--“Gracious, how difficult it is to write a decent sentence. -English certainly isn’t my strong point. I write like a clucking hen. -Style never was in my line.” And then she would laugh, her young, -vigorous, chuckling laugh. - -When I compared my life with hers, how could I not feel that there was -justice in all that young American condemnation. Patience Forbes was -old, she was poor, she went about in tram-cars, she worked for her -living, and she was happy. There was no doubt that she was happy. She -envied no man and no woman, and asked nothing of any one. She would not -even let me help her. She said that she had everything she wanted and I -was bound to believe her. - -Early in August we went up to my Uncle Bradford’s camp in the woods -at the head of the lake. He had written urging us to come and saying -that if we didn’t he would come down to St. Mary’s Plains as he wanted -particularly to see me. - -A white steam-boat, with side paddles churning peacefully through the -water, carried us for a long day and night and part of another day west -by north-west, past little white straggling towns, calling at long -piers to deliver mails and provisions, moving on and on, farther and -farther across the wide shining expanse of water, away from the world -of men. Timber schooners passed us, square-rigged, coming down from the -great forest lands. The skies were boundless and light and high above -the water. We moved in marvellous translucent space. The air was new as -if the world had been created yesterday. - -Uncle Bradford and his sons with their wives and children had built -themselves log houses on the shore of the lake. The forest stretched -away behind them as far as the Canadian border, and a great tract of -it belonged to them, with its rivers, its game and its timber. Some -of them were in the lumber business, others came there merely for the -summer holidays. I found my Aunt Minnie there, and an even greater -crowd of youngsters than in St. Mary’s Plains. Uncle Bradford, dressed -in a red flannel shirt and a sombrero, ruled his camp like a Russian -patriarch, and again I found every one interested in things that I -had forgotten were interesting. There in that glorious pagan world -surrounded by virgin forests they worshipped a stern and exacting -God, read the Bible, and argued in the evening before the blazing log -fire as to whether the mind were separate from the soul, or evolution -incompatible with the principles of Christianity. And I wondered at -them, for they were not afraid of their puritan God, nor weary of -endless argument. Their consciences were clear. They could look God in -the face, and their brains, if rather empty, were admirably keen. - -I watched the women. They all seemed to have devoted husbands who -assumed the sanctity of marriage to be the basis of life and took -the beauty of their women for granted. Extravagant youngsters, how -I envied them. Husbands who remained faithful lovers, wives who -remained innocent girls, all contented and unafraid, and with their -outspokenness, shy people keeping secret the sacred intimacy of love. - -The children were splendid animals. They liked me and included me in -their games. We used to go swimming before breakfast when the heavenly -morning was crystal pale. I would slip from my cabin and join those -little bronze figures, run through the clearing to the shore and down -the wooden pier, stand an instant with them all about me breathing in -the sweet air, then with a shout all together we would dive. I swam as -well as any of those boys. It pleases me now to remember their respect -for my prowess. And I could paddle a canoe and throw a ball like a man, -and I caught the largest fish of all, a fine big salmon trout weighing -fifteen pounds. My thought was--“I want a boy like one of these to -become a man for Jinny. I want her to have a husband from my people.” - -It was a delicious life. The air was fine and dry and sharply scented -with the scent of pine woods drenched in sunlight. Each morning was a -miracle as clear as the first morning of creation. Swift rollicking -streams tumbled over rocks, fat salmon jumped in deep pools. Mild-eyed -Indians came travelling down from the depths of the vast forest, -paddling their lovely canoes of birch bark, laden with grass baskets -and soft moccasins embroidered in beads. The nights were cold. One -was lifted up into sleep, one floated up and away into sleep under -sparkling stars, hearing the waves lapping the shore and the wind -murmuring through the branches of the innumerable pines of the forest -that spread away, further and further away, endlessly, countless trees -murmuring a strong chant under the wide sky, stretching beyond the edge -of the mind’s compass, as far as one could think, as far as one’s soul -could reach out, the forest, the sky, the water, calm, untroubled, -eternal. - -Then suddenly something crashed into that crystal space. - -My Uncle Bradford took me one morning to his office. - -“You are nearly thirty now, Jane.” - -“Yes, Uncle.” - -“I have a letter for you from your father. He left it with me to -deliver to you when you were thirty years old.” - -I took the envelope he handed me. I was trembling. My uncle mopped his -forehead and cleared his throat. - -“You will be absolute owner of your property when you are thirty.” - -“Oh,” I said blankly. - -“Yes, you were not to know. It was your father’s wish. Did your mother, -before she died, tell you anything about him?” - -“No, I don’t think so.” - -“Well, I’m sorry. It was her place to tell you. Your father is buried -out west, in Oregon.” - -“Yes, I know.” - -“He’s not buried in a cemetery. He’s buried on a hill. He bought the -tract of land himself.” - -I waited. The noises of the camp came cheerily through the cabin -windows. There was a strong smell of pine wood and resin and of bacon -frying somewhere out of doors. - -“Your father broke his neck falling down the elevator shaft in a -New York hotel. The verdict was accidental death, but it was not an -accident. Your mother knew, and I knew.” - -I stood up, staring at him stupidly, holding the letter in my fingers, -then quickly turned and went out. I crossed the camp and struck off -into the woods. In a quiet place I sat down and opened the letter. It -began, “My dear daughter Jane.” I know it by heart. This is the letter. - - - “_My dear daughter Jane_: It is time for me to go. A man is free - to choose his time. This I believe, not much else. I am sorry to - leave you, but you are only five years old and you will be better - off with your grandmother in St. Mary’s Plains than you would be - with me. Your grandmother and your aunts will take care of you. - They are good women. It’s not their fault that they don’t like me. - The truth is, Jane, that I’m not their kind. I’m nobody’s kind and - I’m awful tired of being alone in a crowd. This world is getting - too full of people for me. I want space and I guess I’ll find it - where I’m going. - - I wouldn’t leave you so much money if I knew what to do with it. - It never did me any good. It was only fun getting, not having. At - first I worked with my hands--in the earth--then I found gold. I - bought land and more land, built a railroad or two, and then Wall - Street got me. That was like the poker table I’d known when I was - a boy working on the Chippevale Ranch. That was just excitement, - no good to any one, but fun for a spell. - - When you are thirty years old you’ll have as much sense as you’re - ever going to have. Perhaps you’ll do better than I did. Perhaps - you’ll know how to spend. I didn’t. I’d like you to enjoy what - I’ve left you. It would console me some. - - I’m not a believer in the Cross of Jesus and I don’t want it on my - grave, but I’m not sure there isn’t something over yonder on the - other side. I hailed from the far West. It’s spoiling now, but a - wide prairie and a high sky are the best things I know, that and - working with your hands. - - Good-bye, little girl Jane, you’re the only thing I mind leaving - behind. I’d kind of like to know what you’ll be like when you get - this. - - Your Uncle Bradford’s an honest man, there aren’t many, you can - trust him. He’ll give you this and explain that there was no - disgrace. Only I didn’t feel like living any more. There are too - many people hanging round. I want to get away. If I’m doing you a - wrong by quitting I ask you to forgive me. - - “Your loving father, - “_Silas Carpenter_.” - - -I worked it out that night with maps and time-tables. I had just enough -time to go to Redtown and get back to New York to catch my boat. I left -the next morning. My aunt went with me. Uncle Bradford’s steam launch -took us down the lake. We caught a train at a place called Athens and -joined the western express the middle of the next day. It took us three -days and three nights to get to Oregon. We crossed the Mississippi -river early one morning. The next day we thundered through the Rocky -Mountains. The plains beyond were immense and stupefying. - -I visited the grave alone. A block of granite, reminding me of a -druid’s stone, marked the spot on the hill where he was buried. It -stood up stark and solid on the bare ground. It looked as if it had -been left there endless ages before by some slow, gigantic movement -of nature, some glacier travelling by inches from the north, or some -heaving of the earth’s surface. One side of it was polished and bore an -inscription cut into the stones:-- - - - “HERE LIES SILAS CARPENTER, WHO WAS BORN IN THIS PLACE BEFORE IT - WAS A TOWN AND WHO DIED IN NEW YORK ON JANUARY 5TH 1885.” - - -From the hill-top one had a view of the city lying along the sea, a -new, bright city, an unfriendly sea of a dazzling blue. I sat down -on the grass by the great stone. Here, at last, was something that -belonged to me and to no one else. No one would dispute with me the -possession of my father’s grave. I felt excited and uplifted as if I -had come into a precious inheritance. And yet what had he left me? -A message of failure, an unanswered question, a sense of not having -counted for him enough myself to keep him on the earth. He had shuffled -me off with the rest of it. My mother must have hated him. She must -have had something to do with his giving it up like that. I would have -loved him. I would have understood him. If he had waited for me we -would have been good companions. If he had lived I would never have -gone to Paris. I would have gone west with him to his wide prairie -and high skies. Everything would have been different. I had missed -something. What had I missed? I looked out across the dry grass, the -rolling hills, the big, bare, blazing land, the glittering sea under -the windy sun, and I recognized it as mine. I had missed my life. I had -taken the wrong turn. - -We boarded the train again next day and recrossed the continent of -America. It took us seven days and nights to reach New York. We passed -through Denver, Chicago, Cleveland, and countless other cities. We -crossed deserts white as sand and overgrown with cactus. In the middle -of the Mohawa desert we stopped at a place called Bagdad to give the -engine a drink of water. Bagdad was a single wooden shed standing -in a waste of sand. Bagdad, Bagdad. It was very hot in the train. My -aunt and I sat most of the time on the open platform at the end of -the observation car, watching the earth fly from under the train and -drinking iced drinks that the coloured porters brought us. It is very -exciting to be in a train like that, rushing across the earth at such -speed, suspended in space as if on a giant bridge, and the vast, the -immense, the overwhelming panorama flying endlessly past. Cities, -rivers, prairies, mountains, lonely farms, the steel jaws of stations -engulfing you, out again through the crowding buildings of a city you -will never know, full of people you will never see, into the open, the -horizon endlessly wheeling, the earth under the train flying backwards, -but the far edge of the earth towards the horizon wheeling with you. -Thundering along, the pounding of the engine, the grinding wheels -exciting your brain to a special liveliness, the train is a miraculous -thing, a steel comet cushioned inside imitating a dwelling, but a -long comet whirring through space, a blaze of flying light by night, -a streak and a noise by day, and from it you look out upon a thousand -worlds flying past, and you have glimpses, instant, quick glimpses, of -countless mysterious lives, a group of children hanging over a fence -waving, a farmer in a wide straw hat sitting in a blue wagon at a -railway crossing, a boundless golden field behind him of innumerable -garnered sheaves all gold, a village like a collection of wooden boxes, -saddled horses tethered to a rope in front of an unpainted post office. -Cowboys driving cattle, rolling prairies, horses, wild, running, -kicking up their heels, a lonely cabin against a hill, hens scratching -outside, thin smoke coming from the wobbling iron smoke stack, lost in -the boundless blue; families moving, all their household goods piled -on wagons, the men walking beside the horses with long whips, a mail -coach lurching along a mountain road, the driver has a Colt revolver in -his pocket. You know that. You hope he’ll get the highway robbers who -will be waiting for him at dark. Bret Harte wrote about him. And now -Walt Whitman’s country--Leaves of Grass--a great poem, the greatest. -He knew. He had found out. He understood the giant, the great urge of -life, in this my country. - -And I thought of my father, crossing and recrossing the continent, -restless, lonely, powerful, dissatisfied, an isolated man moving up and -down the land, handling money, gambling with money, not knowing what to -do, growing tired of it all. - -I said to my aunt--“It was twenty-five years ago, but it brings him -close.” - -“Your father’s death?” - -“Yes, it makes a difference.” - -“How?” - -“I’m with him. It clears the ground.” - -I did not quite know what I meant then, but I know now. - -We reached New York. I was suddenly filled with foreboding. In the high -window of our towering hotel I sat with Patience far into the night. We -sat together like watchers in a tower, and a million lighted windows -shone before us in the blue night. - -“I am afraid, Aunt.” - -“Why, my child?” - -“I am afraid to leave you.” - -“Yes, I know.” - -How much did she know, I wondered? What did she suspect? Philibert had -not written to me, of course. She must have noticed. She must know a -good deal. - -“You have your little girl, Jane. Think of her.” - -“I do. She’s a prim little thing, not a bit like me.” - -“Promise me to love your child, to love her enough.” - -“Enough for what, dear?” - -“Just enough; you’ll find out how much that is.” - -“I will try to love her as you have loved me, Aunt, always.” - -She gripped my hand. “Janey,” she muttered, “my girl.” We sat a long -time silent. The desire to unburden all my heart was unbearable. But it -was too late now. - -“Europe is too full of people, Aunt. They have made the earth into a -trivial thing. It is not good for people to subdue the earth. In Paris -one is never out of doors. I don’t feel at home there. I am sick for my -own country, for a wide prairie and a high sky.” - -“You’ll come back again, Jane.” - -“Yes,” I answered, “I will come back.” - -I thought she was asking for a promise. I did not know that she was -stating a prophecy. - -And in the morning I went aboard my ship and my aunt left me and went -down the gangway onto the pier, and the ship moved slowly away from the -dock. There she was again, standing in the crowd in her queer black -clothes, but this time the water between us was widening. She lifted -both her arms to me in a last large gesture of full embrace, then her -arms fell to her sides, and she stood there buffeted by the wind, -jostled by the crowd, a strong old woman, looking after me bravely. I -had a desperate moment. I wanted to jump, to swim back. I felt an agony -of regret, of longing, of warning. I struggled. It was horrible, such -pain. What did it mean? Why was I going? It was wrong, it was wrong. - -I never saw her again. - - - - -V - - -I slipped back into Paris, its pleasant walls closed round me, and the -voice I had heard over there, in my wide country was hushed. It was -like coming out of a great open space into a room. There was all at -once about me a multitude of nice pretty things, a shimmer of lights, -a harmony of bright sounds, the smooth, soothing, flattering touch -of luxury. No whisper of elemental forces could penetrate here. Men -of incomparable taste and limited vision had made this place to suit -themselves. - -Jinny was waiting for me, a prim fairy with starry eyes, standing -daintily on tip-toe to be kissed, smoothing her white frock carefully -after my hug. She told me that she had seen her Papa. He had been on a -visit to _Grand’ mère_! He had given her a strawberry ice in the Bois -and had taken her to see Punch and Judy. Then he had gone far away to a -country where old kings were buried and one rode on camels across the -sand. The _Guignol_ had been very amusing, but she had agreed with her -papa that she was rather old for Punch and Judy. Some day he would come -back and take her to big parties. I looked at Jinny, little Jinny, who -didn’t like to be hugged, pirouetting on one toe and looking at herself -in the glass, and I remembered my promise to Patience Forbes. It wasn’t -enough to dote on my child, to crave her sweetness, her caresses, her -laughter. There would be a struggle. There would be endless things. I -saw them coming, all the events of her poor little life, so spectacular -in its setting. I was there to ward them off, to challenge fate and the -future, to love her with enough wisdom and enough tenacity and enough -self-abasement to--well, to see her through. - -And I had an idea that she wouldn’t help me much. She would perhaps -always be content to curtsey to herself in the glass. I felt this, but -I felt it with less keenness than I expected. There seemed something -a little unreal about struggling desperately to ward off evil from -my child. There were flowers in the room, orchids and violets and -roses, sent to greet me. A sheaf of letters, invitations to lunch, to -dine, to listen to music. The first night of the Russian Ballet was -announced for the following week. Rodin asked me to his studio to see -a new bronze. Beauty all about me, amusement, stimulus, within easy -reach, treasures of pleasure like sugared fruit hanging from fantastic -branches waiting to be plucked. - -Your mother’s kiss of greeting showed me that Philibert’s visit had -made a difference. It was a cold, gay little peck and was accompanied -by nervous pats and hurried playful remarks on a high, forced note. -Clearly she was nervous. Almost, it seemed, as if she were afraid of -me. Poor little _belle-mère_. She had fallen in love with her son all -over again, but why need that make her afraid of me? I was disappointed -and annoyed by her renewed subterfuges. It seemed to me strange that -she should think I would begrudge her the pleasure her son could still -give her. I thought of explaining my feelings to Claire, but Claire was -not in a receptive mood and there was after all nothing to be gained by -it. I was a little tired of explaining. I was, I found, even a little -tired of the de Joigny family. My obligations to them and theirs to me -seemed less important since my return. It occurred to me that I had -taken myself and my problems with a ridiculous seriousness. I was still -very fond of your mother, but I no longer asked of her the impossible. -All that I now wanted of the family was a sufficiently respectable show -of approval and a mild give-and-take of friendliness. I felt equal to -living a life of my own and I proposed doing so. When you suggested -giving a dinner for me in your rooms I was delighted. You promised me -Ludovic and half a dozen of the best brains in Paris. That seemed to -me an excellent way to begin. - -Aunt Clothilde sent for me one morning a few days later. I found her -in bed under an immensely high canopy of crimson damask, sipping a cup -of the richest chocolate, a coarse, white cambric cap, like a peasant -woman’s, tied under her double chin, her wig hung on the bed-post. The -room was vast and stuffy and dark and hung with dingy tapestries. On -one side of the bed sat her _dame de compagnie_, knitting, on the other -a frightened priest with a sallow, perspiring face. Aunt Clo waved a -plump hand as I came in. The duenna and the priest rose hurriedly. - -“No, _mon Père_, I won’t help you. You are no doubt a saintly man, but -that’s not enough for the business in hand. You’ve not got the brains. -You couldn’t preach to a lot of worldly women, you’re too timid. Look -at yourself now. You’re trembling before a wicked old woman who may -have some influence with the Archbishop but has none whatever with -Saint Peter. Come, _mon Père_, brace up and go to the heathen. There’s -a nice post vacant in Madagascar. I’ll put in a word for you there if -you like.” - -The poor man’s face worked painfully. He murmured something and -scuttled away across the great room. The little companion held open the -door for him and followed him out. - -Aunt Clothilde turned to me. “Blaise,” she began at once, motioning -me to sit down, “has asked me to dine with him. Does he dine? Has he -a cook? He says so, but how do I know? What will he give me to eat? -He says the dinner is for you. Since when has he taken to giving his -sister-in-law dinners? He wants me to put you in countenance, and -to impress his disreputable bohemian friends. He says they are all -geniuses. What is a genius? Your mother-in-law thinks they all died in -the seventeenth century. She may be right. How can one be sure? And why -should I dine with a genius? Is that a reason? He promises me, as if it -were a favour, that man Ludovic, a monster with greasy grey curls who -worships an Egyptian cat. Blaise says he is a very great scholar and -that you deserve a little pleasure. Will you find pleasure in his old -scholar? Why should you? I’d rather have a beautiful young fool myself. -It appears the family is horrid to you. Is that so? Wouldn’t let you -take your child to America, eh? Well, I don’t mind having a dig at the -family. Tiresome people, always splitting hairs. And you’re a good -girl. You’ve got pluck, but I thought you were going to hurt Bianca -that night.” She chuckled. “Well, what do you think? Shall I come to -this dinner to meet your crazy friends?” - -“They’re not mine, Aunt, I don’t know them.” - -“You know Clémentine, she likes you. She’s all right, a Bourbon and a -S---- on her mother’s side, but of course as mad as a March hare, and -no morals. She doesn’t need ’em. But don’t take after her, you’ve got -’em and you need ’em. All Anglo-Saxons are like that. Take care. Of -course it would be no more than Philibert deserves.” - -I laughed. “You talk, Aunt, as if Blaise’s friends weren’t proper.” - -“Proper, what’s that? Aren’t they just the most disreputable people -on earth? Isn’t that why they’re amusing? Really clever people are -never proper. It takes every drop of Clémentine’s blue blood to keep -her afloat, and that man Felix! these writers with their habits of -sleeping all day, Blaise tells me he is writing a play without words. -It must be witty. _En voilà une occasion pour faire de l’esprit._ And -the Spaniard, the painter, it appears that he wants to do a fresco for -my music room. Well, he won’t. Only, if he doesn’t for me, he will for -François. Blaise says he’s the greatest mural painter since Tiepolo. I -detest that ‘_Trompe l’œil_’ school, but I’d like to spite François. -What do you think? I’m very poor this year. I sold a forest for half -its value. Now then, what about Philibert--gone to Egypt with his -little salamander, has he?” - -“I believe so, Aunt.” - -“And you? You don’t look very sad.” - -“I don’t think I am, Aunt.” - -“Good, excellent; you console yourself, eh?” - -“No, Aunt, I don’t; not, that is, in the way you mean.” - -“Rubbish; don’t look so virtuous, child. If you haven’t already, you -soon will. We all do. It’s a law of nature. My husband was the dullest -man on earth, I couldn’t abide him. If he hadn’t been the first Duke of -France no one would ever have asked him to dinner. How do you think I -put up with him for twenty years? You find me an ugly old woman, very -fat, very fond of good cooking. My child, there are only two kinds of -pleasure worth having in this world, and one of them has to do with the -stomach. I’ve enjoyed both. I now only enjoy one. That’s enough. What -a face you make at me! If you go against the laws of nature you’ll get -into trouble.” - -“But, Aunt, seriously, these clever friends of Blaise--are they -disreputable?” - -“Child, child, how boring you are, you Americans have such literal -minds. All I mean is that they’ve no moral sense. They’ve something -else though in its place, something better, perhaps, or worse, anyhow -more discriminating.” - -“I see.” - -“No, you don’t, but it doesn’t matter. You’ve a moral sense that -bothers the life out of you. Now go along with you. I must get up. I’ll -come to your party. Your mother-in-law won’t approve. She’s a superior -person. As for you, God knows what you’ll be in ten years time with -such a husband and such a conscience. I had better keep an eye on you. -In the choice of a lover you can ask my advice. I know men. They’re not -worth much, but you don’t take or refuse one for that reason. You’ve -found that out for yourself by now.” - -She dismissed me, waving again her little fat hand from under the -immense canopy of her bed. - -I left her, amused and rather exhilarated. A wicked old woman and a -very great lady. It didn’t occur to me to take her seriously, but I -liked her. All the same, the last thing I wanted was a lover. The mere -thought filled me with disgust. - -Your dinner was awfully nice, Blaise dear. I remember the evening well. -A few snowflakes softly floated down in your little courtyard as old -Albert, your manservant, in his ancient green coat, opened the door. He -had cooked the dinner and arranged the table and made the fire in the -living room and put the champagne on ice; I knew that, but his manner -was of a fine, calm formality as he ushered Aunt Clo and myself into -your presence. A group of men who somehow impressed one as not at all -ordinary, and a bright little lady dressed like a parrot, in a tiny, -shabby, candle-lit room, filling the place comfortably with their easy -good-humour, that was my first impression, followed quickly by others, -pleasant, special impressions, aspects sharp and neat in an atmosphere -that gave one a feeling of tasting a fine subtle flavour. Each person -in the room was an individual unlike any one else. With no beauty to -speak of, several were old men in oddly cut clothes, they were more -interesting to watch than any lovely creature. Their faces were worn -and lined and gentle, thin masks through which one saw the fine play -of intelligence. Some were already known to the great world of thought -and public affairs, others have since become so, but all were simple, -homely men that night, with a certain childlike gaiety that was very -appealing. - -Albert’s food was excellent; succulent, substantial food that suggested -the provinces. The wine was very old. For a moment as I watched -your convives inhaling the bouquet from lifted glasses, I imagined -myself far away in Balzac’s country, a snowy street of silent houses -stretching out between high poplars to a great river, a carriage at -the door, with a postillion in a three-cornered hat, waiting to drive -me to some romantic rendezvous. But the talk swept me along with its -merry-go-round of the present. - -I cannot, after all these years, recall what was said, impossible -to recapture now the quick turns of wit, the dry little jokes, the -swift touches of poetry, that followed each other with such rapid -intellectual grace. It was all incredibly rapid. I could just manage -to keep up with the sense of it. I didn’t attempt to take part. Ideas -were as thick in that room as confetti at a fête. Clémentine, in an -apple-green dress, with a round red spot of rouge on either cheek, -swayed this way and that in response to innumerable sallies, her -face changing like lightning. She was a match for those men. Her wit -played over the history of her country like a jolly little ferret -nosing out and pouncing upon joke and anecdote from the vast field of -the past. Cardinals, princes, and ruffians were held up to ridicule. -International affairs were dealt with clearly and deftly by her cutting -tongue. She played with the ideas round her as if they were a swarm of -brilliant darting winged creatures. Her delight in this battle of wit -was contagious. The talk grew faster and faster. Soon every one was -talking at once. No one could finish a sentence. - -Cambon was explaining to Aunt Clothilde why the Government would not -tolerate an Ambassador to the Pope. Clémentine was defending the -English, no one appeared to like the English. Felix was making fun of -Diaghilev, the new Russian who had appeared with his Imperial Ballet a -week before. - -What delightful people! Certainly without reservation of any kind I -find them now as I did then the most delightful people in the world. -Ludovic wore a celluloid collar. His body was too heavy for his legs -and his head too big for his body; no matter; his profound, quiet -gaze and tired, brown face expressed a nobility that made one ashamed -of noticing his ill-cut coat. Felix looked like a faun. With his -exaggerated features thrust forward into the candle-light he said -funny, penetrating things that kept Aunt Clo chuckling. I watched, -fascinated. These were the people Aunt Clo called disreputable, -utterly lacking in a moral sense. Were ever sinners so joyous, so -light-hearted? Rebels against creeds, against the fixed order of -society, against the didactic spoken word, they were kind to me, -the Philistine, exerting at once and with unconscious ease the most -disarming charm. - -Vaguely I recalled the mentality of my American home. It was there -behind me, like a cold and lifeless plaster cast behind a curtain. -Here was something infinitely more interesting, something brilliantly -living, something merry and subtle and fine that defied disapproval. -The powers of evil? Chimeras! No room for them here, no room for -anything dismal and boring. I felt an uplift, it was like an awakening. -All that horror of soul searching, all the dreary puritan A. B. C. of -right and wrong was a childish nightmare. These people understood the -world. They made fun of evil. They loved each other and found no fault -with their friends. Under their gaiety was a deep sympathy for poor -humanity. - -They said things that would have sent St. Mary’s Plains reeling with -horror into one large devastating revival meeting. If St. Mary’s Plains -could have dreamed of the character of their conversation it would call -upon God to destroy them. I laughed. Albert filled my glass. - -Some one was saying-- - -“Time is a circle.” - -“The sunrise, why the same sun? Who knows?” - -“Truth? Why should one want truth? Truth is a thing we have invented. -An accurate statement of facts? But there is no accuracy except in -mathematics, and in mathematics there are no facts.” - -Were they joking? Or were they serious? Both. I felt like a schoolgirl, -very ignorant, very crude, with a stiff blank mind like a piece of -cardboard. They slowed down to listen to Ludovic. I remember Ludovic -speaking to them all with his eyes smiling under their spiky grey -eyebrows. I think I remember what he said. It was the first time I had -heard him talk, as he talked to me so often afterwards. - -“I sit in some old city of the past and look back upon the present -and still further back into the future. Why not? Time is an endless -circle, wheeling around one. Why trouble to imagine a beginning -or an end? Why these unnatural conceptions? The old legends are -more sensible. The ancient mystic symbol of matter, Ouroborro, the -tail-devourer, a serpent coiled into a circle, symbol of evolution, of -the evolution of matter. There is something there, something to think -of. Let us all think of molecules, and remember the Philosopher’s -Stone. Have you ever laughed at the legend of the Philosopher’s Stone -that can transmute metals and give the elixir of life? What if it were -discovered, this stone? Suppose radium were in the legend stone of long -ago. Wouldn’t that suggest to you that we have only just discovered out -of the long labour of our known cycle of civilization something that -was known before by another race of men? Who knows, perhaps that race -conquered its earth with this stone, turned it from a savage planet -like this of ours into a Garden of Eden, and then, surfeited with ease, -died of inertia, lapsed into darkness, fell from the Heaven it had -made. That is to say, Adam, the father of our race, may have been the -last survivor of a race of fallen gods, supermen.” - -Clémentine took my arm as we went out of the dining-room. - -“You find us a little mad?” she asked. - -“Oh, no.” - -“Tell us how you find us. You are different, big and strong and young -and strange. Your point of view about us would be something new.” - -“I find you extraordinarily happy.” - -“Oh yes, we are gay.” - -The men had followed us. - -“We laugh.” - -“We find the world so funny.” - -“But we’re serious too. There’s Ludovic as solemn as a trout. He’d be -dreary if we let him be.” - -“Only we don’t. Why should one worry? One can’t change anything. You -must be one of us. It’s so amusing with us. You will see how amusing it -is.” - -So it was that they adopted me. And that night as I drove home through -the moonlit streets I thought of St. Mary’s Plains with distaste and -impatience. - -But what I remember best of all about that evening was the sweet funny -way you beamed down the table when you saw that your friends liked me. -You were, you know, just a little nervous about the impression I would -make on them. They were so much more brilliant than any one else that I -don’t wonder. But it all went off well, bless your heart, thanks to the -penetrating sweetness of your will that willed us to be pleased with -one another. - -There followed years of power and pleasure. Your friends made good -their promise. They taught me to enjoy. Ludovic began to form my mind. -Clémentine gave me the daring to use it. I learned how pleasant it -was to follow one’s caprices, to indulge one’s tastes, to realize -one’s dreams. Do you remember the things we did? What indeed didn’t -we do, with our picture shows, our pantomimes, and our music? When -we wanted to do a thing we did it. When we wanted to go to a place -we went. What fun it was going off at a moment’s notice to Seville, -to Constantinople, to Moscow. Some one would say--“Have you seen the -_Place Stanislas_ at Nancy by moonlight? No? But you must.” “Let’s go -tomorrow,” and we went. Or--“I hear that at Grenoble there is a lady -who owns a glove shop and who has in her back parlour a Manet, let us -go and buy it, if it is true.” Of course we went and found it was true -and bought it. Felix it was who took us all the way to Strasbourg for -one night and day, to eat a pâté de foie gras and hear mass in the -Cathedral. - -But we were happiest of all in Paris. Paris was inexhaustible. Not a -nook or cranny of interest and charm escaped us. Sometimes early in -the spring mornings we would walk through silvery streets or along -the quais or take the penny steamer down the Seine. We sampled every -restaurant known to our gourmet Felix. We sat in icy studios at the -feet of shy ogres. Even Dégas thawed to us, while rare spirits from odd -corners of the earth joined us in the evenings. And increasingly the -beauty of Paris was revealed to me. I cared for it intimately now, and -I loved its smooth pale historic stones with a delicate sensuousness. - -I was happy. I was as happy as an opium eater. I lived in a continuous -mood of enjoyment that had the quality of a dream. All this was mine -to behold and delight in, and I was responsible for none of it. I was -passive. I was calm. The play played itself out about me, and I was in -no way involved. What people did and what they didn’t do had no real -significance. When Ludovic said: “A man has as much right to take life -as to give it,” I thought placidly, “Perhaps so, in this world.” When -he denounced property and capitalists and said we should all be poor, I -thought, of course, that is so, and when he pointed out to me a woman -who had killed her father because he was cross-eyed and got on her -nerves, I merely looked at her with mild curiosity. He said that she -was very sensitive and charming, and I believed him. It didn’t seem to -matter. - -And if at times it occurred to me that I was becoming callous and -selfish, at others I felt that I was becoming intelligent and -charitable. - -Jinny was my one responsibility, a little will-o’-the-wisp creature who -danced into my room of a morning to drop a kiss on my nose and dance -out again. Jinny, so entrancingly pretty, so ridiculously dainty, who -never soiled her hands or tore her frock or spilled her food, who said -her prayers night and morning to a silver crucifix that her father had -sent her from Italy, and who confessed her minute sins every Friday to -a priest but never confided in her mother. - -My child baffled me. There was nothing in my own childhood’s experience -that threw any light on the little close mystery of her nature. She -didn’t like animals, she hated romping about, she was afraid of the -cold. What she liked was to be curled up on cushions in front of -the fire and listen to fairy stories. Her indolence was complete, -her capacity for keeping still, extraordinary in one who moved so -lightly when she did move. Sometimes when I looked up from the book I -was reading aloud to her, I would find her great brown eyes fixed on -me with a look of uncanny wisdom. She seemed to disapprove of me. I -wondered if this had anything to do with the teaching of her priestly -tutors that her father had prescribed for her, or whether it sprang -from a natural precocious feeling of the difference between us. We -were certainly a strange couple. Even in moments of my most anguished -tenderness, I could not but feel the incongruity. The idea that she was -much more her father’s daughter than mine was one that I tried not to -dwell on. - -I had been going happily along, thinking that I could enjoy this -adventurous life of my new friends without being involved in it, when -I found out that I was much less free than I thought. Your mother did -not approve, I knew, and I gathered that she blamed you for leading -me astray, but it came nevertheless as a surprise when she gently -interfered. - -“Aren’t you making yourself a little notorious, my child?” she asked -one day. - -“Notorious _belle-mère_?” - -“Yes. Dining in restaurants in the company of such strange men.” - -“They are not very strange, dear, except in being so very intelligent, -and I never, at least scarcely ever, dine alone with men. There is -almost always Clémentine.” - -“I know, that’s just it. For a chaperone, you couldn’t have chosen -worse.” - -“But surely, _Belle Mère_, I need no chaperone, I am old enough to go -about alone?” - -She closed her eyes wearily, opened them and spoke sharply. - -“French women of good family never go about alone, and never dine in -public places.” - -“But Clémentine--” - -“Don’t talk to me of Clémentine.” I was startled by the sudden note of -sharp personal grievance in her voice. “Her conduct is scandalous. Her -mother was my first cousin and dearest friend. It is fortunate that -she is dead. How could she be blamed for that marriage, yet Clémentine -always blamed her and set to work deliberately to make her suffer.” - -“I know nothing of Clémentine’s marriage.” - -“Well, her husband--but no matter, there is no excuse for her making -herself an object of derision.” - -“I scarcely think she does that, dear, she is in great demand you know, -in the very highest quarters.” - -“At foreign courts, perhaps, not in her own country. If it weren’t for -the obligations of kinship no one, but no one would speak to her.” - -“Just what is it that she has done that you so disapprove of?” - -“She has made herself cheap. She has vulgarized her position, she plays -at being a bohemian, she has bartered away her dignity for a little -sordid amusement.” - -“And I?” - -“You are in danger of doing the same, but in greater danger.” - -I was annoyed and rose and moved to the door. - -“You are going?” - -“I am afraid I must. I have an appointment.” - -“Ah, you resent my speaking to you?” - -“No, dear, but--” - -“But--?” - -“I am afraid I cannot quite agree with you.” - -Her face hardened. I made an effort. - -“_Belle-mère_, I am doing no wrong. Surely you believe that. These men -are nothing to me, not one of them.” - -Her eyebrows lifted. “You love no one?” she asked. - -“No.” - -“That too, is just as I thought.” - -“You wouldn’t mind that, I suppose?” - -“Mind it? How should I? How would it concern me?” - -I was a little taken aback. “It only matters then what I seem to do, -not what I really do?” - -She smiled, rather sarcastically, I thought. “Put it that way if you -like, my child.” - -“But, _belle-mère_, don’t you really understand at all, that I am -trying to be happy and keep my self-respect?” - -She eyed me a moment strangely, then dropped her head. - -“We will never understand each other,” she said at last. “We won’t -discuss things any more. It leads to nothing.” - -But Claire felt that she, too, must make an attempt to bring me to -reason. She attacked me on the subject of Geneviève. There she was -clever. Was I not neglecting my child a little? No, I replied I was -not. I was out so much, I seemed to take so little interest in her -education. At this I flared up. - -“Her education, my dear, is as you know, not in my hands. Her father -has made clear his wishes on that subject. Her mind is confided to -the keeping of Monseigneur de Grimont and you know what he is doing -with it better than I do. What with her prayers, her masses and her -confessions, her priestly tutors who instructed her in Latin and Greek, -Italian and Spanish, and the good sisters who teach her to embroider -altar pieces and to believe every ridiculous miracle in the lives of -the saints, such healthy heathen interests as I can cultivate in her -little ecstatic soul have small chance of flourishing.” - -“But Jane, surely she has her dancing, her riding, her music?” - -“Yes, of course, she has everything, everything, but no time for her -mother. Her days are as full as a time table. Try as I may, I can -never get more than an hour a day with her. How then am I to make her -my life’s occupation? That’s what you meant, wasn’t it? You said I -neglected her.” - -“What I meant was that you seem to have forgotten us all, Geneviève -included, and to have forgotten what we and therefore what she must -stand for in society.” - -“On the contrary.” - -“You mean--?” - -“I mean that I constantly think of it, but perhaps not just as you do.” - -“Well, if you want your daughter to take Clémentine as a pattern.” - -“I don’t,” and then added with deliberate wickedness, “I wouldn’t have -poor little Jinny attempt anything so impossible.” - -“You admire her so much?” - -“I do.” - -“But she’s grotesque. She goes in for politicians and for journalists.” - -“I adore her.” - -“She’s shameless--her affairs--” - -I cut her short. “I know nothing about her affairs. What I know is that -she has a generous soul, a warm heart and the most brilliant mind in -Paris. No other woman in Paris can touch her for brains.” - -Claire lifted her eyebrows. I saw that she washed her hands of me. -At the moment I was glad of it. As for Clémentine, she cared nothing -for what Claire or any one else thought of her. She was a law unto -herself. Her love affairs, of which I knew more than I admitted, were -as necessary to her as her meals. She must have food, and she attached -no great importance to it. An artistic find, an amusing trip or an -exciting debate in the Chamber of Deputies, would make her forget with -equal ease her lunch or a sentimental rendezvous. Her relations with -men didn’t seem to me to be any of my business. There was a certain -recklessness there that I didn’t understand. I left it at that. It was -Fan who told me about Clémentine’s marriage. - -“My dear, her husband had unnatural tastes. He kicked her downstairs -a month after the wedding. She can never have any children, and she -hasn’t spoken to him since. Also, she is said to have said that she -would never again have anything to do with a man of her own world. If -she did, well, she has kept her word. Her mother stopped her getting -her marriage annulled. Clémentine never got over that. She’s at war -with the whole tribe of her relations, but of course she can’t cut -loose from them for she hasn’t a son, and anyhow one doesn’t in France. -So her revenge is to do just those things that most irritate them. -They wouldn’t mind a bit how many lovers she had if she would choose -them from her own class, and preserve the usual appearances. What they -can’t bear is her going about with men whose fathers made boots or -sold pigs. And in justice to them you should remember that these men’s -grandfathers cut off their own grandfather’s heads.” - -“They prefer, I suppose, a person like Bianca.” - -“Of course, a million times.” - -“It’s nothing to Clémentine’s credit then that she’s a true friend and -incapable of grabbing a man from another woman.” - -“No, as long as she dresses like a futurist picture, and carries paper -bags through the streets and dines with Ludovic at Voisin’s, she’s a -horrid thorn in their sides.” - -“Well, I’m sorry, because you know I don’t propose to stop going about -with her.” - -“Lord, no, why should you? You certainly deserve a bit of fun. Come to -the Mouse Trap tomorrow night. We’ve a supper party after the Russian -Ballet.” - -But I knew what that meant, a troup of theatrical people, and every one -drunk by morning, so I declined. I saw a good deal of Fan these days, -but she had certain friends I _couldn’t_ see. It didn’t amuse me to -watch women get tipsy. Those Montmartre parties depressed me horribly. -And I felt sure of Clémentine and her band on this point. It was just -one of the admirable things about them that they could be so daringly -gay and never verge on the rowdy. I had seen her administer a snub to -a hiccoughing youth. She could be terrible when she was displeased, -and whatever one said of her, for that matter whatever she herself -felt, no one could get away from the fact that she was as proud a lady -as any in France, and perfectly conscious of her privilege of caste. -It was just this consciousness of her lineage, I imagined, that gave -her such a sense of security. She knew that she could do anything she -chose and be none the less privileged for it, and actually none the -worse. If she touched pitch she knew it wouldn’t stick to her fingers. -If she dipped into Bohemia, she did so knowing that she could never be -said to belong there. There was always behind her a solid phalanx of -relatives who would never disown her however much they disapproved. -Always in her maddest escapades there were the towers of the family -castle looming behind her. They cast an august shadow. She might dress -like an artist’s model, never would she be taken for one. She was safe, -perfectly safe and she knew it, and so did every one else. - -But with me, as Aunt Clothilde pointed out, it was different. - -“There’s nothing to prove what you are but the way you behave, my poor -Jane. If Clem took it into her head to play at being a barmaid, the -de Joignys and all the rest of them would wring their hands and call -it a scandalous idiocy, but if you did the same thing they’d say, -‘Of course, it’s quite natural, she probably was a barmaid in her -own country,’ and they wouldn’t wring their hands at all, they’d be -mightily pleased.” - -“So they think my associating with Ludovic is proof of a low mind?” - -“Well, what do you find in that old bourgeois?” - -“I find a gold mine.” - -“A gold mine of what?” - -“Information, ideas.” - -“Humph!” - -“But it’s true, Aunt, he is educating me. He gives me books, -philosophy, history, all sorts of books, then we discuss them.” - -“Just like going to school, eh?” - -“Very much like that.” - -“And it doesn’t bore you?” - -“On the contrary.” - -“Well, no one will ever believe you. If Philibert comes back, he -certainly won’t.” - -She broke off and looked at me closely. - -“Ah ha, you still care for him, then?” - -“No, no, how could I, I mean how could he? It’s impossible that he -should return now, surely.” - -A week later I found a note from him on my breakfast tray, announcing -his return. He was installed in his own rooms in the west wing of the -house, and he would “present his duties” at the hour I chose to name. -And the post that same morning brought me a letter from Bianca. It -said-- - -“If you blame me for taking away your husband, it is stupid of you. I -did you a great service in doing so. Perhaps that was why I did it. I -can think of no other reason. For myself I regret it, but not for you. -I envy you. Bianca.” - -My fingers trembled as I read this strange epistle, and I felt cold. -Actually--it seemed as if the room had gone cold as ice. - - - - -VI - - -It seemed at first as if Philibert’s return were going to make very -little difference to me. For some weeks I was scarcely aware of his -presence in the house. There was plenty of room for us to live there -without running into each other. When we did meet at the front door -or on the stairs, his manner was marked by just that formal courtesy -that was the usual sign of deference from a man of his world towards -his wife. To the servants, there was always one or two present at such -encounters; there could have been visible no flaw in his armour, nor in -mine. - -Our first meeting had been brief. Whatever his intention in seeking me -out in my boudoir, it took him not more than five minutes to find out -that there was nothing to be gained by a prolonged conversation, and on -the whole, nothing to be feared from me, did he but leave me alone, but -I imagined that I read upon his face more disappointment than relief. -He had not been afraid, perhaps just a little uneasy, but he had been -curious. He had expected something, and as he left me the expression of -his back and the vague fumbling of his hand in the tail pocket of his -coat, gave me the impression that whatever it was he had wanted, he was -going away without it. This impression, however, was fleeting, a deeper -and more painful one remained, and kept me a long time idle at my desk. -He was changed in a way that for some subtle inexplicable reason had -made me ashamed to look at him. There was in his pallid puffy face, in -the sag of his shoulders and the crook of his knees, something that I -did not want to understand, something that he had no right to show me. -Inside his immaculate clothes he was shrivelled to half his size. His -wonderful padded coat sat on him as if on a lifeless and flaccid dummy -out of which had escaped a good deal of the sawdust stuffing. Bianca -had done with him. She had worn him out. He looked old. His eccentric -elegance no longer became him. It was as unsuccessful as a plastered -make-up on the face of an old woman. That was the sharpest impression -of all, he looked a failure. I wondered that he had the courage to show -himself, not to me but to Paris, where he had always walked with such -impudent assurance. His showing himself to me seemed to me not half so -daring. It seemed to me to prove once more and finally his complete -contempt for my opinion. - -I went on with my life. If I found that the savour had gone out of it, -I did not admit this all at once to myself. The situation didn’t bear -thinking about. If one thought about it one would be likely to find it -quite extraordinary enough to upset one’s mentality, and I proposed not -to be upset by it, and Philibert, apparently, with a certain exercise -of tact that reminded one of a burglar arranging the furniture and -putting out the lights after ransacking a room, made things as easy -for me as he could, by, as I say, keeping out of my sight. I soon -found, however, that he wasn’t keeping out of other people’s. On the -contrary, I began to be conscious of him moving about near me among his -friends. It was really rather funny. Only at home under the roof that -housed us both, was I quite free from him. In other people’s houses I -was constantly meeting his shadow. He had either been there, or was -coming, occasionally I was certain, that he had but just taken his -departure as I came in. Something of him remained in the room. I caught -myself looking about for his hat, and the faces of my acquaintances -betrayed varying shades of discomfiture or amusement. Mostly I -gathered as time went on, was their feeling one of amusement. Paris -had not been at all squeamish in welcoming Philibert, and it found our -continued _chassé-croisé_ rather ridiculous. But with its very special -adaptibility and its extraordinary flair for situations, it continued -to be tolerant of my evident absurd wish not to be coupled with my -husband, and did not ask us out together. - -Aunt Clothilde, sitting enthroned like some comic Juno above the social -earth, put an end to this. As was her habit she sent for me and barged -into the subject in hand. - -“Now then, Jane, this sort of thing must stop.” - -“What sort of thing, Aunt?” - -“You and Philibert playing hide and seek all over Paris like a couple -of silly children. Don’t pretend you don’t understand. You chose your -‘_parti_’ long ago when you didn’t insist upon a separation, so now you -must go through with it. Nothing is so stupid as doing things half way. -You’ve ignored his behaviour. You’ve not bolted the door in his face, -and to all appearances you’re a reunited couple.” - -I tried to interrupt. - -“Don’t interrupt me. I don’t care, and nobody cares what goes on -between you and Philibert in your private apartments. Whether you’re -nasty or affectionate is nobody’s business but your own, but as regards -society, society expects people in it to behave in a certain way, and -to make things easy and agreeable and smooth. That’s its main object, -its only _raison d’être_. We people who think ourselves something are -nothing if we’re not well bred, that is, if we don’t know how to help -other people to keep up the pretence that every one is happy, that life -is harmonious and that there’s nothing dreadful under the sun. Society, -French society, is very intolerant of bad manners, not as you know of -anything else. It is exclusive with this object and adamant on this -point. It let you in, now it expects you to behave. You’ve enjoyed its -favour, you owe it something in return. What a bore to lecture you like -a school-mistress, but there you are. I’m going to give a dinner and -you and Philibert are both to come, and that will be the end of this -nonsense.” - -And of course I did as she said. - -And again your mother’s manner to me conveyed a sense of my action -having made a difference, but this time an enormously happy difference. -She beamed, she was more affectionate than she had ever been. She -called me “_Ma chère petite_” “_Ma fille aimée_.” Drawing me down to -her with her delicate blue-veined hand, she would press her lips to one -of my cheeks then the other, lingeringly, and with a pathetic trembling -pressure, and look from me to Philibert with happy watery eyes in which -was no scrutiny or questioning. She was growing old. Something of her -fine discernment was gone. She was no longer curious to know what lay -behind appearances. It was enough for her to have recovered her son and -been spared the sight of his ruin. Like a child she clung to Philibert. -I admit that his manner to her was very charming. He went to see her, I -believe, every day. - -Claire did not seem so pleased with our renewed family life that -resembled so curiously the life we had lived round your mother five -years before. Her smile was bitter, her tongue caustic, but she looked -so ill, that I put her temper down to bad health. It was, strangely -enough, Philibert who explained to me, driving home from his mother’s -one Sunday afternoon. - -“You mustn’t mind Claire,” he began. “She is in trouble.” - -“I don’t. I can see she is in wretched health.” - -“Her health is the result, not the cause, of her unhappiness.” - -“Oh?” - -“Her husband has fallen into the hands of a scheming woman who wants to -marry him. He has threatened Claire with a divorce.” - -I was taken aback. I stammered. For an instant I wanted to laugh, but -Claire’s haggard face was after all nothing to laugh at. I remarked -mildly; “But I thought that in your world one didn’t divorce?” - -“He’s not of our world, never was, never will be. Besides, it bores -him, he’s had enough of us.” - -“I see.” - -“He’s had too many snubs. We’ve been stupid. That affair of the Jockey -Club rankles.” - -“You mean that if you had taken him into the Jockey Club ten years ago -he wouldn’t want to divorce your sister now.” - -“Quite possibly. It would have involved him in other things, given him -something to live up to. As it is, he has, as you know, gone in for -politics.” - -“No, I didn’t know. I never hear him mentioned. I’m very sorry if -Claire is unhappy about it.” - -“She is, terribly.” - -“But she hates him.” - -“Not quite that. In any case the disgrace would kill her. She has -always been a retiring protected creature. The publicity would be -peculiarly awful for her.” - -I knew that what he said was true, but he had more to say, and he -stammered over it. - -“We thought that you, Jane, might do something.” - -I was startled. “Do something?” - -“Yes, to help, to persuade the man not to.” - -“But I scarcely know him.” - -“He has a great respect for you.” - -“For me? What nonsense.” I looked at him sharply. “What do you mean, -Philibert?” - -His pale blue eyes turned from mine to the Sunday pageant of the Champs -Elysées. - -“He wants a place in the Government. He would be greatly influenced by -political considerations, a prospect of success. Your friend Ludovic -could do something there.” - -“You mean that you want me to ask Ludovic to ask the Premier to give -your brother-in-law a place in the Cabinet on condition he doesn’t -bring divorce proceedings?” - -“It needn’t be a big place, you know. An under-secretaryship would do.” -The car drew up, came to a stop. “You’d better talk to Blaise about it -before you decide to leave Claire in the lurch.” - -But you showed a curious reluctance to discuss the question and -referred me to Clémentine. I found her in the disused stables behind -her house where she had fitted up a studio. She was in a linen overall, -her arms smeared with clay, a patch of it on the tip of her tilted -nose, her hair screwed untidily on top of her ugly attractive head. -She pointed out a clean spot on a packing case and after lighting a -cigarette I sat down there. - -“I’ve come about Claire.” - -“I know.” Her face twinkled. She gave a laugh and taking up a handful -of wet clay slapped it on the side of the gargoylish head that she was -modelling. - -“Why won’t Blaise talk to me about it?” - -“He doesn’t like their using you in the matter. He has delicacies of -feeling.” - -“I don’t quite see. He adores his sister.” - -“Of course.” - -“And is very unhappy about her, as they all are.” - -“Naturally.” - -I pondered. “After all, I belong to the family.” - -“Quite so, whether you like it or not.” She ducked about scraping and -smoothing with flexible thumb. - -“But I’m fond of them.” - -“Of Claire?” - -“Yes.” - -“People are.” - -“You sound very dry.” - -She gave a poke to her ugly old man’s protruding eye. - -“_Mon dieu_, I’m not too fond of your family, as you well know. They -bore me. I was brought up with Claire. We know each other.” - -“You don’t like her.” - -“She is uninteresting, no courage, no character.” - -“She has put up with a great deal.” - -“Has she? She liked her husband’s money, you know, and he’s not a bad -sort, really, merely vulgar, quite good-natured.” - -“She loves her children,” I said weakly. At that Clémentine looked -round quickly. - -“Do you call that a virtue?” she asked. - -I stammered. “I don’t know, I suppose so. It seems to me human.” - -“Well, my dear, when humanity has nothing more to recommend it than the -fact that it cares for its young, I shall be ready to depart to another -planet.” She sat down on a high stool, one knee over the other, a foot -hung down, dangling a shabby shoe. Her face was full of merriment. -She chuckled. Her eyes danced. She gave me, as she always did, the -impression of containing in herself an immense fund of interest and -gladness and of finding life much to her taste. - -“You mustn’t destroy my belief in my love for my child,” I said, half -laughingly. - -“Your belief in it?” She wondered. - -“Yes, in its being--worth something.” - -“To which one?” - -“To us both.” - -She puffed at her cigarette. “If I had had a child I should have loved -it terribly, and stupidly,” she said seriously. “I should probably have -been worse than any of you. Maternity is a blinding, devouring passion, -is it not? I don’t know, but so I imagine. A mother’s love for her -child, what is there more admirable in that than in any other fact of -nature? Only when it is strong, so terribly strong as to become wise -and unselfish is it interesting. Even then, no, it is not interesting, -it is only natural and necessary, and often, very often, it is a curse -to the children.” Her face had gone dark and intense. She jumped down -from her stool, gave herself a shake, laughed, turned to her work--“No, -your mother-women are dreadful. I prefer those who love men. Sexual -passion is good for the feminine soul. It makes us intelligent. Tell -me, is it true that in America sensuality is considered a bad thing?” - -“Yes. We--they--admire chastity, purity.” - -“How do you mean--purity?” - -“One man for one woman, love consecrated by marriage.” - -“All one’s life?” - -“Yes.” - -“How strange. Love, you say, consecrated by marriage. How very funny. -You mean then seriously, not just social humbug? In their hearts do -intelligent women, women like yourself, feel love, love as the interest -and savour of life, coming unexpectedly, perhaps often, to be a bad -thing?” - -“Many do.” - -“And you--what do you think?” - -“I? Oh, for me, I can’t generalize about it. I have no ideas on the -subject.” - -“I see.” - -She was silent a while. I watched her clever thumbs pressing and -smoothing the soft clay. She was no sculptor, but the head she was -modelling had a mischievous ugliness. Though badly done, it expressed -something. Watching her I realized again her immense capability, her -command of herself, her understanding of the elements of life. What was -she thinking of now, her sensitive witty face blinking sleepily with -half-closed eyes like a cat’s? Inwardly I felt that she was faintly -smiling at some pleasant memory or prospect. She was neither young -nor beautiful. Her wiry little person suggested nothing voluptuous or -alluring. She was dry and spare and untidy, yet her success with men -was unequalled. Impossible to imagine her in an attitude of amorous -tenderness, yet men adored her. And her lovers remained her friends. -She puzzled me. There was something here that I would never understand. -The high game of sex as a life occupation of absorbing interest and -endless ramifications, a gallant and dangerous sport at which one -became a recognized expert, in some such way I felt that she looked at -it. As an Englishwoman gives herself up to hunting, I reflected, and -exults in knowing herself to be a hard rider, just so Clémentine would -go at the biggest jumps, keep in the first field. Riding to hounds -or playing the daring game of love, the same sporting mentality, the -same ecstatic sense of life, all our faculties sharpened by danger. Why -not? Clémentine was sane, healthy, full of zest and delight. Impossible -to think of her in terms of maudlin sentimentality or sordid secret -pleasures. And yet for myself, I felt a loathing of men, a disgust at -the vaguest image of the contacts of sex. It was very puzzling. There -must be some deep racial difference between us, or some tenacious -effect of my upbringing that held me in a vice, or was it only that -Philibert had poisoned for me the sources of all emotion? - -I moved about the dirty studio, brought back my mind to the subject I -had come to discuss. “We have forgotten about Claire, haven’t we?” - -“Well, yes, what of Claire?” She yawned. - -“Philibert says that Ludovic could arrange it.” - -“No doubt he could. The President of the Council is you know his -greatest friend.” - -“Yes, I know, but surely giving away secretaryships--” - -“Oh, la la! Why not? Don’t worry about that. Madame de Joigny’s -son-in-law will make quite a respectable under-secretary as far as that -goes. I only wonder he’s not got what he wanted long ago.” - -“What shall I do then?” - -She looked at me, her head on one side, screwing up her clever -mischievous eyes. - -“That, my dear, depends entirely on what you want to do.” - -“Do you think Ludovic would mind my approaching him on such a subject?” - -She laughed. “Do you?” - -“No, I don’t. I should put it quite brutally, he would only have to say -no.” - -“Quite so.” She continued to watch me with her funny intelligent grin. - -“And that wouldn’t spoil our friendship, would it?” I asked again. - -“No, I should say not, certainly not.” She laughed again and somehow, -frank as was that bubbling sound, I didn’t like it coming in at that -moment. - -“Why do you laugh?” I asked, looking at her keenly. - -Her face grew gradually grave, her eyes opened. We stared at each other -and in hers I saw a light, a flash, something keen and swift and bright -that made me warm to her, value her, exult in her friendship. - -“_Vous êtes--vous êtes--_” she turned it off, waving a handful of clay. -“_Vous êtes admirable._” But I didn’t understand then, only long after. -I wonder what Claire would say if she knew that her fate hung on the -thread of Clémentine’s charity? For Clémentine saw it all, saw quite -clearly her opportunity for revenge. She had only to suggest what they, -unknown to me, were all thinking, namely that Ludovic, for the simplest -of reasons, would never refuse me anything, and their whole little -scheme would be undone. But she didn’t suggest it. There was nothing -spiteful in Clémentine. - -So I went to him and told him the whole thing quite bluntly, and -he, without any fuss or without giving me any feeling of doing me a -favour, said that of course he would put in a word with the Premier. -They, he and the Premier, were going to the country together for a few -days. They were going to see Ludovic’s mother in her little farm on -the Loire. They would fish and sit in the garden. Perhaps over their -fishing rods on the banks of the lazy, reedy river, something could be -arranged. He then went on to tell me of his mother, who was very old, -nearly eighty-five, and who would not come with him to Paris because of -the noise. She was, he said, just a peasant woman, and had no interest -in his career. But she sent him baskets of apples from her orchard and -socks that she had knitted. She could not write. The _curé_ kept him -informed of her health. They had been very poor. As a child he had -always been hungry and he and his mother had worked in the fields. -Sometimes they had been so poor that they had had to beg for bread. His -father, who had been of a different class, had done nothing for him. He -had made his own way. The _curé_ had taught him to read and write. His -mother was content now. She had a cow and pigs and chickens, an apple -orchard and a garden. But she could not accustom herself to having a -servant in the house and did the cooking herself. He did not allude -again to Claire’s husband, neither then nor later. In time, as you -know, the matter was arranged, and I like to think that it was settled -in that _chaumière_ where Ludovic’s little old mother in her white -cap and coarse blue apron sat knitting, while the hens scratched and -cackled beyond the farm door. There is something humorous to me in the -fact that Claire’s luxurious home was secured to her in that place of -poverty and courage and contentment. - -In the meantime Philibert had recovered his health and his looks. His -doctor and his masseur and his hairdresser and his tailor had in six -months restored to him a very good substitute for youth. He had gone at -the business methodically and with the utmost seriousness. Seeing as -little of him as possible at home, I nevertheless was aware of what was -going on. He lived by a strict régime. His rubber came every morning at -eight o’clock, his fencing master at nine. At ten he dressed. At eleven -he walked or rode in the _bois_. Faithfully he stuck to the diet his -doctor had ordered for him. He drank only the lightest wine. He gave -up smoking. His hand no longer shook. His face was smooth and rosy, he -had put on weight, he walked with his old springy impudence. He looked -almost the same, almost, but not quite. No beauty doctor on earth could -wipe away from his face the mark Bianca had put there. The droop of -the eye-lids, the sag of the lower lip, gave him away. To the crowd -he might seem the same Philibert, the leader of fashion, the joyous -comedian, the perennially young, but not to me, and not to himself. -We both knew that he was an old man now, and this fact formed a sort -of bond between us, a cold, grim, precise understanding that linked us -inevitably together. And for a time I didn’t quite hate this because -I felt secure, I felt that I had the upper hand. He was afraid of me, -and in a curious way depended on me. He depended on me, not to give -him away, not to let on to any one that he was, or had been, in danger -of breaking up. His vanity thus kept him at my mercy, while another -part of his brain found relief in the fact that I saw him as he was. -Sometimes I caught a look in his eyes that seemed to say--“I really -wouldn’t have the endurance to sustain this enormous bluff if I had to -bluff you as well.” I never answered his look. I couldn’t bring myself -to reach out to him in even the most impersonal way. All I could do -was to remain there beside him, in public sharing his life, in private -withdrawn, impassive, stolid, non-committal, and do him no harm. - -And so it might have gone on indefinitely, the atmosphere of our house -coldly harmonious, calm as an icy lake, had not Jinny introduced an -element of hot, surging, dangerous feeling. - -He loved her, too. At first I wouldn’t believe it, but I was bound -at last to admit that it was so. When I first began to notice the -increasing attention he gave her I had thought that he was “up to -something.” I suspected him to be playing the part of devoted father -with motives that had to do with myself, and as I could not conceive of -his wanting to make me like him, I imagined the reverse, that he wanted -to make me jealous, and I set myself to conceal from him the fact that -he had succeeded. I was terribly jealous, for whatever the meaning -of his apparent feeling for her, there was no doubt of her affection -for him. The child was obviously delighted to be with him. Repeatedly -when I asked her if she would like to go with me for a drive, she -would ask if “Papa” were coming too, and when I said no, her face -would change from pleasure to a curious expression of boredom that -was like an absurd imitation of his own. She would turn away quickly -and put out her hands to the empty room in a funny, hurting gesture of -exasperation, then suddenly, feeling my disappointment, would assume -a polite cheerfulness and say, with a quick, tactful insincerity that -reminded me all too vividly of her grandmother, “It is a pity Papa -cannot come, but of course, Mamma, I like best being with you alone.” -And I would cry out in my heart, “My poor, precocious infant, where did -you get such intuitions?”--but I knew where she got them. - -There was between them a very striking resemblance. I looked sometimes -with horrid fascination from one to the other. She would come in with -him, swinging to his hand, twirling about, clasping it in both hers, -and laughing up in his face. Her light, exaggerated grace was his, -also the fineness of her little features. No one would ever at first -sight take her for my child, no one seeing them together could mistake -her for his. They disengaged the same brightness, the same chilly, -sparkling charm. How was it that in one it displeased me and in the -other so tormentingly appealed? Why, I asked myself, did I not hate her -too, since she so resembled her father? But the muttered question was -answered only by an inaudible groan. I had given him all my love, and -had now transferred it all to her, a stupid, elemental woman, I felt -that I was destined to be their victim. Strange thoughts, you will say, -for a mother to have about her child. Why not? I was afraid of her, -far more afraid than I had ever been of him. In the days of his power -over me I had been young, ignorant, insensitive; now I knew what I was -capable of suffering, knew only too well what little Geneviève could -do to me, did she take it into her head to become as like him as she -looked. - -I tried to hide all this, but I felt that he saw. His manner changed. -He was at once more attentive to me and more careless, less formal, -more talkative, in a word more sure of himself. He took to dropping in -on me in the evenings before dinner, bringing Geneviève with him and -holding her beside him in the crook of his arm, while he unconcernedly -chatted, and all the while her great shining brown eyes were fixed on -me with their meaning lucidity. I was obliged to prevaricate, to seem -pleased, to lay myself out in an elaborate assumption of happy intimacy. - -One night she came running back alone after going with him to the door -of his room, and threw her arms round my neck. I gathered her close. -Her caresses were so rare that I held her, positively, in a breathless -delight, with a sense of yearning tenderness so exquisite that it -frightened me. “So sweet, so sweet,” I murmured to myself, straining -her to me. Then I heard her say intensely, “It’s not true, it’s not -true, tell me it’s not true.” - -I lifted my face from her curls. - -“What is not true, my darling?” - -“That you and Papa don’t love each other.” She kept her face buried. I -felt her heart beating against me, a frail little gusty heart beating -painfully. The room round us was very still, too still, no sound in it, -only the felt sound of our heart beats, and the clock ticking on the -mantelpiece. I must speak, I must lie to her, and as the words left my -lips I knew that they were involving me in endless deceptions, in a -long, long ghastly comedy, in countless humiliations. - -“No, darling, it’s not true.” - -Her little arms tightened round my neck. - -“They said--” she whispered. - -“Who said, my pet?” - -“Some ladies. I heard them talking. They said, they said you would -never forgive him.” I felt her body trembling, and I too trembled, and -as I realized that I had thought her incapable of intense feeling I -felt deeply ashamed. “What did they mean, Mamma, tell me, what did they -mean?” - -“Nothing, nothing.” I must have spoken harshly. “They were mistaken, -they were speaking of some one else.” - -She lifted her face then and looked at me, her eyes were wide and -accusing. “Oh, no, Mummy, they said your names, they said Jane and -Philibert, your two names. It was at Aunt Claire’s. Dicky and I were -just behind the door, and I pulled him away so he wouldn’t hear any -more, but he only laughed at me and said, ‘Every one knows your parents -detest each other’--in French, you know, ‘_Tout le monde sait que tes -parents se détestent_,’ and then I kicked him.” - -“Jinny!” - -“I only kicked him a little. It didn’t hurt. I wanted it to hurt, -dreadfully.” - -“My child, my child.” - -“I know, Mummy, that it was very wicked. I told Father Anthony all -about it at confession, and he looked so sad, so beautifully sad. I -wept and wept. He told me to pray very hard to the Virgin to save me -from angry passions, and I did, but I enjoyed being angry. I felt big -and strong when I was angry, quite, quite different from ordinary, and -I thought you would understand. Were you never angry when you were a -little girl?” - -“Yes, darling, I was.” Her question had startled me. I was profoundly -disturbed by this sudden revelation of her character. - -But again her little mobile face had changed. - -“You aren’t like that, are you, Mummy? You couldn’t be?” - -“Like what, my darling?” - -“Unforgiving.” Her eyes were on mine. - -“I hope not, Geneviève.” She flushed at my tone, but continued to look -at me gravely and steadily. - -“I thought you might have been angry with Papa for leaving us for so -long,” she said with an air of great wisdom. “I was, but I forgave him -at once.” I smiled. - -“You see,” she went on, “I couldn’t bear him to be unhappy, for I love -him.” - -“I know, darling.” - -“And you love him, too?” - -“Of course.” - -She heaved an immense sigh. - -“Then we are all happy.” - -“We are all happy,” I echoed. - -A minute later she was at the door, wafting me a gay little kiss. I had -not been able to keep her. She was not more than ten years old at that -time, but even then she was already the complete elusive creature of -swift fleeting moods and superlatively lucid mind that she is today. - -And still I suspected Philibert of playing the part of adoring father -in order to make me do what he wished. So without alluding to Jinny, -never, in fact, daring to allude to her, I tried to bribe him. He -had hinted occasionally about wanting to resume our old habits of -entertaining, and his hint had shocked me. Such a farce had seemed -altogether unnecessary. Now I gave in to him and the same old -extravagant theatrical life began. To me it was incredibly boring and -at times quite ghastly. There were moments when it was as if over the -old sepulchre of our married life he had built an enormous and hideous -altar to some obscene heathen deity, some depraved Bacchus before whom -he and I giddily danced, with vine leaves in our hair. - -“But,” I argued, “this is what he likes, and if I help him do it he -will have got from me all that he wants, he will leave Jinny alone. He -will have less time for her and will forget about her.” Unfortunately -all these social antics took up as much of my time as his. The result -was that neither of us saw the child save in hurried snatches, and in -that horrible house, now so constantly filled with people, with armies -of servants, and streams of guests, I had a vision of her skipping -about like a little white rabbit in a monstrous zoo. Poor Jinny, what -a wretched mess we made of her childhood, Philibert and I, with our -constant vigilant, yet inadequate, lying to each other in her presence, -and our ridiculous absorption in the tawdry pageant of society. And yet -we both loved her and were doing it, even he in his way, for her. He -wanting her to have an incomparably brilliant position in the world, -I wanting to keep him away from her, thinking in my jealous stupidity -that she would belong more to me the more he belonged to the world. - -It was when she fell ill that I was at last convinced of his caring for -her. She had pneumonia, you remember, and was very near death for three -days. I can see Philibert now, sitting through the night by her bed, -he on one side, I on the other, I can see his face as he watched her -painful breathing, a face clammy with sweat, contracting suddenly in a -curious grimace when she struggled for breath. He never touched her. -He left that to me and the nurses. But he never once took his eyes off -her swollen little face. I was deeply impressed by the sight of that -fidgety, nervous man sitting so still, hour after hour, and I remember -his sobbing when the child’s breathing grew easier and the doctors said -the crisis was past. Poor Philibert, with his arms thrown across the -foot of Jinny’s bed and his head on them, sobbing like a child, I felt -very sorry for him that night. - -But it was too late for Jinny’s illness to make any real difference in -our relationship. We had gone too far, I knew him too well. All that -I could do was add to my knowledge of him the fact that he loved his -child and leave it at that. - - - - -VII - - -The years passed, crowded with incidents, colourful, varied, gay. I saw -them going by, like gaudy pleasure boats, richly panoplied and filled -with graceful merry-makers, floating down a sullen river. Sometimes I -seemed to be alone, watching them go by, sometimes, beyond them, a long -way off, I heard a sound that was like the sound of waves breaking on a -distant beach. - -You wince at what you feel to be my poor attempt at poetic imagery--I -am not trying to be poetic, I am trying to express to you my -experience, as precisely as possible. It was like that. In the middle -of a crowded place, at the Opera where women in diamond tiaras nodded -from padded cages, on the boulevards where a thousand motors like -shining beetles buzzed in and out of rows of clanging trams, in a -drawing-room ringing with staccato voices, I would find myself, -suddenly, listening to a sound that seemed to come from an immense -distance; a faint far rhythmic roar that was audible to my spirit, and -that I translated to myself in terms of the sea because it affected me -that way, like a booming murmur, regular as the booming of waves. I -knew what it was. - -I seemed at such times to see Patience Forbes, standing on the other -side of the Atlantic, like some allegorical figure of faith, a gaunt -weather-beaten old woman, her strong feet planted firmly on the shore, -the wind whipping her black clothes about her, her brave old eyes -looking out at me, under shielding hands, across that immense distance. - -The distance between us was growing greater. I no longer wrote to -her every week. There seemed so little to say. I found a difficulty -in telling her of my occupations and amusements. When it came to -describing to her the people I associated with, they appeared suddenly -trivial and peculiar. There was no one about me, whom she could have -understood. Clémentine with her genius for amorous-adventure, Ludovic -with his nihilistic philosophy, Felix the intellectual mischief-maker; -when I wrote to her of these people, I found that I misrepresented -them, made up for them colourless characters that did not exist and -would not distress her. Her innocence cut her off from us. The recital -of my life was like telling a story and leaving out the point. I gave -it up, disgusted by my feeble insincerity, and limited my letters to -news of Jinny and comments on public events. And she understood, of -course, that I was keeping everything back. She was no fool. I can see -now, when it is too late, what a mistake I made, and what a pity it -was. Now that she is dead, I think of her sitting alone in the Grey -House, waiting for my letters, opening them with old trembling fingers, -reading the meagre artificial sentences; her face growing tired and -grim at the meaningless words, then putting away the disappointing -sheets of paper in the secretary by the door. I found them there, all -of them afterwards arranged in packets with laconic pencilled notes -on their wrappers--“Jane doesn’t tell me much. She’s not happy.” “A -bad winter for Jane, she’s taken to gambling; she says nothing of her -husband.” “Jane was coming but can’t. I’m disappointed.” That note was -made the summer Fan died--I had determined to go to St. Mary’s Plains. -Fan’s illness stopped me. - -I had been seeing very little of Fan. She had established herself in -a flat near the _Étoile_ where she lived alone, but where her husband -paid her an occasional visit. Ivanoff was pretty well done for in -Paris. There had been a scene at the Travellers’ Club, and afterwards -his old victims had refused to play cards with him. So he had gone -elsewhere. Men like Ivanoff can always pick up a living at Monte Carlo. -He spent most of his time there, but when he came back, Fan always took -him in. I never saw him on these occasions, nor apparently did any one -else, but Fan would announce his arrival bluntly, and with a sort of -defiant bravado, would put off her dinners and lunches to be with him. - -She lived from hand to mouth. People who accused her of accepting his -ill-gotten gains were wide of the mark. Ivanoff contributed nothing to -Fan’s keep. It was the other way round. He came back to her when he was -on the rocks, came back to beg from her and to recuperate. Once she -said to me, “Ivan’s been asleep for thirty-six hours on the sofa in the -drawing-room. I swear to you it’s true. He has only waked up twice to -eat a sandwich and have a drink.” - -But when I asked why she put up with him, she flung off with a laugh, -and--“God only knows.” - -She lived from hand to mouth in a state of extravagant luxury. Her -stepfather had died, leaving her four thousand dollars a year, that -gave her twenty thousand francs before the war. One would have said -that she spent at the least five times as much, but she didn’t. She -had resources, and little arrangements that made it unnecessary for -her to pay for a good many things; and she earned a good deal. Her -reputation as one of the smartest women in Paris, and her popularity, -represented her capital, a very considerable sum. New and ambitious -dressmaking houses clothed her for nothing, and in return she brought -them the clientele they wanted. She had a standing account at certain -fashionable restaurants, where she was allowed to lunch for five francs -and dine for ten, and where to “pay back” she was the centre of many a -cosmopolitan dinner party. For ready cash she wrote social notes in a -fashion paper and occasionally launched a South American millionaire in -society. Every one knew about all this; no one minded. She never gave -any one away or presumed on her friendships and her frankness about her -own affairs which was dry and desperate and funny disarmed criticism. - -“My dear,” she said one day to Claire over the tea table, “I’ve had -a letter from Buenos Aires from a man who offers me forty thousand -francs if I’ll take his wife about next spring, and a five thousand -franc tip extra, each time she dines at an embassy. Isn’t it a perfect -scream? I wrote back asking for a photo of the wife. It came yesterday. -I’ve turned down the offer.” - -She borrowed from no one and accepted no gifts of money from her -friends, men or women, and I take the last to be the more to her credit -because half the people in her world assumed that she did and the other -half wouldn’t have blamed her if she had done so. Virtues, that you -all held so lightly, have at least a relative value. Fan was incurably -extravagant; she adored luxury, and I consider that her having married -a poor man, and having refused to procure for herself in a manner so -accepted by her world, the ease and comfort she craved, proves her to -have been an interesting person. I see that you don’t believe what -I say, but I know that it is true. Men did not pay her dressmaker’s -bills. As for her little motor brougham that created so much comment, -she bought that after an extremely lucky venture in rubber. She gambled -on the “Bourse” of course. Old Beaudoin the banker gave her tips. -Sometimes he invested her money for her. She would give him a few -thousand francs and a month or two later he would perhaps sends her -back twice the sum, but it is not exact to say that he always arranged -to double her investment. And if he did take her wretched pennies and -speculate with them and pretend that he had won when he lost, what harm -did that do him with all his millions? It was all by way of repayment -anyhow. Fan had got him and his fat wife asked to a lot of nice -houses. He owed her far more than he ever paid. And when she crowned -her services to him by making his daughter’s marriage, surely she had -earned the cheque he sent her or the block of shares, whichever it was. - -To have a good time, to be happy, a more sentimental woman would have -put it, that was her idea. Who of us all had a better, or a different -one? Weren’t we all looking for happiness, always? - -Once I saw a street arab playing in the dirt with bits of mica, -constantly threatened in his game by horses’ hoofs, wagon wheels, -policemen and hooligans. Fan reminds me of him. I remember his tiny -eager hungry grimy face, intent on his game. Fan was like him, I -watched her playing with bits of worthless brightness in the crowded -muddy streets of life, jostled, buffeted, knocked about, a little -rickety gutter snipe, fighting for the right to play, that is the way I -see her. It had a beauty! you’ll admit that, I suppose. - -But we quarrelled. I bored her. She didn’t like having any one about -who couldn’t keep up the farce of treating her as the happiest of -women, and she made fun of my taking the intellectuals so seriously. - -When I wanted to see her I had to go to her flat where luxury and -poverty and dissipation and folly were mingled together in an unhealthy -confusion. It was a curious place, very bare and new and totally -lacking in the usual necessities of housekeeping, such as cupboards and -carpets, table linen and blankets, but there were flaming silks thrown -about, and a good many books and heaps of soft brilliant cushions. A -grand piano stood in the empty drawing-room on a bare polished floor. -The dining room table held always a tray of syphons and bottles. There -might be no food, there were always cocktails and ragtime tunes to -dance to. Sometimes the electric light was cut off because the bill -wasn’t paid, but there was a supply of candles for such emergencies, -and if creditors were too pressing, Fan would take to her bed and lie -under her cobwebby lace coverlet on a pile of white downy pillows all -frills and ribbons, smoking endless cigarettes while weary tradesmen -rang the door bell, and her friends sat about on the foot of the old -lacquer bed telling each other questionable stories, and going off into -muffled shrieks of laughter. - -Her friends were many and various. Among them were people like Claire -and Clémentine and the wife of the Italian Ambassador, but her own -small particular set, the group that she went about with most, had its -special stamp. - -A cosmopolitan lot who had seen better days, and were keeping their -heads up, by grit and bluff; they were I suppose the fastest set in -Paris. The men didn’t interest me, but the women did, rather. There was -something hard and dependable about them that I liked. They bluffed the -world but not each other. Their talk was terse and to the point, their -language coarse and brutal. They made no gestures and seemed always to -be looking very straight at some definite invisible thing that occupied -their cold attention. It may have been the ugliness of life that they -were looking at. If so, it didn’t make them wince. It may have been the -past, if so it didn’t make them shudder or creep. They wasted no time -in remorse or regret. - -At times they reminded me of tight-rope walkers crossing a dizzy abyss. -There was something tense and daring about their stillness, as if a -chasm yawned under them. No doubt it did, but it was not their worldly -position that was precarious, it was their actual hold on life. They -would go on with their old titles and ruined fortunes leading the -dance till they dropped, but they might drop any time. People in their -entourage did, they were accustomed to violence. One had had a lover -who called her up one morning and shot himself while she listened over -the telephone. Another had tried twice to kill herself. Most of them -drank and took drugs. Their hard glittering eyes gave out a glare of -experience, but their faces were cold, calm, non-commital, and if they -were worried by the caddishness of the men they loved, by debts and the -torments of passion, they gave no sign and held together and helped -each other. For damned souls, they made a good show, and I admired them. - -They thought me a fool, however, and made a hedge around Fan, shutting -her off from me. - -One morning I rushed round to her flat on an impulse. I had had no -message from her but a curious feeling of nervousness had bothered me -in the night. Some one had mentioned Ivanoff at a dinner table. I had -heard the words--“wife-beater”--“card-sharper.” - -I found things at the flat in an indescribable state of disorder. - -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.” - -I broke in saying that I didn’t believe a word of it. - -“Don’t you, Jane? Well, it’s no matter. It’s unimportant. The important -thing is that I’m sick to death of everything. Every one bores me. -I find you are the only woman in Paris who is alive. I’ve been -watching you--you are very extraordinary. You care for no one. You are -self-sufficient. You have achieved the impossible.” - -All this time Madeleine was massaging my face and pretending not to be -interested. I could say nothing. I boiled with rage, helpless, wrapped -in sheets and towels, my face plastered with grease, and Bianca sat -there, her little white face buried in her furs and laughed at me. When -at last she had gone, Madeleine said the Princess had such a beautiful -character. - -I felt that I was being bated like one of her famous bulls. I resolved -to make no move. I refused to be goaded to an attack. I was afraid of -her. - -Then one day Fan came to see me. Instead of rushing in with her usual -shrill greeting, she walked up to me quietly, put her arm round me and -laid her cheek against mine. - -“I’m so happy, Jane dear; I’m so happy.” Her voice was gentle. “I have -found what I have been waiting for all my life.” She went down on her -knees and looked up into my face. Hers was calm and rested and had upon -it an expression of sweetness that I had never seen there before. “I’m -in love, Jane dear. I’m in love with the most wonderful man in the -world. I wanted to tell you because I knew you’d be glad I was happy.” - -She stayed with me for an hour and told me all about it. It was -the strangest thing, hard cynical Fan, suddenly become young and -sentimental and timid. They had met at St. Moritz that Christmas. He -was an Englishman, half Irish really, with a strong streak of Celt in -him. His name was Mark. She called him Micky. He was very beautiful, as -beautiful as a god. He had taught her to ski. They had been together -high up on snowy peaks above the world. One day she had fallen and -sprained her ankle. He had carried her down the mountain in his arms. -He was strong and straight like a young tree. He wanted her to divorce -Ivanoff and marry him. He said there was no other way for them to be -happy. He wanted to meet me. Would I come to lunch now, right away? He -was waiting for us. She had told him all about me. - -I went, of course. That boy,--you remember him, and how handsome he -was, with his golden head and fresh bronzed cheeks and the long curly -eyelashes fringing his blue eyes, and his broad sunny smile. He was -too beautiful I had felt until he gave me that very broad smile. - -Our luncheon was a happy absurd affair. Those two were ridiculously -in love--they behaved like children. They beamed, they blushed, they -looked into each other’s eyes, he very shy and sweet and attentive, -calling her Fan, and in talking to me trying to be dreadfully solemn. -“Please, Madame de Joigny, make her be serious. She must divorce that -chap, you know. There’s no alternative. It’s got to be done and I want -it done right away. Please back me up. I say, you mustn’t smile, you -know. It’s dead serious.” - -How could I help smiling? He was very appealing. He rumpled his hair -and his eyes grew dark, and little beads of moisture stood out on -his high tanned forehead. I looked at Fan. Poor Fan! so much older, -so worn, so stamped with the stamp of her harrowing racketing years, -and yet a new Fan with a young light in her eyes; I was disturbed and -anxious. - -My fears seemed during the weeks that followed to be groundless. -She held him. They continued their dream of bliss. He satisfied her -utterly. It was of course his beauty that she loved. Always she had -adored beauty in men--now she had it in its most charming aspect, -fresh, clean, young. They had nothing in common, but their passion. He -was stupid and rather a prude. He had grown up with horses and dogs and -a family of sisters in an English country house, had joined the army -and then had gone to South Africa with his regiment. He had ideas about -womanliness and the honour of a gentleman and the duties of his class. -He had never been in Paris before. Fan found no fault in him. - -She began taking him about with her. Society was at first amused and -indulgent, then again the inevitable happened. He became the rage. A -number of women lost their heads over him. He was invited out without -her. Soon he was everywhere in demand, and Fan rightly or wrongly -persuaded him to go. This at first quite worried him. Women wanting him -for themselves and finding him obstinately faithful, turned spiteful. -He didn’t understand, for he wasn’t fatuous, but he must have heard a -good many things about Fan that he didn’t like. - -I felt for him in a way. It seemed to me that he was holding his own -pretty well and behaving on the whole very decently, but I wished that -Fan’s divorce could be hurried along. She had hesitated about divorcing -Ivanoff. “Of course,” she said, “he lives off women, but I’ve known -that all along, and it doesn’t seem quite fair to get rid of him now--” -but she had given in, in the end. - -The months dragged on. I began to wonder whether Micky would hold out. -It had been difficult to find Ivanoff. A long time elapsed before the -divorce papers could be served on him. - -Micky still stuck to Fan, but he began talking about compromising -her and, after a time, I had an impression that he stuck to her -grimly, without enthusiasm. I imagined him to be cursing his own weak -character. He was weak and he knew it, and so did we. He clung to -Fan as a woman should cling to a man. This did not make her despise -him, it gave her a feeling of strength and safety. She encouraged his -dependence on her and adopted the rôle of guide and counsellor. - -About this time I had a telephone message and a note from Bianca; both -summoning me to her in her old peremptory style. The message was that -the Princess wished to see me on urgent matters and would be at home -all that afternoon. I did not go. The note, received next morning was -as follows: - - - “It is silly and dangerous to stand out against me. I am attacked - by all the demons you know about and if you don’t come, something - unexpected and unpleasant will happen.” - - -I paid no attention to it. - -Fan’s character and the quality of her life changed completely; she -gave up going out and sank into the deep secretive isolation of a woman -who lives for one man alone. Her other men friends melted away. Many -of her women friends dropped her. Not those of her own little band, -but Micky didn’t like these. Claire who was fond of her, said--“_Elle -se rend ridicule avec ce garçon_,” and refused to have them to dinner -together. Fan didn’t seem to care; she stayed more and more at home. -This created for her serious money difficulties. She had never had any -meals at all to speak of in her own flat, and her butcher’s bill had -come to nothing, but now her boy had to be fed. He would come into -dinner or lunch nearly every day, rosy and ravenous, and consume large -beef steaks, fat cutlets, chickens, eggs, butter, sweets. Her bills -became larger as her revenues dwindled. She could or would no longer -avail herself of her old sources of wealth. Her vogue was vanishing, -and with it the amiability of dressmakers and restaurant-keepers. She -had a distaste now for gambling on the Bourse and asking Beaudoin for -tips. Micky it seemed disapproved of women gambling. Her love affair -was costing her her livelihood; and Micky himself gave her nothing, -perhaps because he had nothing much to give; perhaps because of some -idea of honour, perhaps because he didn’t know how hard up she was. -Fan was not the kind to let on. I know for a fact that she often went -hungry to give him a good square meal, and I suspected that under her -last year’s dresses, she didn’t have on enough to keep her warm. - -It became increasingly evident as the winter wore on that there were -influences at work, perhaps a special influence that was worrying them -both, but I had no suspicion of the truth. Had I known I would have -done something effective--I would have wasted no time with Bianca. - -Fan had burned her bridges. There was no going back for her now, no -slipping down into the old stupefying pleasures. He had changed her, -he had purified and weakened her. There was for her a future with him -or nothing. If she lost him, she would be done for. She knew this. She -remained clear-headed and played her cards with desperate caution. -And I watching her, saw just how frightened she was, but she told me -nothing. - -I did not know that Bianca knew Micky. She went out very little -now. People spoke of her living shut up in her house as they might -have spoken of some lurid figure of legend, some beautiful ogress, -gnashing her hungry teeth in a cave, but I didn’t listen when they -talked of her. I wanted less than ever to hear about her. She still -saw Philibert, I knew, but this no longer concerned me. And she seemed -to have given up pursuing me. I ought to have known she was up to -something. I am sorry now that I refused to think about her, for I -might have reasoned it out and discovered by a process of logic, what -she was up to--I might have known that she would inevitably choose -Micky for her own, just because he was in love with another woman, -just because he was the pet of Paris, just because finally, Fan’s life -depended on him and because I cared for Fan as if she were my own child. - -In March Fan began to lose her nerve. She said to me one day-- - -“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. - - - - -VIII - - -Jinny liked to wear silks and velvets when she was quite a little girl. -Her taste for pretty clothes was something more than childish vanity. -I used often to find her in the room lined with cupboards where my -dresses were kept, sitting on the floor amid a heap of soft shining -garments, that she had dragged from their hooks, stroking the fabrics -lovingly, and purring to herself like a blissful kitten. She couldn’t -bear the touch of wool or starched cambric, and screamed herself into -hysterics when in obedience to the doctor’s orders, I tried one winter -to put her into woollen combinations. Her father humoured her in -this. I think it rather pleased him that she should be so delicately -fastidious. He found in it a proof of an exquisite sensibility and -likened her to the fairy-tale princess of the crumpled rose leaf. -Unfortunately he told Jinny the story and she immediately accepted it -as illustrative of herself, acted it out literally in her nursery, -obliging her nursemaid to make and remake her little bed, to smooth -and stroke and smooth again until every imaginary wrinkle in the soft -sheets was gone, before she would consent to get into it. This habit -lasted for some weeks until she read one day in her “_histoire sainte_” -of a saint who had acquired great spiritual blessing by sleeping on -the floor of her cell, whereupon she took no more interest in the way -her bed was made. The nurse was delighted until she discovered that as -soon as she had turned down the light and left the room, Jinny hopped -out of bed and lay down on the floor, choosing fortunately a spot near -the radiator. The harassed women, governess, nurse and nursemaid said -nothing to me the first time, nor the second that they found her asleep -on the floor, but finally came to me explaining that Mademoiselle was -very determined to die of pneumonia. - -Jinny looked at me with grave shining eyes when I asked her what such -naughtiness meant. - -“It is not naughtiness at all, Mamma, you misunderstand, it is the -saintly life, ‘_la sainte vie_.’” - -Fortunately I was sufficiently aware of her romantic absorption in the -lives of the saints, and of her habit of applying everything that she -read or heard to herself, to guess what influence was working on her. -The “saintly life” had come up before. She had already had periods -of fasting that had given way before her great liking for bonbons, -and periods of prayer, that had given way to sleepiness, and had even -attempted at one time to beat her little shoulders with a strap off -a trunk, all of which things had worried me considerably, but none -of which had been immediately dangerous to her health, so I entered -straight upon the subject in as sympathetic a tone, that is on as -high a moral ground as I could find, using all my wits to adapt my -conversation and my thought to her mind, as if, as indeed may have been -the case, her idea was more lucid than my own. - -“Darling,” I said in a tone as grave as the one she had used to me, but -with a certain timidity that she in her exaltation of the young devotee -had certainly not felt at all, “the saintly life is a beautiful thing -when rightly understood; it is too beautiful to be entered upon easily -and capriciously. If you have a true wish to model your life on that of -the saints who gave up every comfort for the salvation of their souls, -then I will help you. I will do it with you. We will change everything. -We will take away all the pretty things, and empty these rooms, yours -and mine, of the pictures, and the rugs, keeping only the strict -necessaries. We will sleep on hard beds, floor, we will eat bread and -water every day, nothing more; we will wear no more nice clothes, we -will each have a serge dress and very plain underwear, of some strong -cotton stuff, we will--” - -But poor Jinny had grown quite pale. “Oh, Mummy, Mummy, you are cruel. -Don’t you see I can’t do all that? Don’t you want me to want to be -good.” - -That you see ended well. She cried a little in my arms, and listened -quietly as I explained that being good was quite another thing to -the saintly life as she had understood it, and that this latter was -not vouchsafed to children, and we arranged between us that it would -be much more truly good, to take a great many baskets of toys to the -little poor crippled children in the big hospitals than to jump out of -bed when no one was looking, but I was not immeasurably reassured by my -victory. With Jinny it was always a case of its being all right till -the next time, and the next time was never slow in coming. - -I take it that my own feeling for Jinny needs no explanation. I am -a simple woman, and I was her mother; she was all that I had. But -Philibert loving her so much was curious, don’t you think? It seemed -so inconsistent of him! I don’t even now understand it. Perhaps -the most obvious explanation is the real one. Perhaps it was just -because she was so very attractive. Had she been ugly I believe that -he would have disliked her. She was never ugly, she had never had an -awkward age. At fourteen she had already that look of costliness, of -something luxurious, sumptuous and precious that she has today. She was -slender and fragile and smooth. At times she suggested a child Venus -by Botticelli. Her mouth had the delicate drooping curve of some of -his Madonnas, her hands were full and soft and dimpled with delicate -tapering fingers. Sensuous idle hands, they were to her instruments of -pleasure. Touching things conveyed to her some special delight; with -her finger tips she enjoyed. I know for I have watched those hands for -years, moving softly and deftly over lovely surfaces, and following the -contours of flowers, of porcelain vases, but she never did anything -practical with them. Even embroidery, she disliked. But jigsaw puzzles -amused her--she and Philibert always had one somewhere spread out on a -table. They spent hours together fitting in the innumerable tiny bits, -their heads close together, excitedly comparing, fitting, exclaiming. -Philibert liked the idea of his daughter’s distaste for doing anything -useful. He encouraged her laziness and her absurd little air of languid -hauteur. When she dropped a glove or handkerchief and waited for a -servant to pick it up for her, he laughed. - -Sometimes I tried to reason with him. - -“You are spoiling her,” I said on more than one occasion, but he only -shrugged his shoulders. - -“Don’t you see, Philibert?” I would insist, “that it is bad for her to -live in this atmosphere?” - -“What atmosphere?” - -“The atmosphere of this house, of Paris, of the world we live in.” - -“Well, my dear, it is her house, her Paris, her world--she’s born to -it, and belongs to it, so she may as well grow up in it. What would you -have for her--something more like your own home over there, eh?--the -place that turned you out, so admirably fitted for our European -life--you want her to be as you were, is that it?” - -“God forbid.” - -“Well then--” - -I couldn’t argue with him. I couldn’t tell him what I really felt and -feared, or explain to him how I hated for Jinny, all the things that I -now accepted for myself, for he was one of those things, the principle -one; I had accepted him. I had even grown to understand him, and if -it hadn’t been for Jinny, I felt that we might become friends. His -extravagances, his cynicism, his fondness for women were things that I -now took for granted. They no longer bothered me. For me, he would do -now, I no longer asked anything of him, but for Jinny he wasn’t half -good enough. As a father to my child, I found him impossible. - -One often hears of estranged couples being brought together by their -love for a child. With Philibert and myself, it was the contrary. We -were both jealous of Jinny. We were afraid, each one, that she loved -the other best, and our nervousness on this point acted to keep us in -each other’s company while it made friendship impossible. Neither of -us liked to leave the other alone with her for any length of time. I -had stayed with Fan for three months and had come back to find Jinny -hanging on her father’s every word, and to find what I imagined was a -coldness between her and myself. This may have been my imagination, -or it may have been true; I don’t know, but I suspected Philibert -of working to alienate her from me, and he suspected me of the same -thing. If I suggested taking Jinny to Ste. Clothilde for a fortnight, -he either found a way of keeping us in Paris or accompanied us, and if -Philibert wanted for some reason to go away, to London or Berlin or -Biarritz, he was haunted by the idea that in his absence I might steal -a march on him with Jinny, so really bothered I mean, that nine times -out of ten, he would give up going unless I went with him. The result -was that we were more constantly together than we had been since the -first year of our marriage. - -Looking back now to that winter of 1913-14 I see it as a season of -delirium, of fever, of madness. Paris glows there, at the eve of -war, in a lurid blaze of brilliance, its people giddy, intoxicated, -dancing over the quaking surface of a civilization that was cracking -under them. A period in the history of the human race was drawing to -a close. The old earth was rushing towards the greatest calamity of -our time, carrying with it swarming continents that in a few months -were to seethe and smoke like beds of boiling lava--and the people of -the earth as if aware that the days of pleasure were numbered, were -possessed by a frenzy. I say the people of the earth, but I mean of -course, the rich, the idle, the foolish, the so-called fortunate who -make up society and of whom Philibert and I were the most idle, the -most foolish, as we were perhaps the richest. - -That winter marked the height of our folly and of our worldly -brilliance, and for me it marked at the same time the deepest depth of -futility and cowardice. - -Philibert and I were like two runaway horses harnessed together, -and running blindly, with the smart showy vehicle of our empty life -rattling and lurching behind us, and poor little Jinny inside it. - -His extravagance that winter was colossal. I did not try to restrain -it. He felt the inertia of old age coming on him, and was having a last -desperate fling: I felt sorry for him. His parties were fantastic. He -bought the servants’ under-linen at Doucet’s; I only laughed when he -told me. Money? Why not spend it! The more he spent, the less would be -left for Jinny, and that, I argued, was all to the good. If only he -could manage to run through the whole lot, then Jinny and I would be -free. Dinner succeeded dinner, dance followed dance. We received half -Europe and were entertained in a dozen capitals. London, Brussels, -Rome, Madrid, we took them all in. It was very different from my picnic -trips with you and Clémentine when we travelled second-class, carried -paper bags of sandwiches and had literary adventures in old book shops -with ancient scholars in skull-caps and spectacles. Philibert and -I travelled in Rolls Royces or in private trains. We had maids and -valets and couriers to smooth away every discomfort and every bit of -unexpectedness. Philibert never missed his morning bath and massage, -his Swede, too, travelled with us. - -It was not very interesting. One glass of champagne is like another. -Royal palaces are as alike as cabbages. Everywhere we met the same -people and did the same things. We danced, we gambled, we gossiped, we -ate and drank and changed our clothes, and I was often bored, and often -gloomy. Too much brilliance has the effect of darkness. - -In my dismal moods I told myself that I hated it, but probably I -didn’t. No doubt it had become necessary to me to be surrounded by a -crowd of flatterers. We are all fools--And I had no precise idea of -myself. Even at night, when I was alone, and when I should have been -stripped naked to my soul in the dark, I was still wrapped about to my -own eyes, in the flattering disguises of the world’s adulation. - -In Jinny’s eyes alone did I seem to see myself as I really was. I -trembled as I looked into them. - -I wonder if all women are afraid of their children? Perhaps not, the -woman who has the love of her husband and a clear conscience and a sure -hope of heaven. I had none of these things, and I was afraid. I had -staked everything on Jinny, but my conscience was not clear about her. -Instead of a hope of heaven, I had the hope of her happiness and yet -I knew that I was not doing what was necessary to realize it. What I -was doing was, when one thought it out, futile and ridiculous. I was -wasting my life to save hers; because of her, I had been involved in -this endless round of futility and I was behaving as if I believed that -if I were wretched enough, she would be happy. - -What I wanted most of all was to save her from an experience like my -own. For her, there were to be no wretched sordid compromises with -life, no unclean pleasures, no subterfuges, no lying, no fear. She was -to remain good and brave and lovely and I was to find a true man for -her who would love her as I longed to have her loved, reverently. - -And in the meantime, she was growing up surrounded by slavish servants, -by doting relatives, by luxury and dissipation and all that I did to -protect her, was to shut her up as much as possible in the schoolroom. - -I had always been in the habit of talking to her of Patience Forbes, -her great aunt in America. It had seemed to me important for Jinny to -understand and value my people. I wanted her to love the woman who had -so loved me. To secure for that distant lonely admirable character the -respect and affection of my child was, it seemed to me, my duty. And -as a little girl Jinny had been interested in hearing about the Grey -House in St. Mary’s Plains, the waggon slide down the cellar door, -the attic full of old trunks, crammed with faded panniered dresses -and poke-bonnets, and the back garden full of hollyhocks and bachelor -buttons, and larkspur. She liked to hear of the great river that one -glimpsed between the houses at the bottom of the street behind the -garden, and of the ships that came smiling down laden with lumber from -the great forests, and she would climb into my lap and say--“Now tell -me more about when you were a little girl”--but as she grew older she -lost interest in these stories, and was more and more unwilling to -write to her great aunt and one day, when I finished reading to her a -letter from Patience, she gave a sigh and said petulantly, - -“What a boring life--‘_Quelle vie ennuyeuse._’” - -“Jinny!” I exclaimed sharply. - -“But it is, Mummy. It must be. I see her there. Ah, Mon Dieu, so -dismal. ‘_Une vieille--vieille._’ An old old one--in dusty black -clothes, in a horrid little room. All her stuffed birds round her -in glass cases--so funny! But the atmosphere is cold. It sets the -teeth on edge, and she is ugly, like a man, with big feet and hands. -There--look!” She took up poor Aunt Patty’s photograph from the table. -“Look--what has that old woman to do with me? Why does she write to me -‘My darling little Geneviève’--I’m not her darling, I don’t love her at -all. I don’t want to think of her.” - -I was very angry. “Jinny, you make me ashamed.” - -“I can’t help it,” she almost screamed at me. “I can’t help it. _C’est -plus fort que moi_--she’s strange--she’s ugly.” And she flung the -photograph on the floor and stamped her feet--her face was white, her -eyes blazing--“I don’t want to think she belongs to us. I don’t want -you to love her,” and she flung herself into a chair in a paroxysm of -angry tears. - -I sent her to bed; it was five o’clock in the afternoon, and gave -orders that she was to have bread and milk for her supper but when I -went to her later in the evening, though she was quiet, she stuck to -her idea. - -“What did you mean by your terrible behaviour, Jinny?” - -She eyed me gravely from her pillow. - -“I don’t know, except that it is all dismal and strange in America, and -I can’t like Great Aunt, and if I can’t--why then I can’t--_Cela ne se -commande pas._” - -I sat beside her, strangely depressed. Her little white bed with its -rosy hangings, her curly blond head on the lace pillow, the white fur -rug, the shaded lamp, the flickering fire, swam before me, blurred; I -half closed my eyes, and saw another child, an ugly child with a long -pigtail, in a cotton nightgown and flannel wrapper, kneeling by an old -wooden bed in a bare little room, and a tall grizzled woman standing -with a candle while the child said her prayers. “God bless my mother in -Paris and take me to her soon, and make me keep my temper and be like -my Aunt Patty--” - -I had failed--I had failed. - -But Jinny’s voice roused me. “Papa says it is an ugly country, -America--miles and miles of empty fields, just grass and grass -stretching all round.” - -“Your father has never been there.” - -“I know, but he knows about it. He says he would never go there, -not for anything, and that I needn’t--so if I’m never to see Great -Aunt--why bother?” - -Why indeed? They were too much for me, those two, my husband and my -child. - -In my depressed moods I used to go to see Clémentine. She listened -patiently, lying on a couch in purple pyjamas, smoking a cigarette -through a holder a foot long, and watching me intently while I -explained that I was no longer in control of my own life, that I was as -impotent as a paralytic, and that I hadn’t even the feeling of being a -part of anything that made up existence. - -“It is all unreal--I have lost touch. I can’t grasp anything. There’s -a space,--‘_infranchissable_,’ between me and it. At times I feel that -the only reality is the past, the remote past. My childhood is real -to me, nothing much else. I remember my home in America, now this -minute sitting in your room, more vividly than the house I left half an -hour ago. Pleasure is a narcotic--I drug myself with it, but I don’t -really understand joy--I understand sorrow. Joy is a perfume that -evaporates--suffering is a poison that remains.” - -Clémentine broke in abruptly. - -“_Ma chère amie_--take my advice, I know what you need--take a lover.” - -I burst out laughing, but she eyed me gravely. - -“You laugh, but I know what I am saying. Your life is abnormal, don't -go against nature.” She rolled over on an elbow and laid a hand on my -knee. “You must love--it will wash away all your sick fancies. You’ll -see. Any one you’ve a liking for will do; surely you like some one? -Don’t be romantic, be practical. Face facts. Take things as they are, -and you will find beauty, mystery, rapture and sanity. Beyond the -little prosaic door of compromise you will find the world of dreams. -Believe me, materialism is the only road to happy illusion, and to -remain sane, we must have illusions.” - -Well, that was her point of view, and she may have been right. I never -found out. I didn’t take her advice. Perhaps had I done so, I would be -in Paris now content with the illusion she promised me. Who knows? - -That sort of thing is the solution of most lives. A growing lassitude, -a growing fear, the feeling that one has missed life, that it will soon -be too late, and at last we give in and take in the place of what we -wanted, what we can get. - -I couldn’t. There was no one about who in the slightest degree -resembled a lover--my lover. And I was sick of the subject of love. For -years and years and years it had been served up to me, for breakfast, -for lunch, for dinner. Every theatre, every music hall, every novel one -opened, every comic paper was full of it. Travestied, caricatured, -perverted or idealized, but always the same old thing--sex--sex--sex -in all its ramifications--always monotonously the same; it bored me to -extinction. - -Philibert, fastening on this woman then that one, all my friends -falling in and out of love, like ducks round a muddy pond; it put me in -a rage with the world. - -The War came--and with it the end of a world. - -I sometimes think that God’s final day of judgment will not be so very -different. The Edict will go out from Heaven. Life will stop. Humanity -suddenly arrested on the edge of time will look over the precipice -of Eternity--will pause--will shudder--then, why should it not act? -Why not revolt as it did in 1914 against the menace of universal -destruction? Was it not just like that? - -Death was let loose on the earth. And men refusing to die, gave their -lives so that man might live. - -The obliteration of life! Something else took its place. All the usual -things of life disappeared, human relationships, amusements, ambitions, -business, hope, comfort. The people vanished. No familiar faces -anywhere. Armies took their place. Men were changed into soldiers, all -alike. Women were turned into nurses. Their personalities fell from -them, they appeared again, a mass of workers, colourless, uniform, with -white set faces in professional clothes. - -Our world, Philibert’s and mine suddenly fell to pieces; all the men -servants left, most of the women, called to their houses to send their -men to the war. Philibert found himself one morning a private in an -auxiliary service of the army; he too disappeared. The enemy was -marching on Paris; Ludovic telephoned me to say that I had best leave -for Bordeaux. I packed off Jinny to Nice with her grandmother. A woman -whose work in the slums I had been interested in for some years, was -taking an _équipe_ of nurses to the front. I went with her. Philibert’s -secretary had orders to pack up all the valuables in the house. I -forgot them. I forgot everything. - -We went as you know to Alsace--were taken prisoners--sent back again. - -On regaining Paris, I turned the house that I had hated into a -hospital. Most of its treasures had already been packed up and sent -away to a place of safety. The empty salons were turned into wards, -my boudoir into an operating room. I enjoyed filling the place with -rows of white iron beds and glass topped tables and basins and pails -and bottles and bandages. It had been a hateful house, it made a good -hospital. When it was in running order, I left again for the front. - -I enjoyed the War. It set me free. I reverted to type, became a savage, -enjoyed myself. In a wooden hut, on a sea of quaking mud under a -cracking sky, I lived an immense life. I was a giant--I was colossal--I -dwelt in chaos and was calm. With death let loose on the earth, I felt -life pouring through me, beating in me; I exulted. Danger, a roaring -noise, cold, fatigue, hunger, these my rations, agreed with me. I was -a giantess with chilblains, and a chronic backache; I was a link in an -immense machine, an atom, a speck in an innumerable host of atoms like -myself, automatons, humble ugly minute things doomed to die, immortal -spirits, human beings, my brothers. - -I observed that my little tin trunk contained everything needful for -life; soap, warm clothes, rubber boots, a brush and comb. I wanted -nothing; I was content to go for days without a bath. The beef and -white beans of the soldier was sufficient. I ate it ravenously. - -I worked and was happy. I lifted battered men in my arms, soothed their -pain, washed their bodies, scrubbed their feet; poor ugly swollen feet -tramping to death in grotesque boots, socks rotting away in them. I -enjoyed scrubbing them. I had, for the business, pails of hot water, -scrubbing brushes, the kind one uses for floors, and slabs of yellow -soap. For some months, it was my job to wash the wounded who came in -from the trenches. Many of them were peasants, old bearded men who -talked patois, in soft guttural voices and called me sister. Their -great coats were covered with mud and blood, they crawled with vermin. -I loved them. They had given their lives, they had given up their -homes, their deep ploughed fields, their children, their cattle. They -did not complain. Their stubborn souls looked out at me kindly from -weary eyes, sunk under shaggy brows, and loving them, my brothers, I -loved France, the France I had not, before, known. - -We were sent from one part of the front to another. Our _équipe_ had -a good reputation. Passing through Paris from time to time, I found -opportunities for using money. I gave, gratefully. Supply depots were -organized. Every one was in need, every one was doing something. The de -Joigny family were pleased with me. They made a great fuss over me when -I came to Paris. They spoke of my generosity, my devotion, my courage. -I loved them too, bulking them together with my comrades, my _poilus_, -the men of France. - -I had lost track of Philibert during the first months of the war. Then -I heard that he had been put to guard one of the Paris gates. He stayed -there for three months, standing in the road, with a gun, stopping the -motors of officers, looking at passes. Poor Philibert! And there was -no one to take any interest now in what became of him. His world was -finished, his friends could do nothing for him. The France that was at -war with Germany did not know him. The men who were leading the nation -had never heard of him, or if they had, remembered him with a sneer. - -Ludovic had entered one of the ministries. I went to him. Philibert, -I pointed out, was being wasted. He was a linguist. A month later he -was given the rank of interpreter and attached to the General Staff. -Occasionally he accompanied Ludovic to London, or Rome, or Boulogne. -Poor Philibert! He would have gone to the trenches if he could. He was -too old. I scarcely saw him, for four years. - -When I had leave I spent it with Jinny. He did the same, but our leave -didn’t often coincide. - -Jinny came back to Paris and lived with her grandmother. There was a -room kept ready for me in the flat. - -Sometimes I motored down from the front, along the thundering roads -where armies moved in the dark, and with the gigantic rumble of motor -convoys, and the pounding of the guns in my ears, I would step into the -little still bright sitting room with its glinting miniatures and silk -hangings to find the two of them rolling bandages or knitting socks. - -Jinny seemed to me quite safe there. - -And in a way I was glad that the years of her girlhood should be passed -in a seclusion and quiet that would have been impossible in peace -time. There was no one left to spoil her now, no army of servants for -her to order about, no pageant of pleasure to dazzle her eyes. The -problem of her life seemed like everything else to be simplified out of -recognition. - -I did not know that Bianca had come back to Paris. I had forgotten her. -Jinny was very sweet to me when I came. She would turn on my bath and -help me take off my things, and wail over my dreadful hands, stained -with disinfectants and swollen with chilblains. - -“Oh, darling,” she would say, “how brave you are to do it,” and then -she would shudder and add--“I couldn’t--the sight of blood makes me -sick. How you can bear the ugliness--” - -And I would assure her that she was much too young to do nursing. - -Your mother was very kind to me. The war had aroused her from the -lassitude of old age. She had risen to meet it. Lifting her gentle head -proudly, she had seemed to look out beyond the confines of her narrow -seclusion, across the years, and to see her country rise before her in -its old beauty, its one-time grandeur. - -“France will have her revenge now,” she had said, with a flash lighting -her weary eyes. - -And her mind appeared more vigorous. She read all the newspapers or -asked Jinny to read them aloud to her. She took a great interest in my -work, and seemed to regard me as some admirable but inexplicable puzzle. - -“You are too brave, _mon enfant_, and too exalted. When the war is over -and you come back to your old habits, to take up your old life--you -will see--” - -“Maybe I shall never come back to it, dear--never take up again the old -life as you say.” - -And again she smiled, thinking that I was joking, but I was not joking, -my brain was clear, I believe I knew even then, that I would never run -Philibert’s house again. - -“You look happy, my child,” she said to me one day. - -“I am, _belle-mère_.” - -“Ah--but how curious!” - -“But dear--it is not as if any one very near or dear were in danger. -Philibert is safe, Blaise too, driving his ambulances.” - -“But the horror, the pain, the suffering all round one--look--already -in our family five young men killed--your Aunt Marianne bereft of her -sons--your Uncle Jacques crippled--” - -“I know--I know--I do feel for them, and I do feel for France. When I -say that I am happy, I only mean, that for me the equation of life is -so simple, that I am content as never before.” - -“I see--you are happy because of the sacrifice you have made--because -of all you have given up in the cause for our country. _Cela est très -beau._” - -“No, dear.” I felt bound to try and explain. “It is not that. It is not -fine at all. I haven’t given up anything that I cared about. I have -only got what I wanted. I have found my place, my right place--the -place of a worker.” - -She looked puzzled, then turned it off with a smile. - -Jinny was growing up and the war was slipping by over her little blond -head like a monstrous shadow. She seemed in that greyness, to become -unreal. I did not know what was going on in her mind. - -One night in March 1918 I staggered in on her. I must have been more -tired than I realized. My head was burning. The little soft still room, -your mother with her hair in stiff regular waves, a lace shawl round -her shoulders, and Jinny, smiling over a story book; it was like a -dream. - -And Jinny was like a little creature in a dream. Her idle delicate -hands, her plaintive voice were strange. She had on a rose coloured -frock, and was eating sweets. Some one had sent her a box of chocolates. - -“Look, Mummy, chocolates--we never have them any more, do we, _petite -mère_?” - -I had seen the world rushing to destruction; the powers of darkness -triumphant. Just beyond those walls, along the road, one came to the -edge of the abyss. - -“Mummy, I hate the war, _c’est si bête_--when will it end?” she pouted. - -Suddenly I was angry; I felt that it was wrong for my daughter to be -like that, wrong and stupid. - -“Jinny,” I cried--“are you asleep? Don’t you understand that the world -is coming to an end?” - -But she looked at me with curious defiant eyes and asked, “What do you -mean?” - -“I mean what I say. Come with me tomorrow. Come and see. Come and -help--you’re no longer a child. Come!” But she drew away from me with a -shiver. - -“I couldn’t,” she said in a fine hard little voice. - -And your mother broke in, - -“Jane, you must be mad to suggest such a thing.” - -“But I want her to know--to understand--to share--” - -“That is wrong. What is there for her to understand? She is a child. -Her life is not involved in the war. It lies beyond. She should be -protected from this nightmare.” - -“I want her with me.” - -Your mother shook her head sadly. “If you want her with you, you should -stay at home and look after her. You have been admirable, you have -devoted yourself, but when the war is over, you will perhaps find that -you have made a mistake.” - -“Mistake! Would you have me stay at home while men are dying by -thousands!” - -She sighed gently. “Ah--well--dear--you know best, but I wonder -sometimes, if you are not deluded--” - -Jinny had disappeared. I found her in her bedroom, her head buried in -her pillow. - -“I’m a coward,” she sobbed, “a coward. I would be afraid to go.” - -I took her in my arms. “My poor little lonely Jinny.” I held her a -long time--a long time--comforting her, conscience-smitten, troubled, -but the next day I left again for the front, following my monstrous -illusion, answering the terrible call of the greatest imposture in -creation. For I was wrong and your mother was right. The war was not a -fine thing. It did not save the world or renew it. It left nothing fine -or noble behind. It was an obscene monster. It called up from the soil -of a dozen continents all the fine strong men, and devoured them, it -summoned out of the heart of humanity, heroism, and it devoured that. -Courage, faith, hope, self-sacrifice, all the dreams of men were poured -into its jaws and disappeared. Nothing was left but broken men, and a -ruined earth. - -I ought to have stayed with Jinny. That was my job. - -Her nineteenth birthday was a week after the armistice. She had changed -from a child to a woman while I was away, helping men to die uselessly -and suddenly I saw that she was wise as I had hoped never to see her. -She said to me that day, - -“I know Mummy about you and Papa--you needn’t pretend any more.” - -It was time, the family said, that she should be married. - - - - -IX - - -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. - -I was startled. I stammered. “My ideas--?” - -“Yes--you know don’t you, that she’s got to be married?” - -“Ah--but in time. In my country--girls don’t--” - -“This isn’t your country. Jinny is nineteen, she’s very conspicuous. -There are already several _prétendants_--” - -“_Prétendants?_” - -“Yes. Hasn’t Philibert consulted you?” - -“No.” - -“It is as I thought.” - -“What do you mean, Aunt?” - -She pounded on the floor with her cane. She was almost impotent now and -spent her days in an armchair, from which she had to be lifted to bed -by two servants. And her temper was short. - -“Don’t be a fool! I am warning you. You’d better ask Philibert. Don’t -tell him I told you. Oh well--do if you like, what is it to me, to have -him angry?” - -I was very much disturbed but didn’t go to Philibert and ask him what -he was up to, because I wanted to gain time, and it didn’t occur to me -as possible that he would really commit himself without consulting me. -I wanted to gain time for Jinny herself. I had hopes for her of what -seemed to me the happiest of all solutions. - -Philibert thinks to this day that the poor little abortive romance of -Jinny and Sam Chilbrook was my doing. Poor sweet babies. I had had no -hand in their falling in love. It had seemed to me to be the work of -God and I had kept out of it. - -Sam had come to Paris from the army for the peace conference. He -was attached to the President’s suite. I had known his father and -his mother and his grandfather and grandmother. Every one knew the -Chilbrooks. They lived in Washington and Philadelphia, and the men of -the family had a taste for the diplomatic service. The grandfather you -remember was the American Ambassador in London, years ago. They were -very well off. - -Sam was a romantic, with a humorous grin and the nicest voice in the -world. He had nice young eyes, and freckles on his nose. He liked to do -things in a hurry. He met Jinny at luncheon at the American Embassy and -fell in love with her at first sight. - -“Please ask me to tea alone,” he said to me after lunch. “I want to -talk to you. I want to marry your daughter”--and he cocked an eyebrow -like a puppy. - -I laughed and said, “But I don’t think you can.” - -“Please ask me to tea anyway and please Madame de Joigny don’t laugh at -me. Love at first sight is sometimes true love, you know.” - -I asked him to tea, and he put us into our car. - -Jinny wrapped in grey furs, her face flushed palest pink, her eyes -shining, snuggled up to me and took my hand. - -“What a nice lunch party, Mummy.” - -“Did you enjoy it, darling?” - -“Yes. I talked to the American with red hair. He has a face like a sky -terrier--he was very amusing.” Then with a little sigh, “Darling Mummy, -I do love you so.” - -When Sam came to tea--he had seen Jinny twice in the meantime--he -wasted no time. - -“I do seriously and truly want to marry your daughter, Madame de -Joigny.” - -“But you can’t, she’s a Roman Catholic.” - -“That’s easy. I’ll become one.” - -I laughed again. I was beginning to adore him. “I will take care of -her,” he said, “as you would want me to take care of her. She would -be safe with me. She would be worshipped. I would kneel to her, and I -would make her happy. She would be happy, I vow to you, she would be -happy.” - -“I am afraid it is impossible.” - -“Why--?” - -“Her father has other ideas.” - -“Let me go to him.” - -“You may of course, but he will send you packing.” - -He flushed painfully and I saw in his eyes a deep shy hurt look, the -look of modesty and innocence--and faith. - -“But if she loved me, surely he wouldn’t refuse then--” - -“Perhaps not. I don’t know. He might all the same. It would depend on -how much she cared.” - -“I will make her care.” - -“But,” I broke off, I hesitated. Why should I have been so scrupulous? -What obligation had I to warn Philibert that his daughter might fall in -love with this eligible American? Still I did have a scruple. - -“It is not considered fitting, you know, in our French world, for -a young man to pay court to a _jeune fille_ without her parents’ -approval.” - -“Then what am I to do?” - -“I don’t know.” - -We sat in silence a moment. - -Suddenly he got up. He stood there before me, tall, clean, honest. - -“You’re not against me, Madame de Joigny?” - -“No, I’m not against you.” - -“Well then, I guess I know what to do. I guess I can wait. You can -trust me, you know. I won’t bother your daughter. All the same, we are -all in Paris together, and I can’t help seeing her sometimes, can I?” -His eyes smiled, but he was very serious. I realized how serious he was -when Philibert remarked a few days later that he had met quite a nice -young American lunching at the Jockey Club, quite a man of the world, -a national polo player, a Monsieur Chilbrook. Did I know him? Yes, I -said I knew him, and had known his family always. Philibert thought -I might ask him to dinner with Colonel and Mrs. House, the following -week. I did so, but Sam made me no sign. He was perfectly correct. The -only thing that was noticeable was his successful effort to interest -Philibert. I myself was surprised. Poor Sam--little good it did him. - -Jinny seemed happy. She enjoyed being grown up and going to parties. In -June we gave her a coming out ball, for in spite of all my premonitions -we had again taken possession of our house. After that I took her to -a number of dances. She was surrounded by young men of course. Sam -was only one of a dozen; she treated them all with the same radiant -aloofness. She made me no confidences. Her intimacy with her father -was greater than ever. Together they had supervised the unpacking and -rearrangement of the household treasures. Philibert was educating her. -I observed that she had his flair for bibelots. She had already all the -patter of the amateur collector. They went shopping together a good -deal. More often than not, coming in from some luncheon I would find -that they had gone out together for the afternoon. - -On one such day, when I was sitting alone, Sam Chilbrook was announced. -He was troubled. His eyes were dark, his young face tired. - -“Jinny loves me, I know she does, Madame de Joigny, but she is unhappy. -It is time I went to her father. You see I’m afraid,” he stammered, -“afraid that she won’t have the courage--if I don’t--” - -“But have you spoken to her--I thought you promised.” - -“I’ve not spoken--I’ve kept my promise, but I wish you hadn’t exacted -it. I know your daughter now. I know her character, and I love her. She -spoke yesterday in a way that frightened me--” - -“What did she say?” - -“She said that she loved her father better than any one in the world.” - -“That was all?” - -“Yes, no--not quite.” - -“What else did she say?” - -“She said that if it came to a struggle between them, or between you -and him about her--she was sure she would do what he wanted.” - -“Well, then go to him!” He left me at five; it was that same afternoon -only a few minutes after he had gone, that you, Blaise, were announced. - -I understand now what it cost you to do what you did. _Tout simplement_ -it cost you the affection of your family. You ranged yourself on my -side, against them. That was what it amounted to. That anyway was the -way they took it. - -I remember your face when you told me that I had best go round to your -mother’s flat at once, that Philibert and Jinny were there and some -other persons whom I ought to see. I didn’t at first grasp what you -meant. What other persons? The little Prince Damas de Barbagne of the -family des Deux Ponts and his uncle. - -“In your mother’s drawing-room?” - -“Yes.” - -“With Jinny?” - -“Yes.” - -“But I refused to present him to her only a few months ago.” - -“I know.” - -“What then--?” Suddenly it dawned on me. - -“Philibert!” I almost shouted, “Philibert has done this without -consulting me. That miserable little creature.” - -You nodded. - -I knew the Damas boy. Philibert and I had stayed with his uncle in -their dreadful old prison of a place. - -The young man had made on me a very disagreeable impression. His -reputation was of the worst, and his appearance did not belie it. He -was small and weak legged and had no chin. His skin was bad and his -eyes yellow. He professed in those days a great admiration for the -Crown Prince of Germany, and I fancy had taken the latter as his model. -One of the things that amused him was, I found out, the torturing of -animals. Fan had told me a tale about him that I had never forgotten. - -One day he was terribly bored. Not knowing what to do with himself -he brought all his dogs into the house. He had twelve, all kinds, -greyhounds, setters, great danes. He told his man to keep them in -one of the salons, while he went into the next one, and loaded his -revolver. Disgusted with life, he had become disgusted with his dogs. -He called them one by one. Then as they came through the door, shot -them dead. He didn’t miss one. He got each one between the eyes. - -“Pour parlers” of marriage were going on you told me, between Philibert -and the august uncle of this heir to a bankrupt principality. I saw -it all. The house of the Deux Ponts was royal. It was a branch of the -Nettleburgs but had maintained a strict neutrality during the war. With -nearly every throne in Europe crumbling into dust, Philibert still -wanted a crown for his daughter’s head. In the midst of the savage -passion of anger that had seized me, I could have yelled with laughter. -Philibert still believed in his ridiculous baubles. He wanted to put -his little girl on a throne. Well, I would stop him. - -She was mine. She was mine. - -I had borne her out of my body. She belonged to me. I remembered -the months before she was born, I remembered the child in my womb, -stirring--the obscure passionate tenderness welling up in me--the -mysterious sense of union. I remembered Philibert’s disgust with my -deformity, his constant absence. He had left me to myself during those -months. He had left me, of course, to go to other women. I had brought -Jinny into the world alone. The pain had been mine, and mine the -ecstasy. What had Philibert to do with my child? - -Now they proposed to dispose of her without my consent. They proposed -to hand her over to a degenerate. Well, they wouldn’t, I wouldn’t stop -them. - -My entrance created something of a sensation in your mother’s -drawing-room. They were all there. I had time to take them all in, -while they stared at me. The august uncle who looked like the Emperor -Francis Joseph was standing in the window with Philibert. Your mother -had Jinny on one side of her, at the tea table, the Princeling on the -other. Her face blanched when she saw me. There was terror in her eyes, -physical terror, what did she think I was going to do? - -Philibert was of course the first to recover himself. He came forward -in his most perfect manner. - -“_Chère amie_, I am so glad that after all you were able to come. I had -explained to his Royal Highness about your terrible migraine--” - -I took his cue. The pompous uncle and the pimple-faced Damas kissed -my hand, first one then the other. I asked your mother for a cup of -tea, and drank it slowly, conscious of Jinny’s eyes on my face. What -did they mean, those great brown starry eyes? What was going on in her -mind? I hadn’t any idea. - -“I have interrupted you,” I said putting down my teacup. “Pray continue -your talk.” - -No one spoke. - -“You were perhaps gathered together for a purpose that concerns my -daughter? No?” - -Philibert went crimson; the uncle coughed; I waited; your mother -rattled the tea things; she looked at Philibert, he looked at her. -“_Mon enfant_,” she quavered, at last, “His Royal Highness has honoured -you with a demand for your daughter’s hand in marriage, and as you -no doubt are aware, your husband,” her voice almost failed her, but -she controlled it, “your husband, my son, is disposed to think that -possibly these two young people would be very happy together.” - -“Is it to ask their opinion that they have been brought here?” I asked -quickly. - -The uncle coughed again. The little shrimp at the table stammered--“Not -at all, not at all. My opinion is very well known to Monsieur de -Joigny. I should be honoured.” - -I rose to my feet. I knew now just how far matters had gone. They had -gone very far indeed! I had no choice. It was necessary to be quite -definite. I faced the older man. - -“There has been a mistake, your Highness, I do not approve of this -marriage.” - -Philibert made a jump towards me--an exclamation. I waved him off. - -“I have other ideas for my daughter. You must excuse me from explaining -what they are. And now I must beg you to let me take this child home. -Come Geneviève.” For a moment she hesitated, her poor little face -crimson, her eyes filled with tears. I took her hand and drew her with -me out of the door. - -That night Philibert and I had a terrible scene. I need not go into it -in detail. I cannot bear to recall it. It seems incredible now that -we should have behaved as we did. Things were said that will rankle -for ever, things that would have made it impossible, even if it hadn’t -been for the last ghastly episode of Bianca, for us to go on living -side by side. I look back with shame to that hour, I must have been -beside myself. What was goading me on more than anything else, was -the realization that Jinny was against me. She had been shocked by my -behaviour. That was how it had struck her. She had been horrified and -humiliated. That was all. I saw it in her eyes. She didn’t care to know -why I had done what I did. She only hated my having done it. She looked -at me with fear and almost, I thought, with a shiver of repulsion. - -I refused to give Jinny a penny if he married her off without my -approval. He informed me that I could not, by French law, disinherit -her and that he would find a way of bringing me to my senses. As for -Sam Chilbrook--Philibert dealt with him the next morning, I don’t know -what he said to him, but the boy never came back. I never saw him -again. It must have been something pretty horrible. - - - - -X - - -There is little more to tell you. You know about Jinny’s subsequent -marriage and how after all Philibert, if he did not secure Prince -Damas, his heart’s desire, is still well enough satisfied with the -young Duke, his son-in-law. Philibert wanted the Duke, so I let him -have him. Jinny wanted the house in Paris so I gave it to her. The -three live there together, quite harmoniously I am told. And I? I do -not pretend that Jinny’s husband is a cad. He is no doubt, as nice as -most young men about town. I merely regret that he does not love her -nor she him. Doubtless they will get on very well once that fact is -established between them. - -You see Jinny’s marriage was my supreme failure. I have lost her, I can -never do anything more for her. She will never turn to me in joy--or in -trouble. - -She hates me. It was because she came to hate me that I gave way. She -believed that I killed Bianca. I didn’t, but then I might have, I have -no way of knowing whether or not I would have killed her. - -I am trying to explain to you why I have come back to St. Mary’s -Plains. You remember Patience Forbes’ will. It read--“To my beloved -niece Jane Carpenter, now called the Marquise de Joigny, I leave the -Grey House and all that is in it, because some day, she may want some -place to go.” Well, she was right--I came back because I had no other -place to go to. I came back but I came too late. The people who lived -here and who loved me are all dead and I cannot, somehow, communicate -with them as I had hoped to. I do not know what Patience Forbes would -say of my life, and I shall never know. Her ghost does not comfort me -because I failed her too. I let her die, here alone. - -They found her, you know on the floor by her bed, in her dressing gown, -the candle on the table burned down to its socket; she must have been -saying her prayers. Her Bible was open on the patchwork quilt; her -spectacles were beside it and three of my letters, some weeks old, -also, strangely enough, a facsimile (reduced) of the Declaration of -Independence, with a pencil note “To send to Jane.” You know how it -reads: “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for -one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them -with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate -and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God -entitle them.... We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men -are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain -unalienable rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit -of Happiness--” - -The last lines I have quoted were underlined. What did she mean by -them? What did she want them to mean for me, lying there, dying, going -out on the great journey alone from the empty Grey House--dead, alone -in the house through that long night with the Bible and the Declaration -of Independence beside her? - -I do not know what she meant--I only know that I left her alone to die. - -And I do not know whether I have come back defeated or victorious. In -the conduct of life I was defeated. Whenever I tried to do right, I -did wrong. To the people I loved I was a curse. I had a few friends. -You remain, and Clémentine and Ludovic. But I must lose you too, now. -I feel it my destiny to be alone. I did not understand how to live -among men. But there are hours when sitting here in this shabby room, -I am conscious of a feeling of high stark bitter triumph. At such -times I think of my father’s grave over there beyond the horizon, on -a wide prairie under a high sky. A stone. That stone and I are linked -together. I loved Philibert once, I love Jinny. I am alone now, but -I shall hold out. I shall not give in. My life has been wasted, but -I shan’t end it. I shall see it through. It stretches behind me, a -confused series of blunders. I try to understand. It is finished, but I -go on living. There is nothing left for me to do but wait. Maybe if I -wait long enough I shall understand what it is all for. - -I love France, but I had to come back here, and I know that I will -stay. It is right for me to be here. It is fitting and just. In some -way that I cannot explain the equation of my life is satisfied by my -coming, and the problem--I see it as clear, precise and cold as a -problem in algebra--is solved. - -Here, in St. Mary’s Plains there is nothing for me. The big bustling -awkward town is full of strangers who have no time to interest -themselves in a derelict woman who has drifted back to them from -“foreign parts.” My return seems to those who remember me to be a -confession of failure. They are not interested in failure, so they -leave me alone. It is as well. I did not come back to talk but to -think. I did not come back to begin something new, but to understand -something old and finished. I do not need these bright brave ignorant -young people. To do what I am doing it is necessary to be alone. - -But to go back to my story. Jinny had a shivering fit that night, -after the scene in your mother’s flat. Her maid called me. She lay on -her back in bed her teeth chattering, her knees drawn up and knocking -together. We put hot water bottles to her feet and her sides. It was a -warm night late in June, but she kept whispering that she was cold. The -doctor when he came said that it was nerves. He prescribed bromide and -perfect quiet for some time, afterwards a change. He told me that she -had a hypersensitive nervous organism, and should be protected always -as much as possible from excitement or emotional strain. - -She slept quietly towards morning. Her hair clung to her forehead in -little damp curls, soft pale golden hair like a child’s. Her closed -eyelids were swollen above the long brown eyelashes. She lay on her -side with both hands together under her cheek, her lovely young body at -rest. Beautiful Jinny. - -I sat watching her. The sound of her father’s voice and of mine, saying -hideous things rang in my ears. - -Beyond the open window, the darkness was turning to light. All about -were still shuttered houses filled with sleeping people, a million -sleeping men and women. Their dreams and their weariness, and their -disappointments seemed to be rising like a mist above the hot close -houses. - -I had promised Patience Forbes to love Jinny enough--enough for what? -Enough--for this--to save her this. - -I had failed, and I felt old, so very old, and at the same time -my heart was full of childish longings and weakness. If only some -one would come and comfort me. If only some one would take my -responsibilities from me. I wanted help and relief. I thought of you. I -knew that you, Blaise, would have helped me, but Philibert had shut the -door in your face that evening and had snarled at me horrible things, -saying he would never have you in the house again. He had accused you -and me of a criminal affection for each other. I remembered his livid -face and twitching lips. A feeling of sickness pervaded my body and -soul. Jinny, asleep, was fragrant as a flower. I was contaminated, -unclean. - -Suddenly she was there,--Patience Forbes, my Aunt Patience, standing -on the other side of Jinny’s bed. She had on her black mackintosh and -her bonnet with the strings tied in a knot under her chin. But she was -not quite as I had last seen her. The wisps of hair that straggled down -under her bonnet were white. There was something terrible and grand -about her. She was old, very old. Her face was brown and withered. -She looked thin, emaciated, her eyes sunken. She looked starved. Her -clothes were very shabby, the clothes of a poor woman. She was grand -and terrible. Her sunken eyes shone with a splendour I had never seen -before. She was looking down at Jinny--I saw her smile an ineffable -smile of unutterable beauty, then I waited breathlessly, with such -longing, with an anguish of longing. Surely in a moment she would turn -to me, gather me into her arms--now--now she was turning-- - -“Mummy--what time is it?” Jinny was sitting up in her bed rubbing her -eyes, yawning. Sunlight shone through the parted curtains. I looked at -my watch. - -“Seven o’clock, darling.” - -“I would like some coffee. Is any one about? I’m so hungry. Oh dear--” -She sank back onto her pillow. “I remember now, I remember--why did I -wake up?” - -The next day, I received a cable announcing my Aunt Patience’s -death. Jinny was lying on her “chaise longue” eating chocolates. She -said--“Poor thing, but she was very old, wasn’t she?” - -“Yes, seventy-five years old.” - -“Older than _grandmère_!” - -“Yes, several years older--” Jinny was not interested. There was no one -in Paris who had ever seen Patience Forbes. - -Jinny seemed quite well again; only a little languid and silent. She -spent most of the day on her chaise longue, reading, having her nails -manicured, having her hair brushed, eating sweets, dozing; she was -quite affectionate. - -One evening she said, “I think, Mummy, that I would like to go into a -convent.” She had on, I remember, a white satin négligé trimmed with -white fox, and emerald green brocade slippers. I must have smiled. - -“Don’t smile, Mummy. I’m not joking, I have thought it all out. ‘_Il -faut se connaître._’ I am weak, I have a weak character. I liked Sam -Chilbrook, but I didn’t dare say so. I disliked the Prince very much, -I didn’t dare say so. If you and Papa could agree, I would be content -to do what you decided for me--but you can’t agree. No, no, don’t be -tragic. Don’t be so sorry. Let us be reasonable. If you never agree -on a husband for me, I must either choose one for myself and run off -with him and be married, or become an old maid. Neither seems a very -nice idea, does it--but to be a nun--that is beautiful. You remember -when I was little and tried to lead the saintly life--you thought it -ridiculous. You did not understand. There is something in me that -you do not take seriously because I am lazy and like pretty things -and marrons glacés. But it is there all the same. If you were a true -Catholic I could explain. To be a nun is beautiful--beautiful, and I -would be safe there, and out of the way. For you and Papa there would -be no more problem, you would not have to live together any more. And -the sisters love me; they would be glad to receive me. They are so -gentle, so sweet--you have no idea, and quite happy you know. Sometimes -they laugh and make little jokes, like children. It is much happier in -the convent than here.” - -It was I that broke down then, and cried. I cried miserably, ugly -tears, sobbing against Jinny’s languid knees. I, a middle-aged woman, -disfigured, with a swollen face, a great, strong, tired, drab creature, -in whose tough body life had gone stale, was humbled before my -beautiful child. - -I asked her forgiveness. Brokenly I begged her to be kind. And I -apologized to her. Kneeling beside her I tried to explain my inability -to believe in any creed, any dogma of the Church, I spoke of truth, -I proclaimed as if before a high spiritual judge, my honest search -for truth. Pitiful? Yes--but do you not believe that it is often -so--mothers kneeling to their children, avowing their mistakes, their -failures, begging for love? - -I was desperate to destroy the thing that separated us--I was so lonely -so alone--it seemed to me that this moment held my one chance, my one -hope of drawing my child close to me. I looked up at her. Cool, lovely -youth holding aloof, if only she would come, if only she would respond -and take me in her slim fresh innocent arms. Ah, the relief it would -be--the comfort! - -“Jinny--Jinny--love me--I need your love, I am your mother. I am -growing old. There is no one left for me to turn to--no one to advise -me, no one to care for me, except you. Do you realize what I mean? My -life is finished, it goes on only in you, only for you. Jinny, Jinny, -don’t you understand, I need you.” - -She stroked my hair lightly with delicate fingers, but looking up, I -saw that her face was contracted in a nervous spasm--of distaste. A -moment longer I waited staring up at her face with a longing that must -have communicated itself to her, a longing so intense that I felt it -going out of me in waves but she made no sign. - -“I do love you, Mummy--you know I do,” she said in a dull little voice. - -I stumbled to my feet and left the room. - - -Philibert had gone away, so when the doctor said a few days later -that Jinny should go to Biarritz it was I who took her, though I knew -she would rather have gone with some one else. I should have sent her -with a companion. Had I left her alone then things might have been -mended, but I was too jealous, and though I knew the truth in my heart -I couldn’t bear to admit that my child didn’t like being with me. I -kept on thinking of ways to win back her love, silly feeble ways. I -was like a despairing and foolish lover who cannot bring himself to -leave the object of his passion though he knows that everything he does -exasperates her. I had no pride. I gave her presents. I did errands for -her that the servants should have done. With a great lump of burning -pain in my heart I went on smiling and busy, avoiding her eyes and -fussing about her, and she was exquisitely patient and polite. - -I do not know to this day whether Bianca followed us to Biarritz -knowingly and with intent, or not. Clémentine told me afterwards -that she had seen Bianca with Philibert at Fontainebleau at the Hôtel -de France on the Sunday, the day he left Jinny and me, after our -scene, but whether she learned from Philibert during the week they -spent together of Jinny’s whereabouts and tracked her down, I cannot -tell. Probably not. Yet it may be.... It is all so strange that one -can believe anything. Philibert and Bianca together--after all those -years--that in itself is extraordinary. What sort of relationship could -have existed between them at the end? I don’t know. I do not attempt to -understand. They were people beyond my comprehension, but some thing -that they possessed in common, some bond, some feeling profound and -complex, had evidently survived. - -It is useless dwelling upon their problem. Revolting? Evil? I suppose -so, and yet their infernal passion has somehow imposed upon me a dread -respect. Philibert after Bianca’s death crumpled up as if by magic -into a silly little old man. I saw it happen to him, there in that -hotel where he came rushing on receipt of the news. He stood in my -room shaking and disintegrating visibly before my eyes, profoundly -unpleasant, pitiful. It was as if Bianca had held in her hand the vital -stuff of his life, and as if with her death he was emptied of all -energy and power. - -All this happened you see at Biarritz where Bianca came and found us. - -I am almost sure that I did not think of killing Bianca, even at the -very end, when I found myself in her room, standing over her. And yet, -if she hadn’t taken that overdose of morphine herself, that very night, -what would have happened I don’t know. - -It is very curious, her dying like that, whether by accident or intent, -no one will ever know, on just that night, and in just that place, -involving me in Jinny’s eyes, for ever. God knows there were plenty of -other places on the earth where she might more logically have chosen -to breathe her last. Why not in Venice in that great dark vaulted -palace of hers with the black water lapping under her balcony? Or in -her castle in Provence, where she lived with her demons, or in Paris in -the red lacquer den with its golden cushions? Any one of those settings -would have been more in keeping--but in the Plage Hôtel--above the sea, -no, there was no poetic justice in her choosing that spot. And if it -was an accident, then the freakish spirit who planned it did it with -his diabolical eye on Jinny and me. - -We had been a week in Biarritz. Jinny had found some young people with -whom she played tennis in the afternoon. Occasionally I left her for a -game of golf. One day coming back I saw her sitting on the terrace with -a woman whose eccentric elegance was familiar, but whom I did not at -first recognize. I saw her back, long and narrow, a fur wrap slipping -from the shoulders, an attenuated arm hanging across the back of her -chair. Jinny, all in white, her hair a golden halo in the light of the -sun that was setting behind her, was facing her. Their faces were close -together. The older woman was leaning forward. She had Jinny’s hand in -both of hers. There was about this pose something intimate and intense. -Jinny started up at the sight of me, and the woman turned her small -dark head round and gave me a little nod. It was Bianca. - -She was very much changed. I remember every detail of her appearance, -her red turban, her soiled white gown, her fur coat that looked somehow -rather shabby. She was carelessly dressed, she had an air both tawdry -and neglected. Actually she didn’t look clean. Her face was startling. -The makeup was badly done. Once it had been a smooth even white, now -the eyelids were yellow and on the thin cheek-bones were spots of red. -The finger nails of the beautiful hand that hung limp over the back -of her chair were enamelled pink but dirty. She had obviously been -going down hill at a rapid pace, and for one instant this realization -in the midst of my panic at finding her with Jinny, gave me pleasure. -For Bianca to turn into an untidy hag; that was something to make me -wickedly exultant. - -She looked at me calmly out of her monstrous eyes. “It is centuries -since we met,” she said. I did not reply. I was trembling and I saw -that she saw my trembling. Her discoloured eyelids lifted, and sent -out their old fiery blue light. Her eyes grew more enormous. She -stared into mine and her thin pointed lips curved into a smile. “Not -since Deauville, after the death of poor Fan Ivanoff--four, five, six -years--is it not? Before the war. I have been so little in Paris.” Her -eyelids fluttered, her eyes deadened, a curious lassitude spread over -her suddenly. She drooped in her chair, she was like a bruised soiled -faded plant, almost to me she seemed to exhale the odour of decay. -“I have travelled--I have wandered--Spain--Portugal--America--Buenos -Aires--I am so restless, I go anywhere--” her voice trailed off. She -gave herself a little jerk. Her eyes slid to Jinny, dwelt upon her. -“Your daughter and I have been talking. ‘_Quel amour d’enfant_’--so -_exaltée_, so sensitive.” - -Jinny, it seemed to me, was rather pale. She stood nervously clasping -her hands, her eyes moving from one of us to the other. - -“The Princess brought me a message from Papa,” she said in a shrill -defiant note. - -“Ah yes, I saw him just the other day--where was it? I cannot remember, -I have no memory, but he told me you were here.” - -The long unclean hand again went out to Jinny. It caressed her arm. I -shivered. “Don’t,” I muttered in spite of myself. - -Bianca jerked, a nervous twitch, and gave a little laugh. - -“Ah, you see, my child, your mother doesn’t like--” She broke off. -Jinny’s face was crimson now. “Never mind--she is perhaps right. I will -leave you now. I go to the Casino. It is all so boring. Perhaps later--” - -She did not look back at us as she trailed away. I thought to see -toads jumping up from the imprint of her feet. - -Upstairs, I said as quietly as I could: - -“How is it that you know the Princess?” - -“Papa introduced me to her long ago--when I was quite a little girl.” - -“You have seen her since?” - -“Yes.” - -“Often?” - -“Several times.” - -“You admire her?” - -“Yes--she is strange. I like strange things.” - -“I do not like her at all,” I said curtly. - -Jinny sat on the edge of a table, poking into a box of chocolates. - -“Why don’t you like her, Mummy?” - -“Because she is a bad woman.” - -“Oh no, surely you are wrong. She is Papa’s oldest friend.” She popped -a sweet into her mouth. - -“Who told you that?” - -“She did herself--and besides, I know--I have known a long time. She -was his first romance, his--what do you call it,--his calf love.” - -I burst into harsh laughter. My laugh sounded to me ugly and terrible. -Jinny’s face went pale; I crossed to the window. - -“What else did she tell you?” I asked with my back to her. - -“She has told me about life in convents, she is very devout. She has -often been in convents to ‘_faire une retraite_.’ She says it is very -soothing there, but that I should not be in a hurry about making a -decision.” - -“Ah!” - -“Yes--she seems to understand me--she conveys much sympathy. She has a -magnetism--it draws one.” - -“I know.” - -“What is the matter, Mummy? You are angry. I feel sorry for the -Princess, she is so alone in the world, and she says she loves me, -that she is wonderfully attracted to me, that I would do her good. -She called herself laughing you know, but with a sadness--she called -herself ‘_une damnée_.’” - -I could contain myself no longer. “_Une damnée_--well, that’s just -what she is--” I wheeled about. I felt my voice rising in spite of me. -“I forbid you ever to speak to her again. Do you understand? You must -never speak to her again.” My child’s face hardened. The eyes widened, -the nostrils dilated. She was very pale. Something sinister seemed to -rise between us. She receded from me. - -“Don’t--don’t!” she whispered backing away. - -“Don’t--don’t what?” I cried back. “You don’t want me to stand between -you and this horrible woman who has ruined my life--ruined your -father--ruined us all--and who wants now to ruin you.” - -“No, no, no--don’t say such things.” She was screaming too now. “It is -wicked of you to say such things. I don’t believe it. I don’t believe -you. I won’t believe it. I love Papa, I love Papa better than you, -better than you. You have done it. You have ruined his life. I know it, -I have seen it. I have seen you look at him with hatred. How do you -think it feels to see one’s parents hating each other? Ruined? Yes, you -have ruined my life. You--you--you ought never to have brought me into -the world. I wish I were dead--I wish I were dead--” She rushed into -her room and banged the door. - -I told myself looking out over that horrible sea, immense, restless -and cold, that nothing irretrievable had happened, that Jinny would -come back to me, that she would forgive, that things would be the -same. But I had no faith, and what did that mean, if things were the -same. Was that sufficient as a basis for the future? What if we went -on and on having scenes--screaming at each other. I was ashamed, and -shaken, and I was afraid. Bianca had come back--Bianca was there, down -the corridor--close to us, close to Jinny. “Une damnée”? she called -herself. - -I must take Jinny away in the morning, but what good would that do in -the end? Bianca would follow us sooner or later to Paris. Jinny would -be sure to see her. I had a ridiculous picture of Bianca pursuing us -from place to place, lying in wait for Jinny--laying infernal schemes. -I remembered what I had recently heard of her strange habits, her -vicious tastes, of the effect she had had on certain women. I saw her, -a restless, haunted damned soul, the slave of infernal passions, a -prowl in the world, hunting for victims, growing more implacable as she -grew old. - -I dressed for dinner. Jinny sent word she would dine in bed. On the -way to the lift, I saw Bianca go into her room. She looked back at me -over her shoulder, half smiling but with a curious look in her eyes. -Was it fear? Was it regret? I thought for a long time of that look, I -thought of it all evening sitting in my high window, listening to the -interminable boom of the waves. Her presence, near, under the same roof -was intolerable, like a dreadful smell, or an excruciating nagging -sound. I was feeling again, even now, through my terror for Jinny, and -in spite of my sickened sense of the woman’s decay, the impact of her -personality. She existed there beyond my door, special, vivid, intense, -and I began to feel her decrepitude as a reproach, her ruin as a -responsibility. Moment by moment I felt her, exerting on me a horrible -pressure. There had been in her dreary face, an appeal, a claim, a -despair that laid on me a weight. In her eyes, there had been, memory. -It was that that haunted me. Somehow, actually, her eyes had reflected -the past and had dragged my mind back, afar back to the days when we -had been friends. I remembered everything. In their deep burning blue -light that was like a lamp lighted inside a corpse, I saw her youth -and my youth glowing, and I remembered how we had been together, two -strong young things, curiously linked, responding to each other, with a -sympathy that should have been a good thing to us. She had said once, -“Jane, I love you--you are the only friend I have ever had.” And I -remembered the day she had talked to me of herself in that old castle -in Provence, above the white road and dusty vineyard. - -I felt sick and was aware of an intolerable physical pain in my side. -Bianca, who had been so beautiful, and whom I had loved divinely once, -was a rotten rag now, soiled, dingy, bad smelling--and I hated her. We -hated each other. Our youth was gone--and all its beauty. There was -nothing under the sun but ugliness and hatred and the principle of life -was decay. - -I walked the room. Jinny was asleep--lovely youth--fresh and sweet. -What would become of her? Bianca and I were two old women, done for. - -To protect Jinny from her, Jinny who hated me, that was all I could do -now. I must go to Bianca. Either she would respond to me and give in to -me because of the memory that had stared out of her face, or I would -make her; I would force her to do what I wanted as I had done before, -but this was to be the last time--this must be the end. - -I looked in at Jinny. She seemed to be asleep. Out in the corridor some -one had turned the light low. The long red carpet of the corridor led -straight to Bianca’s room. I went out quickly closing the door after -me. It took an instant to reach the door of Bianca’s sitting room. I -knocked. There was no answer. I opened it and went in. To the right -another door was open, a light shone through. Bianca was in bed. I -could see her. Her eyes were closed. The lamp beside her bed shone on -her face, a peculiar odour pervaded the room. “I will wake her and have -it out with her,” I thought to myself. - -I went into the bedroom. A number of bottles, a small aluminum saucepan -and a hypodermic syringe were on the night table beside her. She was -breathing heavily and noisily, drawing quick, regular, snoring breaths. -It was obvious that she was drugged; the noise of her breathing was -very ugly. Her face was sharp and pinched and evil. An extraordinary -disorder prevailed in the room. I remember now being astonished by it. -Untidy heaps of underwear about, not very clean, dragged lacey things -on the floor, a high-heeled slipper on the centre table, a litter on -the toilet table that reminded one of an actress’s dressing room, a -tray with a champagne bottle and a plate of oyster shells on the end of -the chaise longue. And pervading every thing that horrid odour of drugs -and the sound of snoring. - -I stood for a moment looking down at the woman in the bed. The sight -of her filled me with loathing. How unclean she was! She was like a -corpse. Already she was half dead. She was something no longer human, -scarcely alive. Her sleep had the quality of a disease, her breath was -poisonous. - -Suddenly I felt some one beside me. It was Jinny, wrapped in her -dressing gown. White as a sheet, she stood staring down at that -dreadful face. “I heard you open the door,” she whispered, “I followed -you. What is it? What is the matter?” - -“Nothing,” I murmured. “She is drugged, that is all.” I pointed to the -bottle of ether, the syringe in its little box. “Come,” I repeated -nervously, “come away.” It was horrible to have Jinny in that room. - -“But, Mummy, can’t we do something, oughtn’t we to do something?” - -“No--come--it’s nothing--I mean she’s used to it.” I dragged Jinny away. - -The next morning, the people in the hotel were informed that the -Princess was dead. She had died in the night of an overdose of morphine. - -It was Marie, Jinny’s maid, who burst in on her with the news, while -she was having her café au lait in bed. I heard Jinny give a shriek and -ran in to her--she had fainted. - -Isn’t it strange the way it all happened? One would think that God -had a hand in it, but if there is a God, why should He want my child -to believe that I had committed a murder? It is that that I do not -understand. - - -Jane’s narrative was ended with those words. She had talked that last -night of my visit to her in St. Mary’s Plains, until nearly morning. -Her forehead grew damp as she talked and her lips dry and her words -carried along the sustained note of her voice like little frightened -sounds. - -And during all those hours that she talked, I remember hearing no other -sound. I heard no voice in the street, nor the sound of trams going -by nor of dogs barking. In our concentration we were as cut off from -contact with the living world as if the whole city of St. Mary’s Plains -had been turned to stone. - -That was just a year ago today. I suppose she is still there in that -meagre faded room, I can see her there, sitting in the high wooden -chair that belonged once upon a time to Patience Forbes. The wind is -hurrying across the immense prairies of her awful wide empty country. -It rattles the windows of that frail wooden house. She is alone there. - -Last night we talked of Jane in Ludovic’s rooms. Clémentine was there -and Felix, we had been to Cocteau’s ballet. Jane would have enjoyed it, -they said; she would have understood the joke, and perceived the beauty. - -Clémentine moved restlessly about. “What is she doing now, I wonder? -Surely she is doing something--” - -“She is thinking things out.” - -“Good God!” groaned Felix. “Our Jane--our great haughty creature--she -wasn’t meant to think. She was meant to be looked at--she ought never -to have had an idea in her head. What a waste--what a wicked waste.” - -Clémentine on a footstool by the fire nursed her knees. “She did really -think we were immoral. We took life as a joke. She couldn’t understand. -She believed in the Bible--all the part about being wicked. She didn’t -know it, but her creed was the ten commandments. She is a victim of -the ten commandments.” - -Ludovic shook his head. “She was right,” he said, “all her life she -wanted to do right--now she has done it. She has gone back to her -people. She should never have come here. There was nothing for her -here, but ourselves.” - -“And were we nothing?” cried Clémentine, “didn’t we love her well? -Didn’t we understand?” - -“No, we didn’t understand. And we didn’t count. We didn’t count for -her.” - -Ah, Jane, Jane, it was true. We didn’t count. In all your story, you -scarcely alluded to us. We were just your friends who loved you, and -we didn’t count. If only you could know what we know about yourself; -if only you knew how we cared for you beyond all the differences of -conduct; if only you could have realized that life is not a thing to -fear, that it is a little trivial thing, or again, just a thing like -food, an element like air, to be eaten, or breathed or enjoyed. But you -thought it a mysterious gift, a terrible responsibility, a high and -serious obligation, with a claim on your soul. You thought it a thing -you could sin against. You confounded life with God. - -This little street is so quiet tonight, so quiet and small. It shuts -me in. It shuts me comfortably in, but beyond it there is a great -distance--a great land--a great sea--a high and terrible sky. - - -THE END - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JANE--OUR STRANGER *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm -concept and trademark. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online -at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> - -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Jane--Our Stranger</p> -<p style='display:block; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:0;'>A Novel</p> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Mary Borden</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: October 20, 2021 [eBook #66568]</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Tim Lindell, Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)</div> - -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JANE--OUR STRANGER ***</div> - -<div class="mynote"><p class="center">Transcriber’s Note:<br /><br /> -A Table of Contents has been added.<br /><br /> -Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.<br /></p></div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="center"><img src="images/front.jpg" alt="front" /></div> - -<hr /> - -<h1>JANE—<br /> OUR STRANGER</h1> - -<hr /> - -<div class="center"><img src="images/books.jpg" alt="books" /></div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="center"><img src="images/title.jpg" alt="title page" /></div> - -<hr /> - -<p class="bold2">JANE—<br />OUR STRANGER</p> - -<p class="bold space-above">A NOVEL</p> - -<p class="bold space-above">BY</p> - -<p class="bold2">MARY BORDEN</p> - -<p class="bold">AUTHOR OF “THE ROMANTIC WOMAN”</p> - -<div class="center space-above"><img src="images/logo.jpg" alt="logo" /></div> - -<p class="bold space-above">LONDON<br />WILLIAM HEINEMANN LTD.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p class="center"><i>First published, 1923</i><br /><i>New Impressions January, February, March,<br />April, August, 1924</i></p> - -<p class="center space-above"><i>Printed in Great Britain by Woods & Sons, Ltd., London, N.1.</i></p> - -<hr /> - -<h2><span>CONTENTS</span></h2> - -<table summary="CONTENTS"> - <tr> - <td></td> - <td><span class="smaller">PAGE</span></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">PART I</td> - <td><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td></td> - <td> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">CHAPTER I</td> - <td><a href="#Page_3">3</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">CHAPTER II</td> - <td><a href="#Page_16">16</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">CHAPTER III</td> - <td><a href="#Page_27">27</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">CHAPTER IV</td> - <td><a href="#Page_38">38</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">CHAPTER V</td> - <td><a href="#Page_49">49</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">CHAPTER VI</td> - <td><a href="#Page_63">63</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">CHAPTER VII</td> - <td><a href="#Page_80">80</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">CHAPTER VIII</td> - <td><a href="#Page_93">93</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">CHAPTER IX</td> - <td><a href="#Page_105">105</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">CHAPTER X</td> - <td><a href="#Page_117">117</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">CHAPTER XI</td> - <td><a href="#Page_133">133</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">CHAPTER XII</td> - <td><a href="#Page_147">147</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">CHAPTER XIII</td> - <td><a href="#Page_159">159</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td></td> - <td> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">PART II</td> - <td><a href="#Page_169">169</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td></td> - <td> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">CHAPTER I</td> - <td><a href="#Page_171">171</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">CHAPTER II</td> - <td><a href="#Page_187">187</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">CHAPTER III</td> - <td><a href="#Page_200">200</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">CHAPTER IV</td> - <td><a href="#Page_220">220</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">CHAPTER V</td> - <td><a href="#Page_242">242</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">CHAPTER VI</td> - <td><a href="#Page_260">260</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">CHAPTER VII</td> - <td><a href="#Page_277">277</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">CHAPTER VIII</td> - <td><a href="#Page_306">306</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">CHAPTER IX</td> - <td><a href="#Page_323">323</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="left">CHAPTER X</td> - <td><a href="#Page_337">337</a></td> - </tr> -</table> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> - -<h2>PART I </h2> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p> - -<h2>I</h2> - -<p>It is a pity we do not die when our lives are finished. Jane may live -another twenty years—a long time to wait, alone between two worlds. -Jane is forty-three, I am five years older, Philibert is fifty-six, my -mother nearly eighty, we are all alive, and strangely enough <i>Maman</i> -is the only one whose life is not yet ended. Hers will not end till -the moment of her death. She has been a wise artist. She is still -embroidering delicately the pattern of her days; she still holds the -many threads in her fingers. Quietly, exquisitely she will put in the -last stitches. They will be the most beautiful of all; they will be her -signature, the signature of a lady. Then she will close her eyes and -commend her soul to God and the perfect work of her worldly wisdom will -be finished.</p> - -<p>As for me, I see no reason why I should not live on indefinitely just -as I have done, and on the whole I am more comfortable here than in -Purgatory, a place that I imagine to be like the suburbs of London. I -see myself there, tapping with my crutch, along endless tramway lines -between interminable rows of dingy perky villas. This little street -in the Faubourg Saint Germain is much nicer. It is old and proud and -secretive; a good street for a cripple to live in; it shelters and -protects him. Once he has entered it he has no distance to go to get -home. It is usually deserted and the great pale houses show discreet -shuttered windows with no one behind the shutters to stare at him. I am -Philibert’s crippled brother. Something went wrong with me before I was -born. Nothing else of importance has ever happened to me, except Jane’s -marrying my brother. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span></p> - -<p>Jane loved this little street. She said that it told her the story of -France and conveyed to her all the charm of the Paris she loved best, -the proud gentle mysterious Paris of the 18th century that with all its -fine reserved grandeur assumes modestly the look of a small provincial -town.</p> - -<p>I came to live here when Philibert sold our house in the Rue de Varenne -that is just round the corner, and my mother went to her new apartment -near the Étoile. That was twenty years ago, and very little has changed -in the street since I came to these rooms at the bottom of this little -courtyard between Constantine’s big white house and the Embassy. The -little man who peddled bird-seed has vanished long ago, his voice is -no more to be heard chanting, but other street vendors still come by -with their sing-song calls. What indeed was there that could change, -save perhaps old Madame Barbier’s grocery shop at the corner, tucked -up against Constantine’s stable wall? But even Madame Barbier has -remained the same. Her hair is as smooth and glossy black, her tight -corsage as neat, and her trim window with its glass jars of honey and -the nice bright boxes of groceries is as it always has been. A thrifty -respectable woman is Madame Barbier, with a pleasant word for her -neighbours. For the rest, on the opposite side of the street there is -the convent, with its pointed roof and the chapel belfry showing above -the wall, and there are the five big houses with their great gates that -make up the whole length of the street. Not a long street—often when -I turn into it at one end, I recognize a familiar figure going out of -it at the other, the good Abbé perhaps going home after confessing the -sisters in the convent, or old Madame d’Avrécourt in her shabby black -jacket, her fine little withered face under her bonnet, wearing its -habitual enigmatic smile. Monsieur l’Abbé says that her voluminous -petticoats are heavy with the sacred charms she has sewn into the -hems, and that may well be; I know that her devotion is very great and -her interest in the outside world very small, and the sight of her is -comforting to me. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p> - -<p>It is so quiet here, and so confined. It is like a cloister—or a -prison—I am glad of that.</p> - -<p>Tonight, Good Friday night, I can hear the good sisters in the chapel -singing. The mysticism of their haunting chant penetrates the walls -of this old house, and tonight because of their lamenting, because of -their dread disciplined agony of supplication, the street is immensely -deep and high, whereas yesterday it was just small and dim and worldly, -with its houses blinking over its walls, a proud battered deceiving old -street, hiding the rare beauty of its dwellings, guarding the secrets -of its families behind mute shutters, till the day it should crumble -to pieces or an insolent government should turn it upside down like an -ash-bin.</p> - -<p>It never, of course, could get used to Jane. Who of us did get used -to Jane? Did I myself? Wasn’t she a big troubling problem to us all -till the very end? How could we not be afraid of her? Poor magnificent -Jane—fine timid innocent child—dangerous nature woman—dreadful -crying message from a new bellowing land—what was she? What was she -not? How could she fit in here? She was as strange here as a leopard -beautifully moving down the grey narrow pavement. How she used to -frighten the good Abbé. I have seen him scuttle into a neighbouring -doorway to let her pass, as if there were no room for him along the -stones she walked so grandly. It was true. There was no room for any -one but Jane when she came, and now that she is gone never to come back -again, the place is as dreary and empty as an abandoned cemetery and -the light is as insipidly pale as the half shadow in a sick room. She -has left a sickness in this place, because she came here sometimes to -see me—and won’t come any more.</p> - -<p>And yet I stay on here. I shall stay here always. I have no reason -to go anywhere now that I have been to America to see Jane, and have -come back with the accurate awful knowledge of the great distance -between us. Ah, that wide sea, that New York, a high cold gate into -a strange <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>over-powering country, those immense prairies, and those -tiny farm houses, with tiny women watching the train; Jane, a tiny -woman, Jane a speck, in a town that is a dot on the map. I will write -down Jane’s story. I will remember it all, everything that she told -me and everything that I saw, and will put it all down exactly with -perfect precision and accuracy, and then, perhaps I shall understand -her. Poor Jane—she wanted to understand life. She believed always -that there was a reason for things, an ultimate reason and a purpose. -She was no philosopher, she was a woman of faith. She should have been -the wife of a pioneer, the wife of such a man as Isak, who went into -the wilderness with a sack over his shoulder. Jane was made for such -a man. I can see them together going out under the sky, he, grave, -deep-chested, long-limbed, “a barge of a man,” and beside him a woman -like a ship, moving proudly. And she married Philibert. Could any -one who has ever seen her with Philibert miss the meaning of their -extraordinary contrast? Philibert with his clever jaunty little body, -his exaggerated elegance, his cold blue eyes and his impudent charm. -She made him look like a toy man. She could have broken him in two with -her hands. Why didn’t she? It is a long story. People say that American -women are very adaptable, very imitative. Jane wasn’t. She never became -the least like us, except in looks and that meant nothing. Paquin and -Chéruit and Philibert did that for her almost at once, but her looks, -even without their aid, were always a disguise, never a revelation of -her self. Some women are all of a piece with their charming exteriors, -Jane was a child cased in armour. As she grew older she learned to -use it, she made it answer, but she used it to become something she -was not. I call up her image as I write. I evoke Jane as she was that -last year in Paris, the most elegant woman in Europe, the most stared -at, and the most indifferent. I remember the cold hard nonchalance -that so frightened people she did not like, and the brilliant metallic -grace that rippled over her like gleaming light when she was pleased. -I remember her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> excessive hauteur in public, the disdainful carriage -of her strange head that was like a coin fashioned by some morose -craftsman of Benvenuto Cellini’s time. I recall the sidelong glitter of -her little green eyes. I remember her in public places, towering above -other women like an idol, mute, glittering, enigmatic, her curious -profile with its protruding lower lip, the tight close bands of jewels -round her forehead. What a figure of splendour she was in those days, -when Philibert had done breaking her heart; and when at the age of -forty she had ceased to care and had reached the perfection of her -physical type.</p> - -<p>I think of her as she was when her mother brought her to Paris and -married her to Philibert; a great strapping girl with a beautiful body -and an ugly sullen face that deceived us all. How could one see behind -it? Can one blame them? I alone caught a glimpse. And she developed -slowly in our artificial soil. It took twenty years for her to become a -woman of the world, une grande dame. That was what they made of her. I -say they, but I suppose I mean primarily Philibert. It is horrible to -think of how much Philibert had to do with making her what she finally -was. And Bianca had a hand in it too. That is even worse.</p> - -<p>We had realized the moment of Jane’s apotheosis. We had seen her -beautifully and gravely spread her wings. We held our breath, waited -entranced, and then, just then, she disappeared. Suddenly we lost her.</p> - -<p>I refer, now, to our group, the little Bohemian group of kindred -spirits who loved Jane; Ludovic, Felix, Clémentine and the others. -Extraordinary that these friends of mine should have been the ones to -love Jane best. They were a gay lot of sinners, quite impossible judged -by any standard but their own. My mother only knew of their existence, -through Clémentine. She has always been in the habit of discussing -artists and writers as if they were dead. It was distressing to her -that Clémentine who was related to her by blood and had married a -Bourbon,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> should have held herself and her name so cheap as to consort -with men and women of obscure origin and problematical genius. As for -me, a man could do as he liked within measure, if he did not forget -to keep up appearances. She regarded my friendship for my wonderful -Ludovic and all the rest of them as a substitute for the more usual -and less troublesome clandestine affairs of the ordinary bachelor. As -I could never “<i>faire la noce</i>” like other men I was allowed these -dissipations of the mind, but <i>maman</i> never forgave me for introducing -Ludovic to Jane. Dearest mother—it was no use telling her that Ludovic -was the greatest scholar of his day. I didn’t try to explain. After all -Ludovic needed no championing from me. I had wanted to do something -for Jane; I had wanted to relieve in some way the awful pressure of -her big bleak dazzling situation. Hemmed in by the complications of my -relationship to her, how many times had I not groaned over the fact -that she had been married by that awful mother of hers to the head of -our house and not to some one else’s devilish elder brother, instead -of to mine, I had pondered and tormented myself over a way of helping -her that would not give Philibert the chance of coming down on me and -shutting the big strong door of his house in my face, and at length -my opportunity had come. It had seemed to me that for her at last -the battle was over, and that she had achieved the desolate freedom -which we could turn into enjoyment. Fan Ivanoff was dead. Bianca had -disappeared. As for Philibert, he had grown tired of bothering her. -Her sufferings no longer amused him. Her loneliness was complete. -Although still to my eyes a figure of drama while we were essentially -merry prosy people, she appeared to me to have acquired that spiritual -mastery of events which made her one of us. I had reckoned without her -child, Geneviève.</p> - -<p>How could I have understood then the fear with which she contemplated -her daughter’s future? And even supposing that I had understood -everything, and had the gift<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> of seeing into that future and had beheld -the shadow of that lovely monster Bianca swooping down on Jane again to -drive her to extremity, even supposing I had known what was going to -happen and how that would take her away from us forever, I still could -have done nothing more than I did do. It had seemed to me that we could -provide her with a refuge, and so we did for a time. If Paris were to -offer her any reward, any consolation, any comfort, then such a reward -and such comfort was, I felt sure, to be found in the sympathy of -these people who had gravitated to one another, out of the heavy mass -of humanity that populated the earth, like sparks flying upwards to -meet above the smoke and heat of the crowd in a clear lighted space of -mental freedom. I gave her the best I had; I gave her my friends; and -if they thought she had come to them to stay, well then so did I. Our -mistake lay in thinking that because we were sufficient to each other -we must be sufficient to Jane as well. I do not believe it occurred -to any one of us how little we really counted for her; I, at least -never knew it until the other day. Actually I had never realized that -her soul was always craving something more, something like a heavenly -certitude or a divine revelation.</p> - -<p>Conceited? I suppose we were; but then you see the world did knock at -our door for admittance. We had all literary and artistic Europe to -choose from, and we did realize the things we talked of. I mean that -we translated our thoughts into things people could see, ballets, -pictures, bits of music. We worked out our ideas for the mob to gape -at, and our success could be measured by the bitter hostility of such -people as Philibert, who fancied himself as a patron of the arts—a -kind of François I—and found us difficult to patronize.</p> - -<p>Jane realized our worth of course. She had a touching reverence for our -ability. She saw clearly the distinct worlds represented by my mother, -and Ludovic; the one exquisite and sterile, beautifully still as a -sealed room with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> panelled walls inhabited by wax figures; the other -disordered and merry, convulsed by riotous fancies, where daring people -indulged their caprices, scoffed at facts and respected intellect.</p> - -<p>What Jane did not realize was the humanity underlying this life of -ours. She thought us uncanny, but she could have trusted us in her -trouble. And we on our side did not know that we did not satisfy her. -After all, for the rest of us our deep feeling of well-being in one -another’s company was like a divine assurance, an absolute ultimate -promise. It was all the heavenly revelation we needed. When we gathered -round Clémentine’s dinner-table with the long windows opening out -of the high shabby room into the shadowy garden where we could hear -during the momentary hush of our voices the note of its flutey tinkling -fountain, or when we settled deep in those large worn friendly chairs -before Ludovic’s fire on a winter’s night, in the cosy gloom of his -overcharged bookshelves, it would come to us over and over again, like -the repeated sense of a divine conviction, that this exquisite essence -of human intercourse was nothing less than what we had been born for.</p> - -<p>Jane could never have had that feeling, but we thought she shared it -with us. We did not know about that deep relentless urge in Jane that -was as inevitable as the rising tide. We never took seriously enough -her fear of God.</p> - -<p>And so when she went away they thought—Ludovic and Clémentine and -the rest of them—“She will be here tomorrow, she will come back just -as she was, and she will find us just where she left us.” And they -continued to talk about her as if she had left them but an hour before -to go and show herself as she was often obliged to do in some great -bright hideous salon. Her chair was always there by Ludovic’s fireside, -and they took account in their discussions of her probable point of -view, as if she’d been there with them. There was something touching in -their expectancy. There was that in their manner to remind one of the -simple fidelity of peasants who lay the place of the absent one every<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> -night at table. The truth did not occur to them, and I who wanted to be -deceived let their confidence communicate itself to me. I told myself -that they were right, that she was bound to come back, that they had -formed in her the habit of living humourously as they did, that they -had given her a taste for things she would not find elsewhere, and that -she would never be content to live now in that big blank new continent -across the Atlantic. The word Atlantic made me shiver. I must have had -a premonition; I must have known that I was going to cross it, urged -out upon that cold turbulent waste of horrid water by a forlorn hope -and an anguished desire to see her once more.</p> - -<p>I hugged to myself during those days of suspense my feeling of the -irresistible appeal of my city. Had Jane not told me, one day on -returning from Como, that in spite of the problems her life held for -her here, she experienced nevertheless each time she went away such -a poignant home-sickness for Paris, its streets, its sounds, its -river-banks and its buildings, that she invariably came back in a -tremor of fear, positively “jumpy” at the thought that perhaps during -her absence it had changed or disappeared off the map altogether? If -she felt like this after a month’s sojourn in Italy, what had I now -to fear I asked myself? Had we not initiated her into the very secret -heart of Paris? Was there a remnant of an old and lovely building that -we had not shown her, or a fragment of sculpture or a picture worth -looking at to which we had not introduced her? Had she not come to feel -with us the difference of the temperature and tone of the streets, the -excitement of the jangling boulevards, the bland oblivion of the Place -de la Concorde, the ghostliness of the Place des Vosges, the intimate -provincial secretiveness of our own old peaceable quarter? Had not -Ludovic called into being for her out of the embers of his fire the -historic scenes that had been enacted in all these and a hundred other -places? Had he not made the whole rich fantastic past of our city -unroll itself before her eyes? Was it a little thing to be allowed to -drink at the source of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> so much humanized knowledge? Where in that new -country of hers would she find so fanciful and patient and tender a -friend as this great scholar?</p> - -<p>So I piled up the evidence, and then when her letter came I knew that -I had foreseen the truth, and when I took them the news and they all -cried out to me—“Go and bring her back, and don’t come back without -her”—I knew while their high commanding voices were still sounding -in my ears that already I had made up my mind to go, and I knew too, -lastly and finally, that I would not be able to bring her back.</p> - -<p>She had enclosed in her letter to me a note for them which I gave -to Clémentine, who read it and passed it on. One after another they -scanned its meagre lines in silence. I saw that Ludovic’s hand was -shaking. When he had finished he closed his eyes for a moment and his -head jerked forward. I noticed in the light of the lamp how white he -had grown in the last year, and how the yellow tint of his pallor had -deepened. Clémentine said looking at me—“It is not intelligible. -Perhaps you can explain.” And I was given the sheet of paper covered -with Jane’s large careless scrawl:</p> - -<blockquote><p>“Dear Friends,” I read, “I am not coming back. I am here alone -with the ghost of my Aunt Patty in the house where I lived as a -child. It is a wooden house with a verandah at the back. There -are snow-drifts on the verandah. I am trying to find out what it -has all been about—my life, I mean. If I believed that I would -understand over there on the other side of death, then perhaps -I would not be bound to stay here now, but I know that Ludovic -is right, and that the hope of eternal punishment like that of -immortal bliss and satisfied knowledge is just the fiction of our -vanity. My punishment is on me now, since among other things I -have to give you up.</p> - -<p class="right">“<span class="smcap">Jane.</span>”</p></blockquote> - -<p>They had cried out at me when I told them, but after reading the letter -they were silent. It was as if they had been brushed by the wings of -some strange fearful messenger from another world, as if some departed -spirit were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> present. We might all have been sitting in the dark with -invisible clammy hands touching our hair, so nervous had we become. The -fall of a charred log in the fireplace made us jump.</p> - -<p>Felix forced a laugh. “The ghost of her Aunt Patty,” he mocked -dismally. “Now what does she mean by that?”</p> - -<p>“Her Aunt Patty was the person who took care of her as a child. Miss -Patience Forbes her name was. She seems to have been a remarkable -character. Jane often spoke of her.”</p> - -<p>My words only added to their mystification. An old maid in America, -dead now, a remarkable character. What had she to do with them? What -power had she over their brilliant courageous Jane? Were they nothing -that they could be replaced by the wraith of an old puritan spinster?</p> - -<p>The room seemed to grow chilly. Some one put a fresh log on the fire. -A little fitful wind was whimpering at the windows. Now and then a -gust of rain pattered against the glass with a light rapid sound like -finger-tips tapping. Felix had wandered away down the long dim room, -his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched as he stood with -his back to us, and his nose close to the packed shelves of books -against the farther wall. The tiny gilt letterings on the old bindings -glimmered faintly in the lamplight. He seemed to be searching among all -those little dim signs for an explanation. Far away beyond the network -of gardens and old muffling houses one heard from some distant street -the hoot of a motor. From the translucent depths of gleaming glass -cabinets the small mute mysterious figures of jewelled heathen gods and -little bronze Buddhas and curious carved jade monsters looked out at us -as if through sheets of water.</p> - -<p>Under the aged shadowy eaves of that room, full of strange old symbols -and rare books and still rarer manuscripts, where so many ideas and -faiths and records had been sifted, examined and relegated to dusty -recesses, its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> occupants remained silent, staring at the new disturbing -object of their mystification. Clémentine, tucked into a corner of the -sofa, her boyish head that she dyed such a bad colour, on her hand, -scrutinized the tip of her foot that she held high as if for better -observation, in one of her characteristic angular attitudes. Her -slipper dangled loose from her toe; now and then she gave it a jerk of -annoyance.</p> - -<p>They tried to take in the meaning of what they had read. The emotional -content of that scrawled page was so strange to them as to appear -almost shocking. They were rather frightened. Here indeed their -philosophy of laughter broke down, for they loved Jane and could not -make fun of her superstitions.</p> - -<p>“We were never hard on her. We treated her gently.”</p> - -<p>“Even when her seriousness bored us we were patient.”</p> - -<p>“She can’t have loved us. We have never really known her then, after -all.”</p> - -<p>Clémentine jerked about. “I was always wanting her to take lovers. She -wanted me to give up mine. Poor child—we were friends all the same.”</p> - -<p>Felix’s falsetto came down to us in a shrill wail of exasperation.</p> - -<p>“But we never attacked her religion. We left her alone. We were good to -her.”</p> - -<p>Clémentine nodded. “Yes, we were good.”</p> - -<p>I remembered the day I had first brought Jane to them, clothed in her -silks and sables, glittering with the garish light of her millions and -her high cold social activities. I had brought her straight from the -preposterous palace she had let Philibert build her to this deep dim -nook where we laughed and scoffed at the world she lived in. I had been -nervous then. I had been afraid they would find her impossible. But -they had seen through the barbarous trappings, intelligent souls that -they were. Hadn’t she realized how they had honoured her? Hadn’t she -known what dependable people they were?</p> - -<p>I heard Clémentine say it again. “We were good, but she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> thought we -were wicked because we broke the ten commandments. She thought a lot of -the ten commandments.”</p> - -<p>“It was the puritan spinster looking at us over her shoulder all the -time.”</p> - -<p>And still they pondered and puzzled, bewildered, depressed, at a loss, -annoyed by their incapacity to picture to themselves even so much as -the place where she was, alone at that moment. “St. Mary’s Plains, -Mohican County, Michigan” was the address she gave. What an address to -expect any one to take seriously. If it had been a joke the mixture of -images would perhaps have conveyed something to them, but as a serious -geographic sign they could do nothing with it. It had the character -of a new glazed billboard, of a big glaring advertisement for some -parvenu’s patent. To think of Jane sitting down away off there in -the middle of a desert under it was too much for them. But the very -outrageousness of the enigma helped them.</p> - -<p>“She couldn’t do it from inclination,” some one of them said at last. -“There must have been something terrible.”</p> - -<p>Then it was that Ludovic startled us. He spoke slowly as if to himself.</p> - -<p>“She was only beginning to learn how little conduct has to do with -life. For others she had come to understand that what one does has -little or no relation to what one is. I am convinced that she, poor -child, is persuaded that she has committed some dreadful crime.”</p> - -<p>But it was Clémentine who said the last word that I carried away with -me.</p> - -<p>“If she hadn’t married into your family,” she said, glaring out at me -from the door of her taxi, “she would have been all right. Why, she -should have chosen Philibert—”</p> - -<p>“But, <i>chérie amie</i>, she didn’t. It was her mother who did it all.”</p> - -<p>“Rubbish! She loved him. She loves him still.”</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span></p> - -<h2>II</h2> - -<p>My mother was a Mirecourt. The family was of a prouder nobility than -my father’s. Her people were of the <i>Grand Chevaux de Lorraine</i>. They -fought with the English against the kings of France in the fourteenth -century. One reads about them as fighters during several hundreds of -years beginning with the Crusades. Sometimes they were on the right -side, sometimes on the wrong. Later generations were not proud of the -part they played in the siege of Orleans. But they were proud people -and acted on caprice or in self-interest with a sublime belief in -themselves. They did not like kings and were loth to give allegiance -to any one. When Louis XI took away their lands, they went over to the -king, but it is to be gathered from the letters of the time that they -considered no king their equal. Richelieu was too much for them. He -reduced them to poverty. To repair the damage the head of the family -made a bourgeois marriage. They were sure of themselves in those days. -Marrying money caused them no uneasiness nor fear of ridicule. My -mother said one day when talking of Philibert and Jane—“We have done -this sort of thing before but always with people of our own race who -had a proper attitude. With foreigners one never knows.”</p> - -<p>My father was a Breton. Anne of Brittany was the liege lady of his -people. His <i>aieux</i> were worthy gentlemen who played an obscure but -on the whole respectable part in history. An occasional spendthrift -appeared now and then among them to add gaiety to their monotonous -lives. The spendthrifts being few and the tenacity of the others very -great, they amassed a considerable fortune and were <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>ennobled by Louis -XIV: a fact of which my aunt Clothilde used occasionally to remind us. -Aunt Clothilde was my father’s sister. She had made a great match in -marrying the first Duke of France, but she seemed to think nothing of -that nor to have any consciousness of the obligations of her class. -She made fun of the legitimists, scoffed at the idea of a restoration -and despised the Duc d’Orleans for the way he behaved in England. She -and my mother did not get on. My mother thought her vulgar. She was, -but it didn’t detract from her being a very great lady. She was always -enormously fat, a greedy, wicked old thing, with a ribald mind, but -with a tremendous <i>chic</i>. Philibert called her <i>La Gargantua</i>. She was -Rabelaisian somehow. I liked her. She never seemed conscious of my -being different from other men, and she was kinder to Jane than the -others.</p> - -<p>There were a great many others. We made a large clan. It seemed strange -to Jane that half the people in Paris were our cousins or uncles or -aunts. But of course it is like that. One is related to everybody.</p> - -<p>As a family we had the reputation of having very nice manners. It was -thought that we knew very well how to make ourselves agreeable and what -was more characteristic, how to be disagreeable without giving offense. -My mother was reputed to be the only woman in Paris who could refuse an -invitation to dinner in the same house six times running without making -an enemy of its mistress. My mother was perpetually penning little -plaintive notes of regret. She was greatly sought after and stayed -very much at home. After my father’s death it became more and more -difficult to get her to go anywhere, but she liked being asked so that -she could refuse. The result was that she became something precious, -inapproachable, a legend of good form and grace and she remained this -always. I have on my table a miniature of her painted when she was -married, at the age of eighteen. She was never a beauty. A slip of a -thing, gentle and pale, with dark ringlets and very bright intelligent -eyes. Her power of seduction was a thing that emanated from her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> like -a perfume, indefinable and elusive. Claire, my sister, has the same -quality.</p> - -<p>One of my mother’s special pleasures as she grew older consisted in -having her dinner in bed on some grand gala evening, and telling -herself that she was the only lady of any importance in Paris who had -refused to be present. Sometimes on such evenings she would send for -me to come and sit with her for an hour. I would find her propped -up on her pillows, her eyes glowing with animation under the soft -old-fashioned frill of her voluminous boudoir cap, and presently I -would become aware that she was submitting me to all the play of her -wit and her charm, and I would know that out of a pure spirit of -contradiction she was giving me, her poor ugly duckling, the treat -that she had withheld from that brilliant gathering, whether to amuse -me most or herself it would be difficult to tell. We understand each -other. Her manner to me was always perfect. It was a beautiful and -elaborate denial of the fact that my deformity was unpleasant to -her. She went to a lot of trouble to pretend that she liked having -me about. If she wanted a cab called in the rain and there wasn’t a -servant handy—we didn’t have too many—it was a part of her delicacy -to ask me to do it rather than have me think that she had my infirmity -constantly on her mind. If she required an escort to some public place -she would choose me rather than Philibert, but she would not always -choose me, lest I should come to feel that she forced herself to do -so. She had the humblest way of asking my advice, and then when she -did not take it, went to the most childlike manœuvres to deceive me -and make me think she had. When I came back from school in England, I -remember wondering what she would do about me and her friends. She had -an evening a week and received on these occasions a number of stiff old -gentlemen and gossipy dowagers, a handful of priests and all the aunts -and uncles and cousins. The question for her was whether she should -inflict on me the penance of talking to these people in order to show -me that she liked to have me about, or whether she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> would let me off -attendance and trust to my superior understanding to assume that I was -in her eyes presentable. I believe she would have decided on the latter -bolder plan, had I not taken the matter out of her hands by asking her -to excuse me. Her answer was characteristic.</p> - -<p>“But naturally, <i>mon enfant</i>. You don’t suppose that I think these -old people fit company for you. Only if it’s not indiscreet, tell me -sometimes about your doings. I, at least, am not too old nor yet too -young to be told.”</p> - -<p>Dear mother. She would have gone to the length of imputing to me a -dozen mistresses if she had thought that would help me. And yet in -spite of it all, perhaps just because of it all, I knew that the sight -of me was intolerable to her. But this I feel sure was a thing that she -never knew that I knew. It was a part of my business in life never to -let her find it out.</p> - -<p>My being sent to England to school had been to me a proof. Though -my father had taken the decision I knew it was to get me out of my -mother’s way. It was not the habit of our family to send its sons -abroad for their education. Philibert had had tutors at home. None -of my cousins had gone away. We were as a clan not at all given to -travelling. In the extreme sensitiveness that engulfed me like an -illness during a certain period of my youth, I had told myself bitterly -that I was banished because they could not abide the sight of me, but -my bitterness did not last, thank God; and when after my father’s death -I came home to live, I set myself to matching my mother’s delicacy with -my own. I arranged to convey to her the impression of being always at -hand and yet I managed to be actually in her presence a minimum of -time. I did things for her that I could do without being aggravatingly -near her; such things as running errands and visiting her lawyer and -looking after her meagre investments, accumulating these duties while -at the same time I withdrew more and more from sharing in her social -activities.</p> - -<p>I had kept, for reasons of economy and in order to be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> near her, my -apartment in a wing of her house over the porter’s lodge, in that part -of the building that screened the house from the street. My windows -looked on the one side across the street into some gardens and on the -other side into our court yard. From my dressing-room I had a view of -my mother’s graceful front door with the wide shallow steps before it -and the gravel expanse of the inner carriage drive. Sometimes when I -came home in the evening, Madame Oui, the <i>concierge’s</i> wife, would tap -on the glass in her door that was just opposite my own little entrance -behind the great double portals that barred us into our stronghold, and -would tell me that my mother had come in and would like to see me. Or I -would find a note bidding me come to her lying on my table. She wrote -me a great number of notes, sprightly amusing missives that reminded -one of the fact that Frenchwomen have been for centuries mistresses in -the art of letter-writing. They gave me the news, recounted the latest -family gossip, contained tips as to how to behave if I came across an -aunt who owed her money, or an uncle who had lent her some, warned me -against this or that person whom she did not want to see any more, -asked me to pay a call on one of her ancient followers who was in bed -with a cold, enclosed a tiresome bill that she hadn’t the money to pay -immediately, or implored me in witty phrases of complaint to use my -influence with Philibert and try to get him away from some woman: in -all of which matters I did my best to meet her wishes save as regarded -my brother. “My influence with Philibert” was one of my mother’s least -successful fictions. I wonder even now that she kept it up. I suppose -it would have seemed to her shocking to admit even tacitly that her -two sons never spoke to each other if they could help it. Yet she must -have known that although he lived nominally in my mother’s house up to -the time of his marriage I scarcely ever saw him unless at a distance -in some crowded salon. The few mutual friends we possessed never asked -us to dinner or lunch together, and strangely enough in the one<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> place -where we might often have happened to come across one another, that -is in my mother’s own boudoir, we never did meet. My mother must have -managed this. She must have manœuvred to prevent such encounters. She -arranged to see us always separately and yet continued to talk to us, -each to the other, as if she supposed that beyond her door we were -amusing ourselves together, thick as thieves.</p> - -<p>She would say—“I hear this latest friend of Philibert’s whom he has so -made the mode this year, is really quite pretty. Tell me what she looks -like,”—assuming me to be perfectly aware of this affair. Or—“Your -brother’s new tailor is not successful at all. He gives him the most -exaggerated shoulders. Fifi is not tall enough to stand it. I wish you -would get him to go back to the old one.” Or even—“Tell me what your -brother is up to. I never see him.” As if I knew what Philibert was up -to.</p> - -<p>My rare meetings with him took place at my sister’s. She used sometimes -to have us at her house together. Her husband would bring him home to -lunch unexpectedly, or I would drop in unbidden and find him there. -Poor Claire had married the biggest automobile works in the country, -and had been taken to Neuilly and shut up there in a gigantic villa. -She was finding that it tasked her philosophical docility to the utmost -to meet the demands of the uxorious individual who paid all her bills -from his own cheque book and was generous only in the way of supplying -her with babies. She had had four in six years, and her health was a -source of anxiety to my mother, who was frankly exasperated by the turn -her daughter’s affairs had taken.</p> - -<p>“My dear,” she said to me one night on her return from Neuilly, “I -supposed that that man had married Claire to get into society, and now -that I’ve given her to him he has taken her off to the wilderness. -I don’t know what to make of it. The poor child is wasting away. He -simply never leaves her alone. They go to bed together every night at -ten o’clock. It is horrible.”</p> - -<p>Claire may have bemoaned her lot to my mother in those<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> long -tête-à-têtes of theirs, but she never complained to me, nor did she, -I believe, to Philibert, who was in the habit of borrowing money from -her large, oily, sleek-headed husband. She had some of my mother’s -mannerisms, her little way of quickly moving her head backwards with -the slightest toss; the same light flexible utterance; the same sigh -and sudden droop of irrepressible languor. I believe her to be the -only person of whom Philibert was ever unselfishly fond. She pleased -him. Her physical frailty, appealed to his taste which was in reality -so fastidious, however vulgar some of his amusements might be, and her -mocking spirit was congenial to him. When one thought of Claire one -thought of her dark shadowed eyes with the deep circles under them -marking the tender cheeks, and her truly beautiful smile. She was -a collection of odd beauties combined in a way to make one’s heart -ache, but there was something sharp in her—something hurting. Lovely -Claire, cynical siren, how caressingly she spoke to me, how she drew -out of my heart its tenderness, and how often she disappointed me. Not -brave enough to be happy, far too intelligent not to know what she was -missing, she took refuge in self-mockery and when faced with a crisis -subsided into complete passivity.</p> - -<p>One evening in the early summer, more than twenty years ago now, I -found a note from my mother tucked in the crack of my door asking me to -come to her at once as she had news for me of the utmost importance. -I found my sister with her, and something in the attitude of the two -women, who were so closely akin as to reproduce each one the same -physical pose under the stress of a deep preoccupation, conveyed to -me a suspicion that Philibert had that moment skipped out through the -long open window. They sat, each in a high brocaded chair, their heads -thrown back against their respective cushions, their hands limp in -their laps and their eyes half-closed. I thought for an instant that -both had fainted. My mother was the first to make a sign. She lifted an -arm and in silence pointed a finger at a chair for me. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Your brother,” she said, when once I was seated, “has sold this house -over my head. He is going to be married.”</p> - -<p>“To a little American girl,” breathed Claire.</p> - -<p>“The fortune is immense,” added my mother.</p> - -<p>“The daughter of that awful smart Mrs. Carpenter,” said Claire, opening -wide her eyes the better to take in the horror.</p> - -<p>“She asked me three times to luncheon,” said my mother. “I have never -seen her.”</p> - -<p>I looked from one to the other—“But if the fortune is immense—” I -ventured.</p> - -<p>“It is all tied up,” wailed my mother. “Her trustees insist on his -debts being paid beforehand. I understand nothing—but nothing.” Her -head dropped forward. She pressed her thumb and forefinger against her -worn eyelids. She began to cry.</p> - -<p>Claire, with a strange sidelong look at her expressive of compassion -and exasperation and wonder, got up and walked to the window and stood -with her back to us looking out into the garden.</p> - -<p>“I should have thought my son-in-law would have saved me this -humiliation,” said my mother, fumbling with her left hand for her -handkerchief. “But Claire says he has already lent Philibert very -considerable sums.” I saw my sister’s slender figure stiffen. “What -curious people Americans are. It seems that the father made such a -will as passes belief. The child comes into the entire fortune but can -only dispose of the income. The mother has an annuity, Claire says -it must be a big one as she entertains a great deal. Why did you not -tell me your brother was getting so dreadfully into debt? The girl is -just eighteen. It appears that in America girls reach their majority -at eighteen. Her name is Jane. A most unpleasant name. Philibert says -she is not pretty. These <i>mésalliances</i> are so tiresome. If only he -could have married that exquisite little Bianca. I shall be obliged to -receive the mother. I am sure she has a very strong accent.”</p> - -<p>My poor mother stretched out her hand to me. “What is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> to become of -us?” she wailed gently. I felt very sorry for her. I understood that -she was afraid of the invasion of a horde of big noisy strangers. I -tried to comfort her. She seemed to me for the first time pitiful, and -I saw that her youthfulness was after all, just one of the illusions -she cast by the exercise of her will. It fell from her that evening as -if it had been some gossamer veil destroyed by her tears.</p> - -<p>Claire remained silent. Only once during all my mother’s broken lament -did she speak, and then she said without turning—“I should have -thought one such marriage in a family was enough.”</p> - -<p>It transpired that Philibert needed five hundred thousand francs to put -him straight, that the house was being sold for a million and that the -remaining half was my mother’s, since they owned the property between -them. He had brought her the deed of sale to sign that afternoon, and -had gone away with the signature in his pocket. She said—“Naturally I -could not refuse. It is not as if he could have sold half the building.”</p> - -<p>I felt humiliated for my mother. It seemed to me that my brother had -injured her in a most offensive way. There was a kind of indecency -about the proceeding that made me ashamed. It was the kind of thing -I had hoped we were none of us capable of doing. He was taking away -from her not only her shelter and security, but a part of her own -personality. It was as outrageous as if he had forced her to cut off -her hair and had taken it round to a wigmaker to turn into a handful -of gold. I saw that without that fine old house, so like her own self -expressed in architecture, with its bland and graceful exterior and -delicate ornamented rooms, she would lose a vital part of her entity. -She was not one of those people whose public and private selves are -distinct. The proud little bright-eyed lady who drove out of those -stately doors in her brougham to dispense finely gradated smiles to the -meticulously selected people of her acquaintance, and the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>passionate -intriguing mother so given to subterfuges of kindness and ineffable -make-believe of disinterested affection, were one and the same -person. She had no special manner for the world. There was no homely -naturalness for her to subside into, no loose woolly dressing-gown of -conduct and no rough carpet slippers of laziness to don in the presence -of her family or by her lonely self. What she was when in attendance -on the Bourbons that she was in her own silent bedroom. Even about her -weeping there was a certain style. Her tears were pitiful but not ugly. -They had destroyed the illusion of her youthfulness, but they had not -marred her elegance. There was measure and appropriateness and dramatic -worth in her weeping. Her son had not broken her heart or her spirit; -he had merely dragged off some of her clothing. She stood denuded, -impoverished, a little shrunken in stature, that was all. It was that -that enraged me. I said—“What a brute.” My mother pulled me up sharply.</p> - -<p>“My son,” she said to me, with more of haughtiness than I had ever -seen in her manner to any one of us. “I have consented to do what your -brother has asked. I have approved of his conduct. That is sufficient.”</p> - -<p>I felt then the finality, the hopelessness. I believe I smiled. The -change was sudden. It had always been like that with mother. She might -complain of Philibert but no one could criticize him to her.</p> - -<p>“Ah, well,” I said, “if you have made up your mind to accept her—”</p> - -<p>Mother lifted her head quickly. “Whom?”</p> - -<p>“Your new daughter-in-law.”</p> - -<p>I am almost sure that she turned pale. I cannot have imagined it. Her -words too, gave me the same painful impression.</p> - -<p>“I have accepted it, not her, as yet.”</p> - -<p>And suddenly I thought of the girl, Jane Carpenter, whom I had not yet -laid eyes on, with an immense pity.</p> - -<p>“Yes,” said Claire, coming back to us, and looking at us<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> with her -least charming, most bitterly mocking air. “We prepare a nice welcome -for her. I wonder how she will like us.”</p> - -<p>But my mother had the last word.</p> - -<p>“We shall, I presume, know how to make ourselves agreeable,” she said, -putting away her handkerchief into her little silk bag. I saw that she -would shed no more tears over the girl, Jane Carpenter.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span></p> - -<h2>III</h2> - -<p>Mrs. Carpenter was an American who apologized for her own country. She -had found it incapable of providing a sufficient field of activity for -her social talents and called it crude. The phrase on her lips was -funny. There was much about her that was funny, since one could not in -the face of her bright brisk self-satisfaction call her pathetic.</p> - -<p>The flattery of such migrations as hers is mystifying to Parisians -like myself, who know that our city is the most delightful place in -the world, but do not quite understand why so many foreigners like -Mrs. Carpenter should find it so. She seemed to derive an immense -satisfaction from the fact that she lived in Paris. But why? Where -lay the magic difference between her Paris and her New York? She had -established herself in a large bright apartment in the Avenue du Bois -de Bologne. Her rent was high, her furniture expensive, her table -lavish, her motor had pale grey cushions and silver trimmings. All -these things she could have had in New York. She might have paid a -little more for them over there, but that would only have added to her -pleasure. She liked to pay high prices for things. It may be that I -am doing her an injustice. There were moments when her indefatigable -pursuit of us all filled me with scornful pity and made me think that -she did hide under her breezy successful manner a wistful and romantic -admiration for things that were foreign and old, and a touching respect -for things she did not understand. She once told me that she had wanted -to take an old hotel in our quarter, something with atmosphere and a -history and old-world charm. But somehow she had not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> found what she -wanted. The houses she saw were dark and gloomy and insanitary. They -were wonderfully romantic but they had no bathrooms. She had wanted -one in particular, had wanted it awfully, but the owner had insisted -on staying on in little rooms under the roof, which meant his using -her front stairs, so at last she had given up the idea. Her apartment -was certainly not gloomy. It glittered with gold—golden walls, gold -plate, gilt chairs. She ended by liking it immensely, but was sometimes -a little ashamed of being so pleased with it. Perhaps, at odd moments, -she called it crude.</p> - -<p>I used to go there sometimes, long before Jane came to Paris. I am -sorry now that I did. Had I known Mrs. Carpenter was going to be, -for me, Jane’s mother, I would not have gone. It is not nice to -remember that I used to make fun of Jane’s mother, and accept her -hospitality with amused contempt. We all did. She was to us an object -of good-humoured derision. Poor old Izzy. She fed us so well; she -begged us so continually to come. She seemed to derive such pleasure -from hearing the butler announce our names. I am sure she believed that -awful flat of hers to be the social centre of a very distinguished -society. The more of a mixture the better to her mind:—Austrians, -Hungarians, Poles,—she liked having princes about, and their dark -furtive eyes and beautifully manicured hands filled her with joy. It -was only after Philibert got hold of her that she began to understand -that perhaps, after all, too cosmopolitan a salon was not quite the -thing. Philibert took her in hand. He had learned somehow about Jane. -He already had his idea.</p> - -<p>And now I come upon a curious problem. I find that two distinct Mrs. -Carpenters exist in my mind, and I cannot reconcile them. One was a -beautiful romantic creature whom Jane—far away in the Grey House in -St. Mary’s Plains—called mother and wrote to once a week and loved -with a pure flame of loyalty; the other was Izzy Carpenter, whose -loud voice and tall elastic fashionable figure was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> so well-known -in Paris: Busy Izzy, who was run by Philibert, and a group of young -ne’er-do-weels. I find it very difficult to realize that this jolly -slangy woman, with curly grey hair and a blue eye that could give a -broad wink on occasion, was identical with the figure of poetry Jane -dreamed about night after night in her little restless cot at the -foot of her Aunt Patty’s four-poster bed. It is disturbing to think -that even about this decided hard-edged vivacious woman there should -have been such a difference of opinion, such a contrast of received -impressions as to make one wonder whether she had any corporeal -existence at all. I think of that stern humorous spinster Patience -Forbes comforting the child who was always asking questions about her -mother; I think of her taking the aching young thing on her gaunt knees -in the old rocking chair with its knitted worsted cushion, and lulling -that troubled eager mind to rest with stories of her mother’s childhood.</p> - -<p>I can see the grim face of Patience Forbes while she searches her -memory for pleasant things about her heartless prodigal sister. She -sits in a bay window looking out into the back garden where there is -a sleepy twittering of birds. The trams thunder past up Desmoine’s -Avenue. The milkman comes up the path; the white muslin curtains -billow into the peaceful room that smells of lavender and mint. There -is sunlight on the old mahogany. Jane’s great-grandmother, in an oval -frame, looks down insipidly, her eyes mildly shining between the low -bands of her parted hair. And Jane has her arms round her Aunt Patty, -and her face, so unlike the gentle portrait, is troubled and brooding, -a sullen ugly little face with something strange, half wild, that -recalls her father and frightens the good woman who holds her close and -goes on answering questions about her sister Isabel. And then I think -of Mrs. Carpenter not as Jane’s mother, but as the daughter of old Mrs. -Forbes of the Grey House, and I am again bewildered. Those people in -St. Mary’s Plains, Jane’s grandmother, her aunts and her uncle, were -people of sense and character and taste. Who that knew<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> Izzy Carpenter -would have thought it? Who that knew Jane could deny it? I suspect Mrs. -Carpenter of having been ashamed of them. Jane’s loyalty saved her from -any such stupidity.</p> - -<p>When I went to St. Mary’s Plains the other day, Jane showed me, on the -wall of her uncle’s study, an old print representing the first log -cabin of the French settler who had come there across the Canadian -border in 1780. In the picture a Red Indian carrying a tomahawk and -capped with feathers skulks behind the trees at the edge of the -clearing, and in the foreground a group of Noah’s Ark cattle are -guarded by a man with a gun. Under the print is written—“St. Marie -les Plaines,” and the signature “Gilbert de Chevigné.” It was a -Monsieur de Chevigné from Quebec, Jane told me, who built the Grey -House. The name had been corrupted to Cheney; the Cheneys were her -grandmother’s people. Many of the families in St. Mary’s Plains traced -a similar history. The town in growing had cherished the story of -its French foundation and its social element had grown to believe -that it had a special sympathy with our country. Its well-to-do -people were constantly coming from and going to France. With an -indifference bordering on contempt, and an ease that suggested the -consciousness of special claims and opportunities, they would cross -the really tremendous expanse of territory that lay between their -thresholds and the Atlantic sea-board, ignoring the existence of -Chicago, Buffalo, Boston, Philadelphia and New York, and set sail for -Cherbourg. It was considered a perfectly natural occurrence and one -scarcely worthy of self-congratulation for a girl from St. Mary’s -Plains to marry a foreigner of real or supposed distinction, but those -who neither married abroad nor at home, but were led astray by the -vulgar attraction of some rich man from the far west or east were -the subject of pitying criticism. Such had been the case with Jane’s -mother. Silas Carpenter had come bearing down on St. Mary’s Plains, a -wild man from the great west; like a bison or a moose breaking into a -mild<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> and pleasant paddock. Isabel Forbes, headstrong, discontented, -covetous, had fallen to his savage charm, his millions and the peculiar -oppressive magnetism of his silence, that seemed filled with the -memories of unspeakable experiences. The first rush to the goldfields -of California loomed in the background of his untutored childhood. -Later he had gone to the Klondike. Gold—he had dug it out of the -earth with his own great hands. Then he had taught himself oddly from -books. A speculator, a gambler, he had a passion for music, and played -the flute. A strange mixture. To please Isabel’s family he gave up -poker, went to church, was married in a frock-coat. People said he had -Indian blood in his veins. It seems possible. He had the long head and -slanting profile and the mild voice characteristic of the race. Society -in St. Mary’s Plains was genuinely sorry for Isabel’s family when she -married him. But she went away to New York to live and was forgotten -until on Silas’ sensational death her departure for Paris revived -interest in her doings.</p> - -<p>“The Grey House” as it was known in St. Mary’s Plains, had the -benevolent patriarchal air of a small provincial manor. Built sometime -in the seventies it had not had too many coats of paint during its -lifetime, and its calm exterior with the double row of comfortable -windows each flanked by a pair of shutters was weather-stained and worn -like the visage of some bland unconcerned person of distinction who -is not ashamed to look in his old age a little like a weather-beaten -peasant. It stood well back from the street in the centre of a wide -plot of ground not large enough to be called a park, though containing -a few nice trees. The lawn indeed merged in the most sociable way into -the grounds of other neighbouring houses and ran smoothly down in front -to the edge of the public side-walk where there was no wall or railing -of any kind. A scarcely noticeable sign beside the path that led from -the street to the front porch with its two wooden pillars said “Keep -off the grass.”</p> - -<p>There were only two storeys to the Grey House and a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> garret with dormer -windows in the grey shingled roof, the rooms of the ground floor being -raised only a foot or two from the level of the street, so that Jane’s -grandmother, sitting in her armchair by the living-room window could -look up over the tops of her spectacles and see and recognize her -acquaintances who often even at that comfortable distance would bow or -lift their hats to the little old lady as they passed.</p> - -<p>Every one in St. Mary’s Plains knew the Grey House. When one of the -Misses Forbes went shopping, she would say “Send it to the Grey -House, please,” and the young man in the dry goods’ store would -answer—“Certainly, Miss Forbes, it’ll be right along. Mrs. Forbes is -keeping well, I hope? Let me see, it’s ten years since I was in her -Sunday-school class.” And Miss Minnie—it was usually Minnie who did -the shopping—would smile kindly at the chatty young man who certainly -did not mean any harm.</p> - -<p>The occupants of that house were people content to stay at home, who -did not always know what day of the month it was, and who found a -deep source of well-being in the realization that tomorrow would be -like today. I imagine those gentlewomen doing the same thing in the -same way year after year, wearing the same clothes made by the same -family dressmaker, and opposing to the disturbing menace of events the -quiet obstinacy of their contentment. I watch them at night go up the -stairs together at ten o’clock, kiss one another at the door of their -mother’s room and go down the dim corridor, Patty staying behind like -a sentinel under the gas-jet, her bony arm lifted, waiting to turn the -light still lower once they were safe behind their own closed doors. -Jane in her bed used to hear their voices saying, “Good-night, mother -dear, pleasant dreams. Good-night, Minnie. Good-night.” And if the man -of the house, Jane’s Uncle Bradford, were at his club playing whist, -Beth, from the rosy interior of her cretonne chamber would be sure to -call out—“I left the front door on the latch for Brad. I suppose it’s -all right.” And Patience would say—“Who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> would burgle this house?” And -Minnie would add—“I put his glass of milk in his room.” And then there -would be silence disturbed only by the sound of footsteps moving to and -fro behind closed doors. And Jane would wait drowsily for Aunt Patty to -come in and say “Good gracious, child, not asleep yet? It’s past ten -o’clock.”</p> - -<p>To the Forbes family the doings of the outer world were a pleasant -distant spectacle that interested and amused but made them feel all the -happier to be where they were. When a letter arrived from Izzy bearing -its Paris postmark, they would read it together, become pleasantly -animated over the news and then settle down with relief at the thought -that they didn’t have to go over there and do all those things. The -letter would then be added to a package bound with an elastic band and -put away in the secretary until some one came to call and asked how -Isabel was getting on.</p> - -<p>I seem to see them all, on these occasions, sitting there in their -habitual attitudes. I imagine the little grandmother, with the letter -open in her black silk lap, adjusting her spectacles on the slender -bridge of her arched nose, and Jane on a footstool beside her, waiting -to listen once more with absorbing interest to the extracts from her -mother’s letter that she already knew by heart, and the two or three -friends sitting round rather primly on the old mahogany chairs, and -Aunt Beth with her embroidery on the horsehair sofa, and Aunt Minnie -making the tea, and Aunt Patty teaching one of her birds to eat from -her lips at the window, and perhaps Uncle Bradford, who has come home -from his office, visible across the hall through the door in his -study with some weighty volume on his knees, and a good cigar between -his lips. I seem to hear the purring song of the tea kettle and the -pleasant sound of voices calling one another intimate names. I see -the faded carpet with its dimmed white pattern and the stiff green -brocaded curtains in their high gilt cornices, and the pleasant mixture -of heterogeneous objects selected for use and comfort. I have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> in my -nostrils the perfume of roses opening out in the warmth of the room, -and of the newly baked cakes made for tea by Aunt Minnie, and still -another finer perfume, the faint fresh fragrance of the spirit of that -little old lady who ruled the house in gentleness and was beloved in -the town. A humourous little old lady who was not afraid of death, and -believed in the clemency of a Divine Father. She liked Jane to read -aloud to her while she knitted,—Trollope, Charles Lamb, Robert Burns, -were her favourites, and she enjoyed a good tune on the piano, and -would beat time with her knitting needles when Beth played a waltz. But -on Sundays Beth played hymns and the servants came in after supper to -sing with the family “Rock of Ages,” “Jesus Lover of my Soul,” “Abide -with Me.” Jane liked those Sunday evenings. They made her feel so safe, -was the way she put it.</p> - -<p>All the inmates of the Grey House were God-fearing but Minnie was -the most religious. She had a talent for cooking and a craving for -emotional religious experience. The kitchen of the Grey House was a -very pleasant place with a window that gave onto the back verandah, and -often on summer mornings Aunt Beth who was young and pretty, would take -her sewing out onto this back porch while Aunt Minnie in the kitchen -was making cakes, and they would talk through the open window with -Jane curled up in the hammock beside Beth’s work-table. Beth, would -call out in her very high small voice that expressed her plaintive -dependence and blissful confidence in the protected life she so utterly -loved—“Minnie, Minnie!” and the sound of the egg-beater in the kitchen -would cease, and Aunt Minnie would call through the open window in her -lower, deeper tone—</p> - -<p>“Yes, what do you say?”</p> - -<p>“I forgot to tell you that Mrs. Blatchford asked me if I’d ask you to -make six cakes for the Woman’s Exchange Fourth of July Sale.”</p> - -<p>And Aunt Minnie would exclaim— </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Good gracious. Six angel cakes, that makes thirty-six eggs.” While -beating up the whites of eggs for her famous cakes Minnie would ponder -on the power of mind over matter, the healing of physical pain by -faith, and the ultimate purifying grace of the Divine Spirit. One day -she announced that she had joined the Christian Science Church. The -family took the news seriously. Jane’s grandmother turned very white. -She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes and whispered—“Oh, -Minnie dear, I’m so sorry.” Uncle Bradford brought his fist down on -a table with a crash and shouted—“Don’t you do it, Minnie. These -newfangled religions are no good.” Beth wept. Patience said “Hmph.”</p> - -<p>Jane didn’t like the new look on her Aunt Minnie’s face, but the -religious mystery behind it had a worrying fascination. She listened -to the talk of her elders hoping to learn about this new faith, but it -was characteristic of them not to argue or discuss things that affected -them deeply, so she learned little, and she was afraid to ask her Aunt -Patience who seemed somehow not at all patient with Minnie just now. So -she was reduced to talking it all over with Fan, her friend, who lived -next door. They would sit astride the fence that divided the two back -gardens and talk about God and their elders.</p> - -<p>“Aunt Minnie has got a new religion,” Jane announced. “Religions are -funny things. I don’t think I like them but they do do things to you.”</p> - -<p>“Pooh! I know. It’s not half so queer as Mormons and Theosophites and -Dowyites.”</p> - -<p>“What’s all that?”</p> - -<p>“The Mormons have lots of wives. They live in Salt Lake City and -practice bigamy. The Dowyites are in Chicago. There’s a big church -there full of crutches of all the lame people Dowy has cured by -miracle.”</p> - -<p>“Well, Aunt Minnie says there’s no such thing as being lame or sick, -and everything is a miracle.”</p> - -<p>“He-he! I’m not a miracle” </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Yes, you are.”</p> - -<p>“No, I’m not.”</p> - -<p>“Who made you?”</p> - -<p>“My mother.”</p> - -<p>“How?”</p> - -<p>“I dunno.”</p> - -<p>“Well, that’s a miracle.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Jane, you are a silly.”</p> - -<p>“I’m not silly. I know you’ve got to have a religion or you can’t be -good, but I don’t like it all the same.”</p> - -<p>“Who wants to be good?”</p> - -<p>“I do.”</p> - -<p>“Why?”</p> - -<p>“Because I’d be afraid to die.”</p> - -<p>Fan had a complete worldly wisdom that could cover most things, but she -was obliged to admit, though with her nose in the air, that she, too, -would be afraid to die if she went on being very bad up to the last -minute.</p> - -<p>Fan Hazeltine was an orphan. She lived with a stepfather who hated -her and sometimes didn’t speak to her for a week. She and Jane had -met on the back fence the day after Jane’s arrival in St. Mary’s -Plains. Jane was six years old then, Fan eight, but I imagine that Fan -was very much the same at that time, as when I met her twenty years -later. She was always a wisp of a thing no bigger than an elf with a -wizened face. Life gave her no leisure for expansion. She was one of -those people who never had a chance to blossom out, but could just -achieve the phenomenal business of continuing to exist by grit and -the determination not to be downed. What she was in her stepfather’s -inimical house that she remained in the larger inimical world, a -small under-nourished undaunted creature, consumed with a thirst for -happiness, hiding her hurts under an obstinate gaiety, a minute lonely -thing steering her bark cleverly through stormy waters, keeping afloat -somehow, sinking and struggling, her grim little heart hardening, her -laughter growing shriller and louder as the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> years went by. There is no -difficulty about understanding Fan. I can see her astride that fence, -screwing up her face while she told Jane what she was going to do in -the world, and I can see her set about doing it.</p> - -<p>“I’m going to have a good time. You wait. You just wait. I tell you I’m -going to have a good time—fun, fun, fun. That’s what I want.”</p> - -<p>But Jane did not say what she wanted from life.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span></p> - -<h2>IV</h2> - -<p>Patience Forbes was a woman of science, an ornithologist. When she -died years ago she was recognized in America as one of the foremost -authorities on birds. I remember her death. Jane got the news in Paris. -It was at the time of the final struggle over Geneviève’s marriage. She -showed me her Aunt Patience’s will. It read:—“To my beloved niece Jane -Carpenter now known by the name of the Marquise de Joigny, I leave the -Grey House and everything in it except my collections and manuscripts. -These I leave to the Museum of St. Mary’s Plains. But the house and all -the furniture I leave to Jane in case she may some day want some place -to go.”</p> - -<p>Jane looked at me with strange eyes that day.</p> - -<p>“Isn’t it queer,” she said. “How could she have known?”</p> - -<p>But I understand now that Patience Forbes was the only one who did -know. She must have been a shrewd woman. She must have followed Jane in -her mind all those years, with extraordinary accuracy considering the -little she had to go on. But she never betrayed her misgivings. There -is only that sentence in her will to indicate what she thought.</p> - -<p>She was an imposing woman, plain of face, careless of her appearance -and masculine in build. Her nose was crooked, her neck scrawny and her -hands large and bony. But she had an air of grandeur. When she tramped -through the woods or across the open country that surrounded St. Mary’s -Plains, her field glasses and her camera slung across her shoulder, she -had in spite of her quaint bonnet and long black clothes the look of a -grizzled amazon. She would walk twenty miles in a day and frequently -did so.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> Many of the farmers round about knew her. They called her “the -bird lady” and asked her in to their kitchens for a glass of milk and -a slice of apple-pie, and often while sitting there with her bonnet -strings untied and her dusty skirt turned up on her knees, she would -receive gifts from sun-burned urchins who, knowing the object of her -pilgrimages would bring to her in the battered straw crowns of their -hats, rare birds’ eggs that they had discovered in the high branches of -trees or the secret fastnesses of tangled thickets.</p> - -<p>She was the dominating personality in her own home. Her mother and -sisters were a little afraid of her. When her brother Bradford married -and she announced that she was going to hold classes in the parlour of -the Grey House and charge for them, they dared not object, although -they would have preferred going without the comforts that Bradford’s -shared income had provided rather than have a lot of strange people -invading the house.</p> - -<p>It was characteristic of the family that they never spoke to Jane of -money and never gave her any idea that she was or ever would be an -heiress. She made her own bed in the morning, and sometimes if she were -not in too much of a hurry to get off to school she helped Aunt Minnie -with the others. On Saturday mornings she darned her own stockings, -or tried to, sitting on a low chair beside her grandmother, but this -was by way of a lesson in keeping quiet. I am afraid she took it as a -matter of course that Aunt Beth and her grandmother should mend her -clothes for her.</p> - -<p>She gave a great deal of trouble. Not only was she always getting -into scrapes, but she was subject as well to storms of passion that -sometimes, as she realized later, seriously frightened her grandmother. -Her accidents—she had a great many little ones and one at least that -was serious—were episodes marked in her memory as rather pleasant -occasions that procured for her an extra amount of petting. There was a -high bookcase at the top of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> stairs in a dark corner of the upper -hall, full of old and faded volumes. Here she spent hours together on -Sunday afternoons, sitting on the top of a step-ladder that she dragged -out of the housemaids’ cupboard. One day, finding among those dusty -little books a copy of Dante’s “Vita Nuova,” she became so absorbed -in the lovely poem, though it was only a lame translation in English -verse, that she began chanting the lines to herself, unconsciously -swaying backwards and forwards on her perch, until all at once the -ladder gave way beneath her, and she fell to the floor, breaking her -arm. The days that followed were among the happiest of her life. She -was installed in her Uncle Bradford’s room that gave out onto the -sunny back garden where a pear tree was in bloom. There, propped up in -the middle of the great white bed, her arm in a sling and not hurting -too much to spoil her voluptuous sense of her own importance, she -seemed to herself a romantic figure, and received Fan with benevolent -superiority, while deeply and deliciously she drank in with every -feverish throb of her passionate little heart the tender devotion -of the patient women who loved her. Her Aunt Patty slept on a cot -beside her at night; her Aunt Minnie brought her meals to her on the -daintiest of trays; her grandmother and her Aunt Beth came with their -sewing to sit with her in the afternoon. Often when she felt herself -dropping into a doze after lunch, before finally closing her eyes to -give herself up to the sleep that was creeping over her so softly, she -would for the pleasure of it open them again to look through her heavy -eyelids at her grandmother’s head that she could see above the foot -of the great bed outlined against the sunny light of the window; and -she would see the little old lady lift a finger to her pursed lips and -nod mysteriously smiling at Beth and glance towards the bed as much as -to say—“The child is dropping off, we mustn’t make a sound.” And the -child, with such a sense of security and peace as to convey to her in -after years the memory of a heavenly instant, would let herself float -blissfully out into the still<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> waters of oblivion, knowing that she -would surely find them there when she awoke.</p> - -<p>She was given the book, “La Vita Nuova” for her own, and lay in bed -dreaming of a poet who would one day love her as Dante had loved his -Beatrice.</p> - -<p>It was about this time that Mrs. Carpenter began working out her -schemes with Philibert.</p> - -<p>Jane was according to her own testimony subject to fits of such violent -temper that she scarcely knew what she was doing. At such moments she -frightened every one round her and herself as well. One evening stands -out in her memory as peculiarly dreadful. The family were gathered in -the drawing room before supper waiting for her, when she burst in on -them, her face as white as a sheet, and flung herself on her Aunt Patty -with the words—“I’ve killed a boy. Come quick. He was torturing a -beast. He’s out in the garden lying quite still.” And shuddering from -head to foot she dragged her aunt out after her. The boy was not dead, -but lay as a matter-of-fact unconscious on the path near the back gate. -Jane had knocked him down and half throttled him. There had been three -boys shooting with sling shots at a lame cat to whose leg they had -tied a tin can so that the wretched beast could not get out of range. -Jane had seen them from the window and had rushed to the rescue. The -affair made something of a stir in the town. It got into the papers. -The boy had to be taken to a hospital. Jane’s Uncle Bradford needed all -his influence to avert a public scandal. Unfortunately it was not the -first case of Jane’s violence that had come to the knowledge of the -neighbours. People talked of her as “that savage girl of Izzy’s” and -told their children they were not to play with her any more. She was -taken out of school for a time.</p> - -<p>It is difficult to get at the exact meaning of this story. All that I -know is what Jane has told me herself, and she may have exaggerated -its social importance. At any rate, to her own mind it was an immense -and horrible disgrace.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> She felt herself a monstrosity, and for weeks -could not bear to go into the street. Her Aunt Patience too, had taken -a very serious view of the affair. She sent for Jane to come to her in -her study the next morning; the child was, I suppose, too nervous and -shaken that night to listen to anything in the way of reprimand, and -Aunt Patience showed her a riding whip on a peg in the corner against -the wall. It was a cowboy quirt, a braided leather thing with a long -lash.</p> - -<p>“Jane,” said her Aunt Patty, “that quirt belonged to your father. -He left it here once long ago. It is yours. I have put it there on -that peg for you. I am giving it to you for a special purpose. When -a dreadful act is committed against a human being, some one has to -suffer, to make things equal. Usually the one who does the evil deed -is punished, but I can’t, Jane, punish you like that.” And here Aunt -Patty’s stern voice quavered. “I can’t because I can’t bear to. You are -my child. I love you too much. I have lain awake all night thinking -about it. When God is angry he punishes people he loves. He has the -right. He is wise and perfect. But I am not in the place of God to you, -and I can’t do it. I am going to do something quite different. I am -going to do it because something has got to be done, some one has got -to suffer for what you have done. You are to take that whip down now -from that peg and give me three lashes with it across my shoulders. I -am going to take your punishment on me because I think that will make -you understand. Do as I say.”</p> - -<p>The child was terrified. In a kind of trance she took the leather -weapon in her shaking hands. Her aunt stood straight and still in the -middle of the room. “Do what I say, Jane,” she commanded again. Her -voice was awful. Jane advanced a step towards her as if hypnotized, -looked a long moment at the stern face, then suddenly collapsed in a -heap at those large plain feet in their worn flat slippers.</p> - -<p>“I can’t, Aunt Patty,” she whispered. “I can’t! It’s enough. It’s -enough.”</p> - -<p>After this Jane spent more and more time in her aunt’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> company. The -dreadful experience drew them even closer together. Jane would almost -always accompany her aunt on her long tramps into the country, and -although as Patience so often said she never took any real interest -in the science of birds, she nevertheless became an adept at climbing -trees and going through thickets, and learned to imitate the songs of -birds in an astonishing way. This accomplishment indeed, she never -lost; even when she had long since forgotten all she learned about -Baltimore Orioles and Brown Thrushes and Scarlet Tanagers and the -migrations of birds in the spring time, and their marvellous intricate -manner of fabricating their nests, she could throw back her head and -fill the room wherever she might be with the most bewildering joyous -riot of warblings and twitterings and liquid trills. She became so -expert at this that sometimes she would play pranks on her aunt, and -climbing into the tree outside the study window, she would imitate -the song of some little feathered creature so perfectly that her Aunt -Patty would leave her work and tip-toe softly to the window only to be -greeted with a squeal of triumphant laughter.</p> - -<p>The classes in bird lore that were held in the parlour were for Jane -little more than a chance of giggling with Fan in a corner. The -lectures indoors went on during the winter, but in the spring and -early summer Miss Forbes took her followers by train to a village on -the edge of the forest, and there, in the leafy fastnesses of those -sunny enclosed spaces would give her pupils demonstrated lectures. -Jane has told me that when following the sound of a bird’s note heard -overhead at a distance, her aunt’s face would become transfigured; a -little mystic smile would come over her plain features; she would sign -to her throng to make not the slightest noise, and silently her head -bent sideways and upwards, she would lead the way, stopping now and -then, her finger on her lips, to listen for the clear note that guided -her, until at last she would catch sight of her beauty, high up on a -swaying leafy bough, and all her being would strain upward towards that -tiny creature, and her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> face would light up with even a brighter joy, -and she would point a gaunt finger mutely at the object of her worship -as if calling attention to some lovely little celestial being. Then -if some one, as was always the case, made a sound and the bird flew -away, a shadow would fall on her face, her pose would relax and she -would turn to the heavy human beings about her, a dull disappointed -glance, looking at them all for a moment in deep reproach before she -recollected what she was there for, and began to tell them of the -habits and customs of the songster who had just disappeared over the -treetops.</p> - -<p>On one occasion Fan went so far as to say these rambles were -ridiculous, and Jane flared up at once.</p> - -<p>“My Aunt Patty ridiculous?” she cried out. “How dare you? She’s the -greatest ornithologist in the world, and I love her, I love her more -than all the outside world together and everything in it.”</p> - -<p>When Jane was fifteen her grandmother died, and a year later her Aunt -Beth was married, and Jane, who was sixteen, had a white organdie -bridesmaid’s dress and carried a bouquet of pink roses, and after that -Aunt Minnie went away to be a Christian Science healer in New York, and -Jane was left alone in the Grey House with her Aunt Patty.</p> - -<p>Her grandmother’s death left her with no impression of horror. The -little old lady had gone to sleep one day quietly in her accustomed -place by the window and had not wakened again, that was all. Aunt -Patty at the funeral in a long black veil, looked like some grand and -austere monument of grief, reminding her vaguely of a statue she had -seen somewhere of emblematic and national importance, but she made no -fuss over her sorrow, and told the child that night of her own mother’s -imminent arrival from Paris.</p> - -<p>This was a piece of news sufficiently wonderful to offset completely -the effect of death in the house. Jane said to herself, “She is coming -to take me away to be with her at last.” And she went up and hid in her -room so that her Aunt Patty should not see how excited she was. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span></p> - -<p>But Jane was mistaken. Such was not Mrs. Carpenter’s intention. She -had come to America on receiving her sister’s telegram partly out -of deference to her mother’s memory, partly to consult her lawyers, -and partly for the purpose of putting Jane in a fashionable American -boarding school. The sadness in Jane’s memory long connected with -those days has little to do with her grandmother’s funeral, but is the -lasting indelible impression of the discovery she made then, that her -mother did not like her.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Carpenter came out with her ideas for her daughter abruptly on -the evening of her arrival. She had no idea that her daughter adored -her. Jane’s letters beginning “My darling Mummy” and ending “Your -loving daughter” had conveyed to her nothing of the writer’s emotion. -No doubt they bored her, and no doubt she supposed that they bored the -child who was obliged to write them. It would probably have seemed to -her incredible that a little girl who scarcely ever saw her should go -on wanting her for ten years from a distance of a couple of thousand -miles. If she justified herself to herself at all, I suppose she made -use of this argument: “Well, if I don’t care for her because she is -so dreadfully her father’s daughter, then that proves that I am too -different for her ever to care for me. The best thing for us both is -to leave her with people who won’t let her get on their nerves as she -would on mine.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Carpenter was not subtle, and she hated wasting time, so she -opened the subject at once sitting with Patience in the back parlour, -her slim silk-stockinged legs crossed easily, one smart foot dangling, -her modish head tilted back above the trim cravat of black crêpe and -white tulle that her French maid had fabricated for her during the -crossing, and a jewelled hand playing with Jane’s long pigtail. Her -sister Patience sat opposite her at her table, her head in her hands, -her bony fingers poked up among her meagre locks, and Jane took in that -evening with a kind of anguish of loyalty the contrast between the -two women. It seemed to her somehow very pitiful that her Aunt Patty<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> -should be so ugly when her mother was so beautiful. With a childish -absence of any vestige of a sense of humour, she felt at one moment -ashamed for her aunt and almost angry with her mother, and then ashamed -for her mother and angry with her aunt.</p> - -<p>“I wanted to tell you, Patty, that I think it would be a good thing now -for this big gawk of a girl to go to a finishing school in New York. -You’ll probably be giving up this house soon, and I don’t want her with -me yet awhile.”</p> - -<p>Jane in talking to me of this moment said that she felt as if her -mother’s hand that was playing affectionately with her hair an instant -before had suddenly picked up a hammer and hit her on the head. For an -interval everything was blurred and dark in the room, with sparks that -seemed to be shooting out of her brain. It was her Aunt Patty’s face -that brought her back to her senses. It was a suffering, angry face, -and presently she heard Patience say—“I am not going to give up this -house, but I think you ought to take Jane to live with you. She wants -to go, and she’s right. You are her mother.”</p> - -<p>But Izzy paid no attention to her older sister.</p> - -<p>“That’s nonsense! Paris is no place for a girl of her age. What in the -world should I do with her? She’d be dreadfully in the way. Besides -she must learn how to walk and manage her hands before I show her to -people.”</p> - -<p>The thing was done. Jane knew. She knew that her mother did not like -her and never had liked her, and she knew somehow that her mother did -not like her because she was ugly and reminded her of her father Silas -Carpenter. She knew too that her Aunt Patty had always known this, -and that her aunt loved her as her mother never would love her, and -that the mottled flush on her grim face was due in part to anger and -in part to the fear of losing her. She understood that her aunt had -determined to help her to attain her heart’s desire, even at the price -of losing herself the one thing more precious to her than anything in -the world. She dared not look at her mother and she could not speak,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> -and still she waited though incapable now of taking in the meaning of -their voices. She heard vaguely her aunt saying something about making -enough money by her lectures and publications to keep the house going, -but paid no attention. A question addressed directly to herself by her -mother at last roused her.</p> - -<p>“Well, Jane, what do you say? Would you rather stay here alone with -your Aunt Patty than go to boarding school with a lot of jolly girls of -your own age?”</p> - -<p>She did not hesitate then for an answer.</p> - -<p>“Oh yes, if you can’t have me let me stay here,” and turning she cried, -“Keep me, Aunt Patty, keep me,” and flung herself into those long -trembling arms.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Carpenter seems to have been mildly amused by this display of -affection. With her face buried in the black woollen stuff of her -aunt’s blouse, Jane heard her say—</p> - -<p>“Well then, I leave it to you two. You can carry on as you like for the -next two or three years. When you are eighteen, Jane, you will make -your début in Paris society. You’ll want to bring Patty with you, I -suppose, when the time comes.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Carpenter left three days later. The subject of Jane’s future was -not broached again in her presence, but she heard the two women talking -about professors of French and Italian and dancing classes, and the -advantages of a saddle-horse and a pony cart. Her mother’s last words -to her were—</p> - -<p>“Now make the most of your time and don’t run about all over the -country in the sun. Your complexion is the best thing about you.” And -yet she didn’t hate her mother. Her idea of her mother had not even -undergone for her any fundamental change. It was all the other way -round. It was her opinion of herself that had suffered. With the dogged -loyalty that seemed at times positively a sign of stupidity and was -to influence every important decision of her life, she defended her -mother to her own heart. If her mother did not like her it was because -she was not likeable,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> because her father had been a dreadful man and -had handed down to her some secret dangerous element of his own nature -that made her antagonistic and unpleasant to brilliant happy people. -Her Aunt Patty loved her because she was sorry for her. Her Aunt Patty -was different from her mother. She, too, was ugly and a little queer; -that was the bond between them. Poor Patience Forbes! Jane was to do -her justice later, but for the moment she almost hated the sympathy -between them, while her mother’s image like some magic adamant statue -possessing a supernatural inviolability remained for her persistently -and brilliantly the same. And when she was gone the question Jane put -her aunt represented the result of hours of heart-broken weeping in -which no whisper of a reproach had mingled.</p> - -<p>“Aunt Patty,” she said, “how can I make my mother love me?” and her -Aunt Patty had replied rather grimly—</p> - -<p>“By trying to be what she wants you to be, I suppose.”</p> - -<p>It was after this that Jane began sleeping at night with a strip of -adhesive plaster across her mouth from her chin to her upper lip. Her -aunt must have known but she did not interfere. I can imagine her -standing over her niece’s bed when she came up from her protracted -studies in the library, with a lamp in her hand, a tall grizzled -figure in long ungainly black clothes, looking down at that sleeping -face with the court-plaster pasted across the mouth, and I can see her -weather-beaten face twist and tears well up in those shrewd intelligent -eyes, and I seem to hear her utter—“Poor Jane, my poor lamb. If you -could only take some interest in science. I don’t know what is to -become of you.”</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span></p> - -<h2>V</h2> - -<p>I begin to feel uncertain in telling this story. I am not at all sure -that I have a just feeling for that American life of Jane’s. I have put -down the facts as she told them to me and have described the people -there as they came into being for me, from her talk, but how am I to -know that they were really like that? Perhaps had I seen them with my -own eyes I should have found them quite different: narrow, dull people -with shrill twanging voices and queer American mannerisms. It may be -that they would have bored me as they bored Mrs. Carpenter. St. Mary’s -Plains I have seen for myself, but what did I see? A railway station, -a few streets, a deep wide muddy river flowing by full of ships and -barges. The town expressed nothing to me. It remained enigmatic. Of -the hidden life going on in all those houses I knew nothing. I did not -even understand what I saw. There were billboards all about the railway -station advertising American products. Enormous nigger babies three -times life-size stared from wooden fences. The Gold Dust Twins? Why -gold dust, why twins, why nigger babies? How should I know? There were -other garish things: I seem to remember flags and red, white and blue -streamers festooning telegraph poles, in celebration I suppose of some -national holiday. It was all too foreign. I could not translate it to -myself. It made me feel very tired, and now this effort to recreate the -atmosphere makes me weary. It is such a strain for the imagination. I -know that my picture is incomplete and therefore false. I have touched -on the gentleness and good breeding of Jane’s people, on the quiet of -their God-fearing lives, but that word God-fearing: it is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> strange; -it suggests something stern and uncompromising that is very different -from anything we know in Paris. It suggests a great seriousness, a -bare nakedness before the mystery of the unknown, a challenge of fate -and an exaltation, of virtue. It affects me like a bleak wind. I turn -away from it with relief. I look out of my window with a sigh. There -is the good Abbé coming out of the convent gate. He has been hearing -confessions; he has been taking away the sins from burdened hearts and -tying them up into neat little bundles to be dropped into the Seine. -God bless him, and thank God for our wise old priesthood and our -wonderful beautiful old compromises, and thank God again for the jaunty -swing of that black cassock. Ugh! I feel better. The little street is -dim this morning. It has been raining. Dear, weary little old street—</p> - -<p>There is no room here for American Puritanism. Paris is too old, -too wise to harbour such things. Was it that that haunted Jane? Did -she always see herself measured up to a fixed fine standard like a -flagpole, the flagpole of American idealism, with a banner floating -over her head, casting a shadow, purity, honesty, fear of God, -written on it in shining letters? Payment, atonement, the wages of -sin is death—old Mrs. Forbes reading out the words, believing but -not worrying, but Jane making them terribly personal, questioning, -puzzling, burying them in her mind. Heaven and hell; realities! -Our actions leading us toward one or the other. Patience Forbes -saying one had to suffer for a bad deed. The mystery about Jane’s -father—something curious about his death. He was an unhappy man, his -silence, she remembered it, she remembered him. She knew she was like -him in some inexplicable way that frightened her. A world of stern -simple values, all smoothed over for her by the gentleness and kindness -of those people, the Forbes. Of course they were gentle and kind. They -loved her. It was all right as long as she had them, but it was a -curious preparation for life with Izzy in Paris. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span></p> - -<p>Izzy sent for Philibert on her return from America. She must have -talked to him about Jane. They must have had a curious conversation. -I am certain that it was then that they elaborated their plan. The -scheme was one of grand proportions. They became partners in a great -enterprise. Mrs. Carpenter was to supply her daughter, who had enough -money to realize even Philibert’s dreams, and he was to supply the -required knowledge, as well as the <i>billet d’entrée</i> into the social -arena of Europe. These two suited each other perfectly. They knew what -they wanted and each saw in the other the means of getting it. Broadly -speaking they wanted the same thing, and if Philibert’s conception of -their common destiny was utterly beyond her that was just what made her -faith in him perfect. Audacious in her way, his audacity far outdid -hers: whatever her idea his was always much grander; he made her feel -beautifully humble by brushing away some of her most cherished hopes as -unworthy of their attention.</p> - -<p>“A palace in Venice?” I seem to hear him say, perched on one of her -little straight gilt chairs, nursing his foot that was tucked under his -knee. “But every one has palaces in Venice. Why not a Venetian palace -in Paris, the Doge’s Palace itself, reproduced stone for stone, if that -takes your fancy?”</p> - -<p>And she would catch her breath with the beauty of the idea. Not that -Philibert ever intended to do anything so silly as spoil a site in -Paris by such a freak of humour. He was a <i>farceur</i> if you like, but -he had too much taste for that. He intended having his palace, and it -was to be of such supreme beauty as to draw pilgrims from all over -the world, but it was to be in harmony with its surroundings. The -allusion to the House of the Doges was just his little happy joke. -He was very cheerful in those days. People used to say—“Fifi does -have luck. Look at him. Who is it now that adores him? Was ever a man -so blatantly successful in his love affairs?” I must say he did have -the look of being happily in love. His smooth cheeks were pink<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>, his -eyes, usually as expressionless as bits of blue enamel, were suffused -with light, and the soft flaxen fuzz that grew round the bald spot -on his head like the down on a little yellow gosling, seemed to -send off electricity. Never in all his immaculate dandyism had he -been so immaculate, his linen was superlative and the shine on his -little pointed boots was visible halfway down the street. There was a -giddy swing to his hurrying coat-tails, and he carried his shoulders -superbly. Almost, but not quite, he achieved the look of being taller. -And his contempt for the rest of us was of course greater than ever. -Born with a gnawing consciousness of his own genius, he had for years -been as exasperated as a Michael Angelo or a Paul Veronese forced by -lack of space and a sufficiency of paints to spend his time doing -little water-colour sketches: but he now saw himself on the way to -realizing his inspirations in all their splendid amplitude, and of -displaying before the eyes of men the finished gigantic masterpiece -of his art. For Philibert was an artist: even Ludovic and Felix and -Clémentine recognized that. He was an artist in life on a grand scale. -He dealt with men and women and clothes and string orchestras and food -and polished floors and marble staircases as a painter deals with the -colours on his palette, or perhaps more exactly as the theatrical -producer deals with stage properties. His stage was the world itself; -he produced his plays and his pageants and his <i>tableaux vivants</i> in -the midst of the activities of society, and his actors, reversing the -method of our modern stage where the players come down across the -footlights to mingle with the audience, were selected by him from the -general public without their knowing it, and found themselves playing -a part in a scene he had created round them and for them as if by -magic. Audacious? Ah, but who could be more so? Who but Fifi would -have had the impertinence to take a real live king and make him, all -unconscious, play the principal part in a pantomime before a handful of -spectators? Mrs. Carpenter had dreamed of entertaining kings. Philibert -entertained them, but he did<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> something much more extraordinary; he put -them into his play and made them entertain him.</p> - -<p>Who in Paris will ever forget the night he threw open his door for the -Czar of all the Russias? Who does not remember how he stage-managed -the crowd outside, how troops of singers from the Opera mingled with -the mob far down the street and sang hymns of acclamation as the royal -guest approached his fairy palace, so illumined as to shine like a -single rosy jewel? And the golden carpet thrown down on the marble -stairs, and Jane standing alone at the top of that fantastic staircase, -like an emerald column, her train arranged by Philibert’s own clever -hands sweeping down the steps beneath her to add supernaturally to her -height, her strange face under its diadem of jewels looking as small -in the distance as the carved image cut out of a coin. Do people not -talk even now of that night, and allude to Philibert as the last of the -benevolent despots? “He was unique,” you can still hear them say it, -“there will never be any one like him. No one can amuse the world as he -did.” And no one ever will. The War has changed all that. François I. -was his father; the Medici were his forerunners; he was the last of his -kind.</p> - -<p>But he refined on this sensational achievement. He went farther. Only -a few realized quite how far he did go. In his most brilliant days, -I was on the point of saying during the most brilliant period of his -reign, he played plays at which he himself was the sole spectator. -I remember the occasion when a certain popular Prince, heir at that -time to one of the most solid thrones in Europe, expressed a desire to -come and shoot at the Château de Ste. Clothilde. Mrs. Carpenter had -been all of a tremble with pleasure. It was the first royal visitor -to sleep under his roof. Philibert had restored our old place in the -country, and had in five years managed by a miracle to have there the -best partridge shooting in France. “You will have a large party for His -Royal Highness, I suppose?” Mrs. Carpenter had ventured timidly. How -humble and self-effacing she had grown by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> that time, poor thing. “Not -at all,” replied Philibert. “There will be no women and not more than -six guns.” And he added then with a sublime simplicity unequalled, I -believe, by any monarch or any court jester in history, “When royalty -comes to Ste. Clothilde for the shooting, there is another place laid -at table, that is all.”</p> - -<p>Poor Izzy, she was completely at a loss. No longer could she attempt -to follow him. It was Jane who understood. She looked at him curiously -through her gleaming half-closed eyes; I remember the look, while she -breathed in a whisper—“Take care, you will have nothing left to live -for.” I remember the tone of that remark.</p> - -<p>But I am anticipating too much. I meant to speak here merely of his -matrimonial expectations. These hopes gave his person an added lustre -and his fine family nose an accentuated sneer. Nevertheless he kept -them secret: no one knew that Mrs. Carpenter even had a daughter. She -never mentioned her to any of us. On the other hand she never mentioned -Philibert in her letters to Jane. It was part of the scheme. They had -worked it out completely between them to its smallest details. Jane -would be dangerously independent. She would be in no way answerable to -her mother for all that immense lot of money. It was best then that she -should suspect nothing. She would arrive, the Marquis de Joigny would -be presented to her and would fall in love with her at first sight. -Her mother would leave her free to choose for herself. Philibert made -himself responsible for the rest.</p> - -<p>And, in the meantime, while these two master minds were at work, Jane -still waited in the Grey House for her mother to come and fetch her, -waited as the appointed time drew near with little of the old exultant -expectancy, but instead with nervous misgiving. She was afraid of not -pleasing her mother, she was in an agony at the thought of leaving her -Aunt Patience.</p> - -<p>And I find myself now, as I sit here, painfully counting with suspended -breath the last days of Jane’s girlhood in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> St. Mary’s Plains. I see -them silently slipping by over her unconscious head as she sat in the -back garden among her Aunt Patty’s hollyhocks, or walked with her -French governess along the homely streets, swinging her school books -by a strap, humming a tune under her breath, her neat modest clothes -swinging to the rhythm of her beautiful young body, her strange little -ugly ardent face lifted to the sweet air in frank animal enjoyment. -Patience Forbes stands on the front stoop between the two wooden -pillars waiting for her to come running up the path, waiting for the -generous clasp of those strong young arms, waiting to feel once more -the contact of all that pure vital youthfulness, and I hear as they sit -down to supper opposite each other, with the tall candles lighted on -the old mahogany table and the hot muffins steaming under the folded -white napkin, the sound of the grandfather clock in the hall, ticking -out the last precious fleeting moments of their time together.</p> - -<p>This is very painful, I will not linger over it. I bring myself back, -I falter, what then am I to think of? Where turn my attention? So much -is ugly. Ah, but Jane, why go any further? Is it not enough? Is it not -clear to you as it is to me? Is there any need to say more? Was it -not all just as I say? Now that you are back there at last alone, now -that we have lost you for ever, now that you have gone, irresistibly -drawn out of your splendour to the little shabby place you loved, what -is there to torment you? Philibert, Bianca? What have they to do with -you now? They hated you. How can you be beholden to people who did you -nothing but harm? But Jane, there were some of us who adored you, and -if you had told us everything, as you at last told me, we would have -loved you only the more.</p> - -<p class="center">* * * * * * - * * *</p> - -<p>I sometimes wonder whether Mrs. Carpenter ever suspected what a narrow -shave she had towards the end, and how all her plans very nearly came -to nothing at the moment of their fruition because of Bianca. It is -probable that she had little more idea of the danger than a vague -uneasy <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>suspicion that Philibert for a time was distraught by some -influence whose source she ignored. She had met Bianca but did not -connect her with Philibert; knowing almost nothing in those days of -what she would have called Philibert’s family life. There was no one to -tell her that Philibert had once wanted to marry Bianca and that old -François had refused him as a suitor for his daughter’s hand because -of his lack of fortune. Izzy knew nothing about the strange intimacy -of these two. How should she? Philibert was not likely to tell her and -certainly none of the rest of us were in the habit of discussing with -her the private affairs of our families. My mother knew of course; she -doted on Bianca, and Claire, and all the family. They had all desired -the match. Bianca was a pearl that they collectively coveted, and when -things went wrong they had all been annoyed with the old rake her -father. Aunt Clothilde had gone so far as to rap him over the knuckles -with her fan one day when he took her out to dinner, and to say in -her best rude manner—“You’ve done a pretty thing, spoiling the lives -of those two children. And what’s Bianca got from her mother? Five -hundred thousand francs a year. Just so, and you will leave her the -same when you die, which will be before long at the pace you are going. -And Philibert has nothing but his debts, but then, who knows, I might -have given him something. I’m not so in love with him as some, but -still he’s my nephew, and the two of them were made for each other. Now -you’ll see, they’ll both turn out badly.” But François only laughed as -if he were enjoying a wicked joke that he was not going to share with -her. He was always like that, chuckling to himself in a sly sort of way -that made you creep and roused the curiosity of women. Sometimes he -would stare at me with his pale, red-rimmed, half-closed eyes and that -smile on his face as if my deformity was very amusing. I hated him. I -could have told them what kind of a father he was to Bianca.</p> - -<p>In any case she was married a year later to her well-to-do nonentity, -and we all went to the wedding, and Aunt Clo,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> being a near relative, -walked in the <i>cortège</i> with François and made faces behind her prayer -book. But Philibert was white as a sheet and kicked a wretched dog out -of the way as he came down the church steps with such violence that he -broke its paw. Bianca was, I remember, as lovely and serene as a lily. -She didn’t speak to Philibert at all the day she was married. She just -kept him standing there near her, not too near, during the reception, -as if he belonged to her, as if he were a flunkey of some sort, and -never once so much as looked at him. But she spoke to me. She asked -me why I had not proposed for her hand. “I might have accepted you, -you know” she said in that small reedy penetratingly sweet voice of -hers—“just to spite them all,”—and there wasn’t a trace of a smile on -her clear curving lips. Devil—she meant it for Philibert, of course, -and of course he heard.</p> - -<p>My mother used to say that Bianca reminded her of a very young Sir -Galahad. Claire suggested half-mockingly St. Sebastian. I thought she -was like a fox, quick and cruel with a poisonous bite. As a matter -of fact, in those days she looked a harmless little thing. Her small -snow-white square face was sweetly modelled and framed as it was by a -cap of short black hair that was cut <i>à la Jeanne d’Arc</i>, it had the -look of a mediaeval Italian angel. Only her enormous eyes very blue and -deep and her voice gave her away. If one watched closely one caught -glimpses in those eyes of the invisible monster locked up in that light -smooth body; if one listened to her voice one heard it. She seemed to -know this, and much of the time she kept her eyes lowered. Cool and -aloof and monosyllabic she hid herself, her real self, calculating her -power and economical of it, deceptive, waiting till it should be worth -her while to disengage the magic that lurked in the smooth complexity -of her little person. Her voice was not a pure single note, but a -double reedy sound that had a penetrating harmony. One remembered it -with a haunting exasperation. It was rather high in pitch, and the -words it carried did not punctuate the sound of it, but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> seemed to be -strung like beads on a sustained vibrating chord as if on some double -coppery wire. Each word was distinct and beautifully enunciated by -her lips without interfering with the sound that flowed through them. -There was nothing guttural or emotional about Bianca’s voice, but it -was disturbing; it irritated and seemed to correspond to some secret -nerve-centre of pleasure in the listener’s brain.</p> - -<p>I have watched her sometimes using her voice for special purposes of -her own, but for the most part in company she tried to subdue it, and -would often stop herself in the middle of one of her rapid speeches -with a little annoyed laugh. She would then look down and move away, -but even her floating stiffly off like a rigid little broomstick with a -pair of wings or wheels on the end of it had a strange charm.</p> - -<p>Her gestures were very restrained. She had a way of holding attention -so closely when apparently doing nothing, that when she did make the -slightest movement it conveyed exactly what she intended it to convey.</p> - -<p>Philibert was a connoisseur fit to appreciate her, and she knew it. -They had in their precocious youth recognized each in the other a -rare complementary quality, but even in the days when Bianca with -abbreviated skirts had let me make love to her, the affinity between -Philibert and herself had made her hate him. It was a curious -attraction I thought that made them constantly want to hurt each -other. I knew well enough that Bianca was only sweet to me in order to -make Philibert angry. Sometimes in the garden of our house, where we -played while François paid his respects of my mother, she would kiss -me, looking sideways at Philibert all the time, and he would pirouette -on one toe and pretend not to care, and would yell with laughter at -me and call out—“Don’t think she loves you. You’re crooked. You will -never be any better. You can’t do this. Look at me. She loves me.” And -Bianca would turn away from us and look at him as he told her to, and -say to him—“I don’t like you at all,” and then stalk away into the -drawing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> room where she would wheedle from her father a succession of -lumps of sugar soaked in cognac, and if we followed we would find her -rubbing her smooth little cheek up and down against François’ whiskers -and making little gurgling noises of pleasure. François was certainly -a queer kind of father. Philibert and I could have told tales about -that.—If it had only been lumps of sugar dipped in brandy—. We took -note with a kind of shocked envy. Once she took us down to the pantry -and showed us a bottle of “Triple Sec.” “That’s the nicest,” she said, -“it’s like honey fire.”</p> - -<p>When she was ten he turned her loose in his library, or at any rate -finding her there with some dreadful book in her lap, only laughed. -Every one knows what that library contained. Rare editions, old -bindings, a priceless collection; bibliophiles came from far to finger -those volumes. François was a discriminating collector. But for -Bianca—no one discriminated for her. One can see her like a little -greedy white lamb browsing in the poisonous herbage of that field of -knowledge. She began with the memoirs of Casanova. She had picked it -out because it was by an Italian. She was always dreaming about Italy, -her mother’s country. Her mother had died while she was a baby, but -Bianca seemed to remember her. She often spoke about her, and every -Friday went with her governess to light a candle in St. Sulpice for -the repose of her spirit. As for her literary discoveries, Philibert -alone was aware of what she was up to, and even he didn’t know much -about it. Occasionally she would drop a hint, or lend a book. She would -never have admitted even to him that she read all the books she did -read. She understood Philibert perfectly. As she grew older she allowed -him to suspect that she was wise, but not too wise. She was willing to -be for him an object of mystification, but never of vulgar curiosity. -Gradually she grew conscious of a purpose in regard to Philibert, and -I believe that this purpose had something to do with her refusing to -marry him. For, after all, she could have brought her father round had -she tried to. No, it was not her idea to marry<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> the man she liked. Her -idea was far more amusing than that.</p> - -<p>What happened just before Jane’s arrival in Paris was simple enough. -Bianca had been married two years. She had been to Italy and had come -back to find Philibert thick as thieves with a great grey-headed -American, and she had asked herself what this meant. It didn’t take her -long to find out. She had a way of knowing what he was up to. Probably -he told her outright, and she was not pleased. For the moment she -did not like the idea of Philibert’s marrying any one, least of all -a colossal American fortune. She was far too clever to make a scene. -She had other means of getting her own way, and now out of caprice she -exerted them. I imagine her opening her monstrous eyes just a little -wider than usual and allowing Philibert to look into them. I can see -her move ever so slightly with a small jerk of the hips and upward -undulation of her slim body, and I watch her lean forward to allow the -faint suggestion of that magic essence of hers to disengage itself from -her person, through her lifted eyelids, through her sweet parted lips, -through the tips of her long delicate fingers, and I see Philibert -falter in his talk about the American girl, and silently watch her, and -get to his feet like a man in a dream and come close but not too close. -For a fortnight she kept him like that, in a trance; everywhere he -followed her.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Carpenter lost him. It was during the month of May. Bianca went -about a good deal that Spring and was very much admired. It was at a -big afternoon affair that I saw her, standing with Philibert looking -out at the crowded gardens. She was very young still; she was nothing -more than a very thin slip of a thing with pretty little sticks of -legs and a pair of long delicate arms hanging close to her sides, the -fingers pressed against the folds of her slinky muslin frock. She -stood very still and rather stiff, her heels together and her lovely -head just tilted very slightly away from Philibert as if she had -drawn it back quickly and gently at the sound of a disturbing murmur, -or as if perhaps<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> she were enticing that murmur, as yet unuttered, -from his lips. I watched them. They did not look at each other. Their -eyes traced parallel lines of vision before them over the heads of -the crowd. Nothing betrayed their deep communion save this common -stillness. I did not hear them speak or see their lips move, but I know -that Philibert was speaking; I learnt afterwards what it was he was -saying.</p> - -<p>He was asking her to bolt with him.</p> - -<p>It was the moment of supreme danger for Izzy Carpenter. The marvellous -edifice she had so carefully fashioned with Philibert hung suspended -by a thread. Like some great gorgeous glittering chandelier with a -thousand candles hoisted into the air by Bianca’s little finger, it -hung there swaying in space, held up to the ceiling of heaven by the -thread of her hesitation. Philibert, his hands behind him holding his -top hat and gloves against the neat back of his morning coat, watched -it. Through closed teeth he had spoken without looking at his companion -and now he waited in silence. If she assented the whole thing would be -dashed to the ground in a million pieces. He took in all that it meant -for him. Like one of those drunkards whose faculties are most keen -when they are under the influence of liquor, he saw with excruciating -clearness, through the superlative excitation of Bianca’s fascination -that was working upon him, the beauty and magnitude of the thing he was -sacrificing. And yet if she had said it, the word he awaited, he would -have turned away from all that débris with a sneer, so perfectly had -Bianca made him feel that she was worth it, worth anything, worth more -than even he, with his formidable imagination could conceive of.</p> - -<p>She didn’t say it. She didn’t say anything. She merely lowered her -head after an instant’s utter stillness and floated away from him. I -wonder if there was the slightest of smiles on her lovely averted lips. -Perhaps not. Her smile was deep down in the well of her abysmal being. -She had had an inspiration. She had thought of something much more -amusing than what he proposed. She would reveal it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> to him later; there -was plenty of time. Or perhaps she would never reveal it to him at all, -but just make him do as she wished without letting him know that she -had thought of it long before. In any case she would leave him alone -now.</p> - -<p>And so Mrs. Carpenter was saved and went to America to fetch Jane.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span></p> - -<h2>VI</h2> - -<p>Philibert had given himself a month in which to win Jane’s hand, and it -took him five. I don’t know why I find any comfort in this fact, but -I do. I am glad she kept him waiting. I am glad the two conspirators -were uncomfortable, even for so short a time, and there is no doubt -that they were uncomfortable. Jane paid no attention to her mother’s -funny little friend, who wore corsets and high heels and used scent. -She sized him up in a long grave glance that covered him from tip to -toe and then seemed to forget about him. The truth was that she was -absorbed in her mother. To her great delight she had found in that -quarter an unexpected cordiality. It almost seemed as if her mother had -decided to like her. She had never been half so nice.</p> - -<p>And she fell in love with Paris.</p> - -<p>Wonderful enchantress city, queen woman of cities! It had assumed -to greet her its most charming and gentle aspect. She arrived one -evening in June. She held her breath as she drove across the Place de -la Concorde, where the light was silver and blue, and up the Champs -Elysées towards the Arc de Triomphe that stood out against the sunset -glow like a great and lovely gate into Heaven. She thought, so she told -me afterwards, of the magic city under the sea in the poem by Edgar -Allen Poe. The following morning she was up with the milkman and had -slipped out of the house alone before any one was awake, and had walked -from the Avenue du Bois down to the Tuileries Gardens and back again -as the newsvenders were taking down the shutters of their kiosks. They -smiled at her and nodded. A little morning breeze laughed in the trees. -A woman<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> came by wheeling a cart full of flowers. She filled her arms -and arrived at her mother’s doorway breathless with pleasure. Mrs. -Carpenter had the sense not to scold her, but she was obliged during -the days that followed to engage a special duenna who could walk far -enough and fast enough to keep up with her daughter. It appeared that -Jane had read a good deal of French history. She visited churches, -monuments and museums and made excursions to Versailles, la Malmaison, -Fontainebleau. The Rue de la Paix amused her, she liked the clothes -her mother bought her; but after a long morning at the dressmaker’s, -standing to let little kneeling women drape silks on her young body, -she would gulp down her lunch and start out again to explore, on foot, -refusing to take the motor.</p> - -<p>One day she turned into this little street. I saw her. I thought at -first that she was a Russian, some young Cossack princess perhaps. Her -dog, a Great Dane, walked beside her, his head close to her splendidly -moving limbs. I had never seen any one walk like that. She came on, her -head up, her arms down along her sides, and the wind, or was it the -force of her own swift movement, made her garments flow back from her. -It was the <i>Victoire de Samothrace</i> walking through the sunlit streets -of Paris. I watched her approach with a strange excitement. Behind -her trotted her valiant duenna, a hurrying little woman in black. -And as the radiant white figure came nearer I saw that she was very -young, scarcely more than a great glorious child, and her strange ugly -face under her close white hat shaped like a helmet seemed to me, all -glowing though it was with health, to be half asleep. When she was gone -I turned back to my rooms and sat with my head in my hands thinking of -how curious it was, the regal carriage of that fine free controlled -body, and that face that did not know itself. I felt oppressed and -exhilarated and somehow full of pity. It was dangerous to be like that, -so young, so brave, so unknowing. Yes, an ugly face, but her walk was -the most beautiful I had ever seen. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span></p> - -<p>Through July Philibert made no progress with his suit. It was a -puzzling problem for him and for Izzy. Mrs. Carpenter found herself the -all too successful rival of the man she had selected for her daughter. -Jane’s attitude was simple enough. She enjoyed everything immensely -and felt that this was just what she had hoped to find. Her wonderful -mother who had appeared at one time not to care for her was now giving -her daily proofs of affection. And so she was happy. Mrs. Carpenter -must have been nonplussed. The connection was obvious, for the more -contented Jane was the less sign did she make of wanting anything else. -She was delighted at being with her mother: how could it occur to her -to want to get married?</p> - -<p>And Philibert’s artfulness with women was of no use to him here. His -professional tricks were wasted. He could only hold her attention by -telling her about the things she looked at; histories, anecdotes, -dissertations on art and architecture she would listen to with profound -interest. She kept him for hours in the galleries of the Louvre -discoursing on the great masters, and occasionally she would say with -a sigh while he mopped his exhausted head—“How much you know.” It was -the only tribute he got from her.</p> - -<p>For August they went to Trouville. Monsieur Cornuché had not yet -invented Deauville. The trip was very nearly Philibert’s undoing. -He was very hard put to it, was our Philibert, during that month of -August. And how he must have hated it. Nothing but sheer grit kept him -going, nothing less than the most enormous prize would have induced him -to put up with so much misery.</p> - -<p>She rode, she swam, she played tennis, she hired a yacht and sailed -it. He was most of the time quite literally out of breath with running -after tennis balls, carrying golf clubs, galloping down the sands -after her vanishing figure; and to add to his discomfiture some of his -friends, those whom he could not be seen with under the circumstances, -saw him all too often and laughed behind the screen of the little red -and white bathing tents. I enjoy in retrospect<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> his discomfiture. Such -as it was it constituted for Jane an unconscious revenge. For a month -she kept her mother and Philibert on pins and needles, and I believe -that if her mother had not been constantly at hand to dress him up -again and again in all the trappings of romance, that Jane would have -found him finally and irretrievably ridiculous, just a poor exasperated -absurd little man who was no good at games and got blue with cold in -the water. For of course what saved Philibert in the end was Jane’s -desire to please her mother.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Carpenter was obliged to take a definite line. It had not been her -intention to do so, but she found that she must if the plan were to -come off at all. I don’t truly believe the woman was more double-faced -than most. She would if one hauled her out of the grave to make her -defence, put up, I suppose, a respectable argument. She would say that -she had done what thousands of mothers do every day, and what all -of them should do. She had picked out a husband whom she considered -a brilliant match for her daughter and had married her to him. The -only reason that obliged her to resort to subterfuge, and hers, she -would say, was of the vaguest and slightest, was the girl’s complete -financial independence. Her own extraordinary husband had given her -no hold over her daughter, but had put everything into the hands of -a trio of bumptious bigoted American citizens. What she really was -doing when she had made her plans for Jane and then got her to fulfil -them without knowing it, was not bamboozling the child, but getting -the best of those horrid trustees. If it had not been for them and the -grotesque will they kept waving in her face, she would have said to -Jane simply, “Here, my darling, is the man I have chosen for you. You -will be married in a month’s time.” But she couldn’t do that. She was -forced to make her daughter take him of her own free choice, and so she -would go on, briskly explaining that she had done it all for the best. -Was it not a creditable desire on her part to see her child the leader -of French<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> society? And had not Jane subsequently become even more -than that? Was there a town in America that did not read with envy the -newspaper accounts of her triumphs? Did it not all come out quite as -she had foreseen? If the two were not happy what did that prove? Just -nothing at all beyond the tiresome truism that marriages always ended -in making people hate each other.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Carpenter had adopted a jocular easy manner with her daughter on -bringing the girl to Europe that seemed to express her happy sense of -their being comrades and equals. The rôle she assumed was that of an -elder sister who was ready to give any amount of good-natured advice -when asked for, but would in no way interfere with the freedom of the -fortunate youngster. This was Izzy’s way of being careful and of making -it impossible for Jane ever to turn round and say—“It was my mother -who urged me to do it.” Fortunately for her peace of mind Jane hid -nothing from her and was constantly asking for guidance.</p> - -<p>It was Mrs. Carpenter’s habit to have her morning coffee in bed at -nine o’clock after an hour’s massage, and to let Jane come and talk to -her while she sipped it and ran through her letters. The girl would -come in from an early ride, plunge into a cold bath, and all aglow and -smelling of soap and youth would run to her mother’s wonderful scented -bedroom where, draped in her dressing-gown, she would stretch herself -out on a chaise-longue; and Izzy, under her lace coverlet, enjoying -the sensation of her willowy figure rubbed down once more to smooth -well-being, would encourage Jane to talk. It was her hour for getting -together the data that she would hand on later in the day to Philibert.</p> - -<p>Jane would say—“Our little Marquis was riding this morning. He joined -me. His eyes looked puffy. They had funny little pouches under them.” -And Mrs. Carpenter, who, with a languid finger turning the page of a -letter, had pricked up her ears, would sigh inwardly and say aloud—</p> - -<p>“The poor man must be tired. He has so many demands<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> on him.” And then -secretly irritated but maintaining a bland countenance, she would -listen to the girl telling how she had given her would-be suitor a -lesson in riding.</p> - -<p>“You know, Mummy, he was really hurting that horse’s mouth dreadfully, -and he didn’t seem to be sorry when I showed him. Do you think he is -just a tiny bit cruel?”</p> - -<p>And again Izzy would reply mildly, in defense of the absent one—“My -darling, I know him to be the kindest man in the world.”</p> - -<p>But Jane did not always by any means show interest in the Marquis de -Joigny, and much as it annoyed Mrs. Carpenter to hear him criticized, -it disturbed her even more when he was not mentioned at all for days -together. Jane would bring with her a letter from her Aunt Patty and -read aloud long extracts about St. Mary’s Plains and its tiresome -doings, about Patience’s rheumatism and Patience’s bird lectures, and -Uncle Bradford’s last new case, and the Mohican bank’s new building on -Pawamak Street, and Aunt Beth’s housekeeping adventures in Seattle, -until poor Izzy was bored to tears; or she would be full of the -problems of Fan’s life with her Polish husband. She saw Fan much more -often than her mother could have wished. One day she said—“I don’t -think Fan is happy. I suppose it’s because she has married a Roman -Catholic. It doesn’t seem to work very well, changing your religion.” -And Izzy in alarm scribbled a note of warning and sent it to Philibert -by a special messenger. She usually wrote to him on the days she -couldn’t manage to see him. Somehow or other he must be kept every day, -<i>au courant</i>. I can imagine these messages.</p> - -<p>“The child’s head is full of Fan and her wretched Pole, and the effect -of religion on marriage. Don’t for anything touch on the subject in -talk. You had better keep away from churches when you take her out. She -is disturbed by Fan’s money troubles and Ivanoff’s gambling. Don’t for -heaven’s sake go near the Casino while we are here.”</p> - -<p>It would be comic if it were not something else. I see<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> my elder -brother perusing these missives with fervour and tossing them away with -exasperated petulance.</p> - -<p>Go near the Casino? Had he done so? Was he not the perfect nursemaid?</p> - -<p>It was Fan who told me about all this afterwards. She had been in Paris -three years before Jane, had got herself brought over by some chance -acquaintances who had paid her passage across the Atlantic, and had -allowed her to benefit by their loose indifferent chaperonage once -she got here. It was all she needed. In six months she had married -Ivanoff and knew everybody in Paris who from her point of view was -worth knowing. Mrs. Carpenter had been civil to her, but not friendly. -Nevertheless it was in Izzy’s drawing room that she had met Ivanoff.</p> - -<p>Ivanoff was one of Izzy’s satellites. She was one of the people he -lived on. He could expect to win twenty thousand francs from her -at Bridge during a winter. Besides that she gave him many meals -and introduced him to other people who could be fleeced for more -substantial sums. We all knew Ivanoff. His title was supposed not -to bear too much looking into, and his estates in Poland were not, -I believe, to be found on the map of that country, but he was very -presentable and was renowned for his success with women. Fan fell in -love with him promptly. He was big, he was dark, his brown face with -its mongolian cast of feature, slanting eyes and thick sleek black hair -seemed to her beautiful, and she believed that he had a deep romantic -soul. Moreover he was a prince and he was like wax in her hands. She -could not and did not resist him. Her stepfather made her an allowance -of twenty-five thousand francs a year and showed no interest in what -she did with it. There was no one to enquire into Ivanoff’s affairs -or habits on Fan’s behalf. She was alone in the world and must make -her own way. Life with Ivanoff would be a continual stream of parties; -Monte Carlo, Paris, Biarritz, Deauville. The prospect glittered before -her.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> Where could she have a good time if not in these gay haunts of -pleasure? The thought of going back to St. Mary’s Plains made her feel -sick.</p> - -<p>She had been married a year or so when Jane joined her mother. Ivanoff -was her slave. She could do anything with him except keep him from -the gaming table. Her one worry was money, but she did not allow this -to worry her much. Jane exasperated her that first summer. Fan felt -herself much the wiser and years the older. Jane’s lamblike devotion -to her mother “gave her fits.” And Jane seemed utterly indifferent -to the enormous power of her money, she was too stupid, the way she -let her mother and Philibert manage her. But Fan thought Philibert -a great catch. She knew her Paris well enough to know that if Jane -became Philibert’s wife her position would be immense. So she didn’t -interfere, merely watched and laughed and thought Jane a fool not to -see what Philibert was after.</p> - -<p>October saw them all in Paris and Philibert not appreciably nearer -his goal. Jane no longer ignored him, she now took him for granted, -which was almost worse. He determined to be personal. It was not easy -with Jane, but he must risk being thought impudent. One day he asked -her what kind of a man she wanted to marry. She hesitated, thinking a -moment. “A hero or a friend,” she answered. But when he said that he -hoped he was her friend she smiled, refusing to take him seriously. -The word hero however, gave him his cue. He had too much sense to try -and pose as one himself, but the thought occurred to him that perhaps -by telling her of other heroes who had belonged to his family and -his country, some of the glamour of the past would touch him with a -reflected brilliance for those candid romantic eyes. And the task was -not uncongenial to him. He had a gift for story-telling and could -gossip endlessly about historic personages. Where history was meagre -he could rely upon his imagination. He began with the lovely story -of Bayard and Du Guesclin and she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> listened with glowing eyes as he -talked of those chivalrous knights. He had found the key. It was -easy now to hold her attention. There followed hours and days filled -with legend and anecdote, tales of brave chivalry and quaint custom. -<i>Philippe le Beau</i> and <i>Jeanne la Folle</i>, <i>Saint Louis</i>, <i>Henri IV</i>, -<i>Clothilde de Joigny</i>, the saintly lady whose name was still honoured -in the family, <i>Monseigneur de B——</i> who had had his tongue cut out -during the <i>Massacres de Septembre</i>; it was a rich field, and one where -he knew his way about, and to supplement his talk he gave her little -books of folklore and poetry, and songs of the Troubadours, the poems -of Ronsard, and found for her an old parchment copy in script of that -charming anonymous ballad that begins “Gentils Galants de France.”</p> - -<p>And Jane, delighted, treated him with a new attentive kindness. He -had gained her confidence and had touched her imagination, but there -again his success seemed to end. He could get no further. It did not -occur to her to ask why he took such pains to supply her eager mind -with lovely legends. And so he fretted and fumed once more. I can -imagine him wracking his brains for a solution. The problem would have -presented itself to him with simple brutality. How rouse the girl’s -emotions without frightening her? He hit on a plan. Mrs. Carpenter took -a box at the Opera. There under cover of the music Philibert whispered -adroitly to romantic youth, told her on every note of the scale that -she was young and wonderful, that life was full of magic mystery, that -the throbbing of her heart was its response to the summons of love, and -that some day a man would come to her and beg her to allow him to carry -her up and out on the surging torrent of that inspiration into a heaven -of pure delight.</p> - -<p>It worked. Under the hypnotic influence of the orchestra with its -disturbing rhythm and moving harmonies, ravished by the seeming beauty -of those sentimental voices, soaring, floating, dropping deep to caress -and moan and shiver, all unconscious of the mediocrity, the coarseness, -the bold <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>sensuality, her little being stirred, and her senses, waking -slowly in their chaste prison responded to the appeal of the man -behind her in the shadow, who took on a little the romantic look of -the hero on the stage. She did not know what was happening to her. She -would come out of the theatre in a daze and walk silently between her -mother and Philibert to the carriage and sink back into her corner, -her head throbbing, and through half-closed eyelids would gaze with -confusion and fear and vague painful pleasure at the tall hat and white -shirt-bosom of the man facing her in the intimate gloom, and as though -the smoothly moving carriage were just another box for the continuation -of the performance she would hear the same voice speaking to her that -had mingled with all that music, and she would find it impossible to -distinguish between her companion’s reality and the magic charm of the -glorious fiction.</p> - -<p>One night when he left them at their door after an evening of -this kind, she heard him say to her mother who had lingered -behind—“<i>C’était très réussi ce soir</i>,” and give a little dry laugh. -She did not ask herself what he meant, but his tone struck her ear as -discordant and she remembered it afterwards. It was one of the things -that flashed up out of her memory when Philibert, some years later, -wanting once and for all to answer her questions as to why he had -married her, told her with his incomparable lucidity all about the -way he and her mother had used her. He put it to her completely then, -explaining to her the details of their method and summing it all up -with the words—“At least half the credit was your Mamma’s. Though -she did not seem to be doing much she was working all the same like a -galley-slave. Of course it was not her duty to make love to you, but -it was she who prepared your mind for the seed I sowed in it, and it -was she who kept me informed of your mental progress. I say mental; -you know what I mean. Call it anything you like, but give full credit -to your charming mother for what she did for you. She showed signs of -positive genius.” </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span></p> - -<p>Thus it was that they put their heads together, and after the -successful experiment of the Opera evenings had run its course for a -month, Jane’s manner began to change. She no longer came rollicking -into the room of a morning like a great roystering puppy. She no longer -talked so much or so freely, and sometimes, heavy-eyed and pale, as -if she had not slept well, she would lie silently on her back staring -at the ceiling, and blush crimson when asked what her thoughts were. -These facts were reported faithfully to Philibert of course, also the -incidents of the morning, when Jane got up with a bound and placed -herself abruptly before her mother’s long mirror and cried with the -accent of despair—“Am I always to be so ugly?”</p> - -<p>But I imagine Mrs. Carpenter in telling Philibert did not finish the -story. She had said to Jane—“No, my child, you can be considered a -beauty if you want to. With that body your face doesn’t matter. Men -will admire you, never fear; in fact I know one that does already.”</p> - -<p>Jane at that had turned away from the glass and had come to the foot -of her mother’s bed and had said earnestly, with a flood of crimson -mantling her face and throat—“But it’s not a man’s admiration I’m -thinking of, mother dear, it’s yours.” The child had then become -speechless and had gulped strangely with the effort not to break down -and had given it up and gone quickly out of the room.</p> - -<p>If Mrs. Carpenter was touched she did not say so, and she never -referred to the incident in her subsequent talks with Jane, limiting -her remarks on the girl’s appearance to a voluble flow of worldly -advice.</p> - -<p>“Never go in for curls or ribbons or fluffiness. That’s not your style. -If you must look like a Chinese mummy then look it even more than you -do. Make the most of your queerness. People won’t know whether you -are ugly or handsome, but they’ll be bound to look at you. That’s all -that’s necessary. Anything is better than being unnoticed. That you -never will be. Nonsense, you must get used to being stared at. Most -girls like it. Wear your<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> hair straight back and close to your head. -Never mind your lower lip. Don’t make faces trying to draw it in. Stick -it out rather. Carry your head high. Look as if you were proud of your -profile. Your dresses should always be straight and stiff like an -oblong box. That one you’ve got on is too soft, and there’s too much -trimming. You will be able to wear any amount of jewellery later, but -never let yourself be tempted by lace. You walk well, and your back, -thank God, is as flat as a board. You’ll never need to wear corsets if -you’re careful, but you must learn what to do with your hands. You’re -always clenching your fists as if you were going to hit somebody. And I -don’t like those boys’ pumps you wear; they’re too round at the toe.” -And so on and so on. And Jane, rather bewildered, would try to make -out from all this whether her mother herself liked the person she was -giving advice to or not.</p> - -<p>But in the end, in spite of all her cautiousness, Izzy was obliged -to commit herself. Jane didn’t let her off. On the contrary she went -straight to her one evening with the proposal Philibert had made her. -It was late and Mrs. Carpenter was sitting in front of her fire, -wondering whether she had been right in leaving the two alone together -for so long in the drawing room. She had never left them alone before. -It had been Philibert’s suggestion and she had agreed with some slight -misgiving. It had occurred to her of a sudden that perhaps he would -not have dared to make such a proposal to one of his own people, and -she felt a flush of annoyance. Strange inconsistency on the part of a -woman who had so thrown to the winds the spiritual decencies, but there -you are; she was worried and mortified, and when Jane entered, turned -to her with a warmer gesture than was her habit. The girl responded -by kneeling at her side and winding her arms round the slim waist and -saying—</p> - -<p>“Do you really want me to do it, Mother dear?”</p> - -<p>The question put in that way, suggesting as it did a keener insight on -Jane’s part into her mother’s heart than had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> even been imagined by the -latter, must have been startling. Mrs. Carpenter hesitated, hedged, was -at a loss.</p> - -<p>“What do you mean, child?”</p> - -<p>But Jane was not to be put off.</p> - -<p>“You know what I mean, Mummy darling. The question is, do you really -want it? I told him that I would do what you said, and I mean it.” -And then rather quaintly she added—“I don’t suppose Aunt Patty would -approve of me. She likes independence. But I have made up my mind to do -as you wish.”</p> - -<p>There it was. Mrs. Carpenter was forced into it. Jane, all unknowingly, -had her. It was no use asking the girl if she liked him: she only said -she felt she undoubtedly would if she made up her mind to, and so at -last after some more hesitating Izzy was obliged to say—</p> - -<p>“Well, darling, since you will have it so, I must tell you that your -acceptance of this distinguished man would make me very happy.” And -Jane, still uncommunicative and by some marvellous instinct of profound -youth hiding at last the tumultuous feelings of her heart, accepted her -mother’s decision sweetly and calmly and went away to her room.</p> - -<p>If she saw there in her mirror, as we are told girls do on such -occasions, a new strange creature, the difference was in her case less -fictitious than most. A very rapid transformation does seem to have -come over her after this. It was as if in accepting Philibert she had -walked bravely up to him and had given him the secret key to her soul, -and as if in turn he had thrown a handful of dust in her eyes. The -effect of the interchange was instantaneous. Philibert had seemed to -her in the beginning, an old man, excessively foreign and occasionally -ridiculous; he was now a hero. I cannot explain the change. I only know -that it was so. The mystery of her girlhood remains to me a mystery. -Who am I to understand her love for my detestable brother? Who am I to -understand the love of any innocent girl for any man? I only know that -Jane’s passion was derived from her own romantic nature and not from -him. I have a <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>feeling that had she once made up her mind to love an -iron poker, she would have loved it with the same fire and the same -ecstasy. At that period of her life the object of her affection was -scarcely more real than a symbol. Philibert represented for her not -himself but her dreams. It may be so with most young people. I do not -know. But what Jane meant when she said to her mother that she was -sure she would come to like him if she made up her mind to, was really -that she knew she would adore him if with her mother’s approval, she -let herself go, i. e., let her imagination control her feelings. What -she wanted from her mother was not only an indication but a guarantee. -Her mother’s consent to her marriage she took as a sign that she could -gloriously give her heart its freedom.</p> - -<p>And Jane’s heart now that he had won it was a surprise to Philibert. -He had gone a-hunting for a dove or some timid sparrow, and he found -himself with an eagle on his hands. He was expected to soar with this -young companion that he had captured. There was no hesitation about -Jane. Spreading wide the wings of her beautiful belief, she flew, she -was making for heaven.</p> - -<p>Poor, wonderful, ignorant Jane. It was to her of a simplicity. Since -she knew now, because her mother had said so, that he was worth -marrying, then he was worthy of all her confidence. Shyly but bravely -she told him so. She spoke to him of God, of life with him after death, -of sharing with him all her thoughts. She unbared to him her ideals, -confessed her dreams, faltered out her fear of her own wild impulses, -recounting to him simply the affair of the boy in St. Mary’s Plains -she had almost killed. She told him all about the Grey House and her -Aunt Patty and her grandmother’s death and her Aunt Minnie’s religious -fanaticism. It is dreadful to think of. He has said that he was never -so bored in his life. I have heard him say so, and of course he would -have been. After a rubber or two at the Jockey, he would turn up at -Izzy’s flat for tea and find Jane waiting for him, her face charged -with grave<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> confident sweetness. She would put a hand on each of his -shoulders and kiss his lips, and then drawing him to a sofa beside her -would hold his hand in both of hers and pour out to him the secrets of -her heart, and he, beside himself with boredom, would listen and make -his responses to the clear chant of her young voice singing its joy.</p> - -<p>“We will be everything to each other, Philibert.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, dear.”</p> - -<p>“We will share each other’s thoughts.”</p> - -<p>“Of course.”</p> - -<p>“You will teach me how to love you.”</p> - -<p>“I will.”</p> - -<p>“And be worthy of you.”</p> - -<p>“My darling.”</p> - -<p>“Love is very wonderful, Philibert.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, dear.”</p> - -<p>“I feel one should be very much alone to understand. You and I alone. -We must keep ourselves free to be alone together.”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“Sometimes I am sorry that we have so much money.”</p> - -<p>“Why, my darling?”</p> - -<p>“It will create obligations. We shall be expected to see so many people -and do so many things. But I am glad to have it if you like it. I -am proud to bring you something. I would give you everything in the -world if I could. I am yours, and what I have is yours, to do with -as you like. But you must never feel indebted to me, for there is no -indebtedness. I can’t quite explain what I mean, but it humiliates me -even to think of giving between you and me. The money is ours, that is -all, and therefore yours. You will control it and give me an allowance -for dresses. I say this now because I don’t want to speak of it again. -You understand, don’t you, Philibert? Let’s not talk of it any more, -ever.”</p> - -<p>Such was her attitude, such was her idea, and all he had to do was to -let himself be loved. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span></p> - -<p>But I don’t like to think about Philibert in his relation to Jane. I -wish I could leave him out of the story altogether.</p> - -<p>In the meantime Mrs. Carpenter, while highly gratified that her plans -had worked out so well, was nevertheless a little taken aback at the -extravagant turn they were taking. She may well have been more then -a little worried at Jane’s going ahead at such a pace. There was no -comfort for Izzy now in conferring with Philibert. The shape of the -triangle had changed. The coveted man had drawn away from her and was -as close now to her daughter as he had once been to her. She found -herself no longer the strong base that held them together. They could -exist now without her. And Philibert began very delicately to make her -feel this. His manner conveyed—“You have done your part, and very well -on the whole, but still you know it’s finished. You’re really no use to -me now. I shan’t of course go back on my bargain. You shall have your -share of the fun. Only don’t bother me by continually making mysterious -signs. You will only succeed in awakening her suspicions and wearing -out my patience.”</p> - -<p>Poor Jane, it would have taken more than her mother’s irritable gaiety -to rouse her suspicions. If any one in those days had come to her with -a full recital of the truth, she would not have believed a word of it. -And when her Uncle Bradford did come in his capacity of trustee to have -a look at the fiancé, she flew into a rage with the good man at the -first sign of his disapproval. I did not see Bradford Forbes. I never -saw him. Jane tells me that he was a large heavy man with a strong -American accent, a rosy face and a pince-nez. I should like to have -seen him. I should like to have seen the image of Philibert reflected -in those eyeglasses. The sight would have been edifying.</p> - -<p>Mr. Forbes had said to Jane—“Well, I don’t think much of your little -Dude. I’d rather you had taken some one more your own size. I guess he -can’t come much higher than your shoulder.” And Jane had flown at him -like a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> wild cat and had told him that he had no business to make fun -of her lover, who was the most important man in Paris and a million -times cleverer than anybody from their home town. If her Uncle Bradford -had had any hope of dissuading her from the step she was about to take -he seems to have abandoned it then and there. He could find out nothing -positively wrong with the head of the house of Joigny. The little -Marquis proved satisfactorily that though his income was pitiful he -had no debts. And when Mr. Forbes pointed out to him that there could -be nothing in the way of a marriage settlement, Silas Carpenter’s -will making such an alienation of property impossible, Philibert had -taken his breath away by the graceful ease with which he accepted -the situation. How was the kind shrewd American citizen to know that -Philibert already had the will by heart, and long ago had accepted -the inconvenience and risk of hanging on to his wife’s property by -hanging on to her? He made a better impression in their hour’s talk -than Jane’s uncle wanted to admit to himself. The good man was obliged -to fade away as he had come, and float off like some wistful porpoise -across the Atlantic leaving behind him only light ephemeral bubbles of -amused disapproval. All the same he had done enough to make Jane very -angry and obstinate and produce from her hand a long letter to her Aunt -Patty in which she inveighed against the obtuse narrow-mindedness of -the entire American nation. Patience Forbes seems not to have answered -this letter. She had sent Jane a note by her uncle of terse affection -and grim good wishes, but her correspondence with her niece during the -months preceding and following the marriage almost entirely ceased. -I imagine that after listening to her brother’s account of the man -in Paris who was to claim her Jane, she was filled with foreboding, -and being powerless chose to remain silent. And Jane was too happy to -wonder why her aunt did not write to her. She did not often think of -the Grey House during those days.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span></p> - -<h2>VII</h2> - -<p>My family, as I think I have already mentioned, had a way of doing -disagreeable things gracefully. They could even when necessary carry -off affairs disagreeable to themselves with every appearance of -special pleasure. When Philibert asked my mother to gather together -the clan, all the uncles and aunts and cousins on my mother’s side and -my father’s, so that he might present to them his fiancée, my mother -apparently felt obliged to meet his wishes, not quite understanding the -need for so much fuss, suspecting perhaps the truth that the ceremony -was a concession to that tiresome Mrs. Carpenter, yet determining once -she had decided to do it, to do it nicely. Our relations in their turn -recognized with the best possible grace the obligation she gently -laid upon them in a series of little plaintive invitations to tea, -and turned up smiling. Their smiles were various, there was plenty of -variety in the family: we went in for cultivating our personalities; -but there was nevertheless in the light of their expressive -countenances a pleasant family resemblance, the stamp of a kinship that -was cherished and valued. They all conveyed that it was for them at -any time and without ulterior purpose an honour and a pleasure to be -received by my mother, and that, however important the present occasion -might be, the agreeable importance lay for them much more in finding -her well than in meeting a stranger, her prospective daughter-in-law.</p> - -<p>My mother, in marrying my father, had married a second cousin, so -that the two sides of the family were representative of but one after -all, and if within our own circle we admitted that the Joignys had in -the last half century shown<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> a more progressive spirit, had taken a -more active interest in the affairs of the Republic, and had rubbed -shoulders more freely with industrials and politicians than had the -Mirecourts, the resulting difference felt was so slight, the nuance of -manner and bearing so delicate, as to pass unperceived by the outer -circle of society. We did not criticize each other. Some of the Joignys -had made money, and one or two had married it. My father had been a -royalist deputy, my Uncle Bertrand had been a Senator; on the other -hand the Mirecourts had had an occasional relapse into the army and -numbered even now a couple of cavalry officers. If there was among -us a tacit understanding that the only thing worthy of us was to do -nothing for the government we detested, we never said so, and never -blamed any one of our members for succumbing to the temptation of -seeking an occupation. We were privileged people who could afford to -amuse ourselves with modern affairs if it so pleased us, and at the -expense of society if this took our fancy. Our philosophy was vaguely -speaking to live as we had always lived under the Kings of France, and -yet to keep intellectually very much abreast of the times. We had an -abundance of ideas about everything. Modernism in art did not displease -the younger members. On the contrary it was one of our characteristics -to keep our old customs and discover at the same time new movements -in music, painting and literature. We considered ourselves not in -the least musty or moth-eaten. On the afternoon that I speak of we -produced an effect the reverse of dingy or dreary, an effect of subdued -brightness, of sprightly gentleness of unmodish elegance. We looked -and were sure of ourselves. Republican France beyond our doors did not -disturb us. We knew that we were clever enough to get the best of it -for another generation or two anyway. We had clung to our lands, our -forests and our meadows. We would cling to them still. We trusted to -our wits to preserve us from the clumsy clutch of democracy. In the -pleasant sanctuary of our family mansion we made fun of the outside -world. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span></p> - -<p>My mother, looking very nice with a black lace scarf round her -shoulders and her dark hair arranged in an elaborate pattern of close -little waves and puffs, received the homage of my aunts, uncles and -cousins with wistful vivacity, asking them all with little gusts of -enthusiasm about their affairs, and then tenderly sighing as if to -convey to them how sympathetic was her appreciation of all their -rich activities, in which she asked their indulgence for playing so -passive a part. It was the last occasion in which she was to receive -in the house that had been already sold to allow Philibert to marry -the girl who was to be on view that day, but my mother gave no sign of -appreciating any irony or any sadness in the situation. If the little -gathering represented for her a trial of some cruelty, she kept her -sense of this perfectly disguised. With her boxes actually packed and -her new modest apartment already cleansed and garnished preparatory -to her arrival, she sat calmly and sweetly by the little wood fire -at the end of the long suite of drearily august salons where she had -known so many seasons of secluded temperate grandeur, holding a small -embroidered screen between her face and the modest blaze of crackling -birch logs. It was a cold November day. The rooms that had been thrown -open were chilly. Not magnificent in size or in richness, but sparsely -furnished, they were sufficiently vast to seem with their fifty odd -occupants comparatively empty, and presented to the eye polished vistas -of waxed parquet, bland expanses of delicate panelling and high, dimly -gilded cornices that were multiplied in numerous long mirrors. The -rooms, as I say, were cold, and they looked cold. The dull day was -darkening rapidly beyond the long windows. The lighted candles on the -chimney-pieces left about them wide vague pools of shadow and made -pockets of gloom behind important pieces of furniture.</p> - -<p>I remember feeling, while we waited for Jane, how beautifully all -my relatives were behaving. There was in their modulated gaiety an -absolute denial of discomfort or curiosity or suspense. Their gestures, -their chatter, their light<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> laughter, expressed a perfect oblivion -of the lowness of the temperature round them, or the imminence of an -ordeal for my mother, or the general consciousness that Philibert -had done something unusual and was about to ask for their approval. -They had put on frock-coats, some of them, and others had put on silk -dresses, but their way of greeting each other signified that any little -extra effort of toilet was made simply out of courtesy to the family. I -remember thinking, as I observed them, that there was perhaps no other -family in France that took so much pains to be pleasant within its own -circle, and that really on the whole we succeeded very well. It came to -me too, looking at <i>Tante</i> Clothilde, <i>Tante</i> Belle and <i>Tante</i> Alice, -and <i>Oncle</i> Louis and old Stanislas and Jean and Paul and Sigismond, -that it was comparatively easy for us because we were gifted. Yes, I -admitted, we were certainly gifted. We understood music and some of -us were very passable musicians ourselves; and then there was <i>Tante</i> -Suze who had translated Keats into French, and saintly <i>Tante</i> Alice -who restored Cathedrals and Jean who wrote plays and Sigismond who did -bacteriological research. Our gifts and our occupations, quite apart -from our amusements, gave us plenty to talk about. Actually it was not -a charming make-believe; we did enjoy meeting. And of all this give -and take of affectionate recognition, Claire my sister was the centre. -The aunts and uncles and cousins adored Claire. She was the perfect -product of their blood, and they understood her, and loving her they -appreciated themselves and were conscious of the solidarity of their -indestructible social unity. She meant even more to them than my mother -because she was young, and since her unfortunate marriage she had for -them the added charm of a martyr. If they had ever been willing to -criticize my mother they would have blamed her for giving her daughter -to such a man as my brother-in-law. There was not a man in the room who -did not dislike him and who would not have taken up the cudgels for -Claire at the slightest sign of her finger. The unpopular outsider was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> -not there. He had perhaps understood that he was expected to stay away. -Even an automobile merchant can be made to feel when he is not wanted. -The poor brute’s skin was perhaps not as thick as they thought. No one, -however, remarked on his absence. No one asked after him or mentioned -his name. Had he behaved as he had been expected to behave, and had -Claire wished it, they would have been kind to him, but he had made one -or two mistakes, and Claire had shown no signs of wanting them to take -him into their circle. He had taken her away to Neuilly, had almost -literally locked her up there, and had offered to lend several of them -money, at a high rate of interest. Also he had asked Bianca’s father, -(who was there by the way that day, though Bianca was not), to get him -into the Jockey Club. It had been impossible not to snub him. They all -felt very sorry for Claire.</p> - -<p>Philibert’s affairs were different. A man need never be the slave of -his <i>ménage</i>. Philibert they knew could quite well look after himself. -They had heard that the fortune of the young American was gigantic. -Philibert would know beautifully how to spend millions, they said to -themselves. That was one of the things that we, as a family, had always -known how to do. They admitted willingly that Philibert was in his way -eminently worthy of themselves. His faults were in keeping with their -traditions; he had never made any of them blush. They trusted he was -not about to do so now. They hoped the young American girl would not be -too impossible. Some Americans whom they knew were charming, but it was -not always the richest who were the nicest. Alas, one could not have -everything. They would be kind to the child, however awful she might -be. It was always worth while being kind, and besides did one really -know how to be anything else to a woman? Had one, as a matter of fact, -any bad manners tucked away anywhere to bring out on any occasion?</p> - -<p>But of course, none of this appeared in their conversation, and as I -say, no one could have detected in their manner<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> any sign of curiosity -or nervousness. And when at last the butler announced at the far end -of the <i>Grand Salon</i> “Madame Carpenter et Mademoiselle Carpenter,” it -was with a scarcely perceptible shifting of positions and straightening -of attention that they made a kind of circle extending out on either -side of my mother, who rose from her chair by the fire in the inner -apartment and advanced two steps towards the distant figures that -appeared in the far doorway of the outer room.</p> - -<p>I recognized Jane at once as the girl who has walked down my street, my -cossack princess, my wild crowned creature of the steppes. She had a -long way to go and she came on slowly and smoothly, with a lightness in -her gait that had about it a certain grandeur and a dignity that seemed -at the same time somehow rather shy and timid. She reminded me of some -nervous creature who was accustomed to traversing vast tracks of open -country and who might be frightened away by the stir of a twig. I saw -in another moment that she was not frightened. She gave my mother the -slightest and most correct of courtseys, and then stood quite still -while her own mother talked to the lady who had so persistently and -gently snubbed her. It was, however, to strike me very soon as one of -the interesting things about Jane that, although she was not frightened -when she first came in, she was beginning to feel so ten minutes later. -I put this down as the first proof she gave me of being intelligent.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Carpenter may have drained from that hour in our paternal mansion -some deep draught of pleasure; I do not know. It is possible that she -regarded her entry into our chilly drawing room as a social triumph; if -so she betrayed no such feeling. She, too, as well as my mother, was -capable of elegant dissimulation. Her rich black figure, marvellously -moulded into its lustrous garment, was of a dignity that surpassed -everything that quite put my gentle mother in the shade. I can imagine -her full, bright consciousness of this. There was something in the -poise of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> her high modish grey head that expressed astonishment as she -shook hands with her little hostess. It was as if she marvelled that so -unimpressive a woman, with really no pretensions at all to a figure, -should hold such sway in the world. A good many of the others she knew. -Some had eaten from her golden plates, others had left cards but not -eaten, a few had invited her to “evenings.” She greeted them with an -easy security of manner that was quite sufficiently a match for their -own shriller effusiveness. If they were not inordinately pleased, well -they seemed so, and if she was, then she did not show it. The comedy -was well played by both sides.</p> - -<p>She had dressed her daughter rather cleverly for the occasion. Jane had -on a straight close-fitting costume of some mouse-grey material that -had the texture of a suede glove. As I remember it, it was cut like a -Russian jacket, trimmed with bands of grey fur, and topped by a close -grey fur hat with a green cockade that matched her eyes. That was all; -the dress was warm and plain, well adapted to the weather and to the -girl’s age, and gave her no look of wealth. The most it did was to set -off with severe modesty the splendid proportions of her strong young -body.</p> - -<p>What I think we all felt when Jane entered was the warmth and vitality -of her youth. She was so very much more alive than all the rest of us -that we could not help noticing it. We felt cold and dry beside her, -and rather small. We were literally, almost all of us, smaller than -she was. This was disconcerting: I caught actually on my mother’s -face after the first presentation had taken place an almost comic -expression, and could not make out what she was after as she looked -quickly from one to the other, until I discovered that she was simply -looking for some one to put next the girl who was tall enough to look -well beside her. My mother had an eye for <i>tableaux vivants</i>; she did -not like to see a woman towering above men. Not finding any one she was -reduced to sitting down herself, and motioning the great long child -to a stool at her knee. It was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> then that I realized Jane was growing -frightened, and was struck by the keenness of her perceptions. There -was nothing obvious to frighten her, and yet there was something in the -air for a fine sensitive nostril to sniff at in alarm if it were fine -enough; just the faintest whiff of antagonism, an antagonism tempered -and mingled with curiosity, surprise and humour.</p> - -<p>My family saw possibilities in Jane. Of that I became growingly -conscious. It was evident in the way they eyed her with rapid sidelong -glances, appraising tilts of the head, steps to the side to get a -closer or different view, and in their murmured undertones. They did -not discuss her then and there, they did not whisper, they were not -rude, God forbid, but they showed that they were struck. She engaged -their attention and was more of a person than they had bargained for. -They looked from her to her mother and back again with lifted eyebrows. -They were surprised to find that Mrs. Carpenter had such a daughter. It -was clear to them that something could be made out of Jane.</p> - -<p>The girl sat on her low seat quite still, one hand in her lap, the -other hanging down by her side, and while she answered my mother’s -questions, shot an occasional clear glance from under her eyebrows at -the people around her. I saw that she was nervous, but not too nervous -to take in a great deal. I was impressed by the amount she did seem to -take in.</p> - -<p>Philibert all this time hung off in a corner and watched her. She -never once looked at him. She seemed determined not to do so. If -he were putting her to some sort of a test she was obviously going -to go through the ordeal without an appeal for aid. It was a fine -performance; unfortunately no one but myself appeared to appreciate it.</p> - -<p>Her nervousness evidently had something to do with her deep desire -to please, and her increasing realization that these relations of -Philibert’s were not people easily pleased with anything or any one. -She felt that she was the object of a finer scrutiny than she had ever -before undergone.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> Her eyes searched rapidly one face then another, and -veiled themselves again under lowered lids. The one thing that might -have consoled her in her sense of their superlative fastidiousness was, -however, just the thing that she could not divine. She didn’t know that -they none of them cared a fig for pretty doll faces and found her ugly -strangeness a very good substitute. It had not yet dawned on her, in -spite of her mother’s preaching, that her countenance was just the sort -of thing that would have worth for sophisticated people.</p> - -<p>I don’t remember just how long this part of the show lasted, or just -how Philibert suddenly changed its character and made the whole thing -seem like a circus performance with himself as ringmaster and his -fiancée as the high-stepper whom he was showing off to the spectators, -but that is nevertheless what happened.</p> - -<p>I had taken a long look at my brother that day. It had come to me, -watching the attention and respect with which my august uncles treated -him, that perhaps I had never done him justice. It was obvious that -they liked him and that he not only amused them vastly, but imposed -himself on them. He had talked to them with even more than his usual -brilliance, and all Paris knows what that means, and I had listened -to his talk marvelling at the power of words. Paris can never resist -words; France succumbs inevitably to talk. No one, I was forced to -admit, was such a talker as Philibert. Like a consummate juggler -keeping half a dozen ivory balls in the air, he played with ideas -and phrases. Gaily he tossed up epigrams and paradoxes, let fly a -challenge, caught it with a counter-challenge, argued two sides of a -question, flung wide a generality, chopped it into bits in a second, -was serious for two minutes, mimicked a public character, gave a sketch -of the political situation, recounted a recent scandal. The faces of -his auditors were a study. They were the faces of delighted spectators -at a play. Positively I expected them now and then to applaud. My -Aunt Suze was wiping her eyes, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>weeping with laughter. Uncle Louis -was waving his handkerchief excitedly and ejaculating “<i>Parfaitement, -parfaitement. Je vois cela d’ici.</i>” Bianca’s father, his rubicund face -wrinkled into a masque of comedy, was watching out of the corner of -his sporting eye and muttering affectionately—“<i>Ah, le coquin, ah -quel comédien.</i>” And my dear little mother from her place by the fire -was smiling shyly over her fire screen, her eyes filled with gentle -adoration.</p> - -<p>I have heard women rave about the fineness of Philibert’s features, the -nobility of his nose, which was certainly a good and generous example -of our high type, signs of the race in the drawing of his head. I -suppose it is true that he had something special about his head. It was -the same head after all that had hung on our walls for generations, -capped by Cardinals’ bonnets and courtiers’ wigs. Nevertheless, when -he called to Jane he looked suddenly like a ringmaster in a circus. -With his little waxed moustache and his little perky coat-tails and -his lightly gesturing hand positively creating in space the image and -sound of a delicate long-lashed whip, he put Jane through her paces. -He had her beautifully trained. He had done it all in a month. She was -perfectly in hand.</p> - -<p>At the sound of his voice she had sprung to her feet. Yes, it was a -spring, quite sufficiently quick to startle my mother. Ha, but that -was a mistake at the very beginning. She was made to turn and mutely -apologize. Whist! she obeyed the sign and crossed to the venerable -and monstrous Aunt Clothilde who sat like a large brown Buddha by the -window. “A lower curtsey this time and kiss the plump old hand. Step -backward now and smile at these gentlemen. Hold up your head. Right -about turn, straight across the ring. Not too fast—proudly do it—show -them how you can walk. Aha, what made you do that? No stumbling, mind -you. High-steppers don’t look at their feet. Flip—just a flick of the -lash to put more life into you.”</p> - -<p>I watched fascinated. I watched till I could bear it no longer. I said -to Claire—“Lead the way into the dining-room. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>Tea’s been ready this -hour.” And Claire went forward gracefully and put an arm through the -trembling creature’s and led her away from her master; but I saw the -girl’s eyes ask for leave, and I saw him condescendingly grant it. By -the tea-table I joined her, and heard the rattle of the cup in her hand -against the saucer. She greeted me with a smile of extreme youthfulness -that tried to conceal nothing. Looking down at me timidly from her -splendid height, her pale countenance made me the frankest fullest -confession and asked wistfully for help, and seemed presently to find -relief.</p> - -<p>“Philibert did not tell me there were so many of you,” she said -quaintly in French.</p> - -<p>“We are all here, every one of us,” I rejoined. “We rushed to welcome -you.”</p> - -<p>She accepted this in silence, and I saw her gaze travel across to my -sister who stood in the window, and rest there with vivid interest.</p> - -<p>“You admire my sister?” I asked in English.</p> - -<p>“Immensely. I hope she will like me. If only she did I wouldn’t mind.”</p> - -<p>“The others? But they all will.”</p> - -<p>“Do you think so?”</p> - -<p>“I am sure of it.”</p> - -<p>She sighed and looked at me gravely. She seemed to be thinking deeply, -and she seemed very very young.</p> - -<p>“There are so many differences,” she said after a moment’s hesitation.</p> - -<p>“Not so many as you imagine,” I protested.</p> - -<p>“I don’t always understand what they mean,” and then with a quick -lighting up of her expression—“You will interpret.”</p> - -<p>“But you speak very excellent French,” I again objected.</p> - -<p>“Ah, it wasn’t the language I meant,” was the reply that came from -those grave parted lips.</p> - -<p>Philibert at that moment approached and laid a finger on my shoulder. -His words, however, were not addressed to me. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Don’t you think,” he said lightly, “that such an absorbing tête-à-tête -might be postponed to another day? It’s not very polite to your elders.”</p> - -<p>I saw the poor girl quiver. I saw the slow flood of crimson mantle her -face and forehead and flush to the tips of her ears. I saw her stare at -my brother humbly, and then I watched her slink off at his side, like a -great dog that he led by a chain and to whom he had given a whipping. -The sight filled me with disgusting pain. I turned on my heel and -joined Claire in her window.</p> - -<p>“A pretty sight, isn’t it?” I spluttered.</p> - -<p>“But, <i>mon cher</i>, she adores him.”</p> - -<p>“Just so.”</p> - -<p>My sister eyed me a little strangely.</p> - -<p>“You don’t like that?” she asked.</p> - -<p>“Do you?” I retorted.</p> - -<p>She shrugged her shoulders and gave a little laugh. “Of course it would -be still nicer,” she mocked lightly, “if he adored her as well. But -what will you? Such is life?”</p> - -<p>I felt how hopeless it was. I had a foretaste of how my sympathy for -Jane was to isolate me.</p> - -<p>“She admires you any way extravagantly,” I persisted with petulance. -Claire only laughed.</p> - -<p>“I should think she would do everything extravagantly,” was her reply -as she floated away.</p> - -<p>“Do be a little kind to the child,” I cried out after her, and she just -nodded at me over her shoulder. How charming her face was seen thus, -framed in her dark drooping hat and black furs, the slender glowing -olive oval, the sombre eyes, the lovely teeth, how charming, how -teasing, how elusive; and her slim figure with its trailing draperies, -how easily it slipped away from all effort, all responsibility.</p> - -<p>Jane was gone when I re-entered the drawing room. I gathered that she -had made a favourable impression. Aunts and uncles and cousins were -taking leave of my mother with phrases of congratulation.</p> - -<p>“<i>Elle est charmante.</i>” </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span></p> - -<p>“<i>Une taille superbe.</i>”</p> - -<p>“Philibert will dress her beautifully.”</p> - -<p>“So young, so healthy.”</p> - -<p>“Such nice manners.”</p> - -<p>“And how she adores him, it’s quite touching.”</p> - -<p>“Fifi always was lucky.”</p> - -<p>The masculine element was almost vociferous.</p> - -<p>“<i>Sapristi</i>, an enormous fortune, and a fine young creature like that.”</p> - -<p>One by one they bowed over my mother’s hand, and went away. My mother -looked very tired. She motioned me to remain. Claire hung over her -tenderly.</p> - -<p>“<i>Pauvre petite mère</i>,” she said, kissing the top of her head. “You -must go straight to bed. All these emotions have been too much for you. -I will come in the morning to see to the packing of the last things. -Don’t stir. Just stay quiet. All the same, it’s too bad, her turning -you out of your own house.”</p> - -<p>I said nothing. Something warned me not to take up Jane’s defence -just then, and I, too, felt sorry for my mother. When we were alone, -she laid her head against the back of the chair and closed her eyes. -Presently, however, without opening them she spoke with surprising -energy.</p> - -<p>“I have had to promise to dine with that woman,” was what she said.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span></p> - -<h2>VIII</h2> - -<p>Jane had made no impression on my mother. Mrs. Carpenter had made -too much of one. She had deflected my mother’s attention from Jane -to herself and this, with unfortunate consequences. Mrs. Carpenter -affected my mother like a loud and unpleasant noise, and my mother -hated noises more than anything in the world. I am not trying to be -witty. I mean this literally. I have seen my mother grow pale with a -sort of nervous nausea and close her eyes in a desperate effort to -control the faintness that came over her at the sound of a harsh ugly -voice raised in anger. There was something about Mrs. Carpenter that -set her nerves on edge in the same way. Her metallic jingling clothes, -her loose easy swagger, her wiry grey curls, her humorous rolling eye, -made up an <i>ensemble</i> that though to most people not seemingly at all -“loud” gave my mother sensations of clashing and clanging. When she -was about it was impossible for <i>Maman</i> to think of or listen to any -one else. All the effort of her hypersensitive nervous organism was -concentrated on just simply bearing her, and she was obliged now to -bear her often and for hours at a time. Mrs. Carpenter didn’t let her -off. She had wanted to know my mother; she knew her now and she made -the most of her.</p> - -<p>During the weeks that preceded the wedding, Izzy was incessantly -with my mother. She was in the highest of gay good humours. A big -fashionable wedding to prepare for, she was in her element. Having -achieved her ambition she professed to take it all as a joke. She -treated the approaching marriage of her daughter as a great lark and -wanted my mother to have her share of the fun. She consulted her about -everything, submitted lists and samples of engraved invitations, -dragged her to dressmakers who were preparing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> the trousseau and -made her come and help open presents. I have a picture of my mother -in a corner of Mrs. Carpenter’s drawing room, limp and pale in her -black clothes, submerged in cardboard and tissue paper, while the -indefatigable Izzy on her knees in the middle of the floor held up -one object after another and gave vent to shouts of indiscriminate -rapture or groans of unenlightened contempt. Poor, dreadful Izzy. She -had such definite ideas about things. Her ignorance was confident -and documented. She had priced every marble and bronze in Paris. No -jeweller’s shop held any secrets for her. She was a connoisseur in -lace. But the little tarnished faded treasures sent by some of our -relatives to Philibert’s bride belonged to no such category, and were -viewed with bewildered disdain. Antique furniture had never been seen -in her own apartment, but she knew that cracked lacquer and tarnished -gilding was respectable in tables and chairs. Beyond that she could not -go. Her instinct had stood in the way of her desire to learn. She clung -irresistibly to baubles and coveted with passion the massive silver tea -service sent by Aunt Clo. I know that Aunt Clo hesitated between this -and an exquisite Ingres drawing. I remember Izzy weighing the monstrous -kettle in her hands, her face a study of shrewd gloating apprisal and -her knee planted firmly on the face of a poor little Louis XV doll that -had come from Aunt Marianne’s cabinet of XVIII century toys.</p> - -<p>It was unfortunate that my mother was forced to assist at these -séances, and that Jane herself was so often absent trying on clothes. -The absence of the one and the ignorance of the other were proofs to my -mother that neither knew how to behave. She judged Izzy as if she were -a Frenchwoman and supposed that because the noisy creature did not know -a treasure of art when she saw it that she most probably put her knife -in her mouth. And so during those days that would have exhausted a much -more robust woman than my mother, Izzy did, I believe, at the very -beginning of Jane’s life with us, use up all the vitality that <i>Maman</i> -could<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> dispose of on behalf of Philibert’s American family.</p> - -<p>The dinner she was obliged to attend for which Mrs. Carpenter had -collected two ambassadors and a slangy Duchess was the last straw. My -mother had never been to such a dinner in her life, and I confess to -a complete sympathy with her when she gasped out afterwards that it -was incredible that she should have been preserved from such ordeals -throughout her youth when she had enough energy to bear them, only -to be subjected to them in her old age when she hadn’t. That dinner, -with its ten courses, was the funeral feast of a relationship not -yet born, but that might truly have come into being and flowered to -full sweetness between the grave awkward girl in the straight white -frock, and the little quivering lady whose twitching eyebrows and -frightened hurried glances alone testified to her acute agony of soul. -Poor <i>Maman</i>, poor Jane, poor Izzy. I was there. I saw, and I did not -realize the full meaning. I did not realize how lasting the effect -would be. I was on the contrary absurdly reassured because of Jane -herself. I saw in her silence, her gravity, her perfect timid deference -to my mother, a promise of future felicity. I gathered that she would -never be guilty of publicly blushing for her own parent, but that she -would and did appreciate mine. I was right in this, but I was wrong -in believing that my mother would appreciate in her turn the tender -tribute. I reckoned without her nerves, her weariness, her discouraged -sense of being victimized and exposed, all the accumulations of her -years of abhorrence of the thing that was now thrust upon her. She -had complained so little that I had failed to understand how deeply -humiliating to her were the circumstances of her son’s marriage. She -considered it indisputably a <i>mésalliance</i>, and yet she was forced to -appear to rejoice in it with indecent exhibitions of familiarity. Mrs. -Carpenter not only had disregarded her request for a little family -gathering but had evidently succumbed to the desire to show her to just -those people who, not having yet seen her, would especially relish the -sight. “Just as if, <i>mon cher</i>,” my mother wailed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> afterwards, “I were -anything to look at. Fancy wanting to show me, a skimpy bundle of black -clothes.” She had done violence to herself in going to that dreadful -apartment in the Avenue du Bois, and the effort was too much for her. -The place was too much for her. She never forgot it and, I believe she -never looked at Jane without remembering those golden plates, those -loud nasal voices, those large glasses full of crushed ice and green -peppermint, those horrid scraping fiddles. To my mother such an evening -was a souvenir to last her the rest of her days. The most she could -do after that was not actively to dislike her daughter-in-law, and -she seemed to achieve this by cultivating in all that concerned that -young person a consistent vagueness. When people talked of Jane she -only half listened and answered irrelevantly. Her phrase was always the -same—“<i>Mais oui, elle est si gentille.</i>” When Jane herself was there -she would look absent-mindedly beyond her and put her phrase in another -form and murmur—“<i>Comme vous êtes gentille.</i>” Jane could never get -any further than that. It constituted a barrier, graceful and light as -gossamer, impenetrable as steel armour. All the girl’s longing to be -loved and to please, all her naïve attentions, all her thoughtful plans -for the older woman’s comfort, were met with the same sweet gentle -vagueness. When she brought flowers, when she asked advice, when she -put her motor at the other’s disposal, when she asked her to come to -her, it was always—“<i>Comme vous êtes gentille</i>,” followed by a little -plaintive sigh that the girl gradually came to understand. Even when -she worked out and carried through all on her own, a scheme for adding -considerably to my mother’s material ease, the formula was merely -changed to “<i>Vous êtes vraiment trop gentille</i>” and finally when Jane’s -baby was born, and she believed that at last her mother-in-law would -show some warmth of feeling, the words that greeted her when she opened -her eyes and saw the latter leaning over the bassinet, were—“Comme -elle est gentille,” this time addressed to the slumbering infant. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span></p> - -<p>I know that my mother tried to be kind to Jane, and I believe that she -was never positively unkind, never at least during those first years -of her marriage, but aside from the unpleasant pressure Mrs. Carpenter -had brought upon her and that had given her a kind of chronic nervous -depression in all that concerned Jane, there was also the fact that -Jane was not the sort of person who would ever have appealed to her. -My mother liked Bianca and had wanted her for a daughter-in-law; how -then could she love Jane who was the antithesis of Bianca, and who -by usurping Bianca’s place, so my mother put it to herself, brought -the contrast constantly to her mind? I have heard my mother say that -she liked people to be more interesting than they looked, and found -it amusing to be with people whom she was led on by some subtle -provocative charm to discover. She recognized this charm in Bianca -without ever discovering the sinister meaning of it, and she felt that -Jane showed too much and therefore promised too little. Jane was too -big and too striking to please her. She made, to my mother’s eyes, too -much of a display. My mother liked above everything “<i>mesure</i>.” Her -favourite form of condemnation was to call a thing “<i>exagéré</i>.” What -at bottom she cared most for in a person was their being “<i>comme il -faut</i>.” I don’t believe that she ever went so far as to consider her -daughter-in-law vulgar, but there were things about her that she would -have called “<i>outré</i>.” If she had ever allowed herself to depart from -the vague affectionate affability that she preserved so consistently -and so bafflingly, she would have said, (perhaps she did say something -of the kind to Claire, I know they discussed Jane between them) that -there was something almost shocking in a young woman with such an ugly -face having such a beautiful figure. They, Claire and <i>Maman</i>, would -have liked the ugliness of the face better if it had not been held so -high on such splendid shoulders. They would have forgiven Jane her -profile if it had not been for her really marvellous hands and feet. In -the same way they would have known better how to deal with the whole -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>striking physical being if it had not gone with such shyness and such -humility. What they could not make out, and found it hard to put up -with, were her incongruities. Such looks should aesthetically have been -combined with audacity and hardness. Instead they found on their hands -a poor quaking creature of a pathetic docility who seemed to present to -them on her lovely palms an exposed and visibly pulsating heart, that -they didn’t know what to do with, didn’t want to touch, were positively -afraid of. It seems strange, but it was nevertheless true that Jane -frightened them. Her need of them exposed there quite simply to their -gaze, her simple, inarticulate but all too visible desire to love them -and be loved, made them turn away in a kind of flurry that was partly -delicacy and partly fear. There was an intensity about her that opened -dangerous and wearying vistas of emotion which they wished at all costs -to avoid. Claire said to me one day—</p> - -<p>“Mother is afraid Jane will crush her, throw herself on her, I mean, -literally, and hug and squeeze her, and she doesn’t like physical -contact of that sort, you know that.”</p> - -<p>Of course I knew. We all knew. From our earliest years we had always -approached <i>Maman</i> as it were on tiptoe, delicately, as if she were -made of some precious perishable stuff that would be broken at a rude -touch. Our sense of this had been for us one of her subtlest charms. -When she allowed us to kiss her we did so lightly and quietly. The -touch of our lips on her hair or her soft worn cheek, was the fleeting -pleasure of a winged instant, yet it was a pleasure; she had a way of -conveying to it a quality, a fine quick elusive meaning. We never felt -that we had been cheated, on the contrary, her kisses were rare and -might have been deemed meagre, but they were beautiful. There was a -grace in the way she laid her hand on one’s arm and drew one down that -was more than artistry; it conveyed a sense of something precious that -had never been vulgarized by handling and mauling. I do not remember -her ever folding any of us in her arms, and if my memory of her -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>demonstrations is particularly acute because they were more often for -Claire or for Philibert than for me, that only proves that I know what -I mean and in no way diminished the beauty of what I was so often able -to observe from my distance. The act of opening wide her arms would -have been extraordinary in my mother. I never saw it. With Claire who -was the person in the world to whom she was closest, I often noticed -how delicate and restrained was her manner, and yet somehow with -scarce any demonstrations of affection, they conveyed to each other -an infinite tenderness. They were constantly together, they talked -everything over. Claire had, I believe, no secrets from <i>Maman</i>. They -depended on each other. Together they tasted the ineffable sweetness -of almost perfect communion. And yet I never saw them cling together, -I never surprised them in each other’s arms. So strangely alike, so -perfectly in harmony, they reminded me sometimes of characters on the -stage, two figures in some graceful pantomime who had been drilled to -make the same gestures in time to the same music and who moved always -through the close articulate measure of their parts in perfect unison, -tracing parallel patterns in the space round them, mysteriously united -yet never touching and scarcely ever looking at each other.</p> - -<p>Such an impression I sometimes had in the old days when I still lived -in the bosom of the family, and now, as a kind of moral outcast, -looking back I find even more in it than I did then. I see them not -so much as actors who had learned a part, but almost as hypnotized -beings who, whether they wished it or not, were bound to move and -act and speak in a certain way. What it all comes to, I suppose, is -that they were the fine perfect products of a system that held their -individualities chained. So perfectly representative of their class, of -their race, of the discriminative intolerant idea of their forebears, -as to have been born with a complete set of gestures and prejudices -and preferences and vocal intonations all ready for them, existing in -them regardless of their own volition. I see them as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> the slaves of a -hyper-sensitive, super-subtle inheritance, and I understand that with -them many things were more truly impossible than with most people. It -was impossible for them to make an ugly abrupt movement. The strong -occult force of their breeding controlled their limbs and gave them a -kind of grace that if one watched carefully was reminiscent of heavy -powdered wigs and unwieldy panniers. It was impossible for them to -mingle in crowds or walk along the street or take an interest in public -affairs. It was impossible for them to look at the public without scorn -or subject themselves to the physical contact of poor people in crowded -trains. Instinctively they manœuvred to hide themselves from the eyes -of the public. It was really as if they had lived under another régime -and could not quite realize this one.</p> - -<p>How could I not understand what Claire meant when she said that <i>Maman</i> -was afraid that Jane would crush her? Jane was no reincarnation of some -spoiled beauty of another century. If she represented any one but her -glorious healthy self, it was more likely a Red Indian princess or a -blond Norse amazon. Jane had not learned in a previous existence how -to conceal one set of feelings and delicately convey another. She did -not even know that such feats were expected of her. She would learn, -but it would take time. For the moment she was just obviously what she -seemed, a brave ardent young thing, capable of all sorts of mistakes. -She would come in with her long beautiful stride and tower over my -mother and sweep down to her; to Claire it seemed like swooping not -sweeping, and my mother would huddle in her chair and struggle against -the inclination to shut her eyes, and then the confused, intimidated, -glowing creature in the marvellous clothes of Philibert’s designing, -would sit dumbly, wistfully, waiting and wanting something, anything in -the way of a crumb of comfort; would watch for any sign of unstudied -natural joy at her presence and would accept in its place the pleasant -flow of my mother’s vague affability, and would go away<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> humbly, to -come back the next day with an offering, flowers or a book or some -precious little gift, and always my mother would say—“<i>Comme vous êtes -gentille.</i>”</p> - -<p>And besides all this the things that Jane and Philibert did were not -calculated to amuse my mother in the least. She had never cared about -public shows, and had always considered the fine art of entertaining -to exist in the number of people one eliminated. Philibert’s enormous -parties, his balls, his dinners of a hundred couples, his fantastic -“<i>Fêtes Champêtres</i>,” dismayed her. She thought they were Jane’s -parties. It was Jane whom she held responsible for all that was -spectacular in the brilliant existence of her son; it was Jane she -blamed for the phenomenal marble Paris mansion. It would have been -impossible to have explained to her that Jane had scarcely glanced -at the plans of the house when Philibert presented them to her. She -refused to go to any of their parties. Her dislike of magnificence -was a part of her deep absolute view of what was “<i>comme il faut</i>.” -Magnificence was suitable to crowned heads, and though she would not -have admitted that anything was too good for her son, she did not -like to see him playing at being a king, and perhaps because all her -life she had cherished a loyal personal sentiment for the destitute -Orleans family, taking their political mourning for her own, it filled -her with horror to find her son surrounded by all the trappings of -an actor monarch and scattering largesse to the rabble, in a way her -impoverished, unrecognized, exiled sovereign could not do. His enormous -house, which she persisted in believing to be Jane’s, depressed her. -The really phenomenal harmony of its richness escaped her. The regal -vistas of its apartments, all warmed and glowing and made by her son’s -consummate artistry habitable left her cold. The fine tapestries, the -riot of blended colour, the audacious effects of light and shadow, the -profusion of precious lustrous silks and gleaming brocades, wearied -her gaze. Knowing well enough, who better, good things when she saw -them, there were here too many to look at. I have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> pathetic memories of -her shrunken black figure tripping through those immense chambers on -Philibert’s arm. I see her pass with little pattering steps across the -endless expanse of polished floor, her lorgnon to her eyes, her head -turning this way and that with quick bird-like movements, pretending to -look at everything while refusing to see anything at all. The size of -the place oppressed her and made her suspicious. She could not believe -that such enormous rooms could be full of fine little treasures. Her -experience told her that fine pieces were rare and were kept under -glass, and were not to be bought, save at a price. Even Jane’s fortune, -which she had been so often made to feel was too much for good taste, -could not in her opinion have filled that house with genuine things. -Her son had been led astray. He was guilty of imitation. If he took her -straight up to a gem of a cabinet and made her scrutinize it, well, she -admitted its existence, but what was one cabinet in a room where there -were twenty? She was in her way incorrigible. She did not believe in -miracles, and while the rest of Paris was gaping it only made her feel -dreadfully tired to be so put upon. That was her real feeling about the -gigantic mansion. It made her feel tired. She was obliged to take the -grand staircase slowly and stop on each landing. With her hand on the -polished marble balustrade she toiled up it panting, gently catching -her breath in the presence of mocking marble fauns and disdainful -goddesses. Dear little fragile figure, growing smaller and more bent -with time in her unmodish garments and simple black bonnet, fine proud -gentle lady, I believe in the bottom of her heart she was sometimes -afraid one of the army of constantly changing footmen would mistake her -identity and show her to the housekeeper’s room. It was the sort of -thing she would have taken as a horrid joke with a dreadful moral.</p> - -<p>I find that I am taking a vast deal of trouble and time in explaining -my own family, and seem to be getting <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>absolutely no nearer my goal, -that is the heart of Jane’s own problem. And yet I am sure it was all a -part of it. In going into my mother’s feelings in such detail, I do so -because of what happened later, and I sometimes wonder whether perhaps -my mother foresaw what was going to happen and knowing whichever way -it turned out that she was going to take Philibert’s part, made up -her mind at the outset that it would all be much simpler if she never -gave Jane any encouragement to expect anything else. Her attitude of -increasing aloofness as time went on becomes more explicable if one -interprets it as an anticipation of trouble. Heaven knows trouble -was obvious enough to anybody who was interested. Weren’t there bets -on at the club as to how long Philibert would stand it, that is, his -enforced conjugal felicity? And other bets as to how long it would -take his wife to find out certain things that every one else knew? It -required no special prophetic gift to foresee that some day something -was bound to happen, and I am sure my mother foresaw it. But I am a -little puzzled as to why Philibert himself chose to make matters worse -by keeping his wife and mother estranged, for I am perfectly sure that -if Philibert had wanted my mother to love Jane, she would have done it, -simply because she always did what he asked her. And again, if <i>Maman</i> -had brought herself to care for Jane, she would have influenced her -and guided her; she might even have prevented her from precipitating a -crisis. One would have thought Philibert would have availed himself of -such aid. But no, that was not his idea. His idea was quite other. He -wanted his mother to dislike his wife for reasons of his own, or, at -any rate, he did not want any understanding intimacy to exist between -the two. On the other hand he asked Claire to make friends with her and -help him with her education. And he seemed content that Jane and Bianca -should be friends. Was this because he knew Claire would never care for -Jane, however much she saw of her, and was afraid my mother<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> might? I -don’t know, I am not sure. There are aspects of the case that grow more -obscure the more I think of them.</p> - -<p>As for Bianca—and Jane—that I learned about afterwards.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p> - -<h2>IX</h2> - -<p>Claire was a person who attracted people to her in spite of herself, -even those people whom she did not like. It had been so in the case -of Jane. My sister charmed more often than not without wanting to do -so. People in general were to her uninteresting and indiscriminate -admiration annoyed her. She was constantly worried by having to -snub would-be admirers who bored her. It was generally accepted in -the family that she was the victim of her own charm, and we often -half-laughingly commiserated with her. My mother once quite seriously -said, “<i>Cette pauvre</i> Claire, with whom every one is in love and who -cares for no one, it is really very tiring for her.”</p> - -<p>Jane’s devotion was to her from the first unwelcome, though for a year -or two she put up with it kindly enough. When Philibert asked her to -help him with Jane’s education, she replied that she already had four -children of her own to bring up, but she nevertheless let Jane go -about with her, gave her advice about people and clothes, let her do -errands for her; and in a mild way returned the girl’s demonstrations -of affection, but it all bored and worried her. There was for her no -pleasure in being adored by a young woman whom she found to be stupid. -She did not on the whole care much for women, and often said she did -not believe in their friendship. Her need of affection was abundantly -supplied to her in her own family. Between her mother and her children -she found all the tenderness she required; in society she asked merely -to be amused. At bottom she was a confirmed cynic. Human nature -appeared to her unsympathetic and pitiable. Her family represented for -her a refuge from a world that disgusted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> her more than it interested. -There was for her something ultimate and absolute in the ties of blood -that gave to the members of a family, all of them mere ordinary human -beings, a special precious significance for each other. If she had ever -analyzed it she would have said—“But of course I know that <i>Maman</i> -and Philibert and Blaise and <i>Tante</i> Marianne are no different from -other people, but that does not matter, they are different for me. -It’s not that I believe in my brothers as men, it’s that I believe in -their relationship to me, and that, is the only thing I do believe in. -Philibert may be the most selfish man in Paris; nevertheless he would -not be selfish to me. That’s all, and that is enough. I don’t believe -in men. I don’t believe in women. I don’t believe in myself or in love -or happiness, but I believe in my family.” But of course she never did -so express herself. She was not given to talking about herself.</p> - -<p>Philibert realized from the first that Claire was necessary to his -scheme, and somehow or other he prevailed upon her to exert herself -on his behalf. She was constantly at his house and became its chief -ornament, and one of its most potent attractions. Jane had her place, -usually at the top of the staircase, but Claire’s corner was the -corner people looked for. Always more quietly dressed than any one -else, (and I believe that Philibert planned the contrast of Jane’s -gorgeous brocades with an eye to the dramatic effect of the two -women) my sister created about her an atmosphere, a hush, a kind of -breathless attention. I have seen her often appear in one of those -great doorways, a slim, shadowy figure, in trailing grey draperies, -and stand there silently while gradually her presence made itself -felt, drew all eyes to her and created a feeling among the assembled -people that a new charm, a finer quality, had been conveyed to the -atmosphere by her being there. Wonderful Claire, clever Philibert; -they played beautifully into each other’s hands. I do not mean that -they were coldly calculating in regard to each other. On the contrary, -their mutual <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>admiration gave them, each one, the warmest affectionate -glow. They rejoiced each in the rare qualities of the other, and -Claire, knowing that in Philibert’s house she would find men worthy -of appreciating her, knowing too, that no artist could so set off her -full value as her brother, seemed unlike my mother to derive a certain -amount of half-cynical amusement from what went on in that mansion. -It is, of course, possible that at bottom she was no more averse to -lunching “<i>dans l’intimité</i>” with royalties than was Mrs. Carpenter. -In any event, princes of royal blood paid court to her in Philibert’s -salons. And Philibert was right when he placed her beside him in -that house. She made it <i>comme il faut</i>. Her presence was to it a -benediction.</p> - -<p>It had taken three years to build Philibert’s palace, and by the time -it was finished, Claire had prevailed upon her husband to move into -Paris and buy there a very nice house of his own. On the whole, things -had turned out for her better than any of us had expected. Six years -of what he would have called I suppose conjugal bliss had tempered the -ardour of my brother-in-law, who had to his wife’s immense relief begun -to look elsewhere than in his home for his pleasures. Though she had -never complained of her slavery and now never spoke of her freedom, we -all knew what had happened and were relieved. My mother was delighted. -“<i>Enfin</i>, he hasn’t killed her,” was her way of expressing it to me. -“The poor child is prettier than ever, and she manages so as not to be -talked about.” What it was that she managed I had no reason for asking. -If Claire was happy, if at last she had selected some one from among -her numerous admirers whom she could love and who was beautifying her -life for her, then all was well. I had no fault to find with her there. -My mother’s reading of the case seemed to me the true one. My mother -had suffered over her daughter’s marriage, and was glad to have some -one make up to her child some part of the joy of life she deserved.</p> - -<p>All this was quite satisfactory. It never occurred to any<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> one of us -to disapprove of Claire. How could we? Why should we? Had she done -anything preposterous like running away with a footman we should still -have stood by her. As it was she remained one of the most admired women -in Paris, and the least talked about, and her sentimental life was -for us a vague rather romantic secret realm which we took for granted -and respected. We never pryed into her affairs, and when one day -Philibert, in my mother’s drawing room, twitted Claire with the fact -that her beauty increased in proportion to her husband’s infidelities, -she merely laughed shyly and said nothing, knowing well enough that -we expected no explanation. The episode would certainly have passed -unnoticed, if Jane’s face had not shown it to be for her a moment of -quite terrible revelation. It was, I remember, on a Sunday afternoon. -We had all been lunching with my mother, Philibert, Jane, Claire and -I, and were sitting by the fire with our coffee cups. Philibert, with -his coat-tails over his arms, standing on the hearthrug, had been -quizzing me. He was in excellent spirits, having just brought off some -one of his social coups—I think it was the Prince of Wales that week -who had dined with him, and Philibert was particularly pleased with -Claire. His little sally had been meant and received as a token of -affection. Unfortunately he had forgotten Jane; or it may be that he -had not forgotten her and had spoken deliberately. It is possible that -he thought the time had come to carry her education a step further. -He probably felt it tiresome to be always on his guard as to what he -said in her presence for all the world as if she were a <i>jeune fille</i>. -She had heard and continued to hear in the houses she frequented, -enough talk of all kinds, heaven knows, to enlighten her as to the -habits of our world, but for all that we had instinctively all of us -in her presence been careful of what we said to each other. It was, -I suppose, our tribute to her innocence, or perhaps even to our fear -of her judgments. More than once I, for one, had stammered under the -gaze of her <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>candid eyes and had swallowed the words that were on the -tip of my tongue. On this occasion the phrase spoken would not have -struck me as dangerous. I did not look at Jane to see how she took -it. I merely happened to be facing her on the sofa and couldn’t help -seeing the pallor that mantelled her face like a coating of wax. It -was like that, not as if she had grown pale because of the ebbing of -blood from her face, but as if a kind of coating of misery and fear had -visibly enveloped her in whiteness. For a moment I did not understand, -and failed to connect Philibert’s words with her aspect. “But, Jane,” -I exclaimed, “what is it? Are you ill?” Fiercely she motioned me to -be silent, gripping my arm with her strong hand so as to hurt me, and -conveying somehow without speaking, for she could not speak, that she -wanted me not to attract the attention of the others. Unfortunately -Philibert had taken it all in. He may have been watching for the effect -of his speech. His next words and his general behaviour give colour to -such a theory. He literally jumped forward toward her across the carpet.</p> - -<p>“But, my poor child,” he cried out derisively, “don’t make up a face -like that. It’s most unpleasant. <i>Voyons</i>, what a way to behave in your -mother-in-law’s drawing-room. If I had known you were so stupid, I -should have left you at home.”</p> - -<p>Those were his words. They were uttered with animation, with an almost -ferocious gaiety, and to accompany them he tweaked her playfully but -not gently by the ear. I got up from my place beside her, feeling -myself flush to my hair. I turned my back to get away from the sight of -that cowering creature huddling back from the hand that held her.</p> - -<p>Exaggerated? Certainly she was exaggerated. Idiotic? Perhaps so. -Understand her? Of course I didn’t. It was not until long after that -I began to understand her. It was enough for me at that moment to -understand Philibert<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> and perceive that never, even if she lived with -him for twenty years and maintained intact the dignity of her honesty, -would he respect her.</p> - -<p>Claire had been a passive spectator of this little passage between -husband and wife. A slight flush had mounted to her cheek, a flush I -took to be of annoyance, for she rose a moment later with more than -usual abruptness and kissed my mother good-bye, ignoring completely the -other two, not so much as looking at them as she made for the door. -Jane, however, was too quick for her, and wrenching herself free from -Philibert, was upon her before she turned the door knob.</p> - -<p>“Don’t go like that,” she cried, “don’t be annoyed. I know he was -joking. I know he did not mean it.” She seemed to be trying to grasp -Claire in her arms, to get hold of her, to cling to her. I had a -confused impression of something almost like a scuffle taking place -between the two women, and of Claire actually throwing her off. I may -be wrong. It may have been merely the expression on Claire’s face and -the tone of her voice that sent Jane backwards. I don’t know, but it -was quite pitifully horrid, and again I turned away my eyes, and with -my back to them heard Claire say in her coldest tone, and God knows how -cold her lovely voice can be—</p> - -<p>“Ne soyez pas grotesque, je vous en prie. Laissez-moi partir.”</p> - -<p>I do not mean to suggest that I sympathized with Jane that afternoon, -for I did not. It was all too absurdly out of proportion. She had -created out of nothing, out of the blue, a scene in my mother’s -drawing-room, and one had only to look at the little delicate crowded -place to know that scenes were abhorrent there. I believe actually that -a small table full of trinkets had been overturned in Jane’s rush for -the door, and I know that a coffee-cup was broken. It was the sort of -thing one simply never had conceived of. My mother’s nerves were very -much upset, and when Jane turned to her after Claire had shut the door -in her face,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> wanting to beg her pardon, <i>Maman</i> could only wave her -hands before a twitching face and say, “No, no, my child. Don’t say any -more, it is enough for today.”</p> - -<p>After that I did not see Jane for some weeks. Neither she nor Philibert -came to lunch with my mother the following Sunday, nor the Sunday -after. On the third Sunday Philibert came alone and explained briefly -that Jane was indisposed. He seemed preoccupied. He talked little, -ate nothing, and drank a number of glasses of wine as if he were very -thirsty. His lips twitched constantly, forming themselves into a kind -of snarl, and he was continually jerking the ends of his moustaches. -I remember thinking that he looked for all the world as if he wanted -to bite some one. He had never appeared more cruel. I began to have a -sickening foreboding. Claire eyed him strangely. I wondered if she had -something of my feeling. How I wished she had!</p> - -<p>It all came out after luncheon. He could not contain himself. He was -beside himself with exasperation. Jane’s stupidity was too colossal. -He could not put up with being loved like that any longer. She had -made him a scene after the absurd affair of the other day and had -asked him to swear that he would never be unfaithful to her. Here he -raised his eyebrows, hunched his shoulders and threw out his hands. -It was incredible how she had gone on. She had said that she had been -thinking over his remark to Claire and was frightened by it, that when -he had spoken so lightly of his brother-in-law’s infidelities it had -come to her as a tremendous shock that such a thing was possible. An -abyss had opened before her—that was her word. How could Claire go on -living with a man who was unfaithful? She could not understand. What -did he mean by her sister’s growing more beautiful in proportion to her -husband’s infidelities? Had he meant anything, or was it only a joke? -Did Claire know her husband made love to other women? She loved Claire, -she thought her wonderful, but she didn’t understand. And so on and so -on. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span></p> - -<p>Philibert recited it all to us. His voice grew shriller and shriller. -He piled up phrase after phrase in a crescendo of exasperation until he -burst into a loud laugh with the words—“She talks, she talks of our -marriage being made in Heaven.” He grasped his head in his hands.</p> - -<p>Claire’s face wore a sneer.</p> - -<p>“She professes not to know then, how it was her mother made it?” she -asked.</p> - -<p>Philibert came as it were to a halt. He looked at us all one after -another. His face was of a sudden impudent, cool, smooth. He began to -explain lucidly.</p> - -<p>“Imagine to yourself, she really did not know it. She believed it was -a love match. She believed it till yesterday, I mean last night, or -it may be it was this morning, I don’t remember looking at the time. -Anyhow, as she wouldn’t let me sleep I told her. I told her all about -it.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t believe she didn’t know,” said Claire.</p> - -<p>He took her up quickly. “There, my dear, you are wrong, and you miss -the whole meaning of her boring character.” He was enjoying himself -now, was my brother, dissecting a human being was one of his favourite -pastimes. In the pleasure it now afforded him to analyze Jane, he -forgot for the moment his personal annoyance.</p> - -<p>“One must remember,” he mused, “that she is a savage, with the -mentality of a Huguenot minister. If you could hear her talk of the -sacrament of marriage! She is of a solemnity, and her ideals, <i>Mon -Dieu!</i> what ideals! She once said to me that her grandfather loved her -grandmother at the day of his death just in the same way that he loved -her on the day of her wedding. When I replied ‘How very disgusting’ she -merely stared and left the room. She is always quoting her grandmother -and her Aunt Patty. What a background—I ask you? St. Mary’s Plains! -It would appear that in St. Mary’s Plains they always marry for love -and live together in endless monotony. Faithfulness—she is in love -with faithfulness; purity too, she thinks a great deal of purity. In -fact she has a most <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>unpleasant set of theories. They fill up her -brain. There is no room for reality. What goes on before her eyes means -nothing to her. No, Claire, you are wrong. She knew nothing of her -mother’s bargaining with me for her little life. Believe it or not, it -is true. She married me for myself and believed the good God sent me -to her, and my revelations were a shock. Impossible she should have -simulated the emotion they caused her. The finest actress in the world -could not have done it. I admit that as a piece of acting it would have -been a fine performance. On the stage I would have enjoyed it, but in -one’s own bedroom, the conjugal bedroom—ugh! no.”</p> - -<p>“What did she do?” asked Claire.</p> - -<p>“She leaned up against the wall, face to the wall, I mean, flattened -against it, her hands high above her head, palms on the wall, too, as -if she were reaching up to the ceiling.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t see anything wonderful in that.”</p> - -<p>“It was a fine picture,” said Philibert. “But she stayed there too -long. She stayed like that some minutes. In fact I went on talking for -a long time to that image, that long back and those outstretched arms. -It reminded one of a crucifixion, modern interpretation. I was not sure -that she was not dying and expected her to fall backwards.”</p> - -<p>My mother had been fussing nervously with her shawl, her sleeves, her -hair, giving herself little pats and tugs and looking this way and -that. Her face was drawn and working. She kept moistening her lips and -saying—“Is it possible? Is it possible?” She now broke in and cried -plaintively—</p> - -<p>“But, my son, all this is terrible. I do not understand. What was it -you told her?”</p> - -<p>“I told her quite simply, mother dear, that I had married her for her -money, that I had managed it all with Mrs. Carpenter before I had ever -seen her; (Old Izzy is done for with Jane now, I am afraid, but that -can’t be helped) that I was tired of making love to her and would be -grateful if she would become less exacting.” </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span></p> - -<p>“<i>Mon Dieu, Mon Dieu!</i>” wailed my mother. “Was it necessary to do -anything so definite? Couldn’t you have gradually—<i>enfin</i>, does one -say such things?”</p> - -<p>“No, one does not, not in a civilized world, but Jane isn’t civilized. -You’ve no idea what it is with her.”</p> - -<p>Claire had risen and wandered away to the window with her usual -drifting nonchalance.</p> - -<p>“<i>Et après?</i>” she asked over her shoulder. “What did she say -afterwards, when you had finished?”</p> - -<p>“She said nothing, she fell down in a swoon.”</p> - -<p>“Backwards?”</p> - -<p>“No, she had turned and was standing with her back to the wall and her -hands against it, leaning forward and glaring, rather like a tiger, -ready to spring when I had finished. But she didn’t spring. When I -mentioned a certain evening before our marriage on which I had taken -her to the Opera, the queer light went out of her eyes. It was like -snuffing out a candle. Then she fainted. I had to call her maid. It -was two hours before she came round. She faints as she does everything -else, too much, too much. <i>Quel tempérament, tout de même.</i> You have no -idea what it is to live with her—and at the same time so fastidious. -Certain things she won’t put up with. Professes a horror of—of the -refinements of sentiment. A prude and a <i>passionnée</i>. Ah, it is all too -difficult. Anyhow, it is finished, thank God for that.”</p> - -<p>At this <i>Maman</i> wailed out—“Finished? What do you mean, finished?”</p> - -<p>Philibert laughed. “I only mean that she won’t bother me any more; not -that she’ll leave me. Ah, no, she won’t leave me.” He ruminated; after -a moment he sighed. “And I may be wrong, she may bother me after all, -in a new way, in a new way. She is very obstinate. She may try to make -me love her, now that she knows I don’t. It all depends on whether -she hates me or not. One never can tell. And, of course, she knows -nothing but what I have told you. It never occurs to her that I could -be like other<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> men. Even now she doesn’t suppose that her husband is -unfaithful, and even now I imagine that fact will be of some importance -to her. It is all very curious. I have told you in order to warn you. -It is quite possible that she will come to you for help.”</p> - -<p>He pulled down his cuffs, twisted his moustaches into place, looked at -himself in the glass over the chimney piece, and bent over my mother, -kissing the top of her head.</p> - -<p>“<i>Au revoir, Maman chérie.</i> Don’t let her worry you. Just quiet her -down a little. But if it tires you to see her, of course you needn’t. I -only suggest it for her sake, and for us all. She will settle down. Au -revoir.”</p> - -<p>He went to Claire and spoke to her in an undertone. I saw her shake her -head. “<i>Non</i>,” I heard her say. “<i>Je ne peux pas. Tout cela mécœure.</i> -Elle est vraiment trop bête.” He shrugged his shoulders. For me he had -no word of instruction, nor any of good-bye. From the window I watched -him cross the pavement to his limousine. For a moment he stood, one -patent leather foot on the step of the car, talking to his footman and -arranging as he did so the white camelia in his buttonhole. His face -was bland. His top-hat had a wonderful sheen. We all knew where he was -going. Bianca had returned to Paris after a six months sojourn in Italy -and had refused to go back to her husband. The connection for us was -obvious. We had been aware for some time of the renewed intimacy of -these two.</p> - -<p>Philibert waved his gloves at me through the window of his limousine -and grinned. A new light dawned on me. It had all been a comedy. He -had done it on purpose. Bianca had put him up to it. If it had not -been for Bianca, he would never have precipitated a crisis with Jane. -All that about her affection being insufferable was nonsense. It was -in his interest that his wife should adore him, and no one when left -to himself could look after his own interests so well as Philibert. -In quarelling with Jane he had done something from his own point of -view incredibly foolish. Had Bianca not interfered he would never have -done it.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> But what was she up to? That was the question. How should I -know? Who on earth could ever tell what Bianca had hidden away in that -intriguing Italian mind of hers? That she meant no good to any one, of -that I was certain.</p> - -<p>When I turned away from the window, Claire was stroking my mother’s -hand. She looked at me inimically. Something in my face must have -betrayed me, though I said nothing. “Don’t ask me to sympathize with -Jane,” she brought out, “for I can’t. I wash my hands of the whole -affair.”</p> - -<p>My mother’s look was kinder than Claire’s. Her eyes held that proud -plaintive sweetness that denied all passion, either of anger, reproach, -or pity. Her face was very white and her eyelids reddened, but her -remark was characteristic.</p> - -<p>“She has her own mother to go to, and her own mother to thank if she is -unhappy.”</p> - -<p>And with that she drew me down to her with one of her beautiful -gestures, and kissed me. I must have been in a highly excited and -unnatural state of mind by this time, for the rare caress, so often -awaited in vain, aroused in me at that moment a vague suspicion. Was -she too, I remember asking myself, afraid I would try to get her to -help poor Jane? If so her fears were unnecessary. Jane did not go to -them. Philibert had been mistaken in thinking that she would rush to -them for help. The time was to come when they would go to her, but of -that later. She spoke to no one of her trouble, and neither Claire nor -my mother laid eyes on her for months. We heard later that she had gone -to Joigny with Geneviève, her little girl. She stayed at the Château -de <i>Sainte Clothilde</i> all summer alone. Long afterwards I found out -that she had not even so much as spoken to her own mother. Jane never -reproached Mrs. Carpenter, never opened her lips on the subject to any -one, until the other day when she told me everything. Poor old Izzy -died the following winter, in ignorance of what her daughter thought -about it all.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span></p> - -<h2>X</h2> - -<p>I am no fatalist. I do not believe that the good God has ordered -to be written down in a book what all the millions of little souls -on the earth are to be doing this day a year hence. He, no doubt, -in his wisdom has a general idea of such coming events as famines, -earthquakes, wars and pestilences, but man must remain full of -surprises for his Maker; his activities are incalculable, and tiny -circumstances, the effect of his minute will, have a way of spoiling -the fine large trend of the great cumulative power of the past that -we call fate. It is true that such characters as Bianca and Philibert -have about them the quality of the inevitable. Certainly, as compared -to Jane, they were not free people. They were the children of an old -and elaborate civilization, and impelled by obscure impulses that they -themselves never recognized and that had their source in some dim dark -poisonous pocket of the past.</p> - -<p>Bianca, more than any women I have ever known, seemed fated to be what -she was and to do as she did. She appears to me now as I remember her -as the little white slave of the powers of darkness. But she liked her -darkness. She dipped into it deeper and deeper. She sank of her own -will and because of her own morbid and insatiable curiosity.</p> - -<p>But Jane was free. One had only to be in her presence to feel it. No -morbid complexes in her, one would have said. Compared to her we were -like so many pigmies in chains, and Bianca beside Jane was like a -ghost or a woman walking in her sleep. Of course Bianca hated Jane. I -don’t believe in their friendship. As it was, I found it disgusting -of Philibert to let Jane go about with Bianca.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> And Bianca must have -been pretending to care for Jane out of perversity. Their natures were -as antipathetic as their looks were opposed. Bianca with her little -snow-white vicious face, so white that it showed pale bluish lights and -shadows, her eccentric emaciated elegance of body, her enormous blue -eyes fringed by their thick eyelashes that were like bushes and that -she plastered with black till they stuck together: Jane, magnificent -young animal, strong child amazon, towering shyly above us, looking -down on us with her serious wistful gaze, holding out her marvellous -hands to Bianca, suspicious of nothing, wanting to be friends—Jane -insists that they cared for each other—I can’t admit it. Of course -Bianca hated her, and the fact that until she saw Jane’s hands she had -seen no others so beautiful as her own made it no easier for Jane, for -Bianca may have been a priestess of the occult powers of darkness, she -was as well a vain and envious young woman. A cat, Fan Ivanoff called -her simply.</p> - -<p>On the other hand I believe that if Paris had not mixed itself up -in the long duel between these two women it might have ended less -tragically, at any rate less tragically for Jane. Had they lived in -London or Moscow or New York it would have been different. They would -not have been so conspicuous. The vast and impersonal life of a great -community would have absorbed them. But Paris held them close and -watched them. It held them for twenty years. If they went away for a -time they always came back and met face to face and could not get away -from each other, for Paris is small and Paris is more personal than -any city in the world. It is a spoiled beauty, excessively interested -in personalities. I speak now of Paris, the lovely capricious -creature that has existed for centuries, that has kept the special -quality of its bland sparkling beauty through invasions, revolutions -and massacres, and is still elegant under the dominion of the most -bourgeois of governments. I speak of the Paris that seems to me to -possess a soul, the soul of an immortal yet mortal woman, seductive<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> -pliable, submissive and indestructible. Do I sound fantastic? I have -communed with my city for years, at night and in the morning and at -mid-day. I have been a lonely man wandering through its streets and -it has confided to me its secrets. Most often at night, when all the -little people that inhabit its houses are asleep, I have listened, -and like a sigh breathing up from its silvery bosom, I have heard its -voice and understood its whispered confidences that carry a lament -for days that are gone and are full of the tales of its many amours. -Ah, my worldly-wise beauty, mistress of a hemisphere, what you do -not know of men is indeed not worth knowing. And still they come, -covetous, lustful, enamoured. What crimes have they not committed, what -birthrights not denied, what fortunes not wasted, what fatherlands not -repudiated, to win your favour?</p> - -<p>It was this Paris that took part in the affair of Jane and Bianca. Why -not? How could it have done otherwise? It has always been attracted by -intrigue. It has a taste for drama. I repeat it dotes on personality; -any personality that is striking, that catches its attention. The type -matters little. Having long ago substituted taste for morals it has no -ethical prejudices. It does not dislike a bandit; it adores a <i>farceur</i> -such as Philibert. It delights in demagogues and artists and men of -intelligence whether they are criminals or saints. Once in a hundred -years, like a woman surfeited with pleasure and sensation, it will -respect a person of character.</p> - -<p>Bianca and Philibert were true children of Paris. They were its spoiled -and petted darlings and they knew this and laid store by it. At bottom -it was Paris that Philibert was continually making love to. He had a -quite inordinate liking for his city, a jealous proprietory affection. -I believe that had he been exiled from it, he would have died, and I -believe that his desire to curry favour with it was the motive of most -of his actions. It was for Paris that he gave his wonderful parties and -concocted his fanciful <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>amusements. He treated it literally as if it -were his mistress. He cajoled, he flattered, he bullied, he caressed, -and he spent on it millions, Jane’s millions. It was not merely an -ordinary vanity that impelled him. He saw himself as the benevolent -despot of Paris, its favourite lover and its protector. To add to its -brilliance he enticed to it princes and celebrities from every country -of Europe. Europe was to him nothing more than a field to be exploited -for the amusement of Paris. He would have beheld every city in Germany, -Austria, Russia or Italy razed to the ground without a twinge of regret -or horror, but when in 1914 the Germans were marching on Paris, then -he was like a man possessed. I can remember him, white to the lips, -rushing in from Army Headquarters to see the Archbishop. He had had -long before any one else the idea of piling sandbags round Notre Dame -to protect the stained glass windows. He was like a maniac.</p> - -<p>As for Bianca, she was unique and Paris wore her like a jewel. The -fact that she was half Italian seemed strangely enough not to mitigate -against her, though her mother, the wonderful bacchante who had become -in memory a legendary figure, had found it at first none too easy to -please, according to Aunt Clothilde. The Venetian had been a woman of -quick passions and child-like humours. She was remembered for her many -love affairs, the garlands of bright flowers she wore in her hair, and -the habit she had of sticking pins into little wax effigies of people -she wished would die. An impulsive, playful, improvident creature, with -the beauty of a peasant and the naïveté of a child. She had died when -Bianca was a child of six, died of home-sickness so they said, for her -beloved Italy. I don’t know, I imagine that François her husband had -something to answer for there. It was said that he had found a wax -effigy of himself in her room, containing no less than three hundred -pins, and had laughed delightedly. He was a cynical devil. Aunt Clo -says that he used to lock up his wife in their dismal château in -Provence and keep her on bread<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> and water for days at a time. In any -case he did not lock up Bianca, nor did Bianca seem to have inherited -any of her mother’s aptitude for getting into scrapes. One could not -easily detect in her the Italian strain, one only noticed that she was -a little different from French women, with a different timbre of voice -and an occasional mannerism evocative of something foreign, something -lazy and sly and mysterious, and if she had inherited secret affinities -with that warm romantic southern country of intrigue and superstition, -she kept them hidden, together with all manner of other things, strange -things, violent obsessions, curious tastes, dark obscure desires, and -knowledge of a dangerous kind. She chose to appear at this time, I -allude to the period covering the first years of Jane’s marriage to -Philibert, as merely the supreme expression of the elegant world of -Paris.</p> - -<p>It is curious to watch the rise and fall of women in society. Women -loom on the horizon; suddenly for no apparent reason. A gold mine, a -rubber plantation, a motor-industry, suddenly looms into prominence. -It takes the fancy, it is advertised, it becomes popular, people -buy shares in it, the shares go higher and higher, the rush to buy -becomes a scramble, and then perhaps a fraud is discovered, there is a -collapse, and a large number of people find they have been expensively -fooled. So it is in society. Women loom on the horizon; suddenly -for no apparent reason they take the popular fancy. Comparatively -plain women or women we have all known for years and have considered -insignificant, become all at once conspicuous and important. Some one -calls her, the plain woman, a beauty. Some one else repeats it. People -become curious. They look at her with a new interest. A number of men -who were before indifferent to her charms begin to pay her marked -attention. The boom begins. Every one agrees that they have heretofore -been mistaken. Her nose is not a snub nose. She is a beauty. It is -whispered that so-and-so is <i>très emballé</i>. She is the success<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> of the -season. And after, when her day is over, she still retains something, -once having been acclaimed a beauty she remains a beauty. Only the men -who dubbed her nose Grecian look at it now with the same indifference -that it inspired when they called it “snub.” They have been engaged in -a little flurry in the social stock market. They do not admit having -been fooled, but being inveterate gamblers they turn their attention -elsewhere. The boom of the gold-mine is over, they go in for rubber. -The men, i. e. the gamblers, are always the same in these affairs; it -is the women who come and go.</p> - -<p>Bianca was not one of these. She was no shooting star in the social -heaven, she was a fixture, the little central shining constellation in -a firmament of lesser planets. As a child she had been an institution. -Strangers were taken to the Bois to look at the beautiful little girl, -who, all in white, white fur coat and white gaiters, and followed by a -white pom, walked there with her governess. She never sought the favour -of Paris. She laid her will upon it and it submitted. As she grew older -she made few women friends and tolerated no rivals. She was nice to old -men and old ladies, people like my mother adored her, but most young -women were afraid of her. Jane was an exception. Jane loved her. The -two as I say used to go about together. The intimacy was shocking to -me—I loathed Philibert for allowing it.</p> - -<p>Jane had no suspicions. Her confidence in Philibert was such as to make -us as a family quite nervous. What would she do, we asked ourselves, -when she found out? Paris took little account of Jane. After the -first flurry of excitement over her wedding, it lost sight of her. -She disappeared behind Philibert. Curious how such a little man could -hide from view a woman so much bigger than himself. It was a case of -perspective. He stood in the foreground. To the more distant public she -was invisible; to those who came nearer she appeared as nothing more -interesting than a large fine piece of furniture. Philibert<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> sometimes -in moments of good humour alluded to her as his Byzantine Madonna.</p> - -<p>I should defeat my own object in telling this story if I did not do -Philibert justice. Yet how do him justice? If he were a centipede or a -rare species of bird my task would be easier. But he lived on the earth -in the guise of a human being, and he was not quite a human being. And -it is difficult to be just to a brother such as Philibert. He always -loathed the sight of me. I don’t blame him for that. I loathe the -sight of myself. I am an ugly object. But Philibert found it amusing -to hate me and to make me constantly aware of my deformity. My twisted -frame seemed to produce in him a kind of itching frenzy, to tickle him -to dreadful laughter, to irritate him to nervous cruelty. And I was -unfortunately never able to grow a thick enough skin to protect me from -him.</p> - -<p>I suppose that I have always been jealous of Philibert. I loved -life, but it pushed me aside. I wanted it, I wanted it in all its -fulness, but it was Philibert who had it. And my incapacity to taste -so many of its pleasures has only made me regard it with a closer, -more wistful attention. I was like a ragamuffin in the street with -his nose plastered against the pastry-cook’s window, a ragamuffin -who dreamed that his pockets were full of gold, but who always found -that the bright coins he jingled so lovingly in his fingers were not -accepted over the counter. After repeated rebuffs, I gave up trying -to get anything, but I could not take my eyes from the feast and so, -even in my childhood, I resorted to the fiction of considering myself -an invisible spectator of other people’s doings, and I helped along -this little game by sitting as much as possible in dark corners or -behind the kindly screen of some large piece of furniture such as the -schoolroom piano. All that I asked of the world that so prodigiously -attracted my interest was that it should not notice me, and thus leave -me free to notice it, and I came at last to feel when some one out of -kindness or cruelty dragged me out of my corner, a sense of outrage.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> -So it was when Philibert, taking me by my collar, exposed me to kicks -and to laughter. So it was years later when Jane, taking me by the -hand, exposed me to the responsibilities of a friendship that demanded -action. I used to dodge Philibert when I could. I would have avoided -Jane’s confidence had I been able. Philibert’s tormenting in no way -involved me. I could just let him kick and was when he finished as free -as before to subside into my corner; with Jane it was different. Jane -involved me in everything.</p> - -<p>And now that I am obliged to think of my own personal relation to Jane, -I have as I do so, a feeling of pain that is like the throbbing of some -old hurt or the recurrence of an illness. Jane was magnificent and -healthy and whole. She was half a head taller than I. I am cursed with -a visualizing mind. As I set myself to the business of remembering her -life, I see her constantly moving before my eyes, visibly acting out -her drama, and I see myself, a wizened little man looking up at her -from a distance. I have an acute sense of an opportunity lost for ever, -of precious time wasted. For years I refused to sympathize with her as -her friend. For years I would not talk to her because I was afraid she -would complain to me of my family. How little I knew her!</p> - -<p>Slowly she imposed herself. Like a woman coming towards me in a fog, I -saw her grow more clear and more definite, until at last I recognized -her for what she was.</p> - -<p>Was I merely in love with her? Was it that? Was that all? If so she -never suspected it. If so I did not recognize the feeling. It is, of -course, the accusation my brother brought against me. He spoke of my -criminal passion for his wife. It is very curious. The cleverest men -are sometimes very obtuse. Philibert’s intelligence was of the kind -that made it impossible for him to understand simple things.</p> - -<p>In love with Jane? I find that I have no idea what the phrase means -and cannot apply it. It is as if I were trying to fit a little paper -pattern to a cloud floating off there in the heaven. My tenderness -for Jane does remind me a little of a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> cloud. It has changed so -often in shape and hue. At times it has seemed to me a little white -floating thing of celestial brightness, at others it has enveloped me -in darkness and always it has been intangible, vague, unlinked to the -earth.</p> - -<p>And yet, even to me, she did seem at first very queer. It seemed to -me that she was really too different to be innocent of all desire to -make trouble. She often annoyed me by remaining so silent when any one -else would have burst out with a flood of protest, and by going pale as -death when a moderate flush ought to have expressed a sufficient sense -of disturbance. The excessive emotional restraint evidenced by those -sudden mute pallors of hers used to worry me with their exaggeration. -I understood how this sort of thing, displeased my mother. I can -remember moments when I expected to see her bound across the room and -go crushing through the mirror, so tense was her physical stillness. -Claire used to look at her then with lifted eyebrows and turn away with -a nervous shrug of impatient disdain. I felt with Claire. I understood -this sort of thing little better than she did. We were accustomed to -people whose gestures were used to enhance the fine finished meaning of -spoken phrases, not to dumb creatures whose eyes and quivering nostrils -and long strong contracted fingers betrayed them in drawing rooms. I, -caught up in the fine web of my family’s prejudices, had found myself -from the midst of those delicate meshes seeing her as they saw her, -as some gorgeous dangerous animal who was tearing the very fabric of -their system to pieces with its many gyrations. As I say, I doubted her -innocence. I suppose like every one else in the family I was affected -by the glare Mrs. Carpenter’s obvious ambition threw over her. It -didn’t seem to me possible that Jane had married Philibert simply and -solely because he fascinated her. Not that I didn’t know Philibert -to be capable of fascinating any one he wanted to, but because such -fascinations had never seemed to me to contain in themselves any -basis for marriage. The truth involved too great a stretch for my -imagination. I had to find it out gradually. It <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>necessitated too, -the admission on my part that for Jane the name of Joigny counted for -absolutely nothing. I couldn’t be supposed to know that Jane didn’t -care a straw about marrying our family, when her mother so obviously -laid great store by her doing so.</p> - -<p>But I started to explain Philibert, and suddenly it comes to me; I -believe that at the bottom of everything he did was the controlling -impulse of his hatred of life. Undeniably he despised humanity. It -exasperated him to tears. Its stupidity put him in a nervous frenzy. -He was animated by a kind of rage of mockery. Everything that humanity -cherished was to him anathema. He had been born with a distaste for all -that men as a rule called goodness, and was nervously impelled towards -that which they called evil. And yet the evil he courted didn’t do him -any harm. I mean that it didn’t wear him out or spoil his digestion or -stupefy his intelligence. On the contrary it agreed with him. He had -begun to taste of life with the palate of a worn out old man. The good -bread and butter and milk of the sweetness of life was repulsive to him -and disagreed with him. He could live to be a hundred on a moral diet -that would have killed in a week a child of nature. Sophistication can -go no further. His equipment was complete, and he had, I suppose, no -choice. His nature was imposed on him at birth. His punishment was that -he lived alone in a world that bored him to extinction.</p> - -<p>Seriously, he appears to me now, as I think of him, as a man living -under a curse. I believe him to have been haunted by a sense of -unreality. To get in contact with something and feel it up against -him, that was one of the objects that obscurely impelled him. His -extravagances of conduct were efforts to arrive at the primitive -sensation of being alive. He did not know this. He only knew that -he hated everything sooner or later. He was conscious merely of an -irritating desire for sensation and amusement. His fear was that he -would run through all pleasure before he died and find nothing left for -him to do. It may have <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>occurred to him at times that the world minus -human interest did not provide endless sources of amusement. The things -one could do to distract oneself were not after all so very many. Even -vice has alas, its limitations, and it was not as if he were really in -himself vicious. He had an absolute incapacity for forming habits good -or bad. Could he have saddled himself with one or two the problem would -have been simpler. Could he have become a drunkard how many hours would -have been accounted for! If women had only had an indisputable power -over him, what a relief to let himself go. But no. He was the victim -of no malady and no craving. Drink as he might, his head remained -excruciatingly clear, debauch himself as much as he would, he remained -master of his passions, and day after day, year after year, he was -obliged to plan what he would do with himself.</p> - -<p>He found in the world only one kindred spirit. Bianca was the one -creature on earth who was a match for him. She was more, and he knew -it; she was in his own line his superior. Many people have been -astonished at Philibert’s <i>liaison</i> with Bianca. They have considered -the intimacy of these two people strange. I believe that Philibert’s -feeling for Bianca was as simple as the feeling of a good man for a -good woman, and as inevitable as if he and she were the only two white -people in a world of black men. I believe that Philibert turned to -Bianca in despair and clung to her out of loneliness. He and she were -alone on the earth, as alone as if they had been gods condemned to live -among men. She was his mate, moulded in the marvellous infernal mould -that suited him. <i>Voilà tout.</i></p> - -<p>But she was a more refined instrument than he was. She filtered -experience through a finer sieve. She had a steadier hand. Hers was -the great advantage of being able to wait for her amusement and her -effects. She was economical of her material. Philibert was afraid of -running through the whole of experience and exhausting too soon the -resources of life. Bianca was not afraid of anything, not even of -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>being bored. She meted out pleasure with deliberation. She calculated -her capital with fine precision, she measured the future with a -centimetre rule, and poured out sensation into a spoon, sipping it -slowly.</p> - -<p>Philibert was a spendthrift. Bianca was as close as a peasant woman. -And on the whole Philibert was honest. He did not try to deceive the -world. He was too impatient and despised it too much. When he fooled -it he did so openly and if people found him out he laughed. But Bianca -was deep as a well and as secretive as death. What Philibert was so he -appeared, but no one knew what Bianca was.</p> - -<p>During the summer that Jane spent alone at Joigny with her child, -Philibert and Bianca saw a great deal of each other. Bianca had musical -evenings that summer, in her garden, and little midnight suppers that -were quite another variety of gathering. Philibert never drank too much -at these suppers, neither did Bianca; as much cannot be said of some -of the others, if Philibert’s own account of these graceful orgies was -true. It was at one of them that poor Fan Ivanoff’s husband threw a -glass of champagne in her face, cutting her cheek. Neither Fan nor her -wretched Russian were asked again. Bianca did not like that sort of -thing.</p> - -<p>Jane has told me that she did not go to America that summer because -she hoped that Philibert would come to her at Joigny. She had found it -impossible after the first shock of his revelations to believe that -they were true. She told herself that he had been carried away by one -of his fine frenzies of talk and had said things he had not meant. It -was incredible to her that he should really mean that he cared nothing -for her. He had, to her mind, given her during those years of marriage -too many proofs to the contrary. Thinking it over alone she came to the -conclusion that there was some mystery here that only time would make -clear to her, and she therefore determined to wait. For a month, for -two months, for three, she believed he would come and if not explain, -at least put things on some decent footing,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> but he did not come for -the simple reason that Bianca wouldn’t let him.</p> - -<p>One has only to stop a moment and remember what he had at stake -to realize the extent of Bianca’s power over him. He was entirely -dependent on Jane for money. There was no settlement of any kind and -he had none of his own. With her enormous income pouring through his -hands, he had not a penny to show if she left him, and when people -accused him later, as some did, of having put aside a portion of that -revenue for himself they were wrong. His code of ethics, morals, -what you will, his idea anyway, of what was permitted and what was -not, allowed him to spend all her income and even run into debt; but -not keep any of it for the future. It did not shock him in the least -to spend Jane’s dollars on his various mistresses but it would have -disgusted him to find any of these coins sticking to his palms. As long -as he poured them out he was satisfied with himself; had he hoarded it -he would have been ashamed.</p> - -<p>In any case he knew the risk he ran, for he understood Jane, and knew -that the fear of scandal would not keep her if she once decided to -break with him. Nor could he have diminished the magnitude of the -catastrophe that this would mean. His sensational reign had only -begun, but it had already become vital to his happiness—I use the -word happiness, for lack of another. He had done great things, but -nothing as yet to compare with what he intended to do. The fame of his -entertainments had already reached the different capitals of Europe, -he had seen to that, but this was mere advertisement, preparatory -work necessary to the realization of his ultimate purpose. He was in -the position of a company promoter who had sent out his circulars and -gathered in a certain amount of capital, but had not yet founded his -business, and was still far from holding the monopoly he aimed at. He -was certain of success but he must have time. If his plans miscarried -now he would be his own swindler.</p> - -<p>Jane, he realized perfectly, felt little interest in his schemes. It -was one of the grudges he had against her. Her <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>attitude from the -first had been galling in its simplicity. When on the eve of their -marriage he had proposed to her building a house, she had suggested -that perhaps one of the beautiful old ones already existing in Paris -might do, but on his insisting that none could compare with the image -he had in his mind, she had given in with a sweetness and promptness -that had taken his breath away. It is characteristic of him, in this -connection, that though he wanted his own way and intended to get it, -his pleasure in doing so would have been very much greater had she made -it more difficult. Her pliability seemed to him stupid and when she -merely said, looking over the plans he proudly spread out before her, -some weeks later, “It’s dreadfully big, but if you like it I shall,” he -came near to gnashing his teeth. It was equally galling to him neither -to impress her nor to anger her, but he was obliged to contain himself, -for after all, as he put it to Claire, he couldn’t go and tear the -thing up just to spite himself. She would calmly have put the bits in -the waste-paper basket.</p> - -<p>When it came to arranging the house she had said—“I want one room at -the top for my own. No one is to go there. I shall arrange it myself,” -and the rest she left to him. I believe he never entered that room and -never knew what she had done to it. If he thought about it at all, -he doubtless thought she had arranged it as a chapel. He probably -imagined an altar and candles and photographs of the dead. Jane never -told him about it. Some obscure instinct of mistrust must have been at -the bottom of her shyness. She had furnished it quite simply like a -room in the Grey House in St. Mary’s Plains. Her Aunt Patty had sent -her a rocking chair, an old mahogany dresser, the window curtains from -her old room, and some of her special belongings that she had left -behind when she came away. It was the strangest room at the top of that -mansion. I remember well the day Jane took me to it. She had come in -from some function and was looking more worldly than usual. I remember -gazing beyond her outstretched silken arm with its jade <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>bracelets -into what seemed to me the most pathetic of sanctuaries. The window -curtains were of faded cretonne. The worn rocking chair had a knitted -antimacassar. Two battered rag dolls sat on an old spindle-legged -dresser against the wall. A spirit dwelt there that I did not know.</p> - -<p>But I am wandering away from my subject. What I started to say was that -Philibert’s life hung by the thread of Jane’s belief in him and he -knew it. If he thought that thread was an iron cable then that fatuous -belief alone might explain his putting such a strain upon it, but I -don’t believe it was so. However far he thought he could try Jane, -there was no sense in doing so, and he wouldn’t have done so had he -followed the dictates of his own wisdom. It would have been so easy -to have gone for a week to Joigny. Two days would have sufficed. A -three hours’ journey in the train, two days away from Bianca, and Jane -would have been reassured and his own future secure. So he would have -reasoned it out had he been left alone, but Bianca did not leave him -alone.</p> - -<p>Her motive was quite simply to make mischief. She wanted Jane to -suffer. She loved Philibert but she wanted him to suffer as well. There -was nothing more in it than that. The most subtle people have sometimes -the simplest purposes. Bianca’s subtlety often consisted in doing very -ordinary things in a way that made them appear extraordinary. Her -cleverness in this instance lay in the fact that Philibert did not -suspect her motive. It is even doubtful whether he knew that it was she -who prevented his going. Certainly she never did anything so stupid -as to tell him not to go. It was rather the other way round. If they -discussed it at all it was Bianca who urged upon him the advisability -of his doing his duty as a husband. I can imagine her lying back on her -divan with her lovely little spindly arms over her head and saying with -a yawn, that really he was too negligent of his wife. His wife adored -him. She was ready to fall into his arms. She was probably very sulky -now, but once he appeared she would welcome him with all the ardour<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> -she was saving up during her <i>villégiature</i>. I can see Bianca looking -at Philibert through half-closed eyes, while she touched up for him a -portrait of Jane calculated to make him shudder.</p> - -<p>Bianca herself was going yachting in the Mediterranean. She wanted to -be hot, to soak in enough sunlight to keep her warm for next winter. -They were to laze about the Grecian islands. G—— the historian was to -be one of the party. While she was giving her body a prolonged Turkish -Bath and taking a course in Greek history, he would be free to bring -in the cows with Jane. No, he couldn’t come with her, it would be too -compromising for him. American women began divorce proceedings on the -least provocation.</p> - -<p>And Philibert, of course, did go on that yacht to the Grecian isles, -but to judge from his humour when he returned, he did not get out of -the trip what he had expected. Bianca having lured him out there seemed -to forget that he had come at her invitation. She left the party at -the first opportunity and went off inland on a donkey, and didn’t come -back, merely sent a message for her maid and her boxes to meet her at -Athens.</p> - -<p>Nor did Philibert find Jane waiting for him in Paris as he had -expected, nor any message from her. It was the butler who informed him -that Madame had gone to Biarritz with the Prince and Princess Ivanoff, -and it was to Biarritz that Philibert was obliged to go to fetch her -home.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span></p> - -<h2>XI</h2> - -<p>Things had been going very badly with the Ivanoffs. Their combined -resources left them poorer than either had been before. Ivanoff’s -resources consisted in debts, but debts that he never was obliged to -pay, because he couldn’t. His creditors, those I mean who were in -the business of money-lending, became more hopeful when he married -and approached Fan without delay believing of course, that being an -American she was rich. Poor Fan with her few meagre thousands a year -meted them out bravely enough at first, paying here and there, the -minimum that was nevertheless her maximum. Ivanoff had a small rather -shabby flat on the Isle St. Louis, with one big room. It could be said -of it that the place had atmosphere and would attract their friends -if they made the most of its Bohemian charm. So they decided to live -there, thinking thus to keep down their expenses. But Fan needed -many things that had been unnecessary to the existence of Ivanoff. -She required cleanliness, a bathroom with a hot-water installation, -cupboards to hold her clothes, a lace coverlet for her bed, and enough -wood and coal to keep the place warm. Ivanoff had never realized the -damp and cold; when he was cold he drank vodka or brandy. He had not -been over fond of washing; he took his baths at the club or in a public -bath house. Fan’s maid was a complication. There was no proper room for -her. She was constantly grumbling about Fan’s discomfort and served -her little mistress with grim disapproval, making continual scenes -with the Prince for the way he failed to look after the Princess, and -going out herself on the sly to buy things for the house that she felt -were wanted.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> The one department in the <i>ménage</i> that ran well was the -kitchen. Ivanoff had a gift for cooking. He could train any youngster -and turn him in three months into an excellent cook. When they gave -parties he would go into the kitchen, put on an apron, roll up his -sleeves and cook the dinner. He did his own marketing, going out with -a basket on his arm. One ate better at his table than anywhere else -in Paris. He used to make a bit now and then by passing one of his -cooks on to a friend. He bought his wines in out of the way corners -of France, and got them cheap, and these too, he sometimes sold at a -profit. Nevertheless their expenses during the first year of their -marriage were more than double their income. They had many friends; -a great number of Russians, French, Italians, and Spanish and a few -Americans came to their suppers, that were served in the big living -room. People ate reclining or squatting on cushions with little tables -before them. When the tables were carried out, some as yet undiscovered -artist from a distant country turned up with a violin under his arm, or -Ivanoff himself with his guitar on his knees would sing the folksongs -of his country, with the long window open to the moonlit river and -the dimly-looming towers of Notre Dame. All this was very gay and -pleasant, but they could not keep it up unless they did something to -make money. For a year Fan tried to find a respectable employment -for her husband, but she was met everywhere with polite, but to her, -mystifying refusals. Even the antique dealers refused to employ him to -buy for them. Yes, they admitted, he had an exceptional “flair,” but -he had no idea of money, and if he fell in love with a piece was as -likely as not, in a burst of enthusiasm, to pay the owner more than he -asked. And Ivanoff himself said that he had no capacity for steady work -of any kind. She would send him to interview some financier or banker; -he would go and talk charmingly about all manner of things save the -business in hand, and then say “You know the Princess my wife wants -you to do something for me. I have come to please her, but of course<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> -you and I understand that it is no use. It wouldn’t last a month, and -I might make some mistake that would anger you.” And he would come -away happily, to report to Fan that there was nothing he could do -in that line. She was obliged to admit him to be incorrigible. The -only thing he could do to make money was play cards. He played Bridge -superlatively well. If he played enough he could count on making a -hundred thousand francs a year.</p> - -<p>I believe, because Jane has insisted that it was so, that Fan was for -a long time unaware of the fact that Ivanoff made a living at cards, -and I know that when she discovered that his stories about rents from -properties in Russia were fairy tales and that the sums he turned over -to her were really his winnings at little green baize tables, that -she took it very hard for a time, and made him stop playing, but how -could they then pay their bills? For six months she held out and he -obediently stayed away from his clubs, spent his time wandering along -the quays, twanging his guitar on his sofa, and cooking the dinner, -while Fan’s little wizened face grew sharper and her laugh shriller and -her cough more troublesome.</p> - -<p>The inevitable happened. She caught cold. There was no coal to heat -the flat. The maid, Margot, flew at Ivanoff, in a paroxysm. Ivanoff -wept and tore his hair, fell at the foot of Fan’s bed, implored her -forgiveness and rushed off to the Club. One is obliged to accept -the inevitable. Fan asked no questions after that. I thought that I -detected a furtive look in her eyes and a note of high bravado in -her gaiety, when she staggered out of bed to go about again amusing -herself. I imagined that she was ashamed. I may be wrong. In any case -though every one knew their circumstances, she remained enormously -popular.</p> - -<p>The strange thing was that Ivanoff could always find people to play -with him. The certain knowledge that they stood to lose heavily, -irresistibly attracted men to his table, rich men, of course, he only -played with rich men. He couldn’t afford Bridge as a pastime. And I -know for <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>certain that he derived from it no amusement. If his victims -approached that square of green baize with pleasurable shivers of -excitement, it was not so with him. Winning money at cards was no -more interesting to him than is the breaking of stones to an Italian -labourer. He played with what seemed to most people an exaggerated -pretence of boredom, but his boredom was no pretence. Ivanoff never -pretended in his life. He was a child of nature, a great dark abysmal -child of the Slavic race. People liked him, they couldn’t help it. He -was considered rather mad and utterly undependable. He had a way of -disappearing mysteriously, and of reappearing again suddenly, and he -never attempted to account for these absences. “Where have you been -this time Ivanoff,” some one at the club would ask him, and he would -smile his wide mongolian smile that narrowed his eyes to slits making -him look like a chinaman, and then a worried wistful look would come -over his sallow face and he would smooth carefully his heavy black -hair—“I don’t know,” he would say, “I really can’t remember,” and -somehow one believed him. He drank heavily, and when he was drunk -he would talk about God, and the soul of the Russian people that -was a deep pure soul besotted with despair, and would say that God -in His wisdom must put an end to human misery very soon. He had an -extraordinary gift for languages. Indeed he had many gifts and no -capacity and no ambition. It never seemed to occur to him that he ought -to provide for his wife, or look after her. For the most part, between -his disappearances he followed her about like a great tame bear. He -had an immense respect for her. “What a head she has,” he would say. -“What a head for figures, and what a will. She can make me do anything, -anything, except the things for which I am incurably incapacitated. I -am like wax in her hands.”</p> - -<p>Poor Fan! If he had had a little more respect for himself and a little -less for her, it would have been easier for her. He drank more and -more heavily as time went on.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> Night after night he would come home -to her drunk and lie in a stupor wherever he happened to fall. Again -and again he would beg her forgiveness, throw himself at her feet, -kissing them and weeping like a heart-broken child. And because she -found him beautiful, and because she believed he loved her, she did, -over and over again forgive him, but she was worried half out of her -mind. It began to dawn on her that his card-playing wasn’t enough; -that he borrowed money of everybody. She foresaw that the day would -soon dawn when every one of his men friends was a creditor. It didn’t -occur to her at this time that he borrowed money from women as well. -Nor did it occur to her as a possible solution to cut down her expenses -by changing her mode of life. She and Ivanoff, and a lot of their -friends for that matter, lived on the principle that, as Montesquieu -said, it was bad enough not to have money, but, if in addition one -had to deprive oneself of the things one wanted, then life would be -intolerable. She had married Ivanoff to be a princess and to have -a good time. She was still pleased with being a princess and more -determined than ever to enjoy herself. Pleasure, noisy, distracting -absorbing pleasure was becoming more and more necessary to her. As her -troubles thickened, her craving for excitement grew. The more she was -worried the more she needed to laugh. Her life became a staccato tune -of laughter and hurting throbs and petulant crescendoes of gaiety. It -was a tinkling dance with a drumming accompaniment of worry, the rhythm -of it moving faster and faster as her problem deepened.</p> - -<p>And people as I say liked her. Even Claire continued to see much -of her. She was considered original and very plucky. Her parties -were amusing, and she herself could be trusted to make any dinner a -success. Her very shrill yell of laughter came to have a definite -social value. She talked with a hard gay abandon that affected people -like a spray of hot salt water. Fagged and blasé spirits turned to -her for refreshment. She would enter a drawing-room on the run, and -call out some extravagant yet neat phrase,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> and every one would become -perky and animated. Always she had had some amusing and extraordinary -adventure five minutes before her arrival. Her taxi had dumped her -into the street, or a man had tried to abduct her or she had found a -bill of a thousand francs lying on the doorstep. One never questioned -her veracity. Nobody cared whether these things really happened or -whether she made them up for the general amusement. It was all the -more to her credit if she took the trouble to invent them. And enough -things did happen to her, heaven knows, dreadful things. She was always -in trouble. Her health was execrable. People mentioned phthisis. She -had a way of fainting in the street and waking up in strange houses -from which she had miraculous escapes. Decorated by her amusing gift -of description, made entertaining by her contagious laughter, her -miseries and her unfortunate adventures came to be an endless source of -amusement in society. Her misfortune was her social capital; she turned -it all to account.</p> - -<p>Jane alone was not amused. Jane alone took Fan’s troubles seriously as -if they had been her own, and watched her with concern and tried to -reason with her. But Fan didn’t want any one to reason with her and was -annoyed by Jane’s anxiety. At bottom I believe, during this period of -their existence, that Jane bored her. She loved her, of course, in a -way, because of their childhood, she knew that she could count on her -in any crisis, but she preferred talking to Philibert. When she lunched -in Jane’s house, she and Philibert would sit together after lunch and -scream with laughter, and then, when she was about to leave, her little -face would suddenly turn grey with fatigue, and she would say to Jane’s -anxious enquiry—“Yes, my dear, I’m as sick as a dog. I haven’t slept -for a month. I’m living on <i>piqûres</i>,” and then, tearing herself out -of Jane’s embrace she would go away coughing, coughing terribly all -the way down the stairs. Jane gave her a good many clothes. Fan told -me so herself. “My dear,” she said, “I’m not going with Jane any more -to her dressmaker’s. She insists on my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> taking too many things, and if -I don’t she’s hurt. I escaped from Chéruit’s this morning with nothing -more than a chinchilla coat. What do you think of that? I shall send it -back when it comes, and there’ll be a scene.” And she did send it back, -and there was I suppose, what she would call a scene. Jane spoke of it -too, for she had overheard. She said—“Of course I’d rather give Fan -blankets and coals, but as I can’t do anything sensible for her, why -shouldn’t she let me do something foolish?”</p> - -<p>I will say for Fan that she did not sponge, neither on Jane nor on any -one else. She left that part of it to Ivanoff. And again Jane insisted -that she didn’t know about Ivanoff. In any case it was Ivanoff who gave -Jane her opportunity, as she believed, to help Fan. He came to see her -one afternoon in a high state of excitement, made her swear she would -never tell Fan a word of what had passed between them, and then asked -her for fifty thousand francs. He said that they would be turned out -into the street if he couldn’t get the money in two days, and that -every stick of their furniture would be sold. It was unnecessary for -him to explain to Jane why Fan should not be told. Jane knew, at least -she thought she knew, that Fan would refuse the money. So she gave -Ivanoff a cheque payable to herself and endorsed it and felt happy to -have been able to help them. Ivanoff had pointed out that it would be -best for her not to make out a cheque in his name. This was the thin -end of the wedge.</p> - -<p>Ivanoff having been well received, came back six months later and -again after that. He had from Jane all told about two hundred thousand -francs during a period of two or three years, not a large sum to Jane -certainly. She easily enough hid the payments from Philibert by paying -the amounts out of her personal account for clothes, travelling, -flowers, trinkets, and so on. Occasionally she would countermand an -order for a fur coat and feel that she was making a personal sacrifice -for Fan, and this added a very real element of joy to her pleasure. And -there was no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> doubt in her mind that this money did go to help Fan. -Ivanoff always had some tale of Fan’s illnesses, her doctors’ bills, -her need to go to some watering place for a cure, her last unfortunate -venture in the stock market. Nevertheless Jane was worried. She was -worried, God help her, because she was deceiving Philibert. The subject -was heavy on her mind. At times she felt she must tell Philibert all -about it, but Philibert did not like Ivanoff. She was afraid to tell -him for fear he should put a stop to her doing anything more in that -quarter. Philibert tolerated Fan because she was amusing and helped to -occupy Jane, but he would not tolerate Ivanoff, and refused to have -the Russian in his house. He was unaware of the latter’s quarterly -afternoon visits. This, too, Jane had been obliged to keep from him. -If she told Philibert that Ivanoff had been to call and had been -received, she would have to explain why. Philibert seldom showed any -interest in the people she received on her day in the afternoon, but -he did occasionally ask her who had been there, and suggest that -one or another was really too stupid or too ugly to be welcomed -under his roof. He did not wish his house to be invaded by touring -Americans or by the halt, the lame and the blind, so he exercised a -sort of censorship over his wife’s calling list. Ivanoff was one of -the people who to Philibert were beyond the pale. Up to the night of -Bianca’s supper party he had forced himself to greet the big Russian -with civility when he met him in other people’s houses, but after the -beastly exhibition the latter had made of himself there, he had let it -be known that he did not wish to find himself again anywhere in the -same room with him.</p> - -<p>It was therefore extremely unpleasant to Philibert to learn from his -butler that Jane had gone to Biarritz with the Ivanoffs. Nothing, -indeed, that Jane could have done could have been so disagreeable to -him. Had she planned it on purpose as a revenge, she could not have -calculated better, and he believed she had done so. He had come to his -senses. He had perceived during the train journey<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> north that he had -been very foolish to take such risks. It occurred to him that he had -not heard from Jane for two months, and that he did not know where -she was. She might have gone to America, she might be there with the -intention of not coming back. She was capable of anything. The news -he received on arrival was a relief that left him free to enjoy his -exasperation. He was not in a desperate fix after all, it was Jane who -was in a fix. She had at last given him a definite cause of complaint -and had incurred his displeasure in a way that made it easy for him to -act against her. If this were her way of taking a line of her own and -paying him back, she had played beautifully into his hands. He took the -train for Biarritz, smiling and revolving pleasantly in his heart the -things he would say.</p> - -<p>But Jane had had no ulterior motive in what she had done. She had come -back to Paris at the end of September and had found Fan lying exhausted -by haemorrhage in an untidy bed with a bowl of blood beside her, and -Ivanoff on the floor, his head in his hands, sobbing, while Margot -stormed at him for his uselessness. Jane had simply picked Fan up in -her arms, and had carried her away, and Ivanoff like an unhappy dog had -followed, his tail between his legs. The haemorrhage had thoroughly -frightened him. It was a fortnight later that Philibert, one brilliant -afternoon announced himself at the Palace Hotel Biarritz. Fan was -better and Ivanoff had recovered from his terror. Philibert found the -two women in an upstairs sitting-room overlooking the sea. Fan was on -a couch, her little wizened face screwed into a smile of bravado under -her lace bonnet, and a cigarette between her rouged lips. Jane looked -the more ill of the two. Her usual glowing pallor had turned to the -whitish-grey of ashes, there were purple circles under her eyes. She -was looking out of the window, her hands clasped behind her head, and -when Philibert entered she wheeled at the sound of his voice, and then -stood silently trembling. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span></p> - -<p>Fan cried out at him, gaily impertinent. “Hullo, Fifi, you didn’t come -too soon, did you?”</p> - -<p>He didn’t answer her. “Come with me,” he said to Jane briefly, and she -followed him out of the room. He had passed Ivanoff below in the bar. -The sight had added nothing pleasant to his humour.</p> - -<p>What he said to her was what he had intended to say. Her wasted face -made no impression in her favour, on the contrary. He read in her -agitation signs of guilt and seemed to have forgotten that he had -abandoned her during six months on the pretext that she loved him too -much.</p> - -<p>As for Jane, she listened to him in a silence that she tried to make -natural and easy.</p> - -<p>Telling me about it afterwards she said, “I had determined this time to -give him no opportunity of laughing at me. I made scarcely a movement. -Though I was trembling, I managed to sit down in a comfortable chair -and cross my legs and lean back, as if he had come to tell me something -pleasant.”</p> - -<p>He expressed without preamble his displeasure at finding her in the -company of the Ivanoffs. He was surprised to find that she cared for -such people. She knew, that he loathed Ivanoff and considered him -an unfit companion for any respectable woman. He saw no reason why -his wife should make his name a by-word in the glaring publicity of -such a place as Biarritz. Here she was in the centre of a dissolute -set of cosmopolitan adventurers, behaving like a common woman of -light character, or at least giving the impression to the world of -so behaving. He presumed that the Ivanoffs were her guests and were -costing her a pretty penny. That was a side issue. The Russian was a -dissolute ruffian who lived not alone on his winning at cards but on -women. He was a man kept by women. As for Ivanoff’s wife, she knew what -her husband was up to and profitted by his earnings. Jane, with white -lips interrupted him here. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span></p> - -<p>“I don’t believe you,” she said quietly. And then more sharply, “You -forget that Fan is my best friend.”</p> - -<p>He sneered. “I do not forget. I am merely unable to congratulate you -on your taste. As for Ivanoff’s habits I can give you precise details. -There is a woman in this hotel—” Something in Jane’s face stopped -him. She did not speak at once, but leaning slightly forward, one arm -on the table before her, looked at him calmly and smiled. She had done -a good deal of thinking during those lonely months at Joigny. Alone -and unobserved she had passed through her crisis. She was no longer -the same person. Day after day, tramping the country, she had passed -in review the years of her marriage and had scrutinized their every -content, discovering slowly their meaning. She had learned a great many -things. She was beginning to understand more than she had ever dreamed -existed, of complication and danger in her surroundings, and she had -determined if Philibert came back to her to put up a fight for her -life, she meant her life with him: for the one thing she had not yet -learned was to despise him. She still blamed herself for not having -made him love her. She still cared for him. But she had learned a great -deal, and among other things she had found out that she was alone. -There was no one for her to turn to. His family, with one possible -exception, myself, she realized now disliked her.</p> - -<p>So she met him calmly. His attack had actually been a relief to her. -Her agitation had been due just simply to the marvellous fact of his -having come back to her, and she read in his annoyance a proof of his -not being after all as indifferent to herself as he tried to make her -believe. She voiced this.</p> - -<p>“I was not aware,” she said quietly, “that you in the least cared -what I did.” Her words and her tone startled him. He looked at her -quickly. It was clear to him that she was older and wiser and would be -more difficult to deal with than he had supposed. A gleam shot out at -her from his eyes. It met an answering gleam. In silence their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> wills -clashed. They were both aware that a struggle had begun. It was she -who, after a moment, continued—</p> - -<p>“I do not believe what you say about Fan and Ivanoff. I know that your -worst accusation is untrue. Fan is incapable of accepting such money.” -She paused as if to calculate her effect and added deliberately. “As -for Ivanoff, if he lives on women then I am one of them. I have lent -him money myself.”</p> - -<p>He had turned away from her, but at this he whirled round like a top, -his face contorted.</p> - -<p>“What? What do you say? You? You have given him—?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, I have given him money on several occasions.”</p> - -<p>Her immobility had its effect. He hung over her speechless, his lips -twitching, and she continued to look at him. At last she spoke.</p> - -<p>“What do you think I gave him money for, Philibert?”</p> - -<p>He saw instantly his danger. Her tone conveyed it to him. If he voiced -a suspicion of anything so horrible he destroyed himself for ever in -her eyes. His brain worked quickly enough to save him. Marvellously and -lucidly he knew she would never forgive him for suspecting her, and -suddenly he knew that she could not be accused. Her virtue that had so -bored him was unassailable and her pride frightened him. Whether he -liked it or not there it was before him, and as if he couldn’t bear -the sight of it he whirled away from her and stalked to the window, -muttering peevishly something about his not knowing why or what she had -been up to. But she didn’t let him off. Her voice followed him across -the room.</p> - -<p>“I gave Ivanoff money for Fan. You understand that, don’t you, -Philibert. You don’t suggest for a moment anything else, do you?”</p> - -<p>He remained with his back to her, and she remained where she was, -waiting, watching his nervous hands that twisted his coat-tails, and -his foot kicking the window-sill,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> watching her image of him shrinking, -wavering, changing. At last she rose. She was afraid now, afraid of -despising him, afraid to watch him any longer. She moved to the door -and from her further distance spoke again.</p> - -<p>“I have given Ivanoff in all two hundred and fifty thousand francs. -If you have anything to say about my doing so, please speak now. I am -waiting.”</p> - -<p>And he, at last, found the words with which to meet her.</p> - -<p>“I don’t believe Fan ever got a penny of it.”</p> - -<p>At that she faltered a moment, but only a moment. Her tone when she -spoke was smooth and light.</p> - -<p>“Well, if she didn’t it’s lost.” She could take it as high as that. -She gave a little shrug, just the slightest shrug. It may be that -she really did strike him as almost coming up to his own standard at -that moment. In any case he chose the instant for his own recovery. -He had seemed not to know what to do. He had made a very painful -impression. His indecision had humiliated her more than his violence. -She felt ashamed for him now, and all the pent-up passion in her -surged uncomfortably, hurtingly, against the shock her opinion of -him had received, sending hot waves of blood pounding through her -veins, that gave her a feeling of sickness. He divined something of -this. It was time that he recovered himself, and his recovery was -beautiful. It shows him, I maintain, an artist. He went up to her -deliberately and took her hand, and looking into her eyes said—“You -are astounding,” then watching his effect he added, “You are superb. I -do not understand, but I admire.” And then deliberately with consummate -gallantry he kissed her hand.</p> - -<p>And poor Jane was pleased. On top of all her deep misery she was -conscious of a little silvery ripple of pleasure. Though it would never -be the same with her again she thought that she had won a battle, and -made an impression, and with a kind of anguish of renunciation she -accepted his offering. She knew now that he would never<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> give her what -she wanted, but she believed that he was prepared at last to give her -something, and she was bound to allow him to do so.</p> - -<p>They left Biarritz the next day, having agreed between them on a -number of things. Jane was to inform the Ivanoffs that their rooms -were retained for a fortnight longer. Philibert promised that he would -never allow Ivanoff to know that he knew Jane had given him money. Jane -in return agreed not to repeat the experiment and to have no further -dealings with Ivanoff of any kind. She refused, however, to give up -seeing Fan as she had always done.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span></p> - -<h2>XII</h2> - -<p>One day toward the middle of the winter of that year, Claire said to -me; “What has happened to Philibert? He acts as if he were in love with -his wife.” It was true. We had all noticed it. I mean Claire and my -mother and myself, but gradually we came to notice something else as -well, namely that Philibert’s increased attentions did not seem to be -making Jane happy. She was strangely preoccupied and for her, strangely -languid. Her old buoyancy was gone, and with it the impression she had -so often conveyed of an over-powering awkward energy. <i>Maman</i> need -never fear now that Jane would fall on her and crush her. Claire need -not worry about being pushed into corners. When Jane did join our -family parties, and she came much less frequently than in the early -days, she was almost always so absent-minded as to seem scarcely to -realize where she was. She would come in with Philibert and the child -Geneviève, kiss my mother gently on the forehead and then sink into -a chair and forget us. We might now have said anything preposterous -that came into our heads. She would not have noticed us. She did not -listen to our talk, and when we addressed her directly would give a -little start and say—“<i>Je vous demande pardon, je n’ai pas compris.</i>” -Sometimes I caught Philibert watching her as if he too were mystified -and troubled. He would drag her into the conversation. “<i>Mais, mon -amie, écoutes donc, quand on vous parle</i>,” he would exclaim in -affectionate remonstrance, and she would flush a little and make a very -obvious effort to pay attention. My mother felt there was something -wrong. It may have seemed to her that she was herself responsible. She -may have felt a certain<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> contrition about Jane, or she may merely have -found it intolerable that any one should derive from her drawing room -circle so little apparent interest. In any case she made on her part an -effort and talked to Jane much more, and in a different more intimate -way than she had ever done before. And, of course, when actually -talking directly to <i>Maman</i> Jane was perfectly attentive and perfectly -courteously sweet-tempered. But when my mother turned her head toward -some one else, Jane, as if released from the end of some invisible -string that had held her erect in her chair, would slip back and lean -her cheek on her hand, and the light in her eyes would be veiled by -that invisible glaze that means an inward gazing. Such are the eyes of -the blind. One could at such moment have waved one’s fingers an inch -from Jane’s face, and she would not have blinked, at least that was my -impression.</p> - -<p>And she was incredibly thin. Many people thought this becoming to her, -but to me it was painful. I had no wish to find Jane beautiful if I -felt that she was going to die, and there were days when I did feel she -was, as one says, going into a decline. She had been so harmoniously -big that one would never have supposed she carried much superfluous -flesh, until one saw it wasting away and found her still alive, and not -a hideous skeleton. Her marvellous hands and feet were now, I suppose, -even more marvellous, but to me their beautiful exposed structure of -lovely bones was a source of pain. Her wrists and ankles were so slim -that one felt if she made a wrong movement they would snap, and her -rich lustrous clothes seemed to find round her waist and bust nothing -to cling to. Only her broad shoulders and narrow hips seemed to support -them. One could not tell where her waist was. Sometimes under the -silken fabric of her skirt one saw the shape of a sharp knee bone. -Her face seemed to have grown much smaller. The cheeks hollowed in -under prominent cheek-bones, and her small green eyes were sunk into -her head—that was more than ever like some carved antique coin and -had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> taken on a quite terrifying beauty; I mean that the charm of her -ugliness had received its special ordained stamp, the mark that the god -or imp who made it had meant it to have. She reddened her lips a little -now; otherwise her face was untouched by powder or rouge. The skin -was of the palest ivory colour, a close smooth dull surface, without -a blemish, soft and pure and dead. There was about the texture of her -skin something curious. It made one dream of a contact so cold that -if a butterfly brushed against it the little living thing would fall -lifeless to the ground.</p> - -<p>And a new charm disengaged itself from her person. She seemed possessed -of a hitherto-unused and undiscovered magnetism, and she dwelt with it -silently, wrapped in a kind of gentle gloom that she tried now and then -to throw off as one throws off a wet clinging garment. I do not want -to give the impression that she was moody, for that would be untrue. -She was, on the contrary, of an uncanny equanimity, and when she smiled -her smile crept slowly and softly over her face and as softly faded -away. There was no jerk of nerves about it. Nervous was the last word -one could apply to her. She was superlatively quiet, unnaturally calm, -and yet at times she looked at me like a haunted woman, a woman haunted -not by a ghost but by an idea, perhaps by some profoundly disturbing -knowledge.</p> - -<p>We were increasingly troubled. We wondered if at last she had found -out things about Philibert, particularly about Philibert and Bianca, -and somehow the fact that we knew he was devoting himself more to Jane -and less to Bianca did not console us. What indeed was it but just the -most disturbing thing of all that Philibert’s new devotion to Jane -produced in her no flush of responsive joy? My mother was very worried -indeed, and we were affected by her anxiety. Even Claire began to watch -Jane with a questioning puzzled attention. Often I found Claire’s dark -eyes travelling from Jane to Philibert, from Philibert to my mother, -from my mother back to Jane. And simultaneously my mother’s eyes moved -from one to the other, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> so did Philibert’s and so did mine. We -were all looking from one to the other, watching, referring, puzzling, -comparing. Jane alone looked at no one.</p> - -<p>I should have felt this to be humorous had it not humiliated and -annoyed. It seemed to me that we were slightly ridiculous at times, -and at other times lacking in delicacy. The last impression irked -me exceedingly. For my mother and sister to be guilty of indelicacy -was strangely unpleasant, I knew they were not impelled in their new -interest by affection. They did not even now care for Jane. She had -become to them an enigma; that of course was something more than she -had been; there was a shade of admiration now in their wondering, but -no genuine feeling for her and no sympathy. Their sympathy was for -Philibert, and perhaps, a little for themselves. In any case they -were afraid for Philibert. They saw his great social edifice swaying. -They were holding their breath. And Jane gave them no sign. Had she -calculated her effect with consummate art her manner could not have -been more perfectly tuned to the high fine note of suspense. And they -dared not to ask her anything.</p> - -<p>But as the weeks passed, they gave way to asking each other. In her -absence they constantly talked of her. It was curious how much of their -attention she took up by staying so much away. Claire and my mother -could now often be heard to say—“Have you seen Jane? What is the child -doing with herself? I find her looking very unwell. Has she complained -to you of feeling ill?” and now and again with a sigh of reproach -either my mother or Claire would say to the other—“What a pity you -never won her confidence. She tells us nothing, but absolutely nothing. -It’s as if she didn’t trust us.”</p> - -<p>And Philibert seemed as much at a loss as they. He could enlighten them -very little. Gradually as their nervousness made them less discreet -they took to questioning him. “But what is the matter with her?” they -would ask, and he would shrug his shoulders. He didn’t know. Did he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> -think she was ill? No, she wasn’t ill, she had never been so active. -Was she then unhappy? Ah, who could say? She was now and then very -gay, much gayer at moments than he had ever known her. She went out -constantly. She had ideas of her own about receiving. She was arranging -a series of musical evenings for the audition of unpublished works of -young French composers. She was multiplying her activities. Sometimes -he did not see her alone for days together. And here my mother gently -and timidly interrupted him. “<i>Mais mon enfant</i>, when she is alone -with you, is she amiable, is she kind? <i>Enfin</i>, is she gracious?” -And Philibert again, but this time with a more exaggerated movement, -shrugged his shoulders—“<i>Comme cela.</i> I have no right to complain.”</p> - -<p>And then quickly I saw them all look at each other and saw the same -thought flit from one mind to the other and dodge away out of sight, -and the spectacle of those intelligent evasive glances exasperated me.</p> - -<p>“Yes, it’s a different story now, isn’t it?” I didn’t care for their -combined shocked stare, now centred on myself, and continued to -Philibert—“After all, you’ve got what you wanted, haven’t you? You -remember you told her not to love you so much.”</p> - -<p>“Blaise!” My mother’s exclamation was a check. I had a sensation of -shaking myself free. “Well, isn’t it so? Weren’t you all awfully bored -with her caring too much for you, and now that she doesn’t, now that -she has withdrawn, is leading a life of her own, you are troubled, you -wonder. How can you wonder? Isn’t it all quite simple?” But I knew that -it was not so simple after all, so I stopped.</p> - -<p>“You think then,” put in my sister gravely, “that she no longer -cares for us?” Her tone made me stare in my turn. It was earnest and -enquiring, and I heard Philibert to my astonishment echoing her words. -“Ah, you believe she no longer cares?” And most wonderful of all my -mother’s phrase. “Tell us, Blaise, what she does feel. I believe that -you understand her better than we do.” </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span></p> - -<p>It was quite extraordinary. I had the strangest feeling for a moment -of pride and power. They had all turned to me. They had all recognized -simultaneously that I possessed something valuable. And for a moment I -enjoyed the novel sensation. They wanted something from me, that was -pleasant, but what they wanted was Jane’s secret. They believed she had -confided in me, and they believed I would tell them. I felt again weary -and impatient and humiliated, and I brought out the truth abruptly. “I -know no more than you do what is going on in Jane’s mind, she has told -me nothing.” But I saw that they did not believe me.</p> - -<p>The room, my mother’s room, seemed to shrink visibly. It appeared very -small and trivial. Its innumerable bibelots and souvenirs winked and -glinted, mischievous and precious, minute tokens of delicate prejudice, -obstinate and conventional and colourless. It all looked small and -meaningless and pale. I could have laughed. I was important there at -last. But it was a tiny place to me now. I pitied it. I felt suddenly -free and alone. I thought—“Jane has told me nothing, it is true, -nevertheless she trusts me,” and I felt them reading my mind and it -didn’t matter. They might know for all I cared that I knew nothing, -they would feel all the same that I knew Jane as they would never know -her. But what they would never know was, that knowing Jane as I did, I -knew many other things, wonderful things. I felt a lift, a lightening, -a widening of space, a fresh rush of wind as if I was being blown upon -by the breath of those wide American forests. Somewhere in my mind -vistas opened. I heard the murmuring of a free wind in high branches. -And all the time I saw my frail little mother in her damask chair, in -her little crowded silken room, and I loved her with tenderness and -compassion. An impulse seized me. I went over to her. I took her hand.</p> - -<p>“If only you would love her,” I said, “everything would be all right.” -Then I saw that I had blundered. How could I have been so stupid as to -have imagined that they had been with me for that moment in those wide -high<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> spaces where I knew Jane lived? My words sounded grotesque and -fatuous. I saw a shade come over my mother’s face. I heard Claire’s -swish of impatient drapery. Philibert snorted. I felt myself blushing. -My face tingled. I had made myself ridiculous. My mother’s hand kept -me off. Its nervous clasp pushed me from her while she murmured -plaintively—“<i>Mais je l’aime bien, mais je l’aime bien.</i>”</p> - -<p>Claire followed me out of the room. In the little dark hall we stood -close together. She had closed the door of the drawing room after her. -Beyond it we heard Philibert’s high nasal voice arguing. “What do you -really think, Blaise?” My sister’s voice was low and confidential. I -felt her mind pressing upon me with gentle insistence.</p> - -<p>“I don’t know.”</p> - -<p>“But you see a great deal of her, she talks to you.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, but not about herself.”</p> - -<p>“Come, Blaise.”</p> - -<p>“Not about the present, only of the past, her home over there.”</p> - -<p>She made an impatient gesture.</p> - -<p>“Does she never mention Philibert?”</p> - -<p>“Never in any way that matters. How can you think—? Do you imagine -then that she is vulgar?”</p> - -<p>But Claire’s eyes, tranquil and dark with their usual mournful depths -of mystery, looked at me deeply as if she had not heard.</p> - -<p>“I am afraid,” she said, “of Bianca.”</p> - -<p>I was startled. The idea that Claire was afraid, so afraid as to voice -her fear to me in that low tone of secret confidence, seemed to make -everything worse, much more miserable.</p> - -<p>“Why?” I asked, searching her face that so often evaded me with its -mockery and now was so grave and deliberate.</p> - -<p>“She may do something.”</p> - -<p>“What?”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know, but she’s jealous.” </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Jealous of Jane?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, hadn’t you noticed? She follows her about?”</p> - -<p>“Bianca follows Jane about?”</p> - -<p>“Just that.”</p> - -<p>I thought how strange women are, seeing things that we none of us -notice. I followed Bianca, Jane and Claire in imagination, moving -about Paris in smooth rapid motors, slipping in and out of crowded -streets, shops, drawing-rooms, theatres, watching each other. But how -could Claire see one pursuing the other with all those people round -them, all the music, the waiters, the footmen, the lights scattered -along dinner-tables, the obstructing tables and chairs, the endless -engagements? My mind wavered, I felt dizzy. I saw each one of the three -women stepping out of her car, going into her house, the door closing -upon her, hiding her from the world.</p> - -<p>I came back to Claire’s delicate face and brooding eyes.</p> - -<p>“But why should Bianca be jealous?”</p> - -<p>“But why not?”</p> - -<p>“You mean she thinks Philibert is escaping her?”</p> - -<p>“And isn’t he?”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know.” Suddenly I felt at the end of my strength, as if I had -been undergoing a great nervous strain. “How should I know anything -about Philibert? You all seem to think I know what Philibert is up to.” -I felt strangely exasperated. “And what, <i>mon dieu</i>, is there exactly -between Bianca and Philibert?”</p> - -<p>“Ah,” my sister smiled faintly, “that I cannot tell you, but whatever -it is, it is enough.”</p> - -<p>“Enough to make trouble, you mean?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, enough to make trouble.”</p> - -<p>“Well, if you really want my opinion, it is that Jane does not bother -at all about Bianca.” And I began irritably to get into my coat. But -Claire, helping me on with it, still pressed me and said over my -shoulder—</p> - -<p>“So you don’t think Jane in her turn is jealous?” </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span></p> - -<p>“I don’t think anything about it. What I think is that it is none of -my business.” And I grabbed my hat and left her, but looking back as I -went down the few steps to the outer door, I saw her looking after me -with an inscrutable smile, as if she had learned something from me that -she had wanted to know, and I determined to keep away from such family -talks in future.</p> - -<p>I had my theory about Jane during those days, of course, but according -to Clémentine I was wrong. Clémentine thinks that Jane loves Philibert -even now, even now over there in that dreary little house. I can’t -believe it. But what does Clémentine mean by love, anyway? Clémentine -is a Latin, the smooth willing exponent and devotee of her senses. She -has known love—“<i>elle a rencontré l’amour plusieurs fois</i>.” If she -means anything, if there’s anything in what she says about Jane, it is -that Philibert still has the power to affect Jane, to make her pulse -beat quicker, even now. I wonder, but I don’t want to think about it.</p> - -<p>I believed that winter that Jane had ceased to care for Philibert, and -that that was the explanation of her strangeness, that made her appear -so often like a sleep-walker. I argued that to a person like Jane it -would be more terrible to no longer love than to be no longer loved. -There were moments when alone in my room with her image before me, I -was certain that she was beginning to despise him. How could she help -it I would ask myself, and be filled with an exulting bitterness. I see -now what it was. I wanted her to despise him, and so believed it. But -it was not so much that I fiendishly wanted Philibert to suffer, for I -did not believe he would suffer. I wanted Jane to right herself. That -was it. I wanted her to get loose from her bonds that seemed to me to -expose her in an attitude humiliating and pitiful. I couldn’t bear to -contemplate her as Philibert’s slave. It was this thought that sent -me out at night to walk the streets in a fever. Ridiculous? Perhaps. -But haven’t I a phrase of Jane’s sounding in my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> brain even now that -justifies all my sickening suspicions of the past, one phrase, the only -one that she ever let fall that threw any light on her relations with -her husband.</p> - -<p>It was only the other day in St. Mary’s Plains. Time had made it -possible for her to speak as she did. Ten years, fifteen, had passed, -but she spoke with an icy distinctness as if controlling a shudder.</p> - -<p>“Bianca,” she said, “was jealous of that process of corruption that she -called my happiness.” But this is all too painful. I must stick to the -facts of my story.</p> - -<p>Claire’s fear was all too well founded. Bianca was jealous and Bianca -was going to intervene. Philibert was slipping away from her and -falling in love with his stupid wife. That could not be tolerated. -She stirred uneasily. Moreover Paris was beginning to take account of -Jane. People were talking about her wherever one went. They argued -about whether she was ugly or just the most beautiful woman in Europe. -Sides were equally divided. But what did it matter whether one called -it beauty or ugliness, once her appearance had made its impression upon -the receptive mind of Paris? The Byzantine Madonna or the Egyptian -mummy or whatever it was that she had been said to resemble had come -to life. Paris recognized her as singular, and that was all that was -necessary. Soon she would be the rage. Some one would set the ball -rolling. Bianca saw it all quite clearly. Like a little witch bending -over a boiling pot she made her preparations. It would be funny to -think of if it had not come off just as she intended. The sorceress -was again on the move astride her broomstick. She was chanting her -incantations that were meant to bring a woman to the dust and a man to -her side. But first she sent for Fan and told her all about Ivanoff and -Jane and about Philibert’s interference in Biarritz. She had got the -whole story from Philibert and used it now with just the effect she -wished. She began lamenting the fact that she saw so little of Jane, -Jane was dropping her old friends. Hadn’t Fan noticed a difference? -No,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> Fan hadn’t. But Ivanoff—surely Jane didn’t see anything much of -Ivanoff these days, not at any rate as she used to? Fan laughed. If -Bianca thought Jane capable of flirting—. But Bianca meant nothing so -silly. Bianca meant simply that Jane had been very foolish and that -Philibert was angry with Ivanoff and wouldn’t have anything to do with -him because of Jane’s foolishness. Fan at this, had grown suddenly -serious. The rest was easy. It all came out. Ivanoff had had large sums -of money from Jane. Philibert had found out, and Jane had made him -swear to do nothing about it so that Fan should never know. This, of -course had been most unfair to Ivanoff as the latter had been given no -chance to clear himself with Philibert. Ivanoff might have been able to -explain many things that remained obscure.</p> - -<p>The result of this conversation was all that Bianca would wish for. -Poor Fan rushed home to her dilapidated attic on the Isle St. Louis and -flung it all at Ivanoff’s great sleek meek head. He had been taking -money from Jane. How much money? When? Why? Where was it? How could he? -How had he come to think of such a thing? Didn’t he have any sense of -honour? Didn’t he have any shame? Ivanoff bowed his head. Meekly and -humbly he let her rave at him until exhausted, she flung herself on -the bed in a torrent of tears, and all that night he sat on the floor -beside her bed, extravagantly ashamed, thinking vague dark hopeless -thoughts, and now and then heaving a sigh.</p> - -<p>It didn’t occur to him, the next day or the next or any day after that -to explain anything. Probably he was unaware that Fan’s second thoughts -were more poisoning and disturbing to her than the first. Ivanoff was -no psychologist. If he noticed that Fan was strained and looked at him -queerly, he remained passive and mute, and no light of curiosity seemed -to strike down into his abysmal calm. When suddenly Fan flashed out the -question—“Did you make love to her?” he merely shook his head, and -when at last after a week of fidgetting she announced that she had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> -written to Jane to tell her that they couldn’t pay the money back and -that she would understand the wisdom of their not seeing each other -any more, he stared vacantly, then frowned and sat down in a heap on -the divan for the rest of the day. Judging by his fantastic subsequent -behaviour, he must have been pondering upon the question. He probably -thought—“Women are worthless cattle. Jane has told. She has given away -the secret. She has hurt Fan. I am getting tired of Fan. Some day I -will go away, but Jane hurt her and made her tiresome and she must be -hurt too, before I go. But how? But how?” That was the difficulty. He -must think of some way. And all the time he was sitting there thinking, -he could hear Fan coughing and tossing in her room, and he could see -her little tame chaffinches jumping about in their cage in the window. -Fan was often like that, like a neat little bird flitting and hopping -about, but now she was sick and ruffled and not gay and chirpy at all.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span></p> - -<h2>XIII</h2> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> found my way in -a fiacre to his bleak and imposing door.</p> - -<p>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. “<i>Monsieur et Madame</i> would undoubtedly be very -late,” the footman told me, “they were ‘<i>chez Monsieur le duc</i>,’ 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 <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>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.</p> - -<p>She spoke in a queer tired voice that grated slightly.</p> - -<p>“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.”</p> - -<p>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—</p> - -<p>“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.”</p> - -<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>“Do you often wait up for him?” She turned half way round.</p> - -<p>“No, but tonight we must wait, we must wait until we know.”</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> through space on a turning globe, made me dizzy. I heard her -say from a great distance—</p> - -<p>“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.”</p> - -<p>“What is going to happen?” I tried to speak naturally.</p> - -<p>“I don’t know. We must wait. We will find out.”</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>“You will be a friend to me, won’t you?” she asked dropping into a -chair before me. I nodded, unable to speak.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> 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.”</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>“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 <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>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.</p> - -<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> 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.</p> - -<p>“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 <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>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.”</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>“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.”</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> 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 <i>roué</i> 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.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span></p> - -<h2>PART II </h2> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span></p> - -<h2>I</h2> - -<p>That was long ago. We were young then. What a haunting annoying phrase. -One meets it everywhere, in books, on people’s lips, or unspoken in -their eyes. The other day in the Grey House, sitting opposite Jane -in the shabby little parlour, there it was again. She spoke it, but -not wistfully, more with relief than regret. I stayed ten days in St. -Mary’s Plains and during those days she told me the rest of the story, -bit by bit, till she came to the end—I put it down now as she told -it—what follows are her own words as I remember them.</p> - -<p class="center">* * * * * * - * *</p> - -<p>That was the end of my youth and the beginning of life. Until then I -had been made use of, but after that I acted and I became responsible -for myself.</p> - -<p>Fifteen years ago, we sat till morning waiting for Philibert. I no -longer remember what I felt. Have you tried to recall sensations of -pain, and by thinking very closely about all the little circumstances -surrounding them, to experience again the stab or the ache? One can’t. -I can’t feel again that agony. I suppose it was agony. You remember -it better than I do, for you saw it. One remembers things one has -seen and things one did, but not what went on inside one’s own dark, -impenetrable body and soul, invisibly. I remember what I did at -that time and what I said and what other people said and looked. I -remember your face, and Jinny’s fear of me, and her fretting for her -father, and Fan’s coming and saying that I looked like a mad woman, -and from these facts I deduce the other fact that I was suffering, -but I have forgotten the feeling. That is very strange when you come -to think of it, for how, then, can I know that it was so? I don’t -know. It is all merely <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>conjecture. One would have thought, from the -way I behaved and the way it changed everything that my emotion of -that time was tremendous; was immensely important. But it wasn’t. It -had no substance. It didn’t stand the test of time. It has vanished -completely. Other things have lasted.</p> - -<p>What are these feelings, emotions, passions that we make such a fuss -about? Nothing but sparks struck from an impact, a collision of some -kind. They seem to burn us up, to consume us for a moment, then they -vanish. They have no body, no staying power, no reality, but we mould -our lives by them.</p> - -<p>I am a woman. My life has always centred about people. In tracing the -course of events, I find that their causes were invariably personal—My -life is a long strong twisted rope made up of a number of human -relationships, nothing more. There was first my mother, and my Aunt -Patience, then Philibert, Bianca and Geneviève. Philibert went away. I -did without him. One can do without anything,—everything. I am proving -it now. But Bianca kept coming back; I never got rid of her.</p> - -<p>My life is a failure. It is finished. It is there in its dreadful, -unchangeable completeness spread out before me. I look at it, as I -would look at a map, and when I think that it is I who made it, this -thing called a human life, I am bewildered and ashamed. How did it come -about that I made so many mistakes, and did so much that was harmful to -others? There was no desire in my heart to hurt, no will to do wrong. -On the contrary I wanted to make people happy, I wanted to do right. -It is very strange. It is almost as if the intensity of my will to do -right forced me to do the wrong thing. Is there some explanation? Is -there a key to the problem of living that I never found? Or was it all -simply due to Bianca? My Aunt Beth used to say that the only way to -live rightly was to do the will of God. But what does that mean? How is -one to know what the will of God is? Often I wonder whether my failure -is due to my never having found out about God. Most of my people here<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> -in America would not hesitate to say yes—but I am not sure. It seems -to me that I was even more eager to do His will than I would have been -if I had been certain of His existence. It would have been an immense -relief to me to have known that God was in His Heaven and that I did -not have to bother about my own soul. “Put your troubles on the Lord,” -our parson used to say in St. Mary’s Plains. Well—I don’t know. That -is a solution for many. If they do that—just shelve everything and go -by texts in the Bible for their order of daily conduct, living must be -very much simplified—but I couldn’t do that. Something stiff and hard -and honest in me wouldn’t allow it. I couldn’t believe that I could -talk to God and ask His opinion. I used to try—when I was a child and -when I was a woman. Praying was like whispering into a chasm, a void, -an echoing emptiness. My questions came back to me, unanswered, mocking -echoes of my own tormented soul.</p> - -<p>So I floundered along.</p> - -<p>I do not excuse myself. I am to blame. I am responsible. I know that. -I lived among charming people. I had, as people say, almost everything -heart can desire. My husband did not love me, but beyond that what had -I to complain of? I had money, health, power, friends. I was one of the -fortunate. Hundreds of women, no doubt, envied me.</p> - -<p>I hadn’t the gift of living. Your mother has it, so has your sister. It -is common among French people, they are artists in life, but I was for -ever looking beyond life for its purpose, and thus missing its savour -and its meaning. The people I loved were too important to me and the -people I hated—but I can see now that Bianca wasn’t as interesting or -as important as she seemed. She was only a vain and selfish woman after -all. But she was for twenty years my obsession.</p> - -<p>I must talk about Bianca. It was really in order to talk about Bianca -that I asked you to come, for I am not yet rid of her. She haunts me -here in this innocent old house. Enigmatic in death as she was in life, -her personality persists, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>exquisite and depraved and relentless. She -comes to accuse me. Having ruined my life, she accuses me of her death.</p> - -<p>I did not kill her. Some of you thought that I did. You didn’t mind. -You didn’t blame me, but you thought so. Ludovic, I am sure, is -convinced of it, and if he does not precisely approve, he at least -accepts the fact as the inevitable outcome of our long exhausting -duel. More than once he told me that until I could rid myself of -the obsession of Bianca, I should be unable to understand the first -little thing about life. He was the one person who understood my -feeling for her and hers for me. In his uncanny wisdom, so devoid -of all prejudice, he knew that our hatred was based upon an intense -mutual attraction, and that we hounded each other to death because -under other circumstances we would have loved each other. The long and -dreary spectacle of two women hating each other for years with intense -sympathy, or if you like, loving each other with an exasperating -antagonism and hatred, was to him pitiful and contemptible. He would -have had me put an end to it somehow, anyhow, at any cost. Taking -another’s life is to him no crime compared to ruining one’s own. Well, -it is at an end now. Bianca is dead, and I am buried alive. We did each -other in, but it took twenty years, and I never touched her with my -hands, or did anything to bring about her death, save will her to die.</p> - -<p>And her death came too late to do me or mine any good. Philibert was -finished. My life was in pieces. There was nothing left to patch up. -She had come between me and my husband and child, while living, but -her death cut me off from them, more absolutely than anything she -could have done alive. And, fiendishly, as if with consummate cunning, -she died mysteriously leaving with me the unanswerable question, as -to whether or not, I had made her kill herself. I go over and over it -all, day after day, week in, week out. I remember my last view of her -alive, in that hotel corridor, the look she gave me over her drooping -shoulder, leaning against the half open door,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> her hand on the door -knob, her long languid weight on it, one pointed foot trailing, and on -her grey face, a desperate vindictive longing, a wistful cruelty, a -question, a threat, a prayer. Was she at last imploring me? Did she in -that moment remember everything? Was she mutely and bitterly asking me -to come and hear her confession? Would it all have been put right by -some miracle had I gone to her before it was too late? I don’t know—I -shall never know. I only know that our wills clashed again for the -last time, that for the last time I resisted her, and let her drag the -incredible weight of her diseased and disappointed spirit out of my -sight, for ever.</p> - -<p>And how am I to know that her death wasn’t an accident, and that her -look of desperate appeal wasn’t just such a piece of acting as she had -treated me to, at intervals for twenty years? Over and over again, -she had done the same trick. Invariably, after one of her pieces of -devilry, she would approach me with that wistful penitent masque, and -stir me to forgiveness and compassion. Repeatedly, she fooled me. -I could save her—I could influence her for good. I was strong and -balanced and sane. If only I would give her what she needed, what she -lacked, some relief from herself in some external thing, some faith, -some definite obstinate purpose, beyond the gratification of her own -vanity.</p> - -<p>And each time I believed, each time I forgave, each time looking into -her wonderful face, I thought I saw there, a spiritual meaning. It -is enough to make one scream with laughter. It was all acting. It -must have been. It was all done for the purpose of tormenting me more -exquisitely afterwards. For years she fooled me—for years I wouldn’t -believe she was what she was, a woman of immense personality and no -character, but I am at last certain that this was so. Ludovic says -that it takes as strong a character to be really wicked as really -good. He used to rave over Bianca, to anger me, I suppose, call her -perversely—“<i>une femme admirable—la plus courageuse damnée qu’il -avait jamais vue</i>.”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> I don’t agree with him. I do not mean that Bianca -had a weak character. I mean literally that she had no character at -all. Where one feels in the average human being, the strong resisting -kernel, the stern spiritual centre that contains identity there in -Bianca there was nothing. At the middle centre of her being there -was emptiness. She had, morally, no core. She was as formless as -one of those genii in the Arabian Nights who came out of Ali Baba’s -earthenware pots.</p> - -<p>I ought to know, for I loved her. She was my friend during the happiest -years of my life, when I believed in Philibert, and was confident. -I say it again, we were friends. I believe even now, in our early -friendship, in those days, Bianca was actually, and much to her own -surprise, fond of me. That she began being nice to me out of a spirit -of mischief is no doubt true. The idea of making Philibert’s wife, her -intimate, was the sort of thing likely to appeal to her but having -made the advances out of perversity, she found herself interested and -attracted. Why did she like me? It is difficult to say. Perhaps because -I was a new type and one that wouldn’t in the ordinary course of -events come her way. I puzzled her. To her I was something primitive, -savage, and dangerous. She used to call me her “<i>Peau Rouge</i>.” She -said I made her think of Buffaloes and Bison and prehistoric animals, -of black men round camp fires in jungles, of snake dancers and deserts -and the infantile magic of savage races. She wove stories about me and -hunted up old prints of queer outlandish people who she insisted had -my type of head. I was, she asserted, only half-tame, and being with -me gave her the same kind of pleasure as having a leopard about. She -was physically afraid of me. Not only at the beginning, but always to -the very end, but in those days, my losing my temper, she found, “<i>un -très beau spectacle</i>.” Her blue eyes would shine, her lips part in -amazement, and timidly she would stroke my shoulder, murmuring—“How -wonderful you are. What a volcano.” </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span></p> - -<p>She used to ask me endless questions about my childhood and appeared -greatly intrigued by my obstinate attachment to what she affectionately -termed, my ridiculous impossible background. She would make me tell -her about life in the Grey House, the baking of cakes in the kitchen, -the hymn singing on Sunday evenings, and the summer trips to the -wilderness, to the woods of Canada, or across the prairies of Omaha, -Dakota, and Arizona. She would lie on her couch in her boudoir making -patterns in the air with her lovely fingers and purring like a pleased -little cat while I described the plains, stretching endlessly under the -sky to the white horizon, the lonely wooden shacks blistered in the -sun, and infested with flies, the lazy cowboys on indefatigable loping -broncos—and she would murmur—“<i>Ah, je comprends cela—c’est grand, -c’est monstrueux, c’est beau.</i>”</p> - -<p>As for me, need I explain why I loved her? Who has not felt the quality -of her beauty? What man or woman that ever saw Bianca, failed to -respond to the peculiar penetrating charm of her personality? I see her -in memory, a vivid creature, perfect, compact, clear in the midst of a -crowd of blurred and colourless shadows. Her beauty was incisive, keen. -It cut into one’s consciousness sharp as a stab. It stamped itself on -one’s brain, indelible and certain. I see her face as clearly today as -I saw it the day I first laid eyes on her when she came up to me in -your mother’s salon and said—“You must like me, I insist.” It is there -close to me, rising out of the grave as pure, as firm, as precisely -drawn as if I held the perfect indestructible masque in my hand.</p> - -<p>I see her eyes open lazily, wider and wider, and shine out suddenly, -bluest blue, so blue that they seem to send out a blue light through -their black lashes. Ah, how lovely she was! How could I not believe in -that loveliness? Blue, brilliant fire-blue eyes set far apart under -a fringe of black hair and pointed curving thin red lips. I could -model her now exactly—the cup of her small chin, her long round white -throat, flat bosom and shoulders flowing down thin<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> arms to her narrow -beautiful hands. Her body was a fragile thing, strong as steel.</p> - -<p>And women of Bianca’s breeding never give themselves away in ordinary -life. They are closed and secret books, open only to those who have -the key. No one can read them who is not of the initiated. I did not -know the language. There was nothing about her to convey to me that -she was anything more than she seemed, a remarkable and gifted woman -of great distinction, a creature so refined as to seem to me to belong -to another planet from the one on which I had been born. It seemed to -me extraordinary that such a person should notice me at all. I was -filled with gratitude. I was humble, devoted, flattered, and Philibert -gave no sign. If not actually enthusiastic about our friendship, he -still seemed content enough, and I was happy in the thought, that this -wonderful woman who had been his comrade from childhood was now, my -friend too.</p> - -<p>And she was careful, as we grew more intimate, to show me, only those -aspects of herself that she knew would flatter and delight me. Never -did she mention subjects likely to frighten me. Her talk was all of -art shows and music and books and the ridiculous absurdities of “<i>le -monde</i>” and those things in her life that I couldn’t help noticing -with concern, she explained in a way to enlist my sympathy. She was -desperately unhappy, she told me, in her marriage, her husband’s -immorality was a great grief to her; the sorrow of her life was, -that she could have no children and so on, and so on. Once she even -confided to me that there was insanity in her family, and that she was -constantly haunted by the fear of going insane. I was, at this, in a -tumult of sympathy. I was prepared to forgive her a far greater number -of eccentricities than she ever showed me.</p> - -<p>She was, she told me, of a mixed strain of southern blood, a Venetian -on her mother’s side, on her father’s a <i>Provençale</i>. From her I learnt -that the old Duke, her father, was descended from the <i>Comtes de -Provence</i> of a line that had numbered kings in the middle ages. For<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> -many generations they had been <i>Seigneurs</i> of a wild and mountainous -region north of Avignon. Their fortress, the “<i>Château des Trois -Maries</i>” stands high against the sky on a spur of rock that reaches -out from the ragged hills, above the wide valley of the Rhône. This -was Bianca’s home. There in that sad and wonderful country of brown -sunlight, she was as nearly happy as she could ever be on earth. I went -to Provence with her one summer. And now that she is dead, I think of -her, not as she was in Paris, languid, perverse, and irritable, but as -she was in her own country. I see her against the swarthy background -of those ruined hills scarred by the hordes of invading Saracens. Her -little person seems to ride above that sunbaked land of blistered -roads and dry river beds, on the wings of legend through a burning -and sanguinary past of repeated invasions; of Barbary pirates from -across the sea to the south, and Visigoths from the north, of wandering -Bohemians, of steady marching Roman armies, of Popes flying from Italy -for refuge, of gentle saints stranded in tiny boats on the desolate -marshy shores of the <i>Camargue</i> and I see her as she ought to have been -and as she was sometimes, down there, her face brown, her blue eyes -flashing, and her thin body, lean and hard, mounted on one of the small -fleet horses of the country, galloping at the head of the thundering -fighting bulls towards the arenas of Nimes or Arles. This was her -proper setting. It was here at the <i>Château des Trois Maries</i> that she -showed herself to me, as she would have been had she not been accursed.</p> - -<p>I remember one day in her room in the west tower of the Castle, -her talking of herself, as she never talked to me before or since, -honestly, as honestly as she could, and with light laughter breaking -into her short light biting phrases. From the high window we could see -the white dust of the road whirling down the valley before the hot -scurrying wind, groves of poplars bending their plumed heads, little -brown houses surrounded by close vineyards huddled behind screens of -cypress trees. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span></p> - -<p>“I was born here,” she said, “of a woman who loathed her husband and -hated this country—but I wasn’t really born—I was made by witches -one hot windy midsummer day. They made me out of the burning sun and -the shrieking mistral and the hot white dust, in the black shade -of cypresses, and they added to the hot mixture, ice water from -that mountain stream; then they each laid on me a curse. One said, -the oldest and wickedest—‘She will covet the earth, but only love -herself.’ The second said ‘She will be haunted by the evil spirits of -dead men.’ The third said—‘Since the people of this country are fond -of wild jokes and pranks,—they are you know, <i>très blagueurs, les -Provençaux</i>, she will be much given to playing mischievous jokes that -will do others harm.’ Then they left me in the dark cypress grove, -where my mother who was wandering about and longing for the laughter -and music of her Italy, found me. She, poor darling, invoked the three -Marys for my protection, <i>les Saintes Maries de la Mer</i> who are carved -in the stone over the great door, <i>Marie Salomé</i>, <i>Marie Jacobé</i> and -<i>Marie Madeleine</i>; their shrine is in the grotto behind the house—but -they had been shipwrecked themselves and were too inefficient to cope -with my witches—and so that you see is what I am—burning hot and -icy cold, and with a dry wind, shrieking in my heart, and three times -accursed. I feel it. I know it. I have known it since I was a child—At -first I struggled, then gave in, took my curses in my arms and made -them mine, made them, I tell you—my religion—” She gave her dry -laugh. Her voice was high and sweet and careless. She spoke, without -passion, in her dry conversational tone. “If I could never love any -one but myself, never forget myself, try as I might in excesses of -every kind, then I would love myself utterly. If I was to be haunted -by the unfulfilled ideas of men and women long dead, then I would give -myself up to those ideas, and if my pranks were fated to do people -harm, well—what business was it of mine? I would enjoy doing people -harm—idiots that they are, why should I care for their thin silly -feelings? </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span></p> - -<p>“You think I am talking nonsense. If you believed me, you would be -horrified—<i>eh, bien</i>—be horrified—but you will never understand. You -will never believe that I am as bad as I am. That is the reason I like -you—that is the reason I talk to you. You are obstinate and faithful -and strong—and beside that you have demons too—I see them in your -awful sullen face that I like.</p> - -<p>“I tell you—that I am used by ideas that are not my own—that do not -come out of my own head, that come to me from I know not where. They -come persistently—out of the sky, circling back again and again like -black birds coming out of the sky to this tower. For instance; an idea -comes to me that I must go to Nimes and see a certain matador and send -for him and make him love me—I know he will be stupid and coarse and -disgusting, and I refuse. Then things happen. Every day lines appear in -the papers—his name is everywhere, in every village on every stable -wall—I laugh—and give in—and it is all stale and horrid before it -begins, but the idea had to be carried out. That you will say is just -the stupid giving into caprice of any idle woman—but it is not always -so ordinary. Suppose that some day the idea comes to me that I must -entice my husband into the oubliette. I laugh at the idea and chase it -away. Six months later it comes back more insistent, a thing with a -voice. It says ‘Get him into the north tower. He is a mean creature. He -will fall down the oubliette’—and I say peevishly—‘But I don’t mind -his being alive—he doesn’t bother me, I am not interested in killing -him’ and again I drive away the idea—but it will come back, it will -keep coming back till it is satisfied. There have been many ideas like -that demanding of me to be satisfied. Sooner or later I carry them -out—do their bidding. Often in hours of lucidity I see how dangerous -they are. I fight against them, distract myself with some idiocy or -run away—take the train, go in the opposite direction—but almost -always I give in, in the end.” She stopped. I see her now against the -stone coping of the window, leaning out—her head in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> the sun—looking -down—the wall fell sheer—a hundred feet of masonry and rock. -“Sometimes I think I will throw myself down to get rid of them, these -ideas of men and women whose restless bones are the hot dust of these -mountains—but why should I—why give myself as a sacrifice? It would -be silly—the people I will hurt if I live aren’t worth it—”</p> - -<p>She jerked back into the room and came to my side, laying a hand on my -shoulder, and standing so that I could not see her, a little behind -me, her lips close to my ear. “There are other things,” she whispered, -“worse things—ideas—that I couldn’t tell—” Her fingers clutched my -shoulder, tightening until they hurt me—“You help me, but sometimes -I am angry with you for being what you are and want to hurt you. Some -day, who knows, the idea may come to me to do you harm. You are safe -now because I don’t understand you, and feel you are stronger than -I—but if I ever detected a weakness in you—or if you ever bored me, -then I should hate you, then I would certainly do you a hurt. It’s a -warning—” she broke off with a laugh, kissed lightly the tip of my ear -and left me.</p> - -<p>I was not afraid of her then—what she said did not disturb me. I -laughed at it; I was happy and confident. I had everything in the world -I wanted, and I lived in a daze of joy and excitement—Europe, Paris, -the miracles produced by my wealth, still dazzled and amazed me; going -to bull-fights with Bianca, or hunting wild boar, with the old Duke, -or attending the Courts of Rome, Vienna, Berlin or St. James’s with -Philibert, everything was marvellous. I had no time to worry, and no -reason to do so that I knew of.</p> - -<p>But I remembered what Bianca had said, and in the light of what -happened, I understood that she had been speaking the truth. It was -simply her way of admitting that she was a supreme egotist. Put simply, -it meant that the one motive power in her, was her vanity. It was her -vanity that held her together and gave her an outline. And as she grew -older she developed it as other women develop a gift<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> for music. She -worshipped herself, and she made of her egotism an elaborate religion. -Her adoration of herself grew into a passion and burned with the ardour -of a saint’s miraculously revealed inspiration. She would have gone to -the stake for it. It incased her in complete armour. No one and nothing -could touch her through it. She was the only woman I have ever known -who lived consistently and exclusively for herself, and she did so with -the sustained passion of a religious maniac. One can only compare her -to a Savanorola.</p> - -<p>Her vanity was her power and her curse. It was an ogre. It had to be -fed. Human beings were thrown to it as to the devouring dragons in -fairy tales. We were all victims. I was, and you were, and Philibert -and Jinny, and Micky and Fan and all the others. Insatiable vanity, -that was all there was to Bianca in the last analysis. That was all the -meaning of her, but its manifestations, its results, its devious ways -of arriving at its own ends, these were infinite, would fill volumes.</p> - -<p>You can see how the curse would operate. It operated through her -intelligence. Had she been stupid, all would have been well, but -concentrated on the study and care of herself, elaborating year after -year her attentions to herself, nursing her body, her face, her senses, -supplying to herself stimulants and soothing preparations, searching -for curious new sensations, she was aware of her own limited power to -please herself. Distinctly she perceived something beyond her reach, -a quality of experience outside her range, a beauty she could not -attain. She would have liked best to have been a queen of love, whom -all men adored, like the radiant Simonetta—fairy queen of Florence, -beautifully worshipped by an entire population, and she only succeeded -in being <i>la femme fatale</i>. With no gladness in her soul, she could -not inspire gladness—always in the faces of her victims she saw a -reflection of her own darkness. If occasionally, in the lurid light -of the excitement she could so easily evoke, she saw in a man’s face -a flash that resembled<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> joy, ecstacy, delight, she as often saw it -fade to a dismal stupidity, or rage or disgust. Impossible for her to -create anything more than an imitation of bliss. Her egoism spoiled -its own gratification. It contained poison. Her touch was magical and -deadly. This, in the end, bored her. She used to complain exasperatedly -of people being afraid of her. The care with which they succumbed -disgusted her. Men grovelling at her feet, men writing sentimental -verses, men touching her with clumsy hands; she came to loathe them. -There was nothing in it; she wanted something else, something out of -the ordinary, something continually surprising, unexpected, dramatic. -Alas! Humanity goes its stolid way comfortably enough in spite of the -Biancas of the world. Men will “play up” to a certain point. They will -pretend to be dying of love to please a beautiful lady’s caprice, but -they won’t really die. One of the things Bianca longed for was to have -a crop of suicides laid to her account. She would have been pleased had -some of her victims blown their brains out, but somehow they didn’t. -They only threatened to do so. Once out of her sight, they recovered -the normal and sallied forth from her boudoir to enjoy fat beefsteaks.</p> - -<p>Her tragedy lay in understanding what she missed. She observed that -inferior people experienced a range of feeling of which she was -incapable. Insignificant women inspired the passions she longed to -inspire. She envied and despised them. She envied every happy woman -her happiness, every lover his love; her eyes watched them all, with -curiosity, disdain and exasperation.</p> - -<p>What in me began, after our three years of harmony, to get on her -nerves, was my monotonous and exclusive feeling for Philibert. That -such a sentiment should continue to absorb me and satisfy me, after -five years of marriage was too much for her. She became irritable and -teasing. She began to make fun of my love for my husband. She called it -stupid, vulgar, grotesque, indecent. I lost my temper, she grovelled, -enjoying that, but when next we met she began<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> again, professing an -extraordinary merriment at the sight of my mawkish sentimentality. -With a sudden flash of insight I accused her of envy. She grew livid. -In a choking whisper, she told me that Philibert for his part was no -such idiot and that all I had to do was to look about me to find out -the truth. I left her in a rage and stayed away. I did not see her -again until the night of her ball, some months later, to which I went, -knowing that she had determined to take Philibert away from me. It was -the fact that Philibert as she believed had begun to care for me, that -made her finally act. She simply couldn’t bear to think that Philibert -and I should come to understand and truly care equally for each other.</p> - -<p>I went to her ball to make a scene, to frighten her into giving him -back to me, but I did nothing. I didn’t speak to her. I didn’t go -near her. I simply stood and watched her. The sight of her paralysed -me. I realized that no man who had ever known and loved Bianca, could -care for me. And I came away, knowing that between me and Philibert, -everything was ended, and I came away terrified. As I left the house, I -remember muttering to myself “I must escape”—“I must escape.” Escape -from what? I don’t know. From them both, from what they had done, from -what they stood for, from the world of treachery and deadly pleasure to -which they belonged.</p> - -<p>But I did not get away. I never got away. I never escaped from Bianca. -I never got out of range of the sense of her presence and of her -infernal charm. I still cared for her. Hating her, I still wondered -that she could have hurt me, still wept and called out to her in the -dark at night to know why she had done it, still felt her to be the -most fascinating woman I had ever known, and it was this that made -my jealousy of Philibert unbearable and fiendish. I had been twice -betrayed and I knew loving them both, and knowing them both, precisely -the quality of the delight they had in each other.</p> - -<p>And I knew too, that Bianca was acting as she did <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>because of me—even -more than because of Philibert. I was conscious and I was convinced -that she was conscious that the real meaning of the whole thing lay -in her feeling for me. There was between us, a relationship that had -become hateful, but that was still going on, a thing that was going to -endure, a mutual sympathy outraged and hideous now, but persisting. If -she had only wanted Philibert—well, she had him already. No—what she -wanted was to hurt me. And making all allowances for the attraction -between them, had it not been for me, he would not have inspired her -with a sufficient energy to bolt with him. The situation would have -lacked that something peculiar and curious which she wanted, had she -not felt as she did about me.</p> - -<p>But I may be confused between what I knew then and what I know now. -It may be that I did not understand it all so well, then—I forget—I -cannot recall my actual state of mind. I give less importance to -my preoccupation with Philibert than I should do, and lay too much -emphasis on Bianca, because you see, I have got over Philibert, the -hurt he did me is long since past and I no longer care about it, but -from Bianca—I have never recovered. She never let me go—she never -finished with me. It wasn’t just one thing—it was a series of things -stretching over years, a continual coming back. You see—in the last -analysis it was because of me that she ran away with Philibert, broke -Fan’s heart and laid schemes for corrupting Jinny—and these things -took fifteen years to accomplish. There was war between us for fifteen -years.</p> - -<p>The story of my life is the story of my duel with Bianca. Other people -played a part, other feelings absorbed me for long periods, other -relationships endured, but my relationship to Bianca was the long -strong rope that hanged me. You will see how it was.</p> - -<p>Why did she go on with it? I don’t know. Unless it was that I never -gave in. Had I collapsed after Philibert left me, she might have been -satisfied—and satisfied, she would have lost interest in me—and I -should have been saved.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span></p> - -<h2>II</h2> - -<p>It is very difficult for me to recall my state of mind during the days -that followed Philibert’s going off with her.</p> - -<p>I’ve an idea that I was in a kind of stupor, not much noticing -anything. I must have given orders that no one was to be admitted, for -I learned afterwards that Claire and your mother both called, and a -number of other relatives. I think I remained in my room for a day or -two lying on the bed with my clothes on and refusing to open the door -to my maid. It was Jinny who roused me. The servants were frightened. -The nurse brought her down and she pounded on the door with her little -fists till I opened it, but when she saw me she gave a shriek and ran -away from me and hid in her nurse’s petticoats. That brought me to -my senses, my child’s fear and the servants’ faces. I had a bath and -something to eat. They brought me my letters obsequiously, and with -furtive curiosity. I could hear the servants hanging about whispering. -I imagined them talking, talking, endlessly talking it over downstairs. -They were strangers to me, Philibert’s servants, servants of that -great, horrible house that I disliked. I had no reason to stay there -now. Nothing kept me—I would go home to St. Mary’s Plains.</p> - -<p>I started a letter to my Aunt Patience, what was I to say to her? “My -husband has run away with another woman. He never loved me. My mother -married me to him for her own purposes. Now that she is dead there is -no more reason to go on with this horrible farce. I am coming home.” -Something of that kind? No, I couldn’t. I stared at the words I had -written—“My dearest Aunt Patty.” I seemed to see her sitting off -there, at the end of that great distance, adjusting her spectacles, -opening my letter with expectant<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> fingers. I saw the shabby room, the -sunlight on the worn carpet, the littered writing desk, the piles of -books, the stuffed birds in their glass cases. I saw my aunt an old -woman, facing old age alone, with equanimity, following year after -year the pursuit of knowledge, not afraid of time, not oppressed by -solitude, going up to bed night after night in the empty house and -kneeling down in her flannel dressing-gown beside her narrow white -counterpane to pray to God, and remembering me always, never forgetting -me, never leaving me alone.</p> - -<p>Once she had said, “When you’re in a hole, Jane, and don’t know what to -do, you can always do the thing you hate doing most and you’ll probably -not be far wrong.”</p> - -<p>Looking out of the window I became aware of Paris and I thought of -those words. Paris! There it was streaming by, to the races. Was it -aware of what had happened to me? I wondered. Did people know that -Bianca and Philibert had run away together like a couple of actors, -like a pair of quite common people? I imagined society agog with the -scandal. I saw them gloating pitying. I heard women saying—“<i>Cette -pauvre femme, elle était vraiment trop bête.</i>” It seemed to me that -every one in the street must be looking up at my windows with curiosity -and derision. They were invading my privacy, pulling off from me the -last decent covering of my dignity. Well, why sit there and bear it? -Why suffer public humiliation? My eyes fell on my engagement book. I -observed that Philibert and I were due for dinner that night at your -Aunt Clothilde’s. I rang for my maid and told her to telephone <i>Madame -la Duchesse</i> and say that although Monsieur, having been called out of -town, would not be able to present himself at her dinner, I would come -with pleasure, as had been arranged. My face in the glass seemed much -as usual. I had done all my weeping with you, my poor Blaise, three -nights before. Having made up my mind to go out I now experienced a -certain relief. The coiffeur was summoned and the manicurist. Aunt -Clo’s dinners were very special affairs, so I chose a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> nice dress, -white, and put on an extra rope of pearls. As you know, my appearance -created something of a sensation. I saw that at once. They had thought -me already dead and buried, and were gossiping as I suspected, over my -remains. My business for the moment was to show them that I was alive.</p> - -<p>Ah, but how dreary and trivial it all seems now. Why? Why? What earthly -difference did it make what they said or thought? But I am telling -you about it, just as it was. I wanted, I needed desperately at that -moment, the sense of my own dignity. It was all I had left. So I went -out to that dinner party and defended it.</p> - -<p>Aunt Clo was nice. She was pleased with me and put me opposite her. It -was a vatican dinner, semi-political. I had, I remember, the Italian -Ambassador on my right and the Foreign Minister on my left. Your aunt -was between the Archbishop and the Duc de B—— recently arrived -from Rome. The talk was brilliant, I believe. I heard it in a daze, -but managed to keep my end up somehow. Clémentine was there, at her -best, in wonderful form. She must have known all about Philibert, -for she came up to me after dinner and said—“Blaise de Joigny is my -great friend. You must come to see me. We have much in common.” Our -friendship dates from that night.</p> - -<p>But when I reached home I felt more tired than I had thought it -possible to be. I went up to the nursery. Jinny was asleep in her cot, -hugging a white woolly dog. I knelt beside her and sent out my spirit -in search of God, but I did not find Him. I could not pray. I heard my -baby’s breathing, blissful, trustful breathing. I knelt listening. She -was so small and sweet. Above her was an immense blackness. She made -now and then happy little sounds in her sleep, and lying there so still -I saw her moving on and on, invisibly, into the future to the ticking -of the nursery clock, carried along as she lay there on the current of -life, life that was an enormous dupery, an ugliness and a lie.</p> - -<p>The days passed, separate and distinct, moving in a <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>procession, each -one to be watched and endured separately, moving by their own volition, -taking no account of me, having nothing to do with me, answerable to -some mysterious power that started each one rolling like a bead dropped -from the end of a string, and in each one, as in a crystal, I saw the -pageant of Paris revolving, but I was outside, drifting in empty space.</p> - -<p>The longing to get away from it all was unbearable. I would go—I -would go—I must go—Patience Forbes was the only person in the world -who could help me—and yet I went on working out my idea that took me -about among people, and you, dear Blaise, went with me. Your attitude -was of a delicacy rare even in your world of delicate adjustments -and sympathies. You understood, you constituted yourself my escort. -Do you remember those days, how we went from one place to another, -luncheons, dinners, private views, official receptions, and how we -tacitly agreed on just the amount we were bound to do for our purpose? -I scarcely realized at the time all that it meant for you to do this, -and how the family would resent your attitude. I know now that they -never quite trusted you after this. As I remember we talked nothing -over and did not, I think, mention Philibert save once, when I asked -you if you knew where he was. You did know, of course. Every one knew, -I suppose, except myself. They had been seen, those two, boarding -the Simplon express. They were in Venice, you told me, I had wanted -to know for convenience. Having adopted a line, it seemed best to -follow it consistently. One was to assume that my husband had gone -away for a holiday. I was there to make his excuses to suffering -hostesses deprived of his society. The note to be struck was light and -commonplace, as if his absence were like any other of his many past -absences. The pretence deceived no one, but then the consistent lying -made for decency. I was marking time. It was particularly difficult -because I was not acting in accord with my nature. Had I been natural -at that time I should have been horrible; I should have smashed -things.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> But I was not behaving like myself. I see now what it was; -I was behaving like one of you, behaving as Claire, for instance, -would have behaved in my place. I was adopting your methods and your -standards. Not to give myself away, not to let any one suspect what -I was feeling and thinking, not to make a false step, not to make -above all a public fuss, that seems to have been my idea. To preserve -appearances as beautifully as possible, that was what you and I were -working at, as we trailed drearily round from one place to another -saying suave things with smooth faces.</p> - -<p>And there was another influence working on me, even more subtle and -far more pervasive. You will smile, perhaps, when I tell you that my -quiet behaviour came from looking every day across the Place de la -Concorde to the austere and reserved façade of the Madeleine, or across -a silver distance of pale houses to the far alabaster pinnacle of the -Sacré Coeur high above the city, but it was so. Paris exercises upon -its inhabitants a fine discipline of taste. Those who love it change -unconsciously. The long, wide, symmetrical avenues, the formal gardens, -with their slim fountains, single waving sprays of crystal water, the -calm façades of long rows of narrow, uniform houses, palest yellow in -sunlight, pearl white towards evening, these things have an effect upon -one’s manners that is imperceptible and profound. They spelt to me -harmony and restraint and Plato’s idea of beauty. My high falsity was -at the best only less futile than a good, noisy bout of hysterics. What -comforted me in these hours of doubt was that I knew you were no more -certain than I. You did not represent your family. You were neither -a go-between nor a spy nor a jailor, you were a friend. Positively I -believe there were moments when you wanted me to break out, break away, -throw caution and carefulness to the winds. Sometimes there was so much -compassion in your face that I almost cried out to you not to care so -much. I wanted to warn you that it was only for the moment that I was -keeping my head up, that I wouldn’t be able and didn’t intend<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> to go on -with it indefinitely and that the thought behind all my smooth social -words was; “He has gone for ever. Soon I’ll be free to say so.”</p> - -<p>I did really believe Philibert had left me for good. It never occurred -to me that he would ever come back, and that belief was in a way -my refuge. I was rid of them both; Bianca, I told myself, would be -satisfied now and would leave me alone. She would carry on her mischief -elsewhere, not in my life. My life was, I believed, my own, separated -for always from hers and from Philibert.</p> - -<p>Then one day Fan turned up. She came in jauntily, her head in the air, -as if nothing had happened. She looked very smart, her hat set at a -rakish angle, her short, pleated skirt flippant above her neat ankles. -From across the room she called out “Well,—Jane, we’ve married a nice -pair of men. Here’s Philibert’s skipped and I’ve had to send Ivanoff -packing. He’d taken to beating me, I’m black and blue all over. Some -people like it—I don’t.” She gave me a peck on the cheek. “Poor old -Jane, you’re taking it hard, I suppose.” She turned back the sleeve -of her dress. Her arm had welts on it. “You should see my back.” I -shuddered, but at sight of my emotion she twitched away from me with a -nervous laugh. “Between my Slav and your Frenchman I don’t know that -there’s much to choose. God, if it were only an occasional beating I -shouldn’t mind.” She did a waltz step across the room, twirled round on -her tiny feet, lit a cigarette standing on tiptoe, and collapsed into a -chair in a spasm of coughing.</p> - -<p>“I had it out with Ivanoff, my dear, about you, and I know all about -it—just the exact sums you gave him for me, bless your baby heart, -and everything. At first I doubted you. I was a fool. I’m sorry. -Unfortunately I found out other things. There are other women in the -world who don’t love me at all, but who pay for my shoes. Do you hear? -Do you get what I mean? I find I’ve been paying my bills with their -money. What do you say to that? I ask you simply. And we’re on the -streets now—at least<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> he’s gone—I’m staying with Madeleine de Greux, -and the bailiffs have got our furniture.” And she went off into a wild -scream of laughter. It was incredibly painful. She sat there as neat -and smart as a pin. Her small cocked hat on one side of her head, her -pretty little legs crossed, one high-heeled patent leather slipper -dangling in the air, the other tapping the floor, she puffed smoke -through her little tilted nose and looked at me desperately out of her -hard, level eyes, while she yelled with laughter just as if some one -were tickling her till she screamed with pain.</p> - -<p>I went to my desk and got out my cheque book. “Let’s pay off the -furniture first,” I said as prosaically as I could, but she jumped up -irritably.</p> - -<p>“God! Jane, what a fool you are. Put that cheque book away. Do you -think I’d touch another penny of yours? There—don’t be hurt. Of course -I would if I needed it, but what good will money do? I can’t go and -hunt out Ivo’s mistresses and pay them back, can I? Oh, God! Oh, God! -Oh, God!—I did like him. Men are devils. Even now I’m worried about -him. I imagine him locked up somewhere or dead drunk in the gutter -lying out in the dark—whereas he’s probably at Monte having a high old -time. By the way, your French family is in a great state about you. -Claire says their position as regards you is very delicate. I suppose -it is. They don’t know whether to come here or to leave you alone. They -wonder what you’re going to do. They’re frightfully cut up about Fifi, -and they’re afraid you’ll do something final like getting a divorce.”</p> - -<p>“Well, my dear, that’s just what I do think of doing.”</p> - -<p>“I see.” She ruminated, chewing her cigarette that had gone out. -“They’ll never forgive you if you do.”</p> - -<p>“I suppose not, but I don’t see that that matters.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, but it does. They’re so perfectly charming. They’d make Paris -impossible for you.”</p> - -<p>“That sounds charming, I must say.”</p> - -<p>“Don’t be stupid, Jane. You know what I mean. You know how clever they -are. They’re the most attractive<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> people on earth. But if you set them -against you, the whole clan, you’ll find life here very different.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t propose to live here.”</p> - -<p>“Where then?”</p> - -<p>“In St. Mary’s Plains.”</p> - -<p>“Heaven help you, my poor misguided lamb.”</p> - -<p>“I’m homesick,” I persisted obstinately.</p> - -<p>“Of course, for the moment, because you’re unhappy.”</p> - -<p>“No, not only because I’m unhappy. I like the Grey House. I belong -there. It’s quiet, it’s safe, it’s real, it’s the place I know best in -the world.”</p> - -<p>“Nonsense. It’s a dingy little shanty.”</p> - -<p>“You can call it names if you like. I don’t care what you say. I’m -going back there.”</p> - -<p>“For good?”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know—perhaps.”</p> - -<p>“Well, you won’t stay, so you’d better not risk it.”</p> - -<p>“Risk what?”</p> - -<p>“Having to eat humble pie and come back to be forgiven.”</p> - -<p>It was my turn to get up with a fling of exasperation and walk about. -She followed me with her bright, piercing gaze.</p> - -<p>“Think a little, Jane. Use your brains, if you can. Think of the -difference between your life here and your life at home in that -Godforsaken hole of St. Mary’s Plains. Look at this room. Look out -of the window and remember. Don’t I remember? Wooden sidewalks with -weeds growing between the boards, boys playing marbles in the street, -women hanging out their washing in backyards, Sunday clothes, oh, -those best Sunday clothes, revival meetings, Moody and Sankey in tents -on the lake shore, picnics, bicycle rides, dances at the Country -Club, freckled youths kissing you on the verandah, great news—Ethel -Barrymore is coming in her new play that’s been running a year in New -York. Excursions on the lake, fifty cents a round trip and soft drinks, -sarsaparilla, ginger ale, buggy rides, shopping down town, talking to -old women—cats who gossip about<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> somebody’s new red silk petticoat, -too flighty, indecent. All going to church and shouting ‘Hallaleluja’ -and eating blueberry pie afterwards till their mouths are all black -inside.”</p> - -<p>“Well,” I said. She wriggled about as if sitting on pins.</p> - -<p>“You want to give up Paris, this house, your position here, for that? -You’ve got Europe at your feet. You’ve only got to sit tight and every -one in Paris will be on your side. Fifi will come back and be as good -as gold. You’ll be able to do what you like with him after this.”</p> - -<p>I stopped her.</p> - -<p>“So you think I’d take Philibert back?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, I do. We all do.”</p> - -<p>“And begin again living together, after this?”</p> - -<p>“Yep.”</p> - -<p>“You don’t find it appalling even to think of—?”</p> - -<p>“No, merely a little uncomfortable to begin with.”</p> - -<p>“You take my breath away.”</p> - -<p>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—?”</p> - -<p>“If you don’t mind we won’t talk about it. Other women’s marriages are -nothing to me.”</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> Your parties are beyond everything. You’re more -<i>recherchée</i> 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.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, I do.”</p> - -<p>“But the people there—” she almost screamed.</p> - -<p>“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.”</p> - -<p>Fan looked at me in amazement.</p> - -<p>“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.</p> - -<p>“You’ve already gone too far,” she said impishly. “You can’t get back. -You’re spoiled for your Aunt Patience.” </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span></p> - -<p>“We’ll see,” I muttered. My suspicions were suddenly roused by a look -in her little squirrel face.</p> - -<p>“You’ve been talking to Claire,” I said.</p> - -<p>“Well, what if I have?”</p> - -<p>“She sent you.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, she did; but I was coming, anyway.”</p> - -<p>“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?”</p> - -<p>“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.”</p> - -<p>“I see.”</p> - -<p>“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.”</p> - -<p>“Why doesn’t Claire come herself and tell me all this?”</p> - -<p>“She doesn’t dare. She says you don’t like her.”</p> - -<p>“That, my dear, is funny. I’ve adored her for years and she’s -consistently snubbed me.”</p> - -<p>“Well, anyway, you’re so different, she feels you wouldn’t understand. -You see, she puts up with a good deal herself.”</p> - -<p>“I know. Perhaps I understand more than she thinks I do.”</p> - -<p>“She’s very unhappy in her marriage, too, but she doesn’t make a fuss -about it. She doesn’t expect the impossible.”</p> - -<p>“Whereas I do?”</p> - -<p>“Well, yes. Between you and me and the lamp-post I think you do.”</p> - -<p>“I only ask to be allowed to save Geneviève from a fate like my own.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, my dear, if you think they’ll let you have Geneviève—” </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span></p> - -<p>“What do you mean?”</p> - -<p>“A man always has rights over his child in this country, whatever the -facts against him.”</p> - -<p>“You suggest that the law wouldn’t give me my own child?”</p> - -<p>“It wouldn’t, not the French law.”</p> - -<p>“Well, we’ll see about that, too.”</p> - -<p>“Jane, you’re terrible.”</p> - -<p>“Am I?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, you frighten me.”</p> - -<p>“I’m sorry.”</p> - -<p>“What shall I say to them?”</p> - -<p>“To whom?”</p> - -<p>“Claire, Madame de Joigny, your Aunt Clothilde, all of them.”</p> - -<p>“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?”</p> - -<p>But Fan had grown deadly pale. I stopped, horrified.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> She was leaning -against the mantelpiece, spitting into her handkerchief: there was -blood on it.</p> - -<p>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.”</p> - -<p>“But, my darling, let me get you well first, let me take you somewhere.”</p> - -<p>“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.”</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span></p> - -<h2>III</h2> - -<p>Philibert’s family had shown up to this point, a remarkable restraint. -As long as I went about as if nothing had happened, they left me alone, -but after my scene with Fan I allowed myself a revulsion of feeling. I -stopped going out. I shut myself up and sent for my lawyer. Philibert -had been gone two months. I saw no reason to put off any longer, the -action that I was determined on; I would start divorce proceedings, -leave things in professional hands and go home. What else could I do?</p> - -<p>July was drawing to a close. The season was ending in a languid dribble -of belated garden parties. Fan, with a characteristic spurt of energy, -had recovered and gone off to the Austrian Tyrol with the de Greux, -leaving me with a last bit of reiterated advice about not being a fool. -I observed that I had no place to go, and nothing to do. Biarritz, -Trouville, Dinard, would mean carrying on the sickening pretence under -an even closer scrutiny than in Paris. The Château de Ste. Clothilde -had no charms for me now. I had liked the place, but Philibert had -spoiled it with his endless improvements. It was now, his creation -stamped with him. Sitting alone in my room at the top of the house with -the shabby relics of the Grey House, I thought of him as he had been -there in the country, strutting about directing his army of workmen, -cutting down trees, pulling up whole lawns to replace them with -gravelled terraces, and sinking into the reluctant earth marble basins -for the lovely vagrant waters of the park. He had always professed to -be the enemy of nature. It was true. What he called—“<i>Les bêtises de -la nature</i>,” filled him with disgust. Spreading trees and green fields -dotted with buttercups and bubbling streams tumbling through thickets -got on his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> nerves. “<i>Regardez donc le laissez-aller de tout cela</i>,” -he would cry. “How ugly it is. How stupid. It has no form, no design.” -Clumps of trees in a meadow he would liken to pimples on hairy faces. -He called grass the hair of the earth, and couldn’t endure it unless it -was close cut. He never saw a stream of water without wanting to use it -up in elaborate fountains. Gardens he regarded as “salons” in the open -air. One should use the shrubs and trees and flowers as one used silks -and brocades in an interior. Everything in a garden must be “<i>voulu</i>.” -Nothing must be left to go its own way, not a vine, not a rosebush, not -a tree should be allowed a movement of its own. Nature must be bound -and twisted into a work of art. “Ah,” he would exclaim, “how it amuses -me to torture nature.” You know what he did. The result was very fine -of its kind, certainly very grandiose. He would lead people out on the -terrace and, standing a minute, a shiny dapper little manikin, five -foot four in high heels above that great design of gravel walks and -fountains and squares of water, with their little parquets of green -grass closed in by hedges, like a series of drawing-rooms, he would -sparkle with enthusiasm. “You see,” he would say, “what I have done, -you see how these gardens <i>s’accrochent au château</i>, how it is all a -part of the house. The château could not exist without the garden, -nor the garden without the château. One would have no sense without -the other. Before I restored the grounds and elaborated on the old -designs of Lenôtre, the house was horrible.” He had placed complicated -machinery under his fountains that made the waters when they were in -play take a dozen varied successive shapes. Nothing amused him more -than watching all those waters playing, twisting, turning, tracing -strange designs in the sunlight, designs that he himself had imagined. -It gave him a peculiar joy to see his own idea produced in crystal -drops of water. He had worked in sunlight and limpid flowing water as -a painter works in colours, and had in a way produced for himself the -illusion of the miraculous. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span></p> - -<p>He couldn’t understand why I suffered when he had all those magnificent -trees uprooted and when later on I complained that there was no shade -anywhere and no place to lie down with a book: “But, my poor child, -you’ve your bed for that, or your ‘<i>chaise longue</i>.’ This garden is -neither a bedroom nor a boudoir, it is a ‘<i>salle de fêtes</i>’.”</p> - -<p>I remembered all this. Certainly for many reasons Ste. Clothilde was -out of the question. I would take Jinny home with me to St. Mary’s -Plains. The moment had come. A strange excitement came over me as I at -last wrote out the cablegram to Patience Forbes announcing our sailing -on the first of August. On the same day I had a talk with my solicitor. -<i>Maître</i> Baudoin was a jaded, dry man, I believe honest, and rather -dull. He was eager for a holiday and very bored, I could see, at the -idea of being kept in town. He gave me little sympathy.</p> - -<p>I wished to divorce my husband. That might or might not be possible. -It depended, of course, to a certain extent, to a limited extent, on -whether I had sufficient grounds, and whether <i>Monsieur le Marquis</i> -contested the suit. I intimated briefly that I believed I had -sufficient grounds. He eyed me gravely through half-shut deferential -and sleepy eyes. Did I think my husband would defend the suit, because -if he did, no matter what my grounds were, the case might last five -years. He told me this as a matter of conscience. Such a case would -be lucrative to him, of course, but it might prove fatiguing to the -parties more directly concerned. Five years? Yes, or even ten. That -was the way in France. A divorce against a man who fought it was very -difficult to obtain, and of course the Church did not recognize it. -That was not his affair save in so far as if I had the intention of -re-marrying, such a marriage would of necessity be considered bigamous -by all good Catholics. I had, I said, no intention of marrying a second -time. He seemed at that rather mystified. I desired, then, nothing more -than legal separation? That was much simpler. It was all a question of -property. Was there a settlement?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> He supposed I wished “<i>séparation -des biens</i>.” I told him that I had no wish to leave <i>Monsieur de -Joigny</i> in financial difficulties and that that question might be left -until later, but he proved obstinate and kept on talking on the same -subject till my head ached. Finally I gathered that he was suggesting -as delicately as he could that Philibert might be bribed. “But I can’t -settle on him a large sum,” I objected wearily, “the fortune is tied up -for my daughter.”</p> - -<p>“Ah, a trust?”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“It all goes to your child on your death?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, to my children or child, by my father’s will.”</p> - -<p>“I see. She becomes, then, the important factor.”</p> - -<p>“What do you mean?”</p> - -<p>“You would lose her.”</p> - -<p>“Why?”</p> - -<p>“The law courts would not deprive her father of her custody.”</p> - -<p>“But if he doesn’t care for her?”</p> - -<p>“Are you sure he doesn’t?”</p> - -<p>“He has left her.”</p> - -<p>“For a time, perhaps, but she is his, and if, which would be most -unnatural, he did not care for her, he might still care for what she -represented.”</p> - -<p>It was on the tip of my tongue to say that he cared for nothing but -his mistress, but I left the vulgar words unspoken. After all, I was -not sure that Philibert did not care for Geneviève. His moods of a -doting father might be genuine. He might indeed fight for her. My will -hardened as I wearily dismissed the tiresome discouraging man of law. -It was all more complicated than I had thought.</p> - -<p>He had scarcely got out of the house before it was invaded by -relatives. With a startling promptitude, they bore down on me. They -must have had spies in the house. My secretary must have telephoned the -alarm, or the Governess or the Butler, any one, or all of the staff -may have been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> keeping them informed. In any case, there they were, -miraculously ushered into my presence without warning one by one, -or two by two, or in groups, aunts, uncles, cousins, first, second, -third cousins, cousins by marriage once removed, some of them people -whom I scarcely knew, strange old women in wigs with withered faces -and ragged feather boas, unearthed for the occasion out of their old -grand sealed houses; shrivelled old men with stiff knees and watery -eyes; it would have seemed funny, had my nerves not been on edge, had -their visits not appeared to me so exceedingly misplaced. I soon found -that no hinting on my part would make them take this view. They meant -business. They were the family. They were acting for the family and as -a family. Some of them constituted that sacred thing the “<i>conseil de -famille</i>” and they were acting in accordance with the rights and duties -of a French family in harmony with and under the protection of the law -of the French state. With correct and concise politeness they gave me -to understand that I was not free to do as I liked, that I was one of -them, bound as they were bound, and that if I chose to go against their -will, and defy my obligations, then I would do so at my own peril and -at the cost of what I held most dear. I saw what they were driving at. -They meant to keep Jinny whatever happened. If I declared war, I would -lose my child.</p> - -<p>I put it brutally. They didn’t. They were charming. They beat round the -bush. They asked after my health. They drank tea and smoked cigarettes -and patted Jinny’s head and said charming things to her and gave her -bonbons but they made their meaning clear and the more diplomatic they -were, the angrier I became.</p> - -<p>This kind of thing went on for three days. I remained obdurate. I -refused to commit myself, but gradually I was becoming frightened. -What frightened me was that I saw that they all, every one of them, -even those that I had thought most human, even your Aunt Alice who -was a saint and your Uncle Stanislas all sided with Philibert,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> all -stood solid behind him, all would stick to him no matter what he did, -before the world and against the foreigner who threatened the close -fabric of their community; and I took it as a sinister portent that -those of the immediate family, whom I knew best, your mother and Claire -and Aunt Clothilde, stayed away. In despair I went to Aunt Clothilde. -What, I asked her, did it all mean? She gave me no comfort. It meant -simply that things were so in France. French families were like that. -They clung together, and they did not admit divorce. If I tried to -divorce Philibert I would fail and would in the attempt lose my child. -Philibert, of course, was a rascal, but what would you, I ought to -have known it from the beginning. American women thought too much of -themselves. There was no modesty in the way I was behaving. Why should -I suppose that the whole scheme of the social state should be upset -because my husband liked another woman better than he did me? She -liked me, of course she liked me—for that reason she had refused to -take part in the family’s councils of war. But she was disappointed -in me, she had thought I had pluck. Here I was, behaving like a fish -wife who has been knocked into the gutter, screaming for my rights, -for vengeance. I had better go home and say my prayers. I went, and -as if in answer to the dreadful old woman’s bidding found a bishop in -the drawing-room. My nerves by that time were in such a state that the -suave and polished prelate soon had me in tears. He mistook them for -tears of repentance. He talked a long time about the consolation of -religion and the comfort of confession and rejoiced to find that I was -less inimical to the benign influence of Rome, than he had thought. I -scarcely heard what he said, but his fine ivory face and glowing eyes -and thin set mouth, gave me a feeling of uncanny power. I remembered -that I belonged to his Church, that I had been solemnly married at the -High Altar of Rome, that there I had taken vows, had professed beliefs, -and I felt a sudden superstitious terror.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> What if it were true, their -truth? What could they do to me, these mysterious ministers of the -Pope? What could they not do? In my fever, I saw myself tracked to -St. Mary’s Plains, followed up the steps of the Grey House by sallow -figures in black cassocks, and suffering, labouring for the rest of my -days, under the mysterious blight of an ecclesiastical curse.</p> - -<p>When one lives in a country that is not one’s own, among strange -people whom one knows only superficially, surrounded by customs and -conventions that one does not understand, one finds it difficult to -decide moral issues. I felt bewildered and at a loss. It still seemed -to me at moments inevitable and right to divorce Philibert. At other -moments I felt less sure. The disapproval of the organized compact -community was having its effect. The antagonism of the family acted on -me with incessant pressure, however obstinately I repeated to myself -the words “I don’t care.” I did care. I was alone. I could not even be -certain that my Aunt Patience would approve. She might say in her terse -way, “Quite right, Jane. He’s forfeited your respect, get rid of him,” -or she might say, “You married him before God, you can’t undo that,” I -did not know what she would say. And the problem of Geneviève tortured -me. The fear of losing her if I divorced her father was no greater -than the fear of seeing her gradually slipping from me as the years -passed, if I remained his wife. No one knew better than I how charming -he could be if he chose. I watched him in anticipation stealing her -heart from me, turning her against her own mother. I saw her becoming -more and more like him, becoming his pupil, his work of art. Philibert -made things his own so easily. He had a genius for conquest. Everything -that he touched became his. How different from me! There was nothing -in Philibert’s house that belonged to me, except the few sticks of -furniture that I had hidden away in that room upstairs. The lovely -things in the great rooms troubled me. They affected my nerves as if -a chorus of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> small muffled voices were calling out to me in strange -tongues that I could not understand. I realized their beauty, but was -conscious of not appreciating them as they deserved. There was no -sympathy between us. They affected me but I did not affect them. I -could never make them look as if they were a part of my life. I was -loath to handle them, but no amount of touching with my fingers would -have given them a familiar look; the tables and chairs and tapestries -remained there around me, enigmatic, permanent, unresponsive. My life -spent itself, throbbing out among them, beating against their calm, -smooth surfaces without reaching them. There was no trace in that house -of the tumult of my own life. It continued cold, inexorable and strange.</p> - -<p>It remained for your mother to seek me out in my loneliness and show me -what I should do. I thought at the time that I recognized her words as -words of truth. I do not know now whether I was right or wrong.</p> - -<p>Claire never came. She sent her husband instead, not so much as a -messenger, more as an object lesson, a mute reminder—I caught her -idea—I was to look at him and realize what she was putting up with -and draw from the spectacle of his awfulness the moral. Unexpectedly, -his awfulness, appealed to me. There was something about this keen -little stolid French bounder that was a relief. His oily head, his fat -brown face, his monstrous nose and little bright beady eyes, these -unattractive things made up a hard compact entity. He was solid and -complete, round paunch, tight trousers, plump hands fingering a gold -watch chain, smell of bayrum and soap, aura of success, of materialism, -of industrial jubilance and all the rest of it. But he showed me -for the first time that day something more, himself smarting under -his thick skin with the innumerable de Joigny slights stinging him, -controlled enough not to let on, determined to get out of them in -exchange what they could give him, but not counting it much, a shrewd -downright kind little rascal, with a good old middle-class self-respect -strong in him, strong enough to make him feel himself their superior. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span></p> - -<p>It didn’t take him long to make his point. He talked quickly and neatly.</p> - -<p>Claire was unwell, she had sent him to add his voice to the family -howl. Claire never howled. When there was trouble, she withdrew. It -wasn’t her <i>genre</i>, to mix herself up in a fuss. Well—he wasn’t at all -sure that he had anything to say. Firstly because, after all, it was -none of his business. He wasn’t a member of the de Joigny family and -never would be. They had made that perfectly clear, years ago. So why -should he interfere?</p> - -<p>I smiled. “Why indeed?” He smiled back, his hands crossed on his -stomach; his smile took a cynically humorous curve.</p> - -<p>“If on the other hand, Madame, my sister-in-law, you want an outsider’s -opinion, it is at your disposal.”</p> - -<p>“Two outsiders, confabing together,” I ventured.</p> - -<p>“No,” he spoke abruptly, in a light sharp staccato, a nasal voice, -not unpleasant, the voice of the phenomenally intelligent French -bourgeoisie. “You are not as I am. You are a woman. They won’t let you -in—but they won’t let you out. You belong to them. I don’t—beside -I am of their people. I am French—I have my own backing. They don’t -like what I represent but they are obliged to admit its importance. It -is the backbone of France that I represent, the bread they eat, the -stones they walk on, the nation they ground under their heels in the -old days. They stamp on me now, but only in play, only to save their -faces—not seriously—they can’t. You, Madame, are different. You are a -foreigner, and ‘<i>sans défense</i>.’ <i>La famille de Joigny</i> have a contempt -for foreigners. Your protectors are in America. They snap their fingers -at them. You are helpless—”</p> - -<p>It was true. Well then?</p> - -<p>He eyed me, humorously. “It depends on what you want out of them. I -take it they can’t give you much of anything. You didn’t marry one -of them, as I did, to ameliorate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> your situation in society. Putting -aside the charm of the son and daughter, why did we do it? I did it -as a bit of business. For me it was ‘<i>une affaire</i>—’ how it turned -out is neither here nor there. I can look after myself. For you it is -different, I repeat you are helpless. They are too many for you.” He -chuckled good-naturedly.</p> - -<p>Again it was true; I assented meekly.</p> - -<p>“Ah ha—<i>Voilà</i>, you see it. Then, my advice is—‘<i>Filez</i>’—get out.”</p> - -<p>“And Geneviève?”</p> - -<p>“Bribe them.”</p> - -<p>“You think—?”</p> - -<p>He ruminated, his nose in the air—“Yes, I think—if you make it -enough.” He laughed again, rose briskly, took up his hat, his -cream-coloured gloves, his gold-headed cane. For an instant his bright -little eyes scrutinized me—he seemed about to speak, his thick lips -formed, I saw them there, grave words, a confidence perhaps, a lament, -a plea for sympathy, I know not what. He didn’t speak them; he was very -intelligent; he had a delicacy as fine as theirs, when he cared to show -it. There was a nicer compliment to me in this clever little bounder’s -attempting no understanding with me, than any I had received in many a -long day.</p> - -<p>He left with me a pleasant feeling of my own independence, he left me -invigorated and more sane than I had been, but your mother wiped out -the impression he had made, with one wave of her hand.</p> - -<p>I remember the sight of her in my doorway. I was so little expecting -her that I had a chance to see her quite clearly during one instant, -before I realized who she was. A small black figure in a stiff little -ugly black hat and short cape, a dumpy forlorn little figure of no -grace or elegance, and a worn nervous face, out of which stared a -pair of very bright determined dark eyes. She might have been a very -hard-driven gentle woman, determined to brave insults and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> apply for -the post of housekeeper. This in the flash before all that I knew of -her covered her like a veil, and before she spoke.</p> - -<p>I did not want to see her. I knew in an instant why she had come. I -remember wondering if I could get out of the other door before she -spoke, before I really looked at her, and all the time I was looking -and she was looking, we were staring at each other.</p> - -<p>I had always had a deep regard for her. The fact that she did not like -me, made no difference. That was where Claire’s husband had fallen -short in his putting of the case. He didn’t know that I cared for -Madame de Joigny; he didn’t know that I wanted the family to love -me, because I loved them. Now in your mother’s presence, I felt the -immense disadvantage of this. She cared nothing for me and I was bound -to give in to her. I knew I would give in. I knew that I was about to -make one last attempt to win her. I tried to rouse myself. I recalled -and went over in my mind the opinion I knew she had of me. I knew that -physically I was repulsive to her. Often when I approached her, I had -seen her shudder. She thought me <i>outrée</i>. Once she had said, “Why is -it Jane, that you can never look like other people? Everything you put -on becomes gorgeous and exaggerated. It is most unfortunate.” And she -was afraid of my feelings, my violent enthusiasms and my deep longings. -Oh, I knew, I knew quite well. Instinctively she felt my hot blood -pounding in my veins—and recoiled from contact.</p> - -<p>Most of all she hated me because of what I had done to Philibert. I -had made him nouveau riche; I had made him ridiculous; I had made him -unhappy, and worst of all, I had made him appear to her, cruel and -vulgar. When he was unkind to me, she hated me for being the cause of -his unkindness. You thought her love for Philibert a blind adoration -but it was not blind. She understood him, she knew him to his bones, -and she spent her life in shielding him from her own scrutiny. Her -relief was in submitting<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> herself to his charm. She delighted in him, -but she hated his conduct. It seemed to her that he was a victim -of what she most hated. She accused him in her own heart of being -faithless to her faith, the faith of his ancestors. She saw on him the -stains and distorting marks of the vulgar world that amused him, but -she was continually falling in love with him and losing herself in -his charm, seeking solace, suffering, being disappointed. I believe -Philibert made your mother suffer more than he made me suffer, far, far -more, for you see she couldn’t stop loving him, she could never be free -from him. He was her own, her first-born, the child of her passionate -youth. He was her self that she had projected beyond herself, he was -her great adventure, he was the gauge she had thrown down at the feet -of fate, and it took all her courage to face calmly the travesty he -made of her miracle.</p> - -<p>My existence, you see, added immeasurably to the difficulty of her -task. If he had married Bianca, Bianca, she believed, would have kept -him in order and would have presented him to her soothed eyes in the -light of a gallant gentleman. In marrying me he committed a serious -error in taste to begin with, and having married me he behaved to -me like a brute, and this was almost more than she could bear. The -interesting thing to notice was that though she suffered horribly she -made no attempt to remedy matters, did not try, I mean, to help us, and -never gave me even as much as a hint as to how I should wisely have -treated him, but limited her energy to just bearing her mortification -without giving a sign of it. It did not seem to her worth while -interfering to try and put things right when they were bound to go -wrong, but it did seem necessary to keep up the make-believe that they -were not going wrong. Almost everything in the world was going wrong. -One couldn’t face it. One must shut oneself up. One must ignore ugly -facts.</p> - -<p>Philibert’s going off with Bianca in that spectacular fashion did, -I know, very deeply hurt your mother. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> horror of it to her must -have been unspeakable. Here, at last, was an ugly fact of monstrous -proportions that she could not ignore. She was bound at last to do -something. She saw her son disgraced, her name dragged through the -divorce court, she heard her world echoing with the clanging noise of -scandal. She felt around her the brutal heaving of the foundation of -her life. In her little tufted silken drawing-room that reminded me -always of the inside of a jewel case, she had sat listening, shivering -with apprehension. News came to her of the runaways. They were in -Bianca’s palace in Venice giving themselves up to curious orgies of -pleasure. People told strange tales of their doings. They seemed to -have gone mad. News came then from another quarter. I had consulted -my solicitor. Claire was thoroughly frightened. Your mother did not -hesitate then. She was old, she was tired, she was without hope or -illusions. She saw her son as he was, and she saw Bianca at last as -she was, and she believed that for her there was no happiness to be -derived ever again from those two people. But she loved Philibert, she -loved him with anger and contempt and a breaking heart, and she was -determined to save him the last final ignominy, and so she put on her -bonnet and came to me. And as I thought of these things I was drawn out -of my chair toward her in spite of myself.</p> - -<p>I begged her to be seated. I told her that I was touched and distressed -by her coming to me, and that had she sent me word I would have gone -to her. She smiled wanly with her old infinite sweetness. That smile -was the most consummate bit of artistry I have ever beheld. It denied -everything. It assumed everything. It fixed the pitch of our talk, it -indicated a direction and a limit. It outlined before me the space -in which I was to be allowed to move. It gave her the leading rôle -in the little drama that was about to be played out between us, and -it established her position once and for all as that of a great lady -calling upon an awkward young woman. But I saw beyond her smile. I saw -what she had been through, and was suffering. The combined<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> play of -her terrible reddened eyes and that lovely unreal smile impressed me -profoundly.</p> - -<p>For any other woman the beginning of such a conversation would have -been difficult, but your mother, opened up the subject that lay before -us with ease and delicacy. Her phrase was finely pointed. She used it -as she might have used a silver knife to lift the edge of a box that -contained something ugly.</p> - -<p>“I do not know,” she said, “whether or not you have ever loved my son, -but I have felt that his sudden departure must have seemed to you very -shocking, so I have come to reassure you.”</p> - -<p>I recoiled at this. It seemed to me that I was being attacked and that -was the last thing I expected. I was startled and puzzled by those -opening words. What difference did it make whether or not I had loved -her son? For a moment I felt angry. After all it was he that had left -me; why then, should I be accused? As for reassurance, I did not want -any. This was no time for reassurance. An ugly spirit stirred in me. I -was about to answer abruptly, when I saw that the purple-veined hand -that lay across the table before me was trembling. It was animated by -some painful agitation that shook it even resting as it did on that -strong surface. The withered palm was rubbing and quivering against the -polished wood, the worn finger tips were tapping spasmodically. My eyes -smarted at the sight of it. I spoke gently.</p> - -<p>“Yes, <i>belle-maman</i>, I thank you for coming.”</p> - -<p>“Ah, my poor child—and the family—I hear the family has been at you.”</p> - -<p>“They have been here.”</p> - -<p>“You must not mind them. They do not understand. In our world women, -you know, take things differently, they do not expect what you expect.”</p> - -<p>There was a pause. What could I say? She seemed very reasonable and -very kind. I had never felt her so near to me before. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span></p> - -<p>When she spoke again it was even more simply. “I have had no news of -Philibert,” she said sadly. “Have you?” The tone of her voice was -intimate and more natural than I had ever heard it when addressed to -me. It implied that we were both unfortunate together. I responded to -it with a flicker of hope.</p> - -<p>“No,” I replied, “I have no news, but I have reason to believe that he -will not come back.”</p> - -<p>“Ah,” she cried. “What makes you think that? But it is impossible.”</p> - -<p>“No,” I continued, “it is not impossible. It is true. He gave me to -understand that himself.”</p> - -<p>I felt her watching me closely.</p> - -<p>“You mean?” she breathed.</p> - -<p>“I mean that I must now take measures to live my own life. It is -impossible for me to live in his house any longer.”</p> - -<p>It was then that she made one of her quick, characteristic mental turns.</p> - -<p>“Yes,” she said. “It’s a monstrous house. I don’t wonder you detest it.”</p> - -<p>I almost smiled, but I was determined to get to the point. “Dear -<i>Belle-Mère</i>,” I insisted, “that is neither here nor there. What I mean -is that I must be legally free from Philibert.” I hesitated, I saw her -face whiten, but I pressed the point. “It is best for me to tell you -that I have decided to divorce your son.”</p> - -<p>I don’t know what effect I had expected and feared to produce. It may -be that I thought she would break down or faint dead away, or something -of that kind. She had seemed so frail that I had been really afraid of -the effect of my words. But nothing of this sort happened. The blow I -had dealt seemed to spend its force in the air. It glanced off and went -shivering into the rich, cold atmosphere of the room.</p> - -<p>“My dear,” she said, enunciating her words very precisely, “<i>on ne -divorce pas dans notre monde</i>.” And she looked away from me, coolly -taking in the room with its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> priceless objects as if summoning them -to witness to the truth of her statement. She was right to look round -that room. It was her room, not mine. It understood her, not me. She -had called it a moment before a detestable house, but that made no -difference. Its magnificence was to be made use of all the same. We -were in the room that Philibert always referred to when he took people -over the house as “<i>le salon de Madame de Joigny</i>,” or “<i>le boudoir de -ma femme</i>.” It was the nicest room in the house. You remember it well, -with its pearly grey boiseries fine as lace, its Frangonard panels, -its green lacquer furniture, the three windows on the garden where a -stone fountain lifted its fine sculptured figures from the lawn. The -light in the room was silvery green and translucent as the light seen -beneath the surface of clear water, and in that dim radiance the fine -precious objects floated above the polished floor as if even the laws -of gravitation had been circumvented in the fine enclosed space. The -boiseries had been in the Trianon—you remember Philibert had procured -them after much bargaining. They had been designed and executed for -Madame de Montespan. Their perfect beauty constituted a document, a -testimony to the marvellous taste and finished craftsmanship of an -epoch. France, in all its delicate dignity, existed in that room. It -is no wonder that your mother looked about her for moral support. The -rest of the immense house might have belied her, here she could place -her faith without hesitation. I opposed to it the profession of my own -faith.</p> - -<p>“In my country,” I said dully, for I was beginning to feel baffled and -confused, “we are not afraid to admit errors, to put away the past and -begin something new.”</p> - -<p>“But this, my dear child, is your country,” she said more gently. “You -are a Frenchwoman now.”</p> - -<p>I smiled. “Do you really think so?” I asked her. She drew a sharp -breath. “Ah, if you only were,” she cried softly, “you would know how -impossible it is to do what you want to do, and how useless.” </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span></p> - -<p>My attention closed sullenly like a clamp on the words “impossible,” -“useless.” I stared at the floor. Why impossible? Why useless? Why -did I listen to this woman who did not love me, and who told me that -my longing to live was useless? How was it she made me listen to her? -Where was her advantage? She was certain and I was uncertain, that -was it. I was not quite sure, but she was sure. Her definite idea was -projected out at me and into me like a hook. It took hold of me. I -felt myself wriggling on it, and I heard, through the confusion of my -own ideas that seemed to buzz audibly in my head, your mother’s voice -talking.</p> - -<p>“You are young,” it said. “You come of a young people. You believe -in miracles. You seek perfection on earth. Believe me, I am old and -wise, ideals are all very well, but one must be practical about life. -Philibert has behaved very badly. He has made a scandal, but you can -remedy that and maintain your dignity by disregarding his escapade, or -at any rate treating it as nothing more than an escapade. And such it -is, nothing more, believe me. The acts of men are never anything more. -<i>Mon Dieu</i>, if we took what they did seriously, where should we be, we -women? We must take them for what they are. <i>Il le faut bien.</i> We must -never count on them. We must count on ourselves.”</p> - -<p>But I seemed gradually to lose track of her words. It was strange, -but the sound of her voice was conveying a meaning more profound and -more direct than her spoken phrases. The sound of her voice rang in -my ears like a light, mournful, warning bell, high metallic, hollow -and sweet. It was old, an old sound much older than the lips through -which it issued. It seemed to come from a far distance, from the -distant past. Hollow and sweet and measured, its monotony insisted on -the fine tried truths of the past, it called up proud, faded images -of old resignations and compromises and lost illusions, and sounded -constantly the note of the persistent obstinacy of pride. The words “we -women” reached me. I was a woman, she was a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> woman. We were together. -There were men in the world and women. When one reduced things to their -last simplicity all women were bound together in the same bundle, -dealing with the same problem. She, the older woman, was wise, I was -foolish; but we were sisters in disappointment, we were weak, we must -be proud. We had both loved Philibert, but even I had never loved him -as she loved him. And he had broken her heart. The dignity of our -life depended on our pride, to hide our hurt, to make no sound, no -complaint, to arrange silently to make things bearable, to influence -men without their knowing it. Our advantage lay in our clairvoyance. -We could see through them when they could not see into us beyond our -skins. We were weak if we treated them as they treated us, but we were -strong if we remained mysterious, mute, proud. The children were ours. -Everything we did was for our children. Philibert was her child. She -must remember, she could not forget, he was her son. If we destroyed -the family we destroyed our children. Even when the men destroyed it -we must hold it together. We must pretend, for our children. When the -man was gone we must pretend he was still there. Truth and beauty -and dignity lay behind the pretence. We must pretend obstinately. If -we pretended well enough it became true. We must not endanger our -children’s lives, anything but that.</p> - -<p>Little Geneviève came dancing into my vision, her hair flying, her -little skirts blowing, her toes dancing; a shadow fell on her, she -stopped her gay jumping about. She was all at once pale. Her eyes gazed -at me reproachfully, mournful eyes of a child, suffering. Something -about her was wrong, twisted, maimed. I shuddered. Your mother’s voice -was still going on. The words she spoke were concise, delicate little -pieces of sound strung together close like beads, they made a long, -pale, shining chain that reached from the beginning of time out into -the future. Over and over again I heard the same words. It seemed to me -that she was endlessly repeating the same thing as if it were a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> bit -of magic, of hoodoo. I wondered if she were hypnotizing me. Women must -pretend—women, the protectors—the strong foundation—the family the -basis of life. Women must keep the family intact. If we destroyed the -family we destroyed our children—Philibert her child—Geneviève my -child.</p> - -<p>I looked up and saw your mother as I had never seen her before—she was -bare—she was stark naked—she was fighting for her child, for her son, -for what he was to her, for him as he must and should be to her and to -the world, for his safety, and his dignity. There was nothing between -us. We were together, two women. She was appealing to me as a woman -like herself. Philibert was her child. Even if she were deceiving me, -pretending to care for me, what did it matter? I understood her—she -was there in the great simplicity of her pretence assuming me to be -like herself, proud, gentle, sure, a woman like herself. Vulgar! I was -vulgar; my struggling for freedom was coarse; I was making an ugly -disgusting fuss; I was ashamed.</p> - -<p>A sensation of warmth and delight crept over me—and I knew that I had -decided to do what she wanted. It seemed to me that she became my own -then, and that I belonged to her and she to me. It was impossible to -wound her. The most important thing in the world was not to disappoint -her. She expected something of me, renouncement. She expected me to -spare her son. She asked for my life, my freedom, two little things I -could give her, so that she would not be disappointed. I must give them -to her. It would be beautiful to make her happy. That was wonderful. -Whatever happened she would always know. There would be something fine -between us. We would be together. I would belong to her and she to me: -two women who had understood something together.</p> - -<p>I touched her hand. I saw that her eyes were filled with tears. Her -fingers clutched mine. “<i>Ma pauvre enfant, ayez pitié de moi</i>,” she -quavered.</p> - -<p>“There dear, don’t think of it any more.” </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Wait, at least, until I am dead,” she whispered. I knelt beside her, -just touching her hand. I was weeping, too, now, silently as she was, -gently, mute tears.</p> - -<p>“I will never do it,” I said. It seemed to me wonderful to give her my -freedom, gently, like that, in a whisper, kneeling close to her, not -frightening her, asking nothing, putting things right, easily, at the -cost of all my life.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span></p> - -<h2>IV</h2> - -<p>I did not go to America until the following year, and then I went -alone, leaving Jinny with your mother. You remember about that, how -after all they made me leave my child behind as a hostage. We won’t -dwell on it now. It was only significant in so far as it showed me that -my new intimacy with your mother was not quite what I had believed it -to be.</p> - -<p>As for St. Mary’s Plains, it gave me a different welcome from the one -I had expected. It disapproved of me and showed it. My people went -for me. They greeted me with the proprietary affection that claims -the right to outspoken criticism. On the whole, I liked that. It was -a relief. Although at first I was bewildered, amused and occasionally -annoyed by their vigorous upbraiding, I was glad that they felt -entitled to treat me as they did: their scolding gave me a feeling of -their solidarity with me. And it was refreshing to find myself among -a group of people who had no respect for my fortune but blamed me -honestly for being so disgustingly rich and doing so little good with -my money.</p> - -<p>Paris gossip had reached St. Mary’s Plains. I had thought it so far -away, so safe. I was mistaken. Many acquaintances had been going back -and forth across the Atlantic carrying information, more or less -correct, of my doings. The fact that my husband was no longer living -with me was variously interpreted. Had I come rushing home for refuge -that first summer they would have been on my side, but I had not. I -seemed to have cynically accepted his liaison with another woman and -was brazenly continuing my worldly life.</p> - -<p>My Aunt Patience, as I came gradually to realize, had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> been the person -least affected by these tales. She lived the life of a hermit, wrapped -up in her studies, and had refused to listen to gossip. “I guess Jane -herself tells me what she wants me to know,” she had said to more than -one busybody, but of course I suspected nothing of all this on arrival. -I had gone to America because of an unquenchable longing to be with my -own people, but I was not without a certain feeling of pride. I was -scarcely fatuous enough to consider myself as a martyr, but it did seem -to me that I had suffered through no fault of my own and had taken -my troubles with a respectable calm. Philibert was still wandering -about Europe with Bianca. I had heard nothing from him directly. An -occasional message reached me through his solicitors, that was all. I -had continued to carry on. I was keeping my promise to your mother.</p> - -<p>My Aunt Patty came to New York to meet my steamer. I saw her from -the deck, before the ship was in dock, a powerful figure, something -elemental about her, reducing others to insignificance; I waved. She -looked at me but made no sign; she did not recognize me. As I came -down the gangway I saw her peering about in the crowd still searching, -and when I walked up to her and said “Aunt Patty, it’s me, Jane,” she -dropped her large black handbag and gave a gasp. She of course was -the same, only more so, bigger and grander, with her black mackintosh -flapping, her bonnet askew and wisps of grey hair hanging down, a -grand old scarecrow. How she hugged me, her long arms round me, people -jostling us. That was a blissful moment. I was perfectly happy for that -moment, a child at rest and comforted.</p> - -<p>Then she said, “Where’s your baby?”</p> - -<p>“I didn’t bring her, Aunt.”</p> - -<p>“Oh!” Her face fell.</p> - -<p>“I couldn’t, Aunt, such a long trip for such a short visit, and her -father wouldn’t let her come.”</p> - -<p>“I see.” She shut her grim lips. It was clear that she was very -disappointed. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span></p> - -<p>We were to take the train that night for St. Mary’s Plains. There was -some confusion about my luggage and trouble about getting it across -the city. I seemed to have a great deal. A great deal too much, my -Aunt said. Celestine had a difference of opinion with the porters and -scolded them in her high, voluble, native tongue. My Aunt did not know -what to make of Celestine.</p> - -<p>I was ridiculously excited when we arrived at St. Mary’s Plains and -drove up Desmoisnes Avenue, and then as our taxi stopped and I looked -across the grass to that modest old house I had a feeling of immense -relief. This was my home.</p> - -<p>The Grey House welcomed me kindly. It had shrunk in size. It had grown -shabby and ugly, but it had the charm of an old glove or shoe, much -worn. I loved it with gratitude and pity and an ache of regret.</p> - -<p>Standing in the front hall I knew that its spirit was unchanged. My -mind reached out comfortably to its furthest corners, to the cupboards -on the back stairs and the pantry sink that I knew as I knew my own -hand. I remembered the smell of the carpet on the dark stairs and the -way the Welsbach burner sizzled on the landing, spreading a round of -light on the stained wall. My room was just as I had left it twelve -years before. The white counterpane on the narrow bed, the flat pillow, -the rag rug on the waxed floor that my Aunt Beth had made for me when I -broke my arm falling off the stepladder.</p> - -<p>Patience changed for dinner into a black silk blouse and serge skirt. -Her high collar was fastened with an oval brooch of gold, the only -ornament I ever saw her wear. There were two servants in the house, -a cook and a housemaid. I suspected that one had been got in for my -visit. It was clear to me that she was poor, even poorer than she had -been. The house was not too clean and very shabby. Patience Forbes -was no housekeeper. She never cared what she had to eat or poked into -corners to find dust. The drawing-room looked forlorn in the pale gas -light. I gathered<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> that she never sat there but spent all her time in -the museum among her precious specimens. The drawing-room made me feel -dismal. In the days when my Aunt Beth kept house it had been a cosy -room. Now the old mahogany sofas and chairs, covered in frayed black -horsehair, were pushed back against the wall in ungainly attitudes. -They seemed to watch me reproachfully. I loved their austere, proud -forlornness, but I felt uncomfortable. The place did not disappoint me, -but I felt that I disappointed it. The blurred and misty mirrors that -held mysteriously behind their marred surfaces the invisible reflection -of my little grandmother’s sweet face and prim figure showed me myself, -large, bright and vulgar, a great outlandish creature in an exaggerated -dress, glittering, hard and horrible. I was profoundly disturbed. If I -looked like that to myself, how must I look to my Aunt Patience? I soon -found out. She was not a person to mince matters. She told me plainly -that I looked wicked.</p> - -<p>“Wicked, Aunt?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, Jane, that’s just about it.”</p> - -<p>“But, Aunt, this is terrible. What is it? What shall I do about it?”</p> - -<p>She stared at me grimly. “I don’t know. I guess it’s everything—your -clothes, that thick bang across your eyes, those ear-rings, that red -stuff on your lips. It looks bad. It makes you look like an ungodly -woman.”</p> - -<p>I rubbed off the lip salve and took off the ear-rings. “Is that better?”</p> - -<p>“Humph. A little.” Suddenly I saw her face quiver, her mouth twist. I -crossed to her and knelt on the floor beside her, put my arms round her -and looked into her working face.</p> - -<p>“Aunt, tell me, what’s the matter? Tell—”</p> - -<p>“There, Jane, I’m an old fool.” She tried to laugh but failed. Her -voice cracked. “I can’t help it. You’re so different that I’m scared. -Janey, Janey, you’ve no call to be so different.” She put her large -worn hands on my shoulders. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span></p> - -<p>“I’m not changed in my heart, Aunt.”</p> - -<p>“Are you sure?”</p> - -<p>“I am sure.”</p> - -<p>“There ain’t nothing real wrong with you, Jane?”</p> - -<p>“No, Aunt.”</p> - -<p>“You can tell me solemnly that your heart’s not changed, that you’ve -come to no harm?”</p> - -<p>I looked into her eyes. Humbly, I knelt and looked into those honest -eyes, not beautiful, with blistered, opaque irises, the whites yellow -now with age. I knew what she meant, and I knew what would put things -right between us. If I told her everything, all about Philibert and -Bianca and my own loneliness she would give me the sympathy I wanted. -Then all her criticism and disappointment would be swallowed up in -pity. I hesitated. I did not believe that she knew anything of my -troubles with Philibert. I had never written her one word about being -unhappy. My happiness, I knew, was the most precious thing on earth to -her. How, then, tell her now, and why? Break her old heart so that she -might comfort me? Sadden the remaining years of her life that I might -enjoy the luxury of being understood? And how explain? What could she -ever understand of such things? She was an innocent woman.</p> - -<p>So I lied. I chose my words in order to keep as near to truthfulness as -I could.</p> - -<p>“No, Aunt, I have come to no harm. I am just the same as the girl -who left you twelve years ago. My looks, why should they matter to -you, Aunt? They are not my own. All that is just dressmakers and -hairdressers and the people round me. I have grown to look like them -there, but I am more like you and yours than you think. I have been so -home-sick, Aunt. I have longed so longingly for this, just this, Aunt, -just to come home.”</p> - -<p>Her face had changed, her eyes searched mine wistfully now.</p> - -<p>“You are unhappy, child.”</p> - -<p>“No, Aunt.” </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Your husband?”</p> - -<p>I felt myself turn pale as she held my head between her hands. What -could I safely say? There was a look in her face that frightened me. -Did she know after all? Had she heard?</p> - -<p>“Aunt, he is a Frenchman, different from us.”</p> - -<p>“But is he a good man?”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“True to you as you are to him?”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>For a moment longer she looked at me closely, then with a sigh of -relief leaned back. “I believe you, Jane, I always said it wasn’t true. -I couldn’t believe my girl wouldn’t tell me.”</p> - -<p>I buried my head in her knees. I felt sick and guilty, and as I knelt -there I saw that long ago I had thrown over my Aunt Patience for your -mother, though I loved Patience Forbes better than any one in the world.</p> - -<p>Presently she said humorously with her slow American twang—“Well, I -guess I’ll have to get used to your looks, Jane, and not be silly, but -I reckon it would be easier if your voice weren’t so French. You’ve got -a queer sort of accent. I don’t know what all your aunts and uncles -will say when they see you. I expect if you explain it’s just the -effect of the world you’ve come from they’ll think it’s a pretty queer -world.”</p> - -<p>But I had no intention of explaining myself to my relatives. Aunt Patty -had the right to bring me to book, but no one else had. It seemed to me -that night, lying awake in my cool, puritan bed, rather funny to think -of the people of St. Mary’s Plains holding me to account. What had I -done, after all, to come in for a scolding? I had told my aunt I was -unchanged. In a sense it was true. If I had not been the same I should -not have wanted to come.</p> - -<p>I could hear Celestine fussing about in the next room. Celestine was -going to be a thorn in the side of the Grey House. She was out of -place. There she was surrounded<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> by my clothes. My clothes looked -horribly gawdy littered all over that room. Presently her light was -extinguished. I lay in the dark between the sheets that smelled of -lavender, my eyes open in the kind familiar darkness, and told myself -that it was true, that I was unchanged, the same—the very same -person that had lain in that bed in that same homely safe obscurity -years before—and for a time, the sounds and the unseen but palpable -presences round me, seemed to agree, to reassure me.</p> - -<p>I heard the tram rumbling by up the Avenue, I could see in my mind’s -eye, the arc light above the street shining on the high branches of -the elm trees, the comfortable houses set back in their grass plots, -shrouded in shadow, lighted windows showing here and there, and beyond -them to the West, I knew was the river, filled with the dark hulls of -ships, lumber schooners from the great lakes, pleasure boats, tugs, -their red lights riding high above the black water. From the side of -my bed my mind could move surely out through the night among known -objects, along familiar and friendly streets, past houses and shops -and churches, all acquainted with me as I was with them. And I felt -the furniture of the room was kindly, sedate and prim, taking me -for granted, assuming that all was well, that I belonged there—but -did I? Was it true? The years seemed to have been rolled up, as if -the intervening time were a parchment scroll, put away in a corner, -but there was something else, something different that could not be -put away. It was in me. It existed in my blood, in my body. It was -restless and it gnawed me. No—no—it was not true. I was not the -same. No miracle could undo what had been done to me. No relief could -obliterate from my mind what I had learned. I was old—I was tired and -corrupt—something irrevocable had happened to me—something final and -fatal, that no longing and no prayers could ever exorcise.</p> - -<p>St. Mary’s Plains had “got a move on” during my absence, so my -relatives told me. I saw as much. It had <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>entered upon one of those -sensational periods of industrial success that come to American towns -so unexpectedly. Some one had invented a stove, some one else a -motor car. Former modest citizens were making millions and building -factories. Down town was encroaching on the pleasant shady districts of -up town. The lots on either side of the Grey House had been bought by a -syndicate who proposed to put there a hotel and an apartment building. -The Grey House would be sandwiched in between them. It would become a -little dark building at the bottom of a well, but Patience Forbes had -refused to sell, though the price offered her would have left her more -than comfortably off for the rest of her life. I asked leave to buy the -Grey House from her for greater security, but she refused. “I’m safe -enough, Jane, because I don’t want money. No man alive can make me sell -if I don’t want to. You’ve no call to worry about me.”</p> - -<p>My Uncle Bradford was not in town but there were a great many other -family connections who came to see us and asked us to come to them for -large hospitable succulent meals. They greeted me with hearty kisses -and handshakes. “Well, Jane, glad to see you home at last. Hope you -left your husband well.” And then we settled down into chairs.</p> - -<p>“You certainly have changed. You’re real French, aren’t you? We’ve -heard a lot about your doings. It sounds pretty funny to us, giving -parties all the time to crowned heads, aren’t you?” This from the men, -or from the women more gently—</p> - -<p>“Dear, couldn’t you have brought your baby? We’re so disappointed. Yes, -you do seem different, but we hope you’re happy. We can’t imagine your -life, you know. It seems so empty, so artificial. The papers give such -strange accounts. All those gambling places, your cousin fighting a -duel, it sounds so strange. France seems to be turning to atheism with -terrible rapidity. The separation of Church<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> and State might be good if -it led to a spiritual revival, but they don’t keep Sunday at all, do -they? All the theatres are open Sundays they say.”</p> - -<p>The elders were gentle but positive in their disapproval, the younger -generation frankly intolerant. They had been struck by various -religious and emotional disturbances that had swept the country, -evangelical revivals, a thing called the “Student Movement,” and a -university type of socialism. I felt myself being measured up to a -certain high standard and found lamentably wanting. Had I forgotten -their standards, I asked myself, or was this something new? When they -asked me what I was doing with my life I said I didn’t know, that it -took me about all my time just to live it. Wasn’t I interested in -anything? Oh, yes, a great many things, music especially, and old -enamels. They didn’t mean that, they meant causes. I didn’t understand. -What causes, I asked, did they refer to? Women’s suffrage, the negro -question, sweated labour. No, I was obliged to admit that women’s -suffrage had not interested me and that there being no negro question -in France I hadn’t thought about the subject. As for sweated labour, -I supposed it did exist in Paris, but that its evils had never been -brought to my notice. All the young people were espousing causes. They -quite took my breath away. They believed so hard in so many things, -and they talked so much about the things they believed in. Really they -were violent talkers. Their fresh young lips uttered with ease the -most astounding phrases. They were fond of big words. Their talk was a -curious mixture of undigested literature and startling slang. Some of -the things they believed in were love, democracy, the greatness of the -American people and the equality of the sexes. What they didn’t believe -in they condemned off-hand. There was for them no quiet region where -interesting questions were left pleasantly unanswered. They abhorred an -unanswered question as nature abhors a vacuum. Every topic was a bull -to be taken by the horns.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> Everything concerned them. There was nothing -that was not their business. They were crusaders, at war with idleness -and cynicism, vowed to the regeneration of the world. They went for -me, but how they went for me! I was a renegade, a back-slider, a poor, -misguided victim of an effete and vicious foreign country. I had -nothing to give them of any value. When I talked of the charm of Paris -they yawned. When I mentioned my friends they called me a snob. When -I spoke of my activities they laughed in gay derision. On the whole I -didn’t mind. I was too tired to mind. They were so young, so keen, so -good to look at, so full of hope. I wouldn’t have stopped their talking -for the world, and I liked them for despising my money.</p> - -<p>I envied them. They were happy, they were free. Deep in my heart I -suspected that they were right to despise my life. In the evenings when -they gathered on the shadowy verandahs of their comfortable countrified -houses, the young men with mandolins, the girls in billowy muslin -dresses, I listened to their laughter and their tinkling music, feeling -so old, so very old. On those summer nights Aunt Patty and I would -sometimes sit on the front steps of the Grey House as the custom was in -the town, and all the street would seem to be charged with romance and -joy and mystery. Through the trees one could see young forms flitting -from house to house where lights streamed from hospitable windows down -across the plots of grass, while on the shadowed verandahs young hearts -whispered to young hearts, whispered of dreams that must come true, -gallant, innocent dreams.</p> - -<p>And there was the difficulty of religion. They couldn’t swallow my -having become a Catholic. On the first Sunday morning I asked my Aunt -Patience if she would like me to go to church with her.</p> - -<p>“Why, yes, Jane, but I thought you’d be going to the Catholic Church.”</p> - -<p>“I’d rather go with you, Aunt.” </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Come, then.” But I saw that she was troubled.</p> - -<p>“You see, Aunt, I don’t really care what church I go to; I’m only a -Catholic for social convenience.”</p> - -<p>“That’s too bad, isn’t it?” She was putting on her bonnet.</p> - -<p>“I don’t know, I don’t seem to have any feeling about it one way or -another. I never could seem to learn much about God, Aunt, don’t you -remember?”</p> - -<p>“But don’t you believe in Him, Jane?”</p> - -<p>“Honestly, Aunt, I don’t know. Sometimes I wish I could, but that’s -when I’m in trouble and only because I want some one to help me out. -That’s not believing, is it? It’s just cowardice.”</p> - -<p>My aunt grunted. “Religion mostly is, but there’s something else, like -what your grandmother had.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, I know.”</p> - -<p>She said no more, and I was grateful to her for taking it like that. We -were companions in spite of everything.</p> - -<p>But when my Aunt Beth came with her husband to visit us things became -more difficult. She had taken my turning Roman Catholic as a dreadful -personal problem of her own, and felt, dear little soul, that she -must try to bring me back to the fold. The result was painful. She -came armed with tracts and pamphlets, a whole bag full of appalling -literature. I was greatly astonished, for I remembered her as a very -gentle little creature. With age she had grown militant in the cause of -evangelical truth. She took me to camp meetings and prayer meetings. -She would come into my room at night in her pink flannel dressing gown, -her little middle-aged face aglow with ecstatic resolve, and would -press into my hand just one more message, a dreadful booklet, “The -Murder of God’s Word,” or something of that kind. I was at last driven -to appeal to my Aunt Patience for protection. She took up the cudgels -for me.</p> - -<p>“I guess Jane’s all right, Beth, I wouldn’t worry. God’s the same, -whatever your Church.”</p> - -<p>“But Patty, it’s heathen idolatry, worshipping the Virgin<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> Mary. The -Virgin Mary was just a woman like you and me.”</p> - -<p>“Well, dear, what does it matter? Perhaps Jane doesn’t worship her in a -heathen spirit, do you, Jane?”</p> - -<p>“No, Aunt, I’m afraid I don’t worship her at all.”</p> - -<p>“But think of the Jesuits,” wailed Aunt Beth.</p> - -<p>“I don’t,” snapped Aunt Patty.</p> - -<p>“Patty, I believe you’re in danger of losing your faith.”</p> - -<p>“No, I’m not, Beth, don’t you fret about me. I’ve a good conscience -before my God and my Saviour. Now just you leave Jane in peace and -trust her to God. That’s what you’re told to do in the Bible. Just you -trust the Lord. He’ll look after Jane.”</p> - -<p>And Beth would be momentarily silenced more by the sense of her elder -sister’s family authority than by any respect for her arguments.</p> - -<p>Aunt Patty and I were happiest when we were left alone.</p> - -<p>In July it became very hot. The back garden was ablaze with flowers. -Rows of hollyhocks lined the wooden fences at either side. Butterflies -fluttered in the sun. The bee-hives at the bottom of the garden were -all a-murmur. We spent long hours on the back verandah, and Aunt Patty, -her knitting needles moving swiftly (she knitted a good deal, but -always had a book open on her lap), would question me about my life -in Paris, and I would tell her as much of the truth as I could. Her -conclusions were characteristic.</p> - -<p>“Your set over there doesn’t seem to have too much sense,” she would -say. “You sound a very giddy lot. You take no interest in science, do -you? I don’t suppose you’ve any of you an idea of what’s being written -and done.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, come, Aunt, some of us are awfully clever. Fan knows all about art -and music. My sister-in-law paints and embroiders quite beautifully, -and all our relatives are gifted.”</p> - -<p>“Humph, art is all very well, but do you keep up with the times?” </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span></p> - -<p>“How do you mean, ‘keep up’?”</p> - -<p>“I mean, child, with what’s going on in the world of thought, -intellectual progress. They’re making great strides in medicine in -Germany. France is doing most in mathematics. But I daresay you never -heard of Professor Lautrand. He lives in Paris. Ever met him? Ever -heard of him?”</p> - -<p>“I’m afraid not, Aunt.”</p> - -<p>“Well, there you are, one of the great spirits of the age.” And she -rubbed her nose with her knitting needle. “A noble intellect. His books -have opened up for me a new world. To think you could talk to him and -don’t even know he’s there! Why, landsakes, Jane, if I were in your -shoes I’d wait on his doorstep till my bones cracked under me.” She -laughed.</p> - -<p>“Come and visit me, dear, do, and we’ll have him to lunch every day,” -I urged. At which she laughed again her young, hearty laugh, but with -a wistful look in her eyes as if the light of a lovely dream glowed a -moment before her.</p> - -<p>“No, Jane, no. I’m too old to go gallivanting about Europe, but I do -wish you’d take my advice. You never did take any interest in science. -If you did you’d not be so dependent upon mere human beings. If you’d -only study geology and biology and the history of races, you’d see -that human beings are no great shakes, anyhow, and don’t count for -much, save that they’ve the power of thought. Has it ever occurred -to you to stop and consider how wonderful it is that you can think, -and how little you avail yourself of the privilege? Go one day to the -<i>Bibliothèque Nationale</i>, that’s what it’s called, they’ve got one of -my books there, and just think for a moment that all that building is -crammed full of the records of man’s thought. Stupid, most of it, you’d -say, too dull to read, all those books. Well, that may be their fault -and it may be yours, but it’s neither here nor there. The fact is that -the recording of knowledge is a miracle.” </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span></p> - -<p>Wonderful Patience Forbes, taking me to task for the frivolity of my -world, sitting on the back verandah, her spectacles on the end of -her nose, her knitting on her lap, her heelless slippers comfortably -crossed, her little modest volume tucked away on a shelf in the -<i>Bibliothèque Nationale</i>. She seemed to me very remarkable, and she -seems even more so now. Time for most of us is just a process of -disintegration, old age is often pitiful and ugly, but at the age of -sixty-five Patience Forbes had the heart of a child and the robust -enthusiasm of a student. She had been persuaded by the State Board of -Education to write a series of text-books on birds, and in the evenings -she would work in the room she called the museum, and I would sit -watching her while she chewed her pen, rapped irritably with her hard -old fingers on the desk, or went down on her knees before a shelf of -books to look up some reference. Sometimes she would walk the floor and -grumble—“Gracious, how difficult it is to write a decent sentence. -English certainly isn’t my strong point. I write like a clucking hen. -Style never was in my line.” And then she would laugh, her young, -vigorous, chuckling laugh.</p> - -<p>When I compared my life with hers, how could I not feel that there was -justice in all that young American condemnation. Patience Forbes was -old, she was poor, she went about in tram-cars, she worked for her -living, and she was happy. There was no doubt that she was happy. She -envied no man and no woman, and asked nothing of any one. She would not -even let me help her. She said that she had everything she wanted and I -was bound to believe her.</p> - -<p>Early in August we went up to my Uncle Bradford’s camp in the woods -at the head of the lake. He had written urging us to come and saying -that if we didn’t he would come down to St. Mary’s Plains as he wanted -particularly to see me.</p> - -<p>A white steam-boat, with side paddles churning peacefully through the -water, carried us for a long day and night and part of another day west -by north-west, past little white<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> straggling towns, calling at long -piers to deliver mails and provisions, moving on and on, farther and -farther across the wide shining expanse of water, away from the world -of men. Timber schooners passed us, square-rigged, coming down from the -great forest lands. The skies were boundless and light and high above -the water. We moved in marvellous translucent space. The air was new as -if the world had been created yesterday.</p> - -<p>Uncle Bradford and his sons with their wives and children had built -themselves log houses on the shore of the lake. The forest stretched -away behind them as far as the Canadian border, and a great tract of -it belonged to them, with its rivers, its game and its timber. Some -of them were in the lumber business, others came there merely for the -summer holidays. I found my Aunt Minnie there, and an even greater -crowd of youngsters than in St. Mary’s Plains. Uncle Bradford, dressed -in a red flannel shirt and a sombrero, ruled his camp like a Russian -patriarch, and again I found every one interested in things that I -had forgotten were interesting. There in that glorious pagan world -surrounded by virgin forests they worshipped a stern and exacting -God, read the Bible, and argued in the evening before the blazing log -fire as to whether the mind were separate from the soul, or evolution -incompatible with the principles of Christianity. And I wondered at -them, for they were not afraid of their puritan God, nor weary of -endless argument. Their consciences were clear. They could look God in -the face, and their brains, if rather empty, were admirably keen.</p> - -<p>I watched the women. They all seemed to have devoted husbands who -assumed the sanctity of marriage to be the basis of life and took -the beauty of their women for granted. Extravagant youngsters, how -I envied them. Husbands who remained faithful lovers, wives who -remained innocent girls, all contented and unafraid, and with their -outspokenness, shy people keeping secret the sacred intimacy of love.</p> - -<p>The children were splendid animals. They liked me and included me in -their games. We used to go swimming <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>before breakfast when the heavenly -morning was crystal pale. I would slip from my cabin and join those -little bronze figures, run through the clearing to the shore and down -the wooden pier, stand an instant with them all about me breathing in -the sweet air, then with a shout all together we would dive. I swam as -well as any of those boys. It pleases me now to remember their respect -for my prowess. And I could paddle a canoe and throw a ball like a man, -and I caught the largest fish of all, a fine big salmon trout weighing -fifteen pounds. My thought was—“I want a boy like one of these to -become a man for Jinny. I want her to have a husband from my people.”</p> - -<p>It was a delicious life. The air was fine and dry and sharply scented -with the scent of pine woods drenched in sunlight. Each morning was a -miracle as clear as the first morning of creation. Swift rollicking -streams tumbled over rocks, fat salmon jumped in deep pools. Mild-eyed -Indians came travelling down from the depths of the vast forest, -paddling their lovely canoes of birch bark, laden with grass baskets -and soft moccasins embroidered in beads. The nights were cold. One -was lifted up into sleep, one floated up and away into sleep under -sparkling stars, hearing the waves lapping the shore and the wind -murmuring through the branches of the innumerable pines of the forest -that spread away, further and further away, endlessly, countless trees -murmuring a strong chant under the wide sky, stretching beyond the edge -of the mind’s compass, as far as one could think, as far as one’s soul -could reach out, the forest, the sky, the water, calm, untroubled, -eternal.</p> - -<p>Then suddenly something crashed into that crystal space.</p> - -<p>My Uncle Bradford took me one morning to his office.</p> - -<p>“You are nearly thirty now, Jane.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, Uncle.”</p> - -<p>“I have a letter for you from your father. He left it with me to -deliver to you when you were thirty years old.”</p> - -<p>I took the envelope he handed me. I was trembling. My uncle mopped his -forehead and cleared his throat. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></p> - -<p>“You will be absolute owner of your property when you are thirty.”</p> - -<p>“Oh,” I said blankly.</p> - -<p>“Yes, you were not to know. It was your father’s wish. Did your mother, -before she died, tell you anything about him?”</p> - -<p>“No, I don’t think so.”</p> - -<p>“Well, I’m sorry. It was her place to tell you. Your father is buried -out west, in Oregon.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, I know.”</p> - -<p>“He’s not buried in a cemetery. He’s buried on a hill. He bought the -tract of land himself.”</p> - -<p>I waited. The noises of the camp came cheerily through the cabin -windows. There was a strong smell of pine wood and resin and of bacon -frying somewhere out of doors.</p> - -<p>“Your father broke his neck falling down the elevator shaft in a -New York hotel. The verdict was accidental death, but it was not an -accident. Your mother knew, and I knew.”</p> - -<p>I stood up, staring at him stupidly, holding the letter in my fingers, -then quickly turned and went out. I crossed the camp and struck off -into the woods. In a quiet place I sat down and opened the letter. It -began, “My dear daughter Jane.” I know it by heart. This is the letter.</p> - -<blockquote><p>“<i>My dear daughter Jane</i>: It is time for me to go. A man is free -to choose his time. This I believe, not much else. I am sorry to -leave you, but you are only five years old and you will be better -off with your grandmother in St. Mary’s Plains than you would be -with me. Your grandmother and your aunts will take care of you. -They are good women. It’s not their fault that they don’t like me. -The truth is, Jane, that I’m not their kind. I’m nobody’s kind and -I’m awful tired of being alone in a crowd. This world is getting -too full of people for me. I want space and I guess I’ll find it -where I’m going.</p> - -<p>I wouldn’t leave you so much money if I knew what to do with it. -It never did me any good. It was only fun getting, not having. At -first I worked with my hands—in the earth—then <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>I found gold. I -bought land and more land, built a railroad or two, and then Wall -Street got me. That was like the poker table I’d known when I was -a boy working on the Chippevale Ranch. That was just excitement, -no good to any one, but fun for a spell.</p> - -<p>When you are thirty years old you’ll have as much sense as you’re -ever going to have. Perhaps you’ll do better than I did. Perhaps -you’ll know how to spend. I didn’t. I’d like you to enjoy what -I’ve left you. It would console me some.</p> - -<p>I’m not a believer in the Cross of Jesus and I don’t want it on my -grave, but I’m not sure there isn’t something over yonder on the -other side. I hailed from the far West. It’s spoiling now, but a -wide prairie and a high sky are the best things I know, that and -working with your hands.</p> - -<p>Good-bye, little girl Jane, you’re the only thing I mind leaving -behind. I’d kind of like to know what you’ll be like when you get -this.</p> - -<p>Your Uncle Bradford’s an honest man, there aren’t many, you can -trust him. He’ll give you this and explain that there was no -disgrace. Only I didn’t feel like living any more. There are too -many people hanging round. I want to get away. If I’m doing you a -wrong by quitting I ask you to forgive me.</p> - -<p class="right">“Your loving father,<span class="s3"> </span><br /> -“<i>Silas Carpenter</i>.”</p></blockquote> - -<p>I worked it out that night with maps and time-tables. I had just enough -time to go to Redtown and get back to New York to catch my boat. I left -the next morning. My aunt went with me. Uncle Bradford’s steam launch -took us down the lake. We caught a train at a place called Athens and -joined the western express the middle of the next day. It took us three -days and three nights to get to Oregon. We crossed the Mississippi -river early one morning. The next day we thundered through the Rocky -Mountains. The plains beyond were immense and stupefying.</p> - -<p>I visited the grave alone. A block of granite, reminding me of a -druid’s stone, marked the spot on the hill where he was buried. It -stood up stark and solid on the bare ground. It looked as if it had -been left there endless ages<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> before by some slow, gigantic movement -of nature, some glacier travelling by inches from the north, or some -heaving of the earth’s surface. One side of it was polished and bore an -inscription cut into the stones:—</p> - -<p class="center">“<span class="smcap">here lies silas carpenter, who was born in this place before -it was a town and who died in new york on January 5th 1885.</span>”</p> - -<p>From the hill-top one had a view of the city lying along the sea, a -new, bright city, an unfriendly sea of a dazzling blue. I sat down -on the grass by the great stone. Here, at last, was something that -belonged to me and to no one else. No one would dispute with me the -possession of my father’s grave. I felt excited and uplifted as if I -had come into a precious inheritance. And yet what had he left me? -A message of failure, an unanswered question, a sense of not having -counted for him enough myself to keep him on the earth. He had shuffled -me off with the rest of it. My mother must have hated him. She must -have had something to do with his giving it up like that. I would have -loved him. I would have understood him. If he had waited for me we -would have been good companions. If he had lived I would never have -gone to Paris. I would have gone west with him to his wide prairie -and high skies. Everything would have been different. I had missed -something. What had I missed? I looked out across the dry grass, the -rolling hills, the big, bare, blazing land, the glittering sea under -the windy sun, and I recognized it as mine. I had missed my life. I had -taken the wrong turn.</p> - -<p>We boarded the train again next day and recrossed the continent of -America. It took us seven days and nights to reach New York. We passed -through Denver, Chicago, Cleveland, and countless other cities. We -crossed deserts white as sand and overgrown with cactus. In the middle -of the Mohawa desert we stopped at a place called Bagdad to give the -engine a drink of water. Bagdad was a single<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> wooden shed standing -in a waste of sand. Bagdad, Bagdad. It was very hot in the train. My -aunt and I sat most of the time on the open platform at the end of -the observation car, watching the earth fly from under the train and -drinking iced drinks that the coloured porters brought us. It is very -exciting to be in a train like that, rushing across the earth at such -speed, suspended in space as if on a giant bridge, and the vast, the -immense, the overwhelming panorama flying endlessly past. Cities, -rivers, prairies, mountains, lonely farms, the steel jaws of stations -engulfing you, out again through the crowding buildings of a city you -will never know, full of people you will never see, into the open, the -horizon endlessly wheeling, the earth under the train flying backwards, -but the far edge of the earth towards the horizon wheeling with you. -Thundering along, the pounding of the engine, the grinding wheels -exciting your brain to a special liveliness, the train is a miraculous -thing, a steel comet cushioned inside imitating a dwelling, but a -long comet whirring through space, a blaze of flying light by night, -a streak and a noise by day, and from it you look out upon a thousand -worlds flying past, and you have glimpses, instant, quick glimpses, of -countless mysterious lives, a group of children hanging over a fence -waving, a farmer in a wide straw hat sitting in a blue wagon at a -railway crossing, a boundless golden field behind him of innumerable -garnered sheaves all gold, a village like a collection of wooden boxes, -saddled horses tethered to a rope in front of an unpainted post office. -Cowboys driving cattle, rolling prairies, horses, wild, running, -kicking up their heels, a lonely cabin against a hill, hens scratching -outside, thin smoke coming from the wobbling iron smoke stack, lost in -the boundless blue; families moving, all their household goods piled -on wagons, the men walking beside the horses with long whips, a mail -coach lurching along a mountain road, the driver has a Colt revolver in -his pocket. You know that. You hope he’ll get the highway robbers who -will be waiting for him at dark. Bret Harte wrote about him. And now -Walt <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>Whitman’s country—Leaves of Grass—a great poem, the greatest. -He knew. He had found out. He understood the giant, the great urge of -life, in this my country.</p> - -<p>And I thought of my father, crossing and recrossing the continent, -restless, lonely, powerful, dissatisfied, an isolated man moving up and -down the land, handling money, gambling with money, not knowing what to -do, growing tired of it all.</p> - -<p>I said to my aunt—“It was twenty-five years ago, but it brings him -close.”</p> - -<p>“Your father’s death?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, it makes a difference.”</p> - -<p>“How?”</p> - -<p>“I’m with him. It clears the ground.”</p> - -<p>I did not quite know what I meant then, but I know now.</p> - -<p>We reached New York. I was suddenly filled with foreboding. In the high -window of our towering hotel I sat with Patience far into the night. We -sat together like watchers in a tower, and a million lighted windows -shone before us in the blue night.</p> - -<p>“I am afraid, Aunt.”</p> - -<p>“Why, my child?”</p> - -<p>“I am afraid to leave you.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, I know.”</p> - -<p>How much did she know, I wondered? What did she suspect? Philibert had -not written to me, of course. She must have noticed. She must know a -good deal.</p> - -<p>“You have your little girl, Jane. Think of her.”</p> - -<p>“I do. She’s a prim little thing, not a bit like me.”</p> - -<p>“Promise me to love your child, to love her enough.”</p> - -<p>“Enough for what, dear?”</p> - -<p>“Just enough; you’ll find out how much that is.”</p> - -<p>“I will try to love her as you have loved me, Aunt, always.”</p> - -<p>She gripped my hand. “Janey,” she muttered, “my girl.” We sat a long -time silent. The desire to unburden all my heart was unbearable. But it -was too late now. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Europe is too full of people, Aunt. They have made the earth into a -trivial thing. It is not good for people to subdue the earth. In Paris -one is never out of doors. I don’t feel at home there. I am sick for my -own country, for a wide prairie and a high sky.”</p> - -<p>“You’ll come back again, Jane.”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” I answered, “I will come back.”</p> - -<p>I thought she was asking for a promise. I did not know that she was -stating a prophecy.</p> - -<p>And in the morning I went aboard my ship and my aunt left me and went -down the gangway onto the pier, and the ship moved slowly away from the -dock. There she was again, standing in the crowd in her queer black -clothes, but this time the water between us was widening. She lifted -both her arms to me in a last large gesture of full embrace, then her -arms fell to her sides, and she stood there buffeted by the wind, -jostled by the crowd, a strong old woman, looking after me bravely. I -had a desperate moment. I wanted to jump, to swim back. I felt an agony -of regret, of longing, of warning. I struggled. It was horrible, such -pain. What did it mean? Why was I going? It was wrong, it was wrong.</p> - -<p>I never saw her again.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span></p> - -<h2>V</h2> - -<p>I slipped back into Paris, its pleasant walls closed round me, and the -voice I had heard over there, in my wide country was hushed. It was -like coming out of a great open space into a room. There was all at -once about me a multitude of nice pretty things, a shimmer of lights, -a harmony of bright sounds, the smooth, soothing, flattering touch -of luxury. No whisper of elemental forces could penetrate here. Men -of incomparable taste and limited vision had made this place to suit -themselves.</p> - -<p>Jinny was waiting for me, a prim fairy with starry eyes, standing -daintily on tip-toe to be kissed, smoothing her white frock carefully -after my hug. She told me that she had seen her Papa. He had been on a -visit to <i>Grand’ mère</i>! He had given her a strawberry ice in the Bois -and had taken her to see Punch and Judy. Then he had gone far away to a -country where old kings were buried and one rode on camels across the -sand. The <i>Guignol</i> had been very amusing, but she had agreed with her -papa that she was rather old for Punch and Judy. Some day he would come -back and take her to big parties. I looked at Jinny, little Jinny, who -didn’t like to be hugged, pirouetting on one toe and looking at herself -in the glass, and I remembered my promise to Patience Forbes. It wasn’t -enough to dote on my child, to crave her sweetness, her caresses, her -laughter. There would be a struggle. There would be endless things. I -saw them coming, all the events of her poor little life, so spectacular -in its setting. I was there to ward them off, to challenge fate and the -future, to love her with enough wisdom and enough tenacity and enough -self-abasement to—well, to see her through. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span></p> - -<p>And I had an idea that she wouldn’t help me much. She would perhaps -always be content to curtsey to herself in the glass. I felt this, but -I felt it with less keenness than I expected. There seemed something -a little unreal about struggling desperately to ward off evil from -my child. There were flowers in the room, orchids and violets and -roses, sent to greet me. A sheaf of letters, invitations to lunch, to -dine, to listen to music. The first night of the Russian Ballet was -announced for the following week. Rodin asked me to his studio to see -a new bronze. Beauty all about me, amusement, stimulus, within easy -reach, treasures of pleasure like sugared fruit hanging from fantastic -branches waiting to be plucked.</p> - -<p>Your mother’s kiss of greeting showed me that Philibert’s visit had -made a difference. It was a cold, gay little peck and was accompanied -by nervous pats and hurried playful remarks on a high, forced note. -Clearly she was nervous. Almost, it seemed, as if she were afraid of -me. Poor little <i>belle-mère</i>. She had fallen in love with her son all -over again, but why need that make her afraid of me? I was disappointed -and annoyed by her renewed subterfuges. It seemed to me strange that -she should think I would begrudge her the pleasure her son could still -give her. I thought of explaining my feelings to Claire, but Claire was -not in a receptive mood and there was after all nothing to be gained by -it. I was a little tired of explaining. I was, I found, even a little -tired of the de Joigny family. My obligations to them and theirs to me -seemed less important since my return. It occurred to me that I had -taken myself and my problems with a ridiculous seriousness. I was still -very fond of your mother, but I no longer asked of her the impossible. -All that I now wanted of the family was a sufficiently respectable show -of approval and a mild give-and-take of friendliness. I felt equal to -living a life of my own and I proposed doing so. When you suggested -giving a dinner for me in your rooms I was delighted. You promised me -Ludovic and half a dozen of the best<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> brains in Paris. That seemed to -me an excellent way to begin.</p> - -<p>Aunt Clothilde sent for me one morning a few days later. I found her -in bed under an immensely high canopy of crimson damask, sipping a cup -of the richest chocolate, a coarse, white cambric cap, like a peasant -woman’s, tied under her double chin, her wig hung on the bed-post. The -room was vast and stuffy and dark and hung with dingy tapestries. On -one side of the bed sat her <i>dame de compagnie</i>, knitting, on the other -a frightened priest with a sallow, perspiring face. Aunt Clo waved a -plump hand as I came in. The duenna and the priest rose hurriedly.</p> - -<p>“No, <i>mon Père</i>, I won’t help you. You are no doubt a saintly man, but -that’s not enough for the business in hand. You’ve not got the brains. -You couldn’t preach to a lot of worldly women, you’re too timid. Look -at yourself now. You’re trembling before a wicked old woman who may -have some influence with the Archbishop but has none whatever with -Saint Peter. Come, <i>mon Père</i>, brace up and go to the heathen. There’s -a nice post vacant in Madagascar. I’ll put in a word for you there if -you like.”</p> - -<p>The poor man’s face worked painfully. He murmured something and -scuttled away across the great room. The little companion held open the -door for him and followed him out.</p> - -<p>Aunt Clothilde turned to me. “Blaise,” she began at once, motioning -me to sit down, “has asked me to dine with him. Does he dine? Has he -a cook? He says so, but how do I know? What will he give me to eat? -He says the dinner is for you. Since when has he taken to giving his -sister-in-law dinners? He wants me to put you in countenance, and -to impress his disreputable bohemian friends. He says they are all -geniuses. What is a genius? Your mother-in-law thinks they all died in -the seventeenth century. She may be right. How can one be sure? And why -should I dine with a genius? Is that a reason? He promises me, as if it -were a favour, that man Ludovic, a monster<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> with greasy grey curls who -worships an Egyptian cat. Blaise says he is a very great scholar and -that you deserve a little pleasure. Will you find pleasure in his old -scholar? Why should you? I’d rather have a beautiful young fool myself. -It appears the family is horrid to you. Is that so? Wouldn’t let you -take your child to America, eh? Well, I don’t mind having a dig at the -family. Tiresome people, always splitting hairs. And you’re a good -girl. You’ve got pluck, but I thought you were going to hurt Bianca -that night.” She chuckled. “Well, what do you think? Shall I come to -this dinner to meet your crazy friends?”</p> - -<p>“They’re not mine, Aunt, I don’t know them.”</p> - -<p>“You know Clémentine, she likes you. She’s all right, a Bourbon and a -S—— on her mother’s side, but of course as mad as a March hare, and -no morals. She doesn’t need ’em. But don’t take after her, you’ve got -’em and you need ’em. All Anglo-Saxons are like that. Take care. Of -course it would be no more than Philibert deserves.”</p> - -<p>I laughed. “You talk, Aunt, as if Blaise’s friends weren’t proper.”</p> - -<p>“Proper, what’s that? Aren’t they just the most disreputable people -on earth? Isn’t that why they’re amusing? Really clever people are -never proper. It takes every drop of Clémentine’s blue blood to keep -her afloat, and that man Felix! these writers with their habits of -sleeping all day, Blaise tells me he is writing a play without words. -It must be witty. <i>En voilà une occasion pour faire de l’esprit.</i> And -the Spaniard, the painter, it appears that he wants to do a fresco for -my music room. Well, he won’t. Only, if he doesn’t for me, he will for -François. Blaise says he’s the greatest mural painter since Tiepolo. I -detest that ‘<i>Trompe l’œil</i>’ school, but I’d like to spite François. -What do you think? I’m very poor this year. I sold a forest for half -its value. Now then, what about Philibert—gone to Egypt with his -little salamander, has he?”</p> - -<p>“I believe so, Aunt.”</p> - -<p>“And you? You don’t look very sad.” </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span></p> - -<p>“I don’t think I am, Aunt.”</p> - -<p>“Good, excellent; you console yourself, eh?”</p> - -<p>“No, Aunt, I don’t; not, that is, in the way you mean.”</p> - -<p>“Rubbish; don’t look so virtuous, child. If you haven’t already, you -soon will. We all do. It’s a law of nature. My husband was the dullest -man on earth, I couldn’t abide him. If he hadn’t been the first Duke of -France no one would ever have asked him to dinner. How do you think I -put up with him for twenty years? You find me an ugly old woman, very -fat, very fond of good cooking. My child, there are only two kinds of -pleasure worth having in this world, and one of them has to do with the -stomach. I’ve enjoyed both. I now only enjoy one. That’s enough. What -a face you make at me! If you go against the laws of nature you’ll get -into trouble.”</p> - -<p>“But, Aunt, seriously, these clever friends of Blaise—are they -disreputable?”</p> - -<p>“Child, child, how boring you are, you Americans have such literal -minds. All I mean is that they’ve no moral sense. They’ve something -else though in its place, something better, perhaps, or worse, anyhow -more discriminating.”</p> - -<p>“I see.”</p> - -<p>“No, you don’t, but it doesn’t matter. You’ve a moral sense that -bothers the life out of you. Now go along with you. I must get up. I’ll -come to your party. Your mother-in-law won’t approve. She’s a superior -person. As for you, God knows what you’ll be in ten years time with -such a husband and such a conscience. I had better keep an eye on you. -In the choice of a lover you can ask my advice. I know men. They’re not -worth much, but you don’t take or refuse one for that reason. You’ve -found that out for yourself by now.”</p> - -<p>She dismissed me, waving again her little fat hand from under the -immense canopy of her bed.</p> - -<p>I left her, amused and rather exhilarated. A wicked old woman and a -very great lady. It didn’t occur to me to take<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> her seriously, but I -liked her. All the same, the last thing I wanted was a lover. The mere -thought filled me with disgust.</p> - -<p>Your dinner was awfully nice, Blaise dear. I remember the evening well. -A few snowflakes softly floated down in your little courtyard as old -Albert, your manservant, in his ancient green coat, opened the door. He -had cooked the dinner and arranged the table and made the fire in the -living room and put the champagne on ice; I knew that, but his manner -was of a fine, calm formality as he ushered Aunt Clo and myself into -your presence. A group of men who somehow impressed one as not at all -ordinary, and a bright little lady dressed like a parrot, in a tiny, -shabby, candle-lit room, filling the place comfortably with their easy -good-humour, that was my first impression, followed quickly by others, -pleasant, special impressions, aspects sharp and neat in an atmosphere -that gave one a feeling of tasting a fine subtle flavour. Each person -in the room was an individual unlike any one else. With no beauty to -speak of, several were old men in oddly cut clothes, they were more -interesting to watch than any lovely creature. Their faces were worn -and lined and gentle, thin masks through which one saw the fine play -of intelligence. Some were already known to the great world of thought -and public affairs, others have since become so, but all were simple, -homely men that night, with a certain childlike gaiety that was very -appealing.</p> - -<p>Albert’s food was excellent; succulent, substantial food that suggested -the provinces. The wine was very old. For a moment as I watched -your convives inhaling the bouquet from lifted glasses, I imagined -myself far away in Balzac’s country, a snowy street of silent houses -stretching out between high poplars to a great river, a carriage at -the door, with a postillion in a three-cornered hat, waiting to drive -me to some romantic rendezvous. But the talk swept me along with its -merry-go-round of the present.</p> - -<p>I cannot, after all these years, recall what was said, impossible -to recapture now the quick turns of wit, the dry<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> little jokes, the -swift touches of poetry, that followed each other with such rapid -intellectual grace. It was all incredibly rapid. I could just manage -to keep up with the sense of it. I didn’t attempt to take part. Ideas -were as thick in that room as confetti at a fête. Clémentine, in an -apple-green dress, with a round red spot of rouge on either cheek, -swayed this way and that in response to innumerable sallies, her -face changing like lightning. She was a match for those men. Her wit -played over the history of her country like a jolly little ferret -nosing out and pouncing upon joke and anecdote from the vast field of -the past. Cardinals, princes, and ruffians were held up to ridicule. -International affairs were dealt with clearly and deftly by her cutting -tongue. She played with the ideas round her as if they were a swarm of -brilliant darting winged creatures. Her delight in this battle of wit -was contagious. The talk grew faster and faster. Soon every one was -talking at once. No one could finish a sentence.</p> - -<p>Cambon was explaining to Aunt Clothilde why the Government would not -tolerate an Ambassador to the Pope. Clémentine was defending the -English, no one appeared to like the English. Felix was making fun of -Diaghilev, the new Russian who had appeared with his Imperial Ballet a -week before.</p> - -<p>What delightful people! Certainly without reservation of any kind I -find them now as I did then the most delightful people in the world. -Ludovic wore a celluloid collar. His body was too heavy for his legs -and his head too big for his body; no matter; his profound, quiet -gaze and tired, brown face expressed a nobility that made one ashamed -of noticing his ill-cut coat. Felix looked like a faun. With his -exaggerated features thrust forward into the candle-light he said -funny, penetrating things that kept Aunt Clo chuckling. I watched, -fascinated. These were the people Aunt Clo called disreputable, -utterly lacking in a moral sense. Were ever sinners so joyous, so -light-hearted? Rebels against creeds, against the fixed order of -society, against the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> didactic spoken word, they were kind to me, -the Philistine, exerting at once and with unconscious ease the most -disarming charm.</p> - -<p>Vaguely I recalled the mentality of my American home. It was there -behind me, like a cold and lifeless plaster cast behind a curtain. -Here was something infinitely more interesting, something brilliantly -living, something merry and subtle and fine that defied disapproval. -The powers of evil? Chimeras! No room for them here, no room for -anything dismal and boring. I felt an uplift, it was like an awakening. -All that horror of soul searching, all the dreary puritan A. B. C. of -right and wrong was a childish nightmare. These people understood the -world. They made fun of evil. They loved each other and found no fault -with their friends. Under their gaiety was a deep sympathy for poor -humanity.</p> - -<p>They said things that would have sent St. Mary’s Plains reeling with -horror into one large devastating revival meeting. If St. Mary’s Plains -could have dreamed of the character of their conversation it would call -upon God to destroy them. I laughed. Albert filled my glass.</p> - -<p>Some one was saying—</p> - -<p>“Time is a circle.”</p> - -<p>“The sunrise, why the same sun? Who knows?”</p> - -<p>“Truth? Why should one want truth? Truth is a thing we have invented. -An accurate statement of facts? But there is no accuracy except in -mathematics, and in mathematics there are no facts.”</p> - -<p>Were they joking? Or were they serious? Both. I felt like a schoolgirl, -very ignorant, very crude, with a stiff blank mind like a piece of -cardboard. They slowed down to listen to Ludovic. I remember Ludovic -speaking to them all with his eyes smiling under their spiky grey -eyebrows. I think I remember what he said. It was the first time I had -heard him talk, as he talked to me so often afterwards.</p> - -<p>“I sit in some old city of the past and look back upon the present -and still further back into the future. Why not?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> Time is an endless -circle, wheeling around one. Why trouble to imagine a beginning -or an end? Why these unnatural conceptions? The old legends are -more sensible. The ancient mystic symbol of matter, Ouroborro, the -tail-devourer, a serpent coiled into a circle, symbol of evolution, of -the evolution of matter. There is something there, something to think -of. Let us all think of molecules, and remember the Philosopher’s -Stone. Have you ever laughed at the legend of the Philosopher’s Stone -that can transmute metals and give the elixir of life? What if it were -discovered, this stone? Suppose radium were in the legend stone of long -ago. Wouldn’t that suggest to you that we have only just discovered out -of the long labour of our known cycle of civilization something that -was known before by another race of men? Who knows, perhaps that race -conquered its earth with this stone, turned it from a savage planet -like this of ours into a Garden of Eden, and then, surfeited with ease, -died of inertia, lapsed into darkness, fell from the Heaven it had -made. That is to say, Adam, the father of our race, may have been the -last survivor of a race of fallen gods, supermen.”</p> - -<p>Clémentine took my arm as we went out of the dining-room.</p> - -<p>“You find us a little mad?” she asked.</p> - -<p>“Oh, no.”</p> - -<p>“Tell us how you find us. You are different, big and strong and young -and strange. Your point of view about us would be something new.”</p> - -<p>“I find you extraordinarily happy.”</p> - -<p>“Oh yes, we are gay.”</p> - -<p>The men had followed us.</p> - -<p>“We laugh.”</p> - -<p>“We find the world so funny.”</p> - -<p>“But we’re serious too. There’s Ludovic as solemn as a trout. He’d be -dreary if we let him be.”</p> - -<p>“Only we don’t. Why should one worry? One can’t<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> change anything. You -must be one of us. It’s so amusing with us. You will see how amusing it -is.”</p> - -<p>So it was that they adopted me. And that night as I drove home through -the moonlit streets I thought of St. Mary’s Plains with distaste and -impatience.</p> - -<p>But what I remember best of all about that evening was the sweet funny -way you beamed down the table when you saw that your friends liked me. -You were, you know, just a little nervous about the impression I would -make on them. They were so much more brilliant than any one else that I -don’t wonder. But it all went off well, bless your heart, thanks to the -penetrating sweetness of your will that willed us to be pleased with -one another.</p> - -<p>There followed years of power and pleasure. Your friends made good -their promise. They taught me to enjoy. Ludovic began to form my mind. -Clémentine gave me the daring to use it. I learned how pleasant it -was to follow one’s caprices, to indulge one’s tastes, to realize -one’s dreams. Do you remember the things we did? What indeed didn’t -we do, with our picture shows, our pantomimes, and our music? When -we wanted to do a thing we did it. When we wanted to go to a place -we went. What fun it was going off at a moment’s notice to Seville, -to Constantinople, to Moscow. Some one would say—“Have you seen the -<i>Place Stanislas</i> at Nancy by moonlight? No? But you must.” “Let’s go -tomorrow,” and we went. Or—“I hear that at Grenoble there is a lady -who owns a glove shop and who has in her back parlour a Manet, let us -go and buy it, if it is true.” Of course we went and found it was true -and bought it. Felix it was who took us all the way to Strasbourg for -one night and day, to eat a pâté de foie gras and hear mass in the -Cathedral.</p> - -<p>But we were happiest of all in Paris. Paris was inexhaustible. Not a -nook or cranny of interest and charm escaped us. Sometimes early in -the spring mornings we would walk through silvery streets or along -the quais or take<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> the penny steamer down the Seine. We sampled every -restaurant known to our gourmet Felix. We sat in icy studios at the -feet of shy ogres. Even Dégas thawed to us, while rare spirits from odd -corners of the earth joined us in the evenings. And increasingly the -beauty of Paris was revealed to me. I cared for it intimately now, and -I loved its smooth pale historic stones with a delicate sensuousness.</p> - -<p>I was happy. I was as happy as an opium eater. I lived in a continuous -mood of enjoyment that had the quality of a dream. All this was mine -to behold and delight in, and I was responsible for none of it. I was -passive. I was calm. The play played itself out about me, and I was in -no way involved. What people did and what they didn’t do had no real -significance. When Ludovic said: “A man has as much right to take life -as to give it,” I thought placidly, “Perhaps so, in this world.” When -he denounced property and capitalists and said we should all be poor, I -thought, of course, that is so, and when he pointed out to me a woman -who had killed her father because he was cross-eyed and got on her -nerves, I merely looked at her with mild curiosity. He said that she -was very sensitive and charming, and I believed him. It didn’t seem to -matter.</p> - -<p>And if at times it occurred to me that I was becoming callous and -selfish, at others I felt that I was becoming intelligent and -charitable.</p> - -<p>Jinny was my one responsibility, a little will-o’-the-wisp creature who -danced into my room of a morning to drop a kiss on my nose and dance -out again. Jinny, so entrancingly pretty, so ridiculously dainty, who -never soiled her hands or tore her frock or spilled her food, who said -her prayers night and morning to a silver crucifix that her father had -sent her from Italy, and who confessed her minute sins every Friday to -a priest but never confided in her mother.</p> - -<p>My child baffled me. There was nothing in my own childhood’s experience -that threw any light on the little close mystery of her nature. She -didn’t like animals, she hated romping about, she was afraid of the -cold. What she liked<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> was to be curled up on cushions in front of -the fire and listen to fairy stories. Her indolence was complete, -her capacity for keeping still, extraordinary in one who moved so -lightly when she did move. Sometimes when I looked up from the book I -was reading aloud to her, I would find her great brown eyes fixed on -me with a look of uncanny wisdom. She seemed to disapprove of me. I -wondered if this had anything to do with the teaching of her priestly -tutors that her father had prescribed for her, or whether it sprang -from a natural precocious feeling of the difference between us. We -were certainly a strange couple. Even in moments of my most anguished -tenderness, I could not but feel the incongruity. The idea that she was -much more her father’s daughter than mine was one that I tried not to -dwell on.</p> - -<p>I had been going happily along, thinking that I could enjoy this -adventurous life of my new friends without being involved in it, when -I found out that I was much less free than I thought. Your mother did -not approve, I knew, and I gathered that she blamed you for leading -me astray, but it came nevertheless as a surprise when she gently -interfered.</p> - -<p>“Aren’t you making yourself a little notorious, my child?” she asked -one day.</p> - -<p>“Notorious <i>belle-mère</i>?”</p> - -<p>“Yes. Dining in restaurants in the company of such strange men.”</p> - -<p>“They are not very strange, dear, except in being so very intelligent, -and I never, at least scarcely ever, dine alone with men. There is -almost always Clémentine.”</p> - -<p>“I know, that’s just it. For a chaperone, you couldn’t have chosen -worse.”</p> - -<p>“But surely, <i>Belle Mère</i>, I need no chaperone, I am old enough to go -about alone?”</p> - -<p>She closed her eyes wearily, opened them and spoke sharply.</p> - -<p>“French women of good family never go about alone, and never dine in -public places.” </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span></p> - -<p>“But Clémentine—”</p> - -<p>“Don’t talk to me of Clémentine.” I was startled by the sudden note of -sharp personal grievance in her voice. “Her conduct is scandalous. Her -mother was my first cousin and dearest friend. It is fortunate that -she is dead. How could she be blamed for that marriage, yet Clémentine -always blamed her and set to work deliberately to make her suffer.”</p> - -<p>“I know nothing of Clémentine’s marriage.”</p> - -<p>“Well, her husband—but no matter, there is no excuse for her making -herself an object of derision.”</p> - -<p>“I scarcely think she does that, dear, she is in great demand you know, -in the very highest quarters.”</p> - -<p>“At foreign courts, perhaps, not in her own country. If it weren’t for -the obligations of kinship no one, but no one would speak to her.”</p> - -<p>“Just what is it that she has done that you so disapprove of?”</p> - -<p>“She has made herself cheap. She has vulgarized her position, she plays -at being a bohemian, she has bartered away her dignity for a little -sordid amusement.”</p> - -<p>“And I?”</p> - -<p>“You are in danger of doing the same, but in greater danger.”</p> - -<p>I was annoyed and rose and moved to the door.</p> - -<p>“You are going?”</p> - -<p>“I am afraid I must. I have an appointment.”</p> - -<p>“Ah, you resent my speaking to you?”</p> - -<p>“No, dear, but—”</p> - -<p>“But—?”</p> - -<p>“I am afraid I cannot quite agree with you.”</p> - -<p>Her face hardened. I made an effort.</p> - -<p>“<i>Belle-mère</i>, I am doing no wrong. Surely you believe that. These men -are nothing to me, not one of them.”</p> - -<p>Her eyebrows lifted. “You love no one?” she asked.</p> - -<p>“No.”</p> - -<p>“That too, is just as I thought.” </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span></p> - -<p>“You wouldn’t mind that, I suppose?”</p> - -<p>“Mind it? How should I? How would it concern me?”</p> - -<p>I was a little taken aback. “It only matters then what I seem to do, -not what I really do?”</p> - -<p>She smiled, rather sarcastically, I thought. “Put it that way if you -like, my child.”</p> - -<p>“But, <i>belle-mère</i>, don’t you really understand at all, that I am -trying to be happy and keep my self-respect?”</p> - -<p>She eyed me a moment strangely, then dropped her head.</p> - -<p>“We will never understand each other,” she said at last. “We won’t -discuss things any more. It leads to nothing.”</p> - -<p>But Claire felt that she, too, must make an attempt to bring me to -reason. She attacked me on the subject of Geneviève. There she was -clever. Was I not neglecting my child a little? No, I replied I was -not. I was out so much, I seemed to take so little interest in her -education. At this I flared up.</p> - -<p>“Her education, my dear, is as you know, not in my hands. Her father -has made clear his wishes on that subject. Her mind is confided to -the keeping of Monseigneur de Grimont and you know what he is doing -with it better than I do. What with her prayers, her masses and her -confessions, her priestly tutors who instructed her in Latin and Greek, -Italian and Spanish, and the good sisters who teach her to embroider -altar pieces and to believe every ridiculous miracle in the lives of -the saints, such healthy heathen interests as I can cultivate in her -little ecstatic soul have small chance of flourishing.”</p> - -<p>“But Jane, surely she has her dancing, her riding, her music?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, of course, she has everything, everything, but no time for her -mother. Her days are as full as a time table. Try as I may, I can -never get more than an hour a day with her. How then am I to make her -my life’s occupation? That’s what you meant, wasn’t it? You said I -neglected her.”</p> - -<p>“What I meant was that you seem to have forgotten us all,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> Geneviève -included, and to have forgotten what we and therefore what she must -stand for in society.”</p> - -<p>“On the contrary.”</p> - -<p>“You mean—?”</p> - -<p>“I mean that I constantly think of it, but perhaps not just as you do.”</p> - -<p>“Well, if you want your daughter to take Clémentine as a pattern.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t,” and then added with deliberate wickedness, “I wouldn’t have -poor little Jinny attempt anything so impossible.”</p> - -<p>“You admire her so much?”</p> - -<p>“I do.”</p> - -<p>“But she’s grotesque. She goes in for politicians and for journalists.”</p> - -<p>“I adore her.”</p> - -<p>“She’s shameless—her affairs—”</p> - -<p>I cut her short. “I know nothing about her affairs. What I know is that -she has a generous soul, a warm heart and the most brilliant mind in -Paris. No other woman in Paris can touch her for brains.”</p> - -<p>Claire lifted her eyebrows. I saw that she washed her hands of me. -At the moment I was glad of it. As for Clémentine, she cared nothing -for what Claire or any one else thought of her. She was a law unto -herself. Her love affairs, of which I knew more than I admitted, were -as necessary to her as her meals. She must have food, and she attached -no great importance to it. An artistic find, an amusing trip or an -exciting debate in the Chamber of Deputies, would make her forget with -equal ease her lunch or a sentimental rendezvous. Her relations with -men didn’t seem to me to be any of my business. There was a certain -recklessness there that I didn’t understand. I left it at that. It was -Fan who told me about Clémentine’s marriage.</p> - -<p>“My dear, her husband had unnatural tastes. He kicked her downstairs -a month after the wedding. She can never have any children, and she -hasn’t spoken to him since. Also,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> she is said to have said that she -would never again have anything to do with a man of her own world. If -she did, well, she has kept her word. Her mother stopped her getting -her marriage annulled. Clémentine never got over that. She’s at war -with the whole tribe of her relations, but of course she can’t cut -loose from them for she hasn’t a son, and anyhow one doesn’t in France. -So her revenge is to do just those things that most irritate them. -They wouldn’t mind a bit how many lovers she had if she would choose -them from her own class, and preserve the usual appearances. What they -can’t bear is her going about with men whose fathers made boots or -sold pigs. And in justice to them you should remember that these men’s -grandfathers cut off their own grandfather’s heads.”</p> - -<p>“They prefer, I suppose, a person like Bianca.”</p> - -<p>“Of course, a million times.”</p> - -<p>“It’s nothing to Clémentine’s credit then that she’s a true friend and -incapable of grabbing a man from another woman.”</p> - -<p>“No, as long as she dresses like a futurist picture, and carries paper -bags through the streets and dines with Ludovic at Voisin’s, she’s a -horrid thorn in their sides.”</p> - -<p>“Well, I’m sorry, because you know I don’t propose to stop going about -with her.”</p> - -<p>“Lord, no, why should you? You certainly deserve a bit of fun. Come to -the Mouse Trap tomorrow night. We’ve a supper party after the Russian -Ballet.”</p> - -<p>But I knew what that meant, a troup of theatrical people, and every one -drunk by morning, so I declined. I saw a good deal of Fan these days, -but she had certain friends I <i>couldn’t</i> see. It didn’t amuse me to -watch women get tipsy. Those Montmartre parties depressed me horribly. -And I felt sure of Clémentine and her band on this point. It was just -one of the admirable things about them that they could be so daringly -gay and never verge on the rowdy. I had seen her administer a snub to -a hiccoughing youth. She could be terrible when she was displeased, -and whatever one<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> said of her, for that matter whatever she herself -felt, no one could get away from the fact that she was as proud a lady -as any in France, and perfectly conscious of her privilege of caste. -It was just this consciousness of her lineage, I imagined, that gave -her such a sense of security. She knew that she could do anything she -chose and be none the less privileged for it, and actually none the -worse. If she touched pitch she knew it wouldn’t stick to her fingers. -If she dipped into Bohemia, she did so knowing that she could never be -said to belong there. There was always behind her a solid phalanx of -relatives who would never disown her however much they disapproved. -Always in her maddest escapades there were the towers of the family -castle looming behind her. They cast an august shadow. She might dress -like an artist’s model, never would she be taken for one. She was safe, -perfectly safe and she knew it, and so did every one else.</p> - -<p>But with me, as Aunt Clothilde pointed out, it was different.</p> - -<p>“There’s nothing to prove what you are but the way you behave, my poor -Jane. If Clem took it into her head to play at being a barmaid, the -de Joignys and all the rest of them would wring their hands and call -it a scandalous idiocy, but if you did the same thing they’d say, -‘Of course, it’s quite natural, she probably was a barmaid in her -own country,’ and they wouldn’t wring their hands at all, they’d be -mightily pleased.”</p> - -<p>“So they think my associating with Ludovic is proof of a low mind?”</p> - -<p>“Well, what do you find in that old bourgeois?”</p> - -<p>“I find a gold mine.”</p> - -<p>“A gold mine of what?”</p> - -<p>“Information, ideas.”</p> - -<p>“Humph!”</p> - -<p>“But it’s true, Aunt, he is educating me. He gives me books, -philosophy, history, all sorts of books, then we discuss them.” </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Just like going to school, eh?”</p> - -<p>“Very much like that.”</p> - -<p>“And it doesn’t bore you?”</p> - -<p>“On the contrary.”</p> - -<p>“Well, no one will ever believe you. If Philibert comes back, he -certainly won’t.”</p> - -<p>She broke off and looked at me closely.</p> - -<p>“Ah ha, you still care for him, then?”</p> - -<p>“No, no, how could I, I mean how could he? It’s impossible that he -should return now, surely.”</p> - -<p>A week later I found a note from him on my breakfast tray, announcing -his return. He was installed in his own rooms in the west wing of the -house, and he would “present his duties” at the hour I chose to name. -And the post that same morning brought me a letter from Bianca. It -said—</p> - -<p>“If you blame me for taking away your husband, it is stupid of you. I -did you a great service in doing so. Perhaps that was why I did it. I -can think of no other reason. For myself I regret it, but not for you. -I envy you. Bianca.”</p> - -<p>My fingers trembled as I read this strange epistle, and I felt cold. -Actually—it seemed as if the room had gone cold as ice.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span></p> - -<h2>VI</h2> - -<p>It seemed at first as if Philibert’s return were going to make very -little difference to me. For some weeks I was scarcely aware of his -presence in the house. There was plenty of room for us to live there -without running into each other. When we did meet at the front door -or on the stairs, his manner was marked by just that formal courtesy -that was the usual sign of deference from a man of his world towards -his wife. To the servants, there was always one or two present at such -encounters; there could have been visible no flaw in his armour, nor in -mine.</p> - -<p>Our first meeting had been brief. Whatever his intention in seeking me -out in my boudoir, it took him not more than five minutes to find out -that there was nothing to be gained by a prolonged conversation, and on -the whole, nothing to be feared from me, did he but leave me alone, but -I imagined that I read upon his face more disappointment than relief. -He had not been afraid, perhaps just a little uneasy, but he had been -curious. He had expected something, and as he left me the expression of -his back and the vague fumbling of his hand in the tail pocket of his -coat, gave me the impression that whatever it was he had wanted, he was -going away without it. This impression, however, was fleeting, a deeper -and more painful one remained, and kept me a long time idle at my desk. -He was changed in a way that for some subtle inexplicable reason had -made me ashamed to look at him. There was in his pallid puffy face, in -the sag of his shoulders and the crook of his knees, something that I -did not want to understand, something that he had no right to show me. -Inside his immaculate clothes he was shrivelled to half his size. His -wonderful padded coat sat<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> on him as if on a lifeless and flaccid dummy -out of which had escaped a good deal of the sawdust stuffing. Bianca -had done with him. She had worn him out. He looked old. His eccentric -elegance no longer became him. It was as unsuccessful as a plastered -make-up on the face of an old woman. That was the sharpest impression -of all, he looked a failure. I wondered that he had the courage to show -himself, not to me but to Paris, where he had always walked with such -impudent assurance. His showing himself to me seemed to me not half so -daring. It seemed to me to prove once more and finally his complete -contempt for my opinion.</p> - -<p>I went on with my life. If I found that the savour had gone out of it, -I did not admit this all at once to myself. The situation didn’t bear -thinking about. If one thought about it one would be likely to find it -quite extraordinary enough to upset one’s mentality, and I proposed not -to be upset by it, and Philibert, apparently, with a certain exercise -of tact that reminded one of a burglar arranging the furniture and -putting out the lights after ransacking a room, made things as easy -for me as he could, by, as I say, keeping out of my sight. I soon -found, however, that he wasn’t keeping out of other people’s. On the -contrary, I began to be conscious of him moving about near me among his -friends. It was really rather funny. Only at home under the roof that -housed us both, was I quite free from him. In other people’s houses I -was constantly meeting his shadow. He had either been there, or was -coming, occasionally I was certain, that he had but just taken his -departure as I came in. Something of him remained in the room. I caught -myself looking about for his hat, and the faces of my acquaintances -betrayed varying shades of discomfiture or amusement. Mostly I -gathered as time went on, was their feeling one of amusement. Paris -had not been at all squeamish in welcoming Philibert, and it found our -continued <i>chassé-croisé</i> rather ridiculous. But with its very special -adaptibility and its extraordinary flair for situations,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> it continued -to be tolerant of my evident absurd wish not to be coupled with my -husband, and did not ask us out together.</p> - -<p>Aunt Clothilde, sitting enthroned like some comic Juno above the social -earth, put an end to this. As was her habit she sent for me and barged -into the subject in hand.</p> - -<p>“Now then, Jane, this sort of thing must stop.”</p> - -<p>“What sort of thing, Aunt?”</p> - -<p>“You and Philibert playing hide and seek all over Paris like a couple -of silly children. Don’t pretend you don’t understand. You chose your -‘<i>parti</i>’ long ago when you didn’t insist upon a separation, so now you -must go through with it. Nothing is so stupid as doing things half way. -You’ve ignored his behaviour. You’ve not bolted the door in his face, -and to all appearances you’re a reunited couple.”</p> - -<p>I tried to interrupt.</p> - -<p>“Don’t interrupt me. I don’t care, and nobody cares what goes on -between you and Philibert in your private apartments. Whether you’re -nasty or affectionate is nobody’s business but your own, but as regards -society, society expects people in it to behave in a certain way, and -to make things easy and agreeable and smooth. That’s its main object, -its only <i>raison d’être</i>. We people who think ourselves something are -nothing if we’re not well bred, that is, if we don’t know how to help -other people to keep up the pretence that every one is happy, that life -is harmonious and that there’s nothing dreadful under the sun. Society, -French society, is very intolerant of bad manners, not as you know of -anything else. It is exclusive with this object and adamant on this -point. It let you in, now it expects you to behave. You’ve enjoyed its -favour, you owe it something in return. What a bore to lecture you like -a school-mistress, but there you are. I’m going to give a dinner and -you and Philibert are both to come, and that will be the end of this -nonsense.”</p> - -<p>And of course I did as she said.</p> - -<p>And again your mother’s manner to me conveyed a sense<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> of my action -having made a difference, but this time an enormously happy difference. -She beamed, she was more affectionate than she had ever been. She -called me “<i>Ma chère petite</i>” “<i>Ma fille aimée</i>.” Drawing me down to -her with her delicate blue-veined hand, she would press her lips to one -of my cheeks then the other, lingeringly, and with a pathetic trembling -pressure, and look from me to Philibert with happy watery eyes in which -was no scrutiny or questioning. She was growing old. Something of her -fine discernment was gone. She was no longer curious to know what lay -behind appearances. It was enough for her to have recovered her son and -been spared the sight of his ruin. Like a child she clung to Philibert. -I admit that his manner to her was very charming. He went to see her, I -believe, every day.</p> - -<p>Claire did not seem so pleased with our renewed family life that -resembled so curiously the life we had lived round your mother five -years before. Her smile was bitter, her tongue caustic, but she looked -so ill, that I put her temper down to bad health. It was, strangely -enough, Philibert who explained to me, driving home from his mother’s -one Sunday afternoon.</p> - -<p>“You mustn’t mind Claire,” he began. “She is in trouble.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t. I can see she is in wretched health.”</p> - -<p>“Her health is the result, not the cause, of her unhappiness.”</p> - -<p>“Oh?”</p> - -<p>“Her husband has fallen into the hands of a scheming woman who wants to -marry him. He has threatened Claire with a divorce.”</p> - -<p>I was taken aback. I stammered. For an instant I wanted to laugh, but -Claire’s haggard face was after all nothing to laugh at. I remarked -mildly; “But I thought that in your world one didn’t divorce?”</p> - -<p>“He’s not of our world, never was, never will be. Besides, it bores -him, he’s had enough of us.” </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span></p> - -<p>“I see.”</p> - -<p>“He’s had too many snubs. We’ve been stupid. That affair of the Jockey -Club rankles.”</p> - -<p>“You mean that if you had taken him into the Jockey Club ten years ago -he wouldn’t want to divorce your sister now.”</p> - -<p>“Quite possibly. It would have involved him in other things, given him -something to live up to. As it is, he has, as you know, gone in for -politics.”</p> - -<p>“No, I didn’t know. I never hear him mentioned. I’m very sorry if -Claire is unhappy about it.”</p> - -<p>“She is, terribly.”</p> - -<p>“But she hates him.”</p> - -<p>“Not quite that. In any case the disgrace would kill her. She has -always been a retiring protected creature. The publicity would be -peculiarly awful for her.”</p> - -<p>I knew that what he said was true, but he had more to say, and he -stammered over it.</p> - -<p>“We thought that you, Jane, might do something.”</p> - -<p>I was startled. “Do something?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, to help, to persuade the man not to.”</p> - -<p>“But I scarcely know him.”</p> - -<p>“He has a great respect for you.”</p> - -<p>“For me? What nonsense.” I looked at him sharply. “What do you mean, -Philibert?”</p> - -<p>His pale blue eyes turned from mine to the Sunday pageant of the Champs -Elysées.</p> - -<p>“He wants a place in the Government. He would be greatly influenced by -political considerations, a prospect of success. Your friend Ludovic -could do something there.”</p> - -<p>“You mean that you want me to ask Ludovic to ask the Premier to give -your brother-in-law a place in the Cabinet on condition he doesn’t -bring divorce proceedings?”</p> - -<p>“It needn’t be a big place, you know. An under-secretaryship would do.” -The car drew up, came to a stop. “You’d better talk to Blaise about it -before you decide to leave Claire in the lurch.” </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span></p> - -<p>But you showed a curious reluctance to discuss the question and -referred me to Clémentine. I found her in the disused stables behind -her house where she had fitted up a studio. She was in a linen overall, -her arms smeared with clay, a patch of it on the tip of her tilted -nose, her hair screwed untidily on top of her ugly attractive head. -She pointed out a clean spot on a packing case and after lighting a -cigarette I sat down there.</p> - -<p>“I’ve come about Claire.”</p> - -<p>“I know.” Her face twinkled. She gave a laugh and taking up a handful -of wet clay slapped it on the side of the gargoylish head that she was -modelling.</p> - -<p>“Why won’t Blaise talk to me about it?”</p> - -<p>“He doesn’t like their using you in the matter. He has delicacies of -feeling.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t quite see. He adores his sister.”</p> - -<p>“Of course.”</p> - -<p>“And is very unhappy about her, as they all are.”</p> - -<p>“Naturally.”</p> - -<p>I pondered. “After all, I belong to the family.”</p> - -<p>“Quite so, whether you like it or not.” She ducked about scraping and -smoothing with flexible thumb.</p> - -<p>“But I’m fond of them.”</p> - -<p>“Of Claire?”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“People are.”</p> - -<p>“You sound very dry.”</p> - -<p>She gave a poke to her ugly old man’s protruding eye.</p> - -<p>“<i>Mon dieu</i>, I’m not too fond of your family, as you well know. They -bore me. I was brought up with Claire. We know each other.”</p> - -<p>“You don’t like her.”</p> - -<p>“She is uninteresting, no courage, no character.”</p> - -<p>“She has put up with a great deal.”</p> - -<p>“Has she? She liked her husband’s money, you know, and he’s not a bad -sort, really, merely vulgar, quite good-natured.” </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span></p> - -<p>“She loves her children,” I said weakly. At that Clémentine looked -round quickly.</p> - -<p>“Do you call that a virtue?” she asked.</p> - -<p>I stammered. “I don’t know, I suppose so. It seems to me human.”</p> - -<p>“Well, my dear, when humanity has nothing more to recommend it than the -fact that it cares for its young, I shall be ready to depart to another -planet.” She sat down on a high stool, one knee over the other, a foot -hung down, dangling a shabby shoe. Her face was full of merriment. -She chuckled. Her eyes danced. She gave me, as she always did, the -impression of containing in herself an immense fund of interest and -gladness and of finding life much to her taste.</p> - -<p>“You mustn’t destroy my belief in my love for my child,” I said, half -laughingly.</p> - -<p>“Your belief in it?” She wondered.</p> - -<p>“Yes, in its being—worth something.”</p> - -<p>“To which one?”</p> - -<p>“To us both.”</p> - -<p>She puffed at her cigarette. “If I had had a child I should have loved -it terribly, and stupidly,” she said seriously. “I should probably have -been worse than any of you. Maternity is a blinding, devouring passion, -is it not? I don’t know, but so I imagine. A mother’s love for her -child, what is there more admirable in that than in any other fact of -nature? Only when it is strong, so terribly strong as to become wise -and unselfish is it interesting. Even then, no, it is not interesting, -it is only natural and necessary, and often, very often, it is a curse -to the children.” Her face had gone dark and intense. She jumped down -from her stool, gave herself a shake, laughed, turned to her work—“No, -your mother-women are dreadful. I prefer those who love men. Sexual -passion is good for the feminine soul. It makes us intelligent. Tell -me, is it true that in America sensuality is considered a bad thing?”</p> - -<p>“Yes. We—they—admire chastity, purity.” </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span></p> - -<p>“How do you mean—purity?”</p> - -<p>“One man for one woman, love consecrated by marriage.”</p> - -<p>“All one’s life?”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“How strange. Love, you say, consecrated by marriage. How very funny. -You mean then seriously, not just social humbug? In their hearts do -intelligent women, women like yourself, feel love, love as the interest -and savour of life, coming unexpectedly, perhaps often, to be a bad -thing?”</p> - -<p>“Many do.”</p> - -<p>“And you—what do you think?”</p> - -<p>“I? Oh, for me, I can’t generalize about it. I have no ideas on the -subject.”</p> - -<p>“I see.”</p> - -<p>She was silent a while. I watched her clever thumbs pressing and -smoothing the soft clay. She was no sculptor, but the head she was -modelling had a mischievous ugliness. Though badly done, it expressed -something. Watching her I realized again her immense capability, her -command of herself, her understanding of the elements of life. What was -she thinking of now, her sensitive witty face blinking sleepily with -half-closed eyes like a cat’s? Inwardly I felt that she was faintly -smiling at some pleasant memory or prospect. She was neither young -nor beautiful. Her wiry little person suggested nothing voluptuous or -alluring. She was dry and spare and untidy, yet her success with men -was unequalled. Impossible to imagine her in an attitude of amorous -tenderness, yet men adored her. And her lovers remained her friends. -She puzzled me. There was something here that I would never understand. -The high game of sex as a life occupation of absorbing interest and -endless ramifications, a gallant and dangerous sport at which one -became a recognized expert, in some such way I felt that she looked at -it. As an Englishwoman gives herself up to hunting, I reflected, and -exults in knowing herself to be a hard rider, just so Clémentine would -go at the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> biggest jumps, keep in the first field. Riding to hounds -or playing the daring game of love, the same sporting mentality, the -same ecstatic sense of life, all our faculties sharpened by danger. Why -not? Clémentine was sane, healthy, full of zest and delight. Impossible -to think of her in terms of maudlin sentimentality or sordid secret -pleasures. And yet for myself, I felt a loathing of men, a disgust at -the vaguest image of the contacts of sex. It was very puzzling. There -must be some deep racial difference between us, or some tenacious -effect of my upbringing that held me in a vice, or was it only that -Philibert had poisoned for me the sources of all emotion?</p> - -<p>I moved about the dirty studio, brought back my mind to the subject I -had come to discuss. “We have forgotten about Claire, haven’t we?”</p> - -<p>“Well, yes, what of Claire?” She yawned.</p> - -<p>“Philibert says that Ludovic could arrange it.”</p> - -<p>“No doubt he could. The President of the Council is you know his -greatest friend.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, I know, but surely giving away secretaryships—”</p> - -<p>“Oh, la la! Why not? Don’t worry about that. Madame de Joigny’s -son-in-law will make quite a respectable under-secretary as far as that -goes. I only wonder he’s not got what he wanted long ago.”</p> - -<p>“What shall I do then?”</p> - -<p>She looked at me, her head on one side, screwing up her clever -mischievous eyes.</p> - -<p>“That, my dear, depends entirely on what you want to do.”</p> - -<p>“Do you think Ludovic would mind my approaching him on such a subject?”</p> - -<p>She laughed. “Do you?”</p> - -<p>“No, I don’t. I should put it quite brutally, he would only have to say -no.”</p> - -<p>“Quite so.” She continued to watch me with her funny intelligent grin. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span></p> - -<p>“And that wouldn’t spoil our friendship, would it?” I asked again.</p> - -<p>“No, I should say not, certainly not.” She laughed again and somehow, -frank as was that bubbling sound, I didn’t like it coming in at that -moment.</p> - -<p>“Why do you laugh?” I asked, looking at her keenly.</p> - -<p>Her face grew gradually grave, her eyes opened. We stared at each other -and in hers I saw a light, a flash, something keen and swift and bright -that made me warm to her, value her, exult in her friendship.</p> - -<p>“<i>Vous êtes—vous êtes—</i>” she turned it off, waving a handful of clay. -“<i>Vous êtes admirable.</i>” But I didn’t understand then, only long after. -I wonder what Claire would say if she knew that her fate hung on the -thread of Clémentine’s charity? For Clémentine saw it all, saw quite -clearly her opportunity for revenge. She had only to suggest what they, -unknown to me, were all thinking, namely that Ludovic, for the simplest -of reasons, would never refuse me anything, and their whole little -scheme would be undone. But she didn’t suggest it. There was nothing -spiteful in Clémentine.</p> - -<p>So I went to him and told him the whole thing quite bluntly, and -he, without any fuss or without giving me any feeling of doing me a -favour, said that of course he would put in a word with the Premier. -They, he and the Premier, were going to the country together for a few -days. They were going to see Ludovic’s mother in her little farm on -the Loire. They would fish and sit in the garden. Perhaps over their -fishing rods on the banks of the lazy, reedy river, something could be -arranged. He then went on to tell me of his mother, who was very old, -nearly eighty-five, and who would not come with him to Paris because of -the noise. She was, he said, just a peasant woman, and had no interest -in his career. But she sent him baskets of apples from her orchard and -socks that she had knitted. She could not write. The <i>curé</i> kept him -informed of her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> health. They had been very poor. As a child he had -always been hungry and he and his mother had worked in the fields. -Sometimes they had been so poor that they had had to beg for bread. His -father, who had been of a different class, had done nothing for him. He -had made his own way. The <i>curé</i> had taught him to read and write. His -mother was content now. She had a cow and pigs and chickens, an apple -orchard and a garden. But she could not accustom herself to having a -servant in the house and did the cooking herself. He did not allude -again to Claire’s husband, neither then nor later. In time, as you -know, the matter was arranged, and I like to think that it was settled -in that <i>chaumière</i> where Ludovic’s little old mother in her white -cap and coarse blue apron sat knitting, while the hens scratched and -cackled beyond the farm door. There is something humorous to me in the -fact that Claire’s luxurious home was secured to her in that place of -poverty and courage and contentment.</p> - -<p>In the meantime Philibert had recovered his health and his looks. His -doctor and his masseur and his hairdresser and his tailor had in six -months restored to him a very good substitute for youth. He had gone at -the business methodically and with the utmost seriousness. Seeing as -little of him as possible at home, I nevertheless was aware of what was -going on. He lived by a strict régime. His rubber came every morning at -eight o’clock, his fencing master at nine. At ten he dressed. At eleven -he walked or rode in the <i>bois</i>. Faithfully he stuck to the diet his -doctor had ordered for him. He drank only the lightest wine. He gave -up smoking. His hand no longer shook. His face was smooth and rosy, he -had put on weight, he walked with his old springy impudence. He looked -almost the same, almost, but not quite. No beauty doctor on earth could -wipe away from his face the mark Bianca had put there. The droop of -the eye-lids, the sag of the lower lip, gave him away. To the crowd -he might seem the same Philibert, the leader of fashion, the joyous -comedian, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> perennially young, but not to me, and not to himself. -We both knew that he was an old man now, and this fact formed a sort -of bond between us, a cold, grim, precise understanding that linked us -inevitably together. And for a time I didn’t quite hate this because -I felt secure, I felt that I had the upper hand. He was afraid of me, -and in a curious way depended on me. He depended on me, not to give -him away, not to let on to any one that he was, or had been, in danger -of breaking up. His vanity thus kept him at my mercy, while another -part of his brain found relief in the fact that I saw him as he was. -Sometimes I caught a look in his eyes that seemed to say—“I really -wouldn’t have the endurance to sustain this enormous bluff if I had to -bluff you as well.” I never answered his look. I couldn’t bring myself -to reach out to him in even the most impersonal way. All I could do -was to remain there beside him, in public sharing his life, in private -withdrawn, impassive, stolid, non-committal, and do him no harm.</p> - -<p>And so it might have gone on indefinitely, the atmosphere of our house -coldly harmonious, calm as an icy lake, had not Jinny introduced an -element of hot, surging, dangerous feeling.</p> - -<p>He loved her, too. At first I wouldn’t believe it, but I was bound -at last to admit that it was so. When I first began to notice the -increasing attention he gave her I had thought that he was “up to -something.” I suspected him to be playing the part of devoted father -with motives that had to do with myself, and as I could not conceive of -his wanting to make me like him, I imagined the reverse, that he wanted -to make me jealous, and I set myself to conceal from him the fact that -he had succeeded. I was terribly jealous, for whatever the meaning -of his apparent feeling for her, there was no doubt of her affection -for him. The child was obviously delighted to be with him. Repeatedly -when I asked her if she would like to go with me for a drive, she -would ask if “Papa” were coming too, and when I said no, her face -would change from pleasure to a <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>curious expression of boredom that -was like an absurd imitation of his own. She would turn away quickly -and put out her hands to the empty room in a funny, hurting gesture of -exasperation, then suddenly, feeling my disappointment, would assume -a polite cheerfulness and say, with a quick, tactful insincerity that -reminded me all too vividly of her grandmother, “It is a pity Papa -cannot come, but of course, Mamma, I like best being with you alone.” -And I would cry out in my heart, “My poor, precocious infant, where did -you get such intuitions?”—but I knew where she got them.</p> - -<p>There was between them a very striking resemblance. I looked sometimes -with horrid fascination from one to the other. She would come in with -him, swinging to his hand, twirling about, clasping it in both hers, -and laughing up in his face. Her light, exaggerated grace was his, -also the fineness of her little features. No one would ever at first -sight take her for my child, no one seeing them together could mistake -her for his. They disengaged the same brightness, the same chilly, -sparkling charm. How was it that in one it displeased me and in the -other so tormentingly appealed? Why, I asked myself, did I not hate her -too, since she so resembled her father? But the muttered question was -answered only by an inaudible groan. I had given him all my love, and -had now transferred it all to her, a stupid, elemental woman, I felt -that I was destined to be their victim. Strange thoughts, you will say, -for a mother to have about her child. Why not? I was afraid of her, -far more afraid than I had ever been of him. In the days of his power -over me I had been young, ignorant, insensitive; now I knew what I was -capable of suffering, knew only too well what little Geneviève could -do to me, did she take it into her head to become as like him as she -looked.</p> - -<p>I tried to hide all this, but I felt that he saw. His manner changed. -He was at once more attentive to me and more careless, less formal, -more talkative, in a word more sure of himself. He took to dropping in -on me in the evenings before dinner, bringing Geneviève with him and -holding her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> beside him in the crook of his arm, while he unconcernedly -chatted, and all the while her great shining brown eyes were fixed on -me with their meaning lucidity. I was obliged to prevaricate, to seem -pleased, to lay myself out in an elaborate assumption of happy intimacy.</p> - -<p>One night she came running back alone after going with him to the door -of his room, and threw her arms round my neck. I gathered her close. -Her caresses were so rare that I held her, positively, in a breathless -delight, with a sense of yearning tenderness so exquisite that it -frightened me. “So sweet, so sweet,” I murmured to myself, straining -her to me. Then I heard her say intensely, “It’s not true, it’s not -true, tell me it’s not true.”</p> - -<p>I lifted my face from her curls.</p> - -<p>“What is not true, my darling?”</p> - -<p>“That you and Papa don’t love each other.” She kept her face buried. I -felt her heart beating against me, a frail little gusty heart beating -painfully. The room round us was very still, too still, no sound in it, -only the felt sound of our heart beats, and the clock ticking on the -mantelpiece. I must speak, I must lie to her, and as the words left my -lips I knew that they were involving me in endless deceptions, in a -long, long ghastly comedy, in countless humiliations.</p> - -<p>“No, darling, it’s not true.”</p> - -<p>Her little arms tightened round my neck.</p> - -<p>“They said—” she whispered.</p> - -<p>“Who said, my pet?”</p> - -<p>“Some ladies. I heard them talking. They said, they said you would -never forgive him.” I felt her body trembling, and I too trembled, and -as I realized that I had thought her incapable of intense feeling I -felt deeply ashamed. “What did they mean, Mamma, tell me, what did they -mean?”</p> - -<p>“Nothing, nothing.” I must have spoken harshly. “They were mistaken, -they were speaking of some one else.”</p> - -<p>She lifted her face then and looked at me, her eyes were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> wide and -accusing. “Oh, no, Mummy, they said your names, they said Jane and -Philibert, your two names. It was at Aunt Claire’s. Dicky and I were -just behind the door, and I pulled him away so he wouldn’t hear any -more, but he only laughed at me and said, ‘Every one knows your parents -detest each other’—in French, you know, ‘<i>Tout le monde sait que tes -parents se détestent</i>,’ and then I kicked him.”</p> - -<p>“Jinny!”</p> - -<p>“I only kicked him a little. It didn’t hurt. I wanted it to hurt, -dreadfully.”</p> - -<p>“My child, my child.”</p> - -<p>“I know, Mummy, that it was very wicked. I told Father Anthony all -about it at confession, and he looked so sad, so beautifully sad. I -wept and wept. He told me to pray very hard to the Virgin to save me -from angry passions, and I did, but I enjoyed being angry. I felt big -and strong when I was angry, quite, quite different from ordinary, and -I thought you would understand. Were you never angry when you were a -little girl?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, darling, I was.” Her question had startled me. I was profoundly -disturbed by this sudden revelation of her character.</p> - -<p>But again her little mobile face had changed.</p> - -<p>“You aren’t like that, are you, Mummy? You couldn’t be?”</p> - -<p>“Like what, my darling?”</p> - -<p>“Unforgiving.” Her eyes were on mine.</p> - -<p>“I hope not, Geneviève.” She flushed at my tone, but continued to look -at me gravely and steadily.</p> - -<p>“I thought you might have been angry with Papa for leaving us for so -long,” she said with an air of great wisdom. “I was, but I forgave him -at once.” I smiled.</p> - -<p>“You see,” she went on, “I couldn’t bear him to be unhappy, for I love -him.”</p> - -<p>“I know, darling.”</p> - -<p>“And you love him, too?” </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Of course.”</p> - -<p>She heaved an immense sigh.</p> - -<p>“Then we are all happy.”</p> - -<p>“We are all happy,” I echoed.</p> - -<p>A minute later she was at the door, wafting me a gay little kiss. I had -not been able to keep her. She was not more than ten years old at that -time, but even then she was already the complete elusive creature of -swift fleeting moods and superlatively lucid mind that she is today.</p> - -<p>And still I suspected Philibert of playing the part of adoring father -in order to make me do what he wished. So without alluding to Jinny, -never, in fact, daring to allude to her, I tried to bribe him. He -had hinted occasionally about wanting to resume our old habits of -entertaining, and his hint had shocked me. Such a farce had seemed -altogether unnecessary. Now I gave in to him and the same old -extravagant theatrical life began. To me it was incredibly boring and -at times quite ghastly. There were moments when it was as if over the -old sepulchre of our married life he had built an enormous and hideous -altar to some obscene heathen deity, some depraved Bacchus before whom -he and I giddily danced, with vine leaves in our hair.</p> - -<p>“But,” I argued, “this is what he likes, and if I help him do it he -will have got from me all that he wants, he will leave Jinny alone. He -will have less time for her and will forget about her.” Unfortunately -all these social antics took up as much of my time as his. The result -was that neither of us saw the child save in hurried snatches, and in -that horrible house, now so constantly filled with people, with armies -of servants, and streams of guests, I had a vision of her skipping -about like a little white rabbit in a monstrous zoo. Poor Jinny, what -a wretched mess we made of her childhood, Philibert and I, with our -constant vigilant, yet inadequate, lying to each other in her presence, -and our ridiculous absorption in the tawdry pageant of society. And yet -we both loved her and were doing it, even he in his way, for her. He -wanting her to have an incomparably brilliant position in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> the world, -I wanting to keep him away from her, thinking in my jealous stupidity -that she would belong more to me the more he belonged to the world.</p> - -<p>It was when she fell ill that I was at last convinced of his caring for -her. She had pneumonia, you remember, and was very near death for three -days. I can see Philibert now, sitting through the night by her bed, -he on one side, I on the other, I can see his face as he watched her -painful breathing, a face clammy with sweat, contracting suddenly in a -curious grimace when she struggled for breath. He never touched her. -He left that to me and the nurses. But he never once took his eyes off -her swollen little face. I was deeply impressed by the sight of that -fidgety, nervous man sitting so still, hour after hour, and I remember -his sobbing when the child’s breathing grew easier and the doctors said -the crisis was past. Poor Philibert, with his arms thrown across the -foot of Jinny’s bed and his head on them, sobbing like a child, I felt -very sorry for him that night.</p> - -<p>But it was too late for Jinny’s illness to make any real difference in -our relationship. We had gone too far, I knew him too well. All that -I could do was add to my knowledge of him the fact that he loved his -child and leave it at that.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span></p> - -<h2>VII</h2> - -<p>The years passed, crowded with incidents, colourful, varied, gay. I saw -them going by, like gaudy pleasure boats, richly panoplied and filled -with graceful merry-makers, floating down a sullen river. Sometimes I -seemed to be alone, watching them go by, sometimes, beyond them, a long -way off, I heard a sound that was like the sound of waves breaking on a -distant beach.</p> - -<p>You wince at what you feel to be my poor attempt at poetic imagery—I -am not trying to be poetic, I am trying to express to you my -experience, as precisely as possible. It was like that. In the middle -of a crowded place, at the Opera where women in diamond tiaras nodded -from padded cages, on the boulevards where a thousand motors like -shining beetles buzzed in and out of rows of clanging trams, in a -drawing-room ringing with staccato voices, I would find myself, -suddenly, listening to a sound that seemed to come from an immense -distance; a faint far rhythmic roar that was audible to my spirit, and -that I translated to myself in terms of the sea because it affected me -that way, like a booming murmur, regular as the booming of waves. I -knew what it was.</p> - -<p>I seemed at such times to see Patience Forbes, standing on the other -side of the Atlantic, like some allegorical figure of faith, a gaunt -weather-beaten old woman, her strong feet planted firmly on the shore, -the wind whipping her black clothes about her, her brave old eyes -looking out at me, under shielding hands, across that immense distance.</p> - -<p>The distance between us was growing greater. I no longer wrote to -her every week. There seemed so little to say. I found a difficulty -in telling her of my occupations<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> and amusements. When it came to -describing to her the people I associated with, they appeared suddenly -trivial and peculiar. There was no one about me, whom she could have -understood. Clémentine with her genius for amorous-adventure, Ludovic -with his nihilistic philosophy, Felix the intellectual mischief-maker; -when I wrote to her of these people, I found that I misrepresented -them, made up for them colourless characters that did not exist and -would not distress her. Her innocence cut her off from us. The recital -of my life was like telling a story and leaving out the point. I gave -it up, disgusted by my feeble insincerity, and limited my letters to -news of Jinny and comments on public events. And she understood, of -course, that I was keeping everything back. She was no fool. I can see -now, when it is too late, what a mistake I made, and what a pity it -was. Now that she is dead, I think of her sitting alone in the Grey -House, waiting for my letters, opening them with old trembling fingers, -reading the meagre artificial sentences; her face growing tired and -grim at the meaningless words, then putting away the disappointing -sheets of paper in the secretary by the door. I found them there, all -of them afterwards arranged in packets with laconic pencilled notes -on their wrappers—“Jane doesn’t tell me much. She’s not happy.” “A -bad winter for Jane, she’s taken to gambling; she says nothing of her -husband.” “Jane was coming but can’t. I’m disappointed.” That note was -made the summer Fan died—I had determined to go to St. Mary’s Plains. -Fan’s illness stopped me.</p> - -<p>I had been seeing very little of Fan. She had established herself in -a flat near the <i>Étoile</i> where she lived alone, but where her husband -paid her an occasional visit. Ivanoff was pretty well done for in -Paris. There had been a scene at the Travellers’ Club, and afterwards -his old victims had refused to play cards with him. So he had gone -elsewhere. Men like Ivanoff can always pick up a living at Monte Carlo. -He spent most of his time there, but when he came back, Fan always took -him in. I never saw him on these<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> occasions, nor apparently did any one -else, but Fan would announce his arrival bluntly, and with a sort of -defiant bravado, would put off her dinners and lunches to be with him.</p> - -<p>She lived from hand to mouth. People who accused her of accepting his -ill-gotten gains were wide of the mark. Ivanoff contributed nothing to -Fan’s keep. It was the other way round. He came back to her when he was -on the rocks, came back to beg from her and to recuperate. Once she -said to me, “Ivan’s been asleep for thirty-six hours on the sofa in the -drawing-room. I swear to you it’s true. He has only waked up twice to -eat a sandwich and have a drink.”</p> - -<p>But when I asked why she put up with him, she flung off with a laugh, -and—“God only knows.”</p> - -<p>She lived from hand to mouth in a state of extravagant luxury. Her -stepfather had died, leaving her four thousand dollars a year, that -gave her twenty thousand francs before the war. One would have said -that she spent at the least five times as much, but she didn’t. She -had resources, and little arrangements that made it unnecessary for -her to pay for a good many things; and she earned a good deal. Her -reputation as one of the smartest women in Paris, and her popularity, -represented her capital, a very considerable sum. New and ambitious -dressmaking houses clothed her for nothing, and in return she brought -them the clientele they wanted. She had a standing account at certain -fashionable restaurants, where she was allowed to lunch for five francs -and dine for ten, and where to “pay back” she was the centre of many a -cosmopolitan dinner party. For ready cash she wrote social notes in a -fashion paper and occasionally launched a South American millionaire in -society. Every one knew about all this; no one minded. She never gave -any one away or presumed on her friendships and her frankness about her -own affairs which was dry and desperate and funny disarmed criticism.</p> - -<p>“My dear,” she said one day to Claire over the tea table, “I’ve had -a letter from Buenos Aires from a man who offers<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> me forty thousand -francs if I’ll take his wife about next spring, and a five thousand -franc tip extra, each time she dines at an embassy. Isn’t it a perfect -scream? I wrote back asking for a photo of the wife. It came yesterday. -I’ve turned down the offer.”</p> - -<p>She borrowed from no one and accepted no gifts of money from her -friends, men or women, and I take the last to be the more to her credit -because half the people in her world assumed that she did and the other -half wouldn’t have blamed her if she had done so. Virtues, that you -all held so lightly, have at least a relative value. Fan was incurably -extravagant; she adored luxury, and I consider that her having married -a poor man, and having refused to procure for herself in a manner so -accepted by her world, the ease and comfort she craved, proves her to -have been an interesting person. I see that you don’t believe what -I say, but I know that it is true. Men did not pay her dressmaker’s -bills. As for her little motor brougham that created so much comment, -she bought that after an extremely lucky venture in rubber. She gambled -on the “Bourse” of course. Old Beaudoin the banker gave her tips. -Sometimes he invested her money for her. She would give him a few -thousand francs and a month or two later he would perhaps sends her -back twice the sum, but it is not exact to say that he always arranged -to double her investment. And if he did take her wretched pennies and -speculate with them and pretend that he had won when he lost, what harm -did that do him with all his millions? It was all by way of repayment -anyhow. Fan had got him and his fat wife asked to a lot of nice -houses. He owed her far more than he ever paid. And when she crowned -her services to him by making his daughter’s marriage, surely she had -earned the cheque he sent her or the block of shares, whichever it was.</p> - -<p>To have a good time, to be happy, a more sentimental woman would have -put it, that was her idea. Who of us all had a better, or a different -one? Weren’t we all looking for happiness, always? </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span></p> - -<p>Once I saw a street arab playing in the dirt with bits of mica, -constantly threatened in his game by horses’ hoofs, wagon wheels, -policemen and hooligans. Fan reminds me of him. I remember his tiny -eager hungry grimy face, intent on his game. Fan was like him, I -watched her playing with bits of worthless brightness in the crowded -muddy streets of life, jostled, buffeted, knocked about, a little -rickety gutter snipe, fighting for the right to play, that is the way I -see her. It had a beauty! you’ll admit that, I suppose.</p> - -<p>But we quarrelled. I bored her. She didn’t like having any one about -who couldn’t keep up the farce of treating her as the happiest of -women, and she made fun of my taking the intellectuals so seriously.</p> - -<p>When I wanted to see her I had to go to her flat where luxury and -poverty and dissipation and folly were mingled together in an unhealthy -confusion. It was a curious place, very bare and new and totally -lacking in the usual necessities of housekeeping, such as cupboards and -carpets, table linen and blankets, but there were flaming silks thrown -about, and a good many books and heaps of soft brilliant cushions. A -grand piano stood in the empty drawing-room on a bare polished floor. -The dining room table held always a tray of syphons and bottles. There -might be no food, there were always cocktails and ragtime tunes to -dance to. Sometimes the electric light was cut off because the bill -wasn’t paid, but there was a supply of candles for such emergencies, -and if creditors were too pressing, Fan would take to her bed and lie -under her cobwebby lace coverlet on a pile of white downy pillows all -frills and ribbons, smoking endless cigarettes while weary tradesmen -rang the door bell, and her friends sat about on the foot of the old -lacquer bed telling each other questionable stories, and going off into -muffled shrieks of laughter.</p> - -<p>Her friends were many and various. Among them were people like Claire -and Clémentine and the wife of the Italian Ambassador, but her own -small particular set, the group<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> that she went about with most, had its -special stamp.</p> - -<p>A cosmopolitan lot who had seen better days, and were keeping their -heads up, by grit and bluff; they were I suppose the fastest set in -Paris. The men didn’t interest me, but the women did, rather. There was -something hard and dependable about them that I liked. They bluffed the -world but not each other. Their talk was terse and to the point, their -language coarse and brutal. They made no gestures and seemed always to -be looking very straight at some definite invisible thing that occupied -their cold attention. It may have been the ugliness of life that they -were looking at. If so, it didn’t make them wince. It may have been the -past, if so it didn’t make them shudder or creep. They wasted no time -in remorse or regret.</p> - -<p>At times they reminded me of tight-rope walkers crossing a dizzy abyss. -There was something tense and daring about their stillness, as if a -chasm yawned under them. No doubt it did, but it was not their worldly -position that was precarious, it was their actual hold on life. They -would go on with their old titles and ruined fortunes leading the -dance till they dropped, but they might drop any time. People in their -entourage did, they were accustomed to violence. One had had a lover -who called her up one morning and shot himself while she listened over -the telephone. Another had tried twice to kill herself. Most of them -drank and took drugs. Their hard glittering eyes gave out a glare of -experience, but their faces were cold, calm, non-commital, and if they -were worried by the caddishness of the men they loved, by debts and the -torments of passion, they gave no sign and held together and helped -each other. For damned souls, they made a good show, and I admired them.</p> - -<p>They thought me a fool, however, and made a hedge around Fan, shutting -her off from me.</p> - -<p>One morning I rushed round to her flat on an impulse. I had had no -message from her but a curious feeling of nervousness had bothered me -in the night. Some one had <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span>mentioned Ivanoff at a dinner table. I had -heard the words—“wife-beater”—“card-sharper.”</p> - -<p>I found things at the flat in an indescribable state of disorder.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>“For God’s sake, Jane, go away; I’ve got the most ghastly headache.”</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>“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.”</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> 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.</p> - -<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> 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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> her -curious magnetism emanated from her like a perfume. She drifted up to -me after dinner.</p> - -<p>“You must talk to me, Jane—” Her voice was cool and concise. “We have -important things to say to each other.”</p> - -<p>“I have nothing to say.”</p> - -<p>She lifted her eyebrows. Her lips curved to a point. She gave a little -sigh.</p> - -<p>“Why do you lie? You are <i>très en beauté</i>, Jane—you are wonderful. Why -do you lie?—You know you owe it all to me—”</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 ‘<i>Château des trois -Maries</i>.’ 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.”</p> - -<p>I broke in saying that I didn’t believe a word of it.</p> - -<p>“Don’t you, Jane? Well, it’s no matter. It’s unimportant. The important -thing is that I’m sick to death of everything. Every one bores me. -I find you are the only woman in Paris who is alive. I’ve been -watching you—you are very extraordinary. You care for no one. You are -self-sufficient. You have achieved the impossible.”</p> - -<p>All this time Madeleine was massaging my face and pretending not to be -interested. I could say nothing. I boiled with rage, helpless, wrapped -in sheets and towels, my face<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> plastered with grease, and Bianca sat -there, her little white face buried in her furs and laughed at me. When -at last she had gone, Madeleine said the Princess had such a beautiful -character.</p> - -<p>I felt that I was being bated like one of her famous bulls. I resolved -to make no move. I refused to be goaded to an attack. I was afraid of -her.</p> - -<p>Then one day Fan came to see me. Instead of rushing in with her usual -shrill greeting, she walked up to me quietly, put her arm round me and -laid her cheek against mine.</p> - -<p>“I’m so happy, Jane dear; I’m so happy.” Her voice was gentle. “I have -found what I have been waiting for all my life.” She went down on her -knees and looked up into my face. Hers was calm and rested and had upon -it an expression of sweetness that I had never seen there before. “I’m -in love, Jane dear. I’m in love with the most wonderful man in the -world. I wanted to tell you because I knew you’d be glad I was happy.”</p> - -<p>She stayed with me for an hour and told me all about it. It was -the strangest thing, hard cynical Fan, suddenly become young and -sentimental and timid. They had met at St. Moritz that Christmas. He -was an Englishman, half Irish really, with a strong streak of Celt in -him. His name was Mark. She called him Micky. He was very beautiful, as -beautiful as a god. He had taught her to ski. They had been together -high up on snowy peaks above the world. One day she had fallen and -sprained her ankle. He had carried her down the mountain in his arms. -He was strong and straight like a young tree. He wanted her to divorce -Ivanoff and marry him. He said there was no other way for them to be -happy. He wanted to meet me. Would I come to lunch now, right away? He -was waiting for us. She had told him all about me.</p> - -<p>I went, of course. That boy,—you remember him, and how handsome he -was, with his golden head and fresh bronzed cheeks and the long curly -eyelashes fringing his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> blue eyes, and his broad sunny smile. He was -too beautiful I had felt until he gave me that very broad smile.</p> - -<p>Our luncheon was a happy absurd affair. Those two were ridiculously -in love—they behaved like children. They beamed, they blushed, they -looked into each other’s eyes, he very shy and sweet and attentive, -calling her Fan, and in talking to me trying to be dreadfully solemn. -“Please, Madame de Joigny, make her be serious. She must divorce that -chap, you know. There’s no alternative. It’s got to be done and I want -it done right away. Please back me up. I say, you mustn’t smile, you -know. It’s dead serious.”</p> - -<p>How could I help smiling? He was very appealing. He rumpled his hair -and his eyes grew dark, and little beads of moisture stood out on -his high tanned forehead. I looked at Fan. Poor Fan! so much older, -so worn, so stamped with the stamp of her harrowing racketing years, -and yet a new Fan with a young light in her eyes; I was disturbed and -anxious.</p> - -<p>My fears seemed during the weeks that followed to be groundless. -She held him. They continued their dream of bliss. He satisfied her -utterly. It was of course his beauty that she loved. Always she had -adored beauty in men—now she had it in its most charming aspect, -fresh, clean, young. They had nothing in common, but their passion. He -was stupid and rather a prude. He had grown up with horses and dogs and -a family of sisters in an English country house, had joined the army -and then had gone to South Africa with his regiment. He had ideas about -womanliness and the honour of a gentleman and the duties of his class. -He had never been in Paris before. Fan found no fault in him.</p> - -<p>She began taking him about with her. Society was at first amused and -indulgent, then again the inevitable happened. He became the rage. A -number of women lost their heads over him. He was invited out without -her. Soon he was everywhere in demand, and Fan rightly or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> wrongly -persuaded him to go. This at first quite worried him. Women wanting him -for themselves and finding him obstinately faithful, turned spiteful. -He didn’t understand, for he wasn’t fatuous, but he must have heard a -good many things about Fan that he didn’t like.</p> - -<p>I felt for him in a way. It seemed to me that he was holding his own -pretty well and behaving on the whole very decently, but I wished that -Fan’s divorce could be hurried along. She had hesitated about divorcing -Ivanoff. “Of course,” she said, “he lives off women, but I’ve known -that all along, and it doesn’t seem quite fair to get rid of him now—” -but she had given in, in the end.</p> - -<p>The months dragged on. I began to wonder whether Micky would hold out. -It had been difficult to find Ivanoff. A long time elapsed before the -divorce papers could be served on him.</p> - -<p>Micky still stuck to Fan, but he began talking about compromising -her and, after a time, I had an impression that he stuck to her -grimly, without enthusiasm. I imagined him to be cursing his own weak -character. He was weak and he knew it, and so did we. He clung to -Fan as a woman should cling to a man. This did not make her despise -him, it gave her a feeling of strength and safety. She encouraged his -dependence on her and adopted the rôle of guide and counsellor.</p> - -<p>About this time I had a telephone message and a note from Bianca; both -summoning me to her in her old peremptory style. The message was that -the Princess wished to see me on urgent matters and would be at home -all that afternoon. I did not go. The note, received next morning was -as follows:</p> - -<blockquote><p>“It is silly and dangerous to stand out against me. I am attacked -by all the demons you know about and if you don’t come, something -unexpected and unpleasant will happen.”</p></blockquote> - -<p>I paid no attention to it. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span></p> - -<p>Fan’s character and the quality of her life changed completely; she -gave up going out and sank into the deep secretive isolation of a woman -who lives for one man alone. Her other men friends melted away. Many -of her women friends dropped her. Not those of her own little band, -but Micky didn’t like these. Claire who was fond of her, said—“<i>Elle -se rend ridicule avec ce garçon</i>,” and refused to have them to dinner -together. Fan didn’t seem to care; she stayed more and more at home. -This created for her serious money difficulties. She had never had any -meals at all to speak of in her own flat, and her butcher’s bill had -come to nothing, but now her boy had to be fed. He would come into -dinner or lunch nearly every day, rosy and ravenous, and consume large -beef steaks, fat cutlets, chickens, eggs, butter, sweets. Her bills -became larger as her revenues dwindled. She could or would no longer -avail herself of her old sources of wealth. Her vogue was vanishing, -and with it the amiability of dressmakers and restaurant-keepers. She -had a distaste now for gambling on the Bourse and asking Beaudoin for -tips. Micky it seemed disapproved of women gambling. Her love affair -was costing her her livelihood; and Micky himself gave her nothing, -perhaps because he had nothing much to give; perhaps because of some -idea of honour, perhaps because he didn’t know how hard up she was. -Fan was not the kind to let on. I know for a fact that she often went -hungry to give him a good square meal, and I suspected that under her -last year’s dresses, she didn’t have on enough to keep her warm.</p> - -<p>It became increasingly evident as the winter wore on that there were -influences at work, perhaps a special influence that was worrying them -both, but I had no suspicion of the truth. Had I known I would have -done something effective—I would have wasted no time with Bianca.</p> - -<p>Fan had burned her bridges. There was no going back for her now, no -slipping down into the old stupefying pleasures. He had changed her, -he had purified and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> weakened her. There was for her a future with him -or nothing. If she lost him, she would be done for. She knew this. She -remained clear-headed and played her cards with desperate caution. -And I watching her, saw just how frightened she was, but she told me -nothing.</p> - -<p>I did not know that Bianca knew Micky. She went out very little -now. People spoke of her living shut up in her house as they might -have spoken of some lurid figure of legend, some beautiful ogress, -gnashing her hungry teeth in a cave, but I didn’t listen when they -talked of her. I wanted less than ever to hear about her. She still -saw Philibert, I knew, but this no longer concerned me. And she seemed -to have given up pursuing me. I ought to have known she was up to -something. I am sorry now that I refused to think about her, for I -might have reasoned it out and discovered by a process of logic, what -she was up to—I might have known that she would inevitably choose -Micky for her own, just because he was in love with another woman, -just because he was the pet of Paris, just because finally, Fan’s life -depended on him and because I cared for Fan as if she were my own child.</p> - -<p>In March Fan began to lose her nerve. She said to me one day—</p> - -<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> lovely for just one year. God! but it’s tiring to be -always trying to look nicer than you are.”</p> - -<p>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?”</p> - -<p>The next time I saw her she was the colour of ashes.</p> - -<p>“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.”</p> - -<p>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?</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>How much she knew or suspected of what had been going on between Micky -and Bianca, I do not know. She<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>“Once I am on the train,” she kept saying, “I feel that I will be safe.”</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> 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 <i>raison d’être</i>. 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 -<i>fêtes galantes</i>—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 “<i>malaise</i>.”</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> train. He had insisted, <i>auprès de Madame la Princesse</i>, as I had -told him to do, but she had been displeased and had sent him away.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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,—“<i>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>” 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?</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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—</p> - -<p>“I heard her laugh. She put her head out of the car window and laughed.”</p> - -<p>“Who laughed, dear?”</p> - -<p>“Bianca—she was with Micky in the train. They wouldn’t let me get on. -I had no ticket—”</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>“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.</p> - -<p>“The <i>wagons-lits</i> man asked me what I wanted. I screamed out—‘That -gentleman has my ticket.’ He half<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> 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 <i>wagons-lits</i> 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.”</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> 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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> 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.</p> - -<p>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.”</p> - -<p>“What, my darling?”</p> - -<p>“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.</p> - -<p>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?”</p> - -<p>“I’m sure they’ll be ravishing, my dear.”</p> - -<p>“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?”</p> - -<p>“Not more than ten days—I should think,” I said avoiding her strange -eager eyes.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> 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.”</p> - -<p>“What for instance—?”</p> - -<p>“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?”</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> 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.”</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>“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.</p> - -<p>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 <i>Père-Lachaise</i> one rainy -afternoon and then he disappeared again for the last time.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <i>Banco</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> 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.</p> - -<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 “<i>manque d’équilibre</i>.” 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>“It is your fault, Jane—you wouldn’t do what I wanted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> 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.”</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>That was in 1913, the year before the war.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span></p> - -<h2>VIII</h2> - -<p>Jinny liked to wear silks and velvets when she was quite a little girl. -Her taste for pretty clothes was something more than childish vanity. -I used often to find her in the room lined with cupboards where my -dresses were kept, sitting on the floor amid a heap of soft shining -garments, that she had dragged from their hooks, stroking the fabrics -lovingly, and purring to herself like a blissful kitten. She couldn’t -bear the touch of wool or starched cambric, and screamed herself into -hysterics when in obedience to the doctor’s orders, I tried one winter -to put her into woollen combinations. Her father humoured her in -this. I think it rather pleased him that she should be so delicately -fastidious. He found in it a proof of an exquisite sensibility and -likened her to the fairy-tale princess of the crumpled rose leaf. -Unfortunately he told Jinny the story and she immediately accepted it -as illustrative of herself, acted it out literally in her nursery, -obliging her nursemaid to make and remake her little bed, to smooth -and stroke and smooth again until every imaginary wrinkle in the soft -sheets was gone, before she would consent to get into it. This habit -lasted for some weeks until she read one day in her “<i>histoire sainte</i>” -of a saint who had acquired great spiritual blessing by sleeping on -the floor of her cell, whereupon she took no more interest in the way -her bed was made. The nurse was delighted until she discovered that as -soon as she had turned down the light and left the room, Jinny hopped -out of bed and lay down on the floor, choosing fortunately a spot near -the radiator. The harassed women, governess, nurse and nursemaid said -nothing to me the first time, nor the second that they found her asleep -on the floor,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> but finally came to me explaining that Mademoiselle was -very determined to die of pneumonia.</p> - -<p>Jinny looked at me with grave shining eyes when I asked her what such -naughtiness meant.</p> - -<p>“It is not naughtiness at all, Mamma, you misunderstand, it is the -saintly life, ‘<i>la sainte vie</i>.’”</p> - -<p>Fortunately I was sufficiently aware of her romantic absorption in the -lives of the saints, and of her habit of applying everything that she -read or heard to herself, to guess what influence was working on her. -The “saintly life” had come up before. She had already had periods -of fasting that had given way before her great liking for bonbons, -and periods of prayer, that had given way to sleepiness, and had even -attempted at one time to beat her little shoulders with a strap off -a trunk, all of which things had worried me considerably, but none -of which had been immediately dangerous to her health, so I entered -straight upon the subject in as sympathetic a tone, that is on as -high a moral ground as I could find, using all my wits to adapt my -conversation and my thought to her mind, as if, as indeed may have been -the case, her idea was more lucid than my own.</p> - -<p>“Darling,” I said in a tone as grave as the one she had used to me, but -with a certain timidity that she in her exaltation of the young devotee -had certainly not felt at all, “the saintly life is a beautiful thing -when rightly understood; it is too beautiful to be entered upon easily -and capriciously. If you have a true wish to model your life on that of -the saints who gave up every comfort for the salvation of their souls, -then I will help you. I will do it with you. We will change everything. -We will take away all the pretty things, and empty these rooms, yours -and mine, of the pictures, and the rugs, keeping only the strict -necessaries. We will sleep on hard beds, floor, we will eat bread and -water every day, nothing more; we will wear no more nice clothes, we -will each have a serge dress and very plain underwear, of some strong -cotton stuff, we will—” </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span></p> - -<p>But poor Jinny had grown quite pale. “Oh, Mummy, Mummy, you are cruel. -Don’t you see I can’t do all that? Don’t you want me to want to be -good.”</p> - -<p>That you see ended well. She cried a little in my arms, and listened -quietly as I explained that being good was quite another thing to -the saintly life as she had understood it, and that this latter was -not vouchsafed to children, and we arranged between us that it would -be much more truly good, to take a great many baskets of toys to the -little poor crippled children in the big hospitals than to jump out of -bed when no one was looking, but I was not immeasurably reassured by my -victory. With Jinny it was always a case of its being all right till -the next time, and the next time was never slow in coming.</p> - -<p>I take it that my own feeling for Jinny needs no explanation. I am -a simple woman, and I was her mother; she was all that I had. But -Philibert loving her so much was curious, don’t you think? It seemed -so inconsistent of him! I don’t even now understand it. Perhaps -the most obvious explanation is the real one. Perhaps it was just -because she was so very attractive. Had she been ugly I believe that -he would have disliked her. She was never ugly, she had never had an -awkward age. At fourteen she had already that look of costliness, of -something luxurious, sumptuous and precious that she has today. She was -slender and fragile and smooth. At times she suggested a child Venus -by Botticelli. Her mouth had the delicate drooping curve of some of -his Madonnas, her hands were full and soft and dimpled with delicate -tapering fingers. Sensuous idle hands, they were to her instruments of -pleasure. Touching things conveyed to her some special delight; with -her finger tips she enjoyed. I know for I have watched those hands for -years, moving softly and deftly over lovely surfaces, and following the -contours of flowers, of porcelain vases, but she never did anything -practical with them. Even embroidery, she disliked. But jigsaw puzzles -amused her—she and Philibert always had one somewhere spread<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> out on a -table. They spent hours together fitting in the innumerable tiny bits, -their heads close together, excitedly comparing, fitting, exclaiming. -Philibert liked the idea of his daughter’s distaste for doing anything -useful. He encouraged her laziness and her absurd little air of languid -hauteur. When she dropped a glove or handkerchief and waited for a -servant to pick it up for her, he laughed.</p> - -<p>Sometimes I tried to reason with him.</p> - -<p>“You are spoiling her,” I said on more than one occasion, but he only -shrugged his shoulders.</p> - -<p>“Don’t you see, Philibert?” I would insist, “that it is bad for her to -live in this atmosphere?”</p> - -<p>“What atmosphere?”</p> - -<p>“The atmosphere of this house, of Paris, of the world we live in.”</p> - -<p>“Well, my dear, it is her house, her Paris, her world—she’s born to -it, and belongs to it, so she may as well grow up in it. What would you -have for her—something more like your own home over there, eh?—the -place that turned you out, so admirably fitted for our European -life—you want her to be as you were, is that it?”</p> - -<p>“God forbid.”</p> - -<p>“Well then—”</p> - -<p>I couldn’t argue with him. I couldn’t tell him what I really felt and -feared, or explain to him how I hated for Jinny, all the things that I -now accepted for myself, for he was one of those things, the principle -one; I had accepted him. I had even grown to understand him, and if -it hadn’t been for Jinny, I felt that we might become friends. His -extravagances, his cynicism, his fondness for women were things that I -now took for granted. They no longer bothered me. For me, he would do -now, I no longer asked anything of him, but for Jinny he wasn’t half -good enough. As a father to my child, I found him impossible.</p> - -<p>One often hears of estranged couples being brought together by their -love for a child. With Philibert and myself, it was the contrary. We -were both jealous of Jinny. We<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> were afraid, each one, that she loved -the other best, and our nervousness on this point acted to keep us in -each other’s company while it made friendship impossible. Neither of -us liked to leave the other alone with her for any length of time. I -had stayed with Fan for three months and had come back to find Jinny -hanging on her father’s every word, and to find what I imagined was a -coldness between her and myself. This may have been my imagination, -or it may have been true; I don’t know, but I suspected Philibert -of working to alienate her from me, and he suspected me of the same -thing. If I suggested taking Jinny to Ste. Clothilde for a fortnight, -he either found a way of keeping us in Paris or accompanied us, and if -Philibert wanted for some reason to go away, to London or Berlin or -Biarritz, he was haunted by the idea that in his absence I might steal -a march on him with Jinny, so really bothered I mean, that nine times -out of ten, he would give up going unless I went with him. The result -was that we were more constantly together than we had been since the -first year of our marriage.</p> - -<p>Looking back now to that winter of 1913-14 I see it as a season of -delirium, of fever, of madness. Paris glows there, at the eve of -war, in a lurid blaze of brilliance, its people giddy, intoxicated, -dancing over the quaking surface of a civilization that was cracking -under them. A period in the history of the human race was drawing to -a close. The old earth was rushing towards the greatest calamity of -our time, carrying with it swarming continents that in a few months -were to seethe and smoke like beds of boiling lava—and the people of -the earth as if aware that the days of pleasure were numbered, were -possessed by a frenzy. I say the people of the earth, but I mean of -course, the rich, the idle, the foolish, the so-called fortunate who -make up society and of whom Philibert and I were the most idle, the -most foolish, as we were perhaps the richest.</p> - -<p>That winter marked the height of our folly and of our<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> worldly -brilliance, and for me it marked at the same time the deepest depth of -futility and cowardice.</p> - -<p>Philibert and I were like two runaway horses harnessed together, -and running blindly, with the smart showy vehicle of our empty life -rattling and lurching behind us, and poor little Jinny inside it.</p> - -<p>His extravagance that winter was colossal. I did not try to restrain -it. He felt the inertia of old age coming on him, and was having a last -desperate fling: I felt sorry for him. His parties were fantastic. He -bought the servants’ under-linen at Doucet’s; I only laughed when he -told me. Money? Why not spend it! The more he spent, the less would be -left for Jinny, and that, I argued, was all to the good. If only he -could manage to run through the whole lot, then Jinny and I would be -free. Dinner succeeded dinner, dance followed dance. We received half -Europe and were entertained in a dozen capitals. London, Brussels, -Rome, Madrid, we took them all in. It was very different from my picnic -trips with you and Clémentine when we travelled second-class, carried -paper bags of sandwiches and had literary adventures in old book shops -with ancient scholars in skull-caps and spectacles. Philibert and -I travelled in Rolls Royces or in private trains. We had maids and -valets and couriers to smooth away every discomfort and every bit of -unexpectedness. Philibert never missed his morning bath and massage, -his Swede, too, travelled with us.</p> - -<p>It was not very interesting. One glass of champagne is like another. -Royal palaces are as alike as cabbages. Everywhere we met the same -people and did the same things. We danced, we gambled, we gossiped, we -ate and drank and changed our clothes, and I was often bored, and often -gloomy. Too much brilliance has the effect of darkness.</p> - -<p>In my dismal moods I told myself that I hated it, but probably I -didn’t. No doubt it had become necessary to me to be surrounded by a -crowd of flatterers. We are all fools—And I had no precise idea of -myself. Even at night,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> when I was alone, and when I should have been -stripped naked to my soul in the dark, I was still wrapped about to my -own eyes, in the flattering disguises of the world’s adulation.</p> - -<p>In Jinny’s eyes alone did I seem to see myself as I really was. I -trembled as I looked into them.</p> - -<p>I wonder if all women are afraid of their children? Perhaps not, the -woman who has the love of her husband and a clear conscience and a sure -hope of heaven. I had none of these things, and I was afraid. I had -staked everything on Jinny, but my conscience was not clear about her. -Instead of a hope of heaven, I had the hope of her happiness and yet -I knew that I was not doing what was necessary to realize it. What I -was doing was, when one thought it out, futile and ridiculous. I was -wasting my life to save hers; because of her, I had been involved in -this endless round of futility and I was behaving as if I believed that -if I were wretched enough, she would be happy.</p> - -<p>What I wanted most of all was to save her from an experience like my -own. For her, there were to be no wretched sordid compromises with -life, no unclean pleasures, no subterfuges, no lying, no fear. She was -to remain good and brave and lovely and I was to find a true man for -her who would love her as I longed to have her loved, reverently.</p> - -<p>And in the meantime, she was growing up surrounded by slavish servants, -by doting relatives, by luxury and dissipation and all that I did to -protect her, was to shut her up as much as possible in the schoolroom.</p> - -<p>I had always been in the habit of talking to her of Patience Forbes, -her great aunt in America. It had seemed to me important for Jinny to -understand and value my people. I wanted her to love the woman who had -so loved me. To secure for that distant lonely admirable character the -respect and affection of my child was, it seemed to me, my duty. And -as a little girl Jinny had been interested in hearing about the Grey -House in St. Mary’s Plains, the waggon slide down the cellar door, -the attic full of old trunks,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> crammed with faded panniered dresses -and poke-bonnets, and the back garden full of hollyhocks and bachelor -buttons, and larkspur. She liked to hear of the great river that one -glimpsed between the houses at the bottom of the street behind the -garden, and of the ships that came smiling down laden with lumber from -the great forests, and she would climb into my lap and say—“Now tell -me more about when you were a little girl”—but as she grew older she -lost interest in these stories, and was more and more unwilling to -write to her great aunt and one day, when I finished reading to her a -letter from Patience, she gave a sigh and said petulantly,</p> - -<p>“What a boring life—‘<i>Quelle vie ennuyeuse.</i>’”</p> - -<p>“Jinny!” I exclaimed sharply.</p> - -<p>“But it is, Mummy. It must be. I see her there. Ah, Mon Dieu, so -dismal. ‘<i>Une vieille—vieille.</i>’ An old old one—in dusty black -clothes, in a horrid little room. All her stuffed birds round her -in glass cases—so funny! But the atmosphere is cold. It sets the -teeth on edge, and she is ugly, like a man, with big feet and hands. -There—look!” She took up poor Aunt Patty’s photograph from the table. -“Look—what has that old woman to do with me? Why does she write to me -‘My darling little Geneviève’—I’m not her darling, I don’t love her at -all. I don’t want to think of her.”</p> - -<p>I was very angry. “Jinny, you make me ashamed.”</p> - -<p>“I can’t help it,” she almost screamed at me. “I can’t help it. <i>C’est -plus fort que moi</i>—she’s strange—she’s ugly.” And she flung the -photograph on the floor and stamped her feet—her face was white, her -eyes blazing—“I don’t want to think she belongs to us. I don’t want -you to love her,” and she flung herself into a chair in a paroxysm of -angry tears.</p> - -<p>I sent her to bed; it was five o’clock in the afternoon, and gave -orders that she was to have bread and milk for her supper but when I -went to her later in the evening, though she was quiet, she stuck to -her idea. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span></p> - -<p>“What did you mean by your terrible behaviour, Jinny?”</p> - -<p>She eyed me gravely from her pillow.</p> - -<p>“I don’t know, except that it is all dismal and strange in America, and -I can’t like Great Aunt, and if I can’t—why then I can’t—<i>Cela ne se -commande pas.</i>”</p> - -<p>I sat beside her, strangely depressed. Her little white bed with its -rosy hangings, her curly blond head on the lace pillow, the white fur -rug, the shaded lamp, the flickering fire, swam before me, blurred; I -half closed my eyes, and saw another child, an ugly child with a long -pigtail, in a cotton nightgown and flannel wrapper, kneeling by an old -wooden bed in a bare little room, and a tall grizzled woman standing -with a candle while the child said her prayers. “God bless my mother in -Paris and take me to her soon, and make me keep my temper and be like -my Aunt Patty—”</p> - -<p>I had failed—I had failed.</p> - -<p>But Jinny’s voice roused me. “Papa says it is an ugly country, -America—miles and miles of empty fields, just grass and grass -stretching all round.”</p> - -<p>“Your father has never been there.”</p> - -<p>“I know, but he knows about it. He says he would never go there, -not for anything, and that I needn’t—so if I’m never to see Great -Aunt—why bother?”</p> - -<p>Why indeed? They were too much for me, those two, my husband and my -child.</p> - -<p>In my depressed moods I used to go to see Clémentine. She listened -patiently, lying on a couch in purple pyjamas, smoking a cigarette -through a holder a foot long, and watching me intently while I -explained that I was no longer in control of my own life, that I was as -impotent as a paralytic, and that I hadn’t even the feeling of being a -part of anything that made up existence.</p> - -<p>“It is all unreal—I have lost touch. I can’t grasp anything. There’s -a space,—‘<i>infranchissable</i>,’ between me and it. At times I feel that -the only reality is the past, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> remote past. My childhood is real -to me, nothing much else. I remember my home in America, now this -minute sitting in your room, more vividly than the house I left half an -hour ago. Pleasure is a narcotic—I drug myself with it, but I don’t -really understand joy—I understand sorrow. Joy is a perfume that -evaporates—suffering is a poison that remains.”</p> - -<p>Clémentine broke in abruptly.</p> - -<p>“<i>Ma chère amie</i>—take my advice, I know what you need—take a lover.”</p> - -<p>I burst out laughing, but she eyed me gravely.</p> - -<p>“You laugh, but I know what I am saying. Your life is abnormal, don't -go against nature.” She rolled over on an elbow and laid a hand on my -knee. “You must love—it will wash away all your sick fancies. You’ll -see. Any one you’ve a liking for will do; surely you like some one? -Don’t be romantic, be practical. Face facts. Take things as they are, -and you will find beauty, mystery, rapture and sanity. Beyond the -little prosaic door of compromise you will find the world of dreams. -Believe me, materialism is the only road to happy illusion, and to -remain sane, we must have illusions.”</p> - -<p>Well, that was her point of view, and she may have been right. I never -found out. I didn’t take her advice. Perhaps had I done so, I would be -in Paris now content with the illusion she promised me. Who knows?</p> - -<p>That sort of thing is the solution of most lives. A growing lassitude, -a growing fear, the feeling that one has missed life, that it will soon -be too late, and at last we give in and take in the place of what we -wanted, what we can get.</p> - -<p>I couldn’t. There was no one about who in the slightest degree -resembled a lover—my lover. And I was sick of the subject of love. For -years and years and years it had been served up to me, for breakfast, -for lunch, for dinner. Every theatre, every music hall, every novel one -opened, every comic paper was full of it. Travestied, caricatured,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> -perverted or idealized, but always the same old thing—sex—sex—sex -in all its ramifications—always monotonously the same; it bored me to -extinction.</p> - -<p>Philibert, fastening on this woman then that one, all my friends -falling in and out of love, like ducks round a muddy pond; it put me in -a rage with the world.</p> - -<p>The War came—and with it the end of a world.</p> - -<p>I sometimes think that God’s final day of judgment will not be so very -different. The Edict will go out from Heaven. Life will stop. Humanity -suddenly arrested on the edge of time will look over the precipice -of Eternity—will pause—will shudder—then, why should it not act? -Why not revolt as it did in 1914 against the menace of universal -destruction? Was it not just like that?</p> - -<p>Death was let loose on the earth. And men refusing to die, gave their -lives so that man might live.</p> - -<p>The obliteration of life! Something else took its place. All the usual -things of life disappeared, human relationships, amusements, ambitions, -business, hope, comfort. The people vanished. No familiar faces -anywhere. Armies took their place. Men were changed into soldiers, all -alike. Women were turned into nurses. Their personalities fell from -them, they appeared again, a mass of workers, colourless, uniform, with -white set faces in professional clothes.</p> - -<p>Our world, Philibert’s and mine suddenly fell to pieces; all the men -servants left, most of the women, called to their houses to send their -men to the war. Philibert found himself one morning a private in an -auxiliary service of the army; he too disappeared. The enemy was -marching on Paris; Ludovic telephoned me to say that I had best leave -for Bordeaux. I packed off Jinny to Nice with her grandmother. A woman -whose work in the slums I had been interested in for some years, was -taking an <i>équipe</i> of nurses to the front. I went with her. Philibert’s -secretary had orders to pack up all the valuables in the house. I -forgot them. I forgot everything. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span></p> - -<p>We went as you know to Alsace—were taken prisoners—sent back again.</p> - -<p>On regaining Paris, I turned the house that I had hated into a -hospital. Most of its treasures had already been packed up and sent -away to a place of safety. The empty salons were turned into wards, -my boudoir into an operating room. I enjoyed filling the place with -rows of white iron beds and glass topped tables and basins and pails -and bottles and bandages. It had been a hateful house, it made a good -hospital. When it was in running order, I left again for the front.</p> - -<p>I enjoyed the War. It set me free. I reverted to type, became a savage, -enjoyed myself. In a wooden hut, on a sea of quaking mud under a -cracking sky, I lived an immense life. I was a giant—I was colossal—I -dwelt in chaos and was calm. With death let loose on the earth, I felt -life pouring through me, beating in me; I exulted. Danger, a roaring -noise, cold, fatigue, hunger, these my rations, agreed with me. I was -a giantess with chilblains, and a chronic backache; I was a link in an -immense machine, an atom, a speck in an innumerable host of atoms like -myself, automatons, humble ugly minute things doomed to die, immortal -spirits, human beings, my brothers.</p> - -<p>I observed that my little tin trunk contained everything needful for -life; soap, warm clothes, rubber boots, a brush and comb. I wanted -nothing; I was content to go for days without a bath. The beef and -white beans of the soldier was sufficient. I ate it ravenously.</p> - -<p>I worked and was happy. I lifted battered men in my arms, soothed their -pain, washed their bodies, scrubbed their feet; poor ugly swollen feet -tramping to death in grotesque boots, socks rotting away in them. I -enjoyed scrubbing them. I had, for the business, pails of hot water, -scrubbing brushes, the kind one uses for floors, and slabs of yellow -soap. For some months, it was my job to wash the wounded who came in -from the trenches. Many of them were <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span>peasants, old bearded men who -talked patois, in soft guttural voices and called me sister. Their -great coats were covered with mud and blood, they crawled with vermin. -I loved them. They had given their lives, they had given up their -homes, their deep ploughed fields, their children, their cattle. They -did not complain. Their stubborn souls looked out at me kindly from -weary eyes, sunk under shaggy brows, and loving them, my brothers, I -loved France, the France I had not, before, known.</p> - -<p>We were sent from one part of the front to another. Our <i>équipe</i> had -a good reputation. Passing through Paris from time to time, I found -opportunities for using money. I gave, gratefully. Supply depots were -organized. Every one was in need, every one was doing something. The de -Joigny family were pleased with me. They made a great fuss over me when -I came to Paris. They spoke of my generosity, my devotion, my courage. -I loved them too, bulking them together with my comrades, my <i>poilus</i>, -the men of France.</p> - -<p>I had lost track of Philibert during the first months of the war. Then -I heard that he had been put to guard one of the Paris gates. He stayed -there for three months, standing in the road, with a gun, stopping the -motors of officers, looking at passes. Poor Philibert! And there was -no one to take any interest now in what became of him. His world was -finished, his friends could do nothing for him. The France that was at -war with Germany did not know him. The men who were leading the nation -had never heard of him, or if they had, remembered him with a sneer.</p> - -<p>Ludovic had entered one of the ministries. I went to him. Philibert, -I pointed out, was being wasted. He was a linguist. A month later he -was given the rank of interpreter and attached to the General Staff. -Occasionally he accompanied Ludovic to London, or Rome, or Boulogne. -Poor Philibert! He would have gone to the trenches if he could. He was -too old. I scarcely saw him, for four years. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span></p> - -<p>When I had leave I spent it with Jinny. He did the same, but our leave -didn’t often coincide.</p> - -<p>Jinny came back to Paris and lived with her grandmother. There was a -room kept ready for me in the flat.</p> - -<p>Sometimes I motored down from the front, along the thundering roads -where armies moved in the dark, and with the gigantic rumble of motor -convoys, and the pounding of the guns in my ears, I would step into the -little still bright sitting room with its glinting miniatures and silk -hangings to find the two of them rolling bandages or knitting socks.</p> - -<p>Jinny seemed to me quite safe there.</p> - -<p>And in a way I was glad that the years of her girlhood should be passed -in a seclusion and quiet that would have been impossible in peace -time. There was no one left to spoil her now, no army of servants for -her to order about, no pageant of pleasure to dazzle her eyes. The -problem of her life seemed like everything else to be simplified out of -recognition.</p> - -<p>I did not know that Bianca had come back to Paris. I had forgotten her. -Jinny was very sweet to me when I came. She would turn on my bath and -help me take off my things, and wail over my dreadful hands, stained -with disinfectants and swollen with chilblains.</p> - -<p>“Oh, darling,” she would say, “how brave you are to do it,” and then -she would shudder and add—“I couldn’t—the sight of blood makes me -sick. How you can bear the ugliness—”</p> - -<p>And I would assure her that she was much too young to do nursing.</p> - -<p>Your mother was very kind to me. The war had aroused her from the -lassitude of old age. She had risen to meet it. Lifting her gentle head -proudly, she had seemed to look out beyond the confines of her narrow -seclusion, across the years, and to see her country rise before her in -its old beauty, its one-time grandeur.</p> - -<p>“France will have her revenge now,” she had said, with a flash lighting -her weary eyes. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span></p> - -<p>And her mind appeared more vigorous. She read all the newspapers or -asked Jinny to read them aloud to her. She took a great interest in my -work, and seemed to regard me as some admirable but inexplicable puzzle.</p> - -<p>“You are too brave, <i>mon enfant</i>, and too exalted. When the war is over -and you come back to your old habits, to take up your old life—you -will see—”</p> - -<p>“Maybe I shall never come back to it, dear—never take up again the old -life as you say.”</p> - -<p>And again she smiled, thinking that I was joking, but I was not joking, -my brain was clear, I believe I knew even then, that I would never run -Philibert’s house again.</p> - -<p>“You look happy, my child,” she said to me one day.</p> - -<p>“I am, <i>belle-mère</i>.”</p> - -<p>“Ah—but how curious!”</p> - -<p>“But dear—it is not as if any one very near or dear were in danger. -Philibert is safe, Blaise too, driving his ambulances.”</p> - -<p>“But the horror, the pain, the suffering all round one—look—already -in our family five young men killed—your Aunt Marianne bereft of her -sons—your Uncle Jacques crippled—”</p> - -<p>“I know—I know—I do feel for them, and I do feel for France. When I -say that I am happy, I only mean, that for me the equation of life is -so simple, that I am content as never before.”</p> - -<p>“I see—you are happy because of the sacrifice you have made—because -of all you have given up in the cause for our country. <i>Cela est très -beau.</i>”</p> - -<p>“No, dear.” I felt bound to try and explain. “It is not that. It is not -fine at all. I haven’t given up anything that I cared about. I have -only got what I wanted. I have found my place, my right place—the -place of a worker.”</p> - -<p>She looked puzzled, then turned it off with a smile.</p> - -<p>Jinny was growing up and the war was slipping by over her little blond -head like a monstrous shadow. She seemed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span> in that greyness, to become -unreal. I did not know what was going on in her mind.</p> - -<p>One night in March 1918 I staggered in on her. I must have been more -tired than I realized. My head was burning. The little soft still room, -your mother with her hair in stiff regular waves, a lace shawl round -her shoulders, and Jinny, smiling over a story book; it was like a -dream.</p> - -<p>And Jinny was like a little creature in a dream. Her idle delicate -hands, her plaintive voice were strange. She had on a rose coloured -frock, and was eating sweets. Some one had sent her a box of chocolates.</p> - -<p>“Look, Mummy, chocolates—we never have them any more, do we, <i>petite -mère</i>?”</p> - -<p>I had seen the world rushing to destruction; the powers of darkness -triumphant. Just beyond those walls, along the road, one came to the -edge of the abyss.</p> - -<p>“Mummy, I hate the war, <i>c’est si bête</i>—when will it end?” she pouted.</p> - -<p>Suddenly I was angry; I felt that it was wrong for my daughter to be -like that, wrong and stupid.</p> - -<p>“Jinny,” I cried—“are you asleep? Don’t you understand that the world -is coming to an end?”</p> - -<p>But she looked at me with curious defiant eyes and asked, “What do you -mean?”</p> - -<p>“I mean what I say. Come with me tomorrow. Come and see. Come and -help—you’re no longer a child. Come!” But she drew away from me with a -shiver.</p> - -<p>“I couldn’t,” she said in a fine hard little voice.</p> - -<p>And your mother broke in,</p> - -<p>“Jane, you must be mad to suggest such a thing.”</p> - -<p>“But I want her to know—to understand—to share—”</p> - -<p>“That is wrong. What is there for her to understand? She is a child. -Her life is not involved in the war. It lies beyond. She should be -protected from this nightmare.”</p> - -<p>“I want her with me.”</p> - -<p>Your mother shook her head sadly. “If you want her with you, you should -stay at home and look after her. You<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> have been admirable, you have -devoted yourself, but when the war is over, you will perhaps find that -you have made a mistake.”</p> - -<p>“Mistake! Would you have me stay at home while men are dying by -thousands!”</p> - -<p>She sighed gently. “Ah—well—dear—you know best, but I wonder -sometimes, if you are not deluded—”</p> - -<p>Jinny had disappeared. I found her in her bedroom, her head buried in -her pillow.</p> - -<p>“I’m a coward,” she sobbed, “a coward. I would be afraid to go.”</p> - -<p>I took her in my arms. “My poor little lonely Jinny.” I held her a -long time—a long time—comforting her, conscience-smitten, troubled, -but the next day I left again for the front, following my monstrous -illusion, answering the terrible call of the greatest imposture in -creation. For I was wrong and your mother was right. The war was not a -fine thing. It did not save the world or renew it. It left nothing fine -or noble behind. It was an obscene monster. It called up from the soil -of a dozen continents all the fine strong men, and devoured them, it -summoned out of the heart of humanity, heroism, and it devoured that. -Courage, faith, hope, self-sacrifice, all the dreams of men were poured -into its jaws and disappeared. Nothing was left but broken men, and a -ruined earth.</p> - -<p>I ought to have stayed with Jinny. That was my job.</p> - -<p>Her nineteenth birthday was a week after the armistice. She had changed -from a child to a woman while I was away, helping men to die uselessly -and suddenly I saw that she was wise as I had hoped never to see her. -She said to me that day,</p> - -<p>“I know Mummy about you and Papa—you needn’t pretend any more.”</p> - -<p>It was time, the family said, that she should be married.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span></p> - -<h2>IX</h2> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <i>poilus</i> 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. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span></p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.”</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>But we were strangers. The war had driven us in opposite<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> 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.</p> - -<p>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.”</p> - -<p>“They helped to win the war.”</p> - -<p>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 “<i>Service de Santé</i>”—for fear that his action -might seem unbecoming, and he was afraid to ask me point blank<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span> what my -idea was. I had no idea—I was waiting for something to happen.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span> anything, but if you frighten him, he smashes -things. I was the savage. They should have known better how to deal -with me.</p> - -<p>It was foolish to plot and scheme behind my back and plan to put me in -the presence of a “<i>fait accompli</i>.”</p> - -<p>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,</p> - -<p>“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,</p> - -<p>“Surely our civilization hasn’t so much to recommend it.”</p> - -<p>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—”</p> - -<p>“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—”</p> - -<p>Your Aunt Clo chuckled—“No wonder the family is in a fever about you.”</p> - -<p>I was annoyed. “You must tranquillize them. Clem and I go to the -meetings of the third International, but I’m not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span> 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.”</p> - -<p>At the mention of Jinny your aunt’s face had grown serious, as serious -as such a round expanse of placid flesh could grow.</p> - -<p>“Well, what are your ideas for Jinny,” she snapped.</p> - -<p>I was startled. I stammered. “My ideas—?”</p> - -<p>“Yes—you know don’t you, that she’s got to be married?”</p> - -<p>“Ah—but in time. In my country—girls don’t—”</p> - -<p>“This isn’t your country. Jinny is nineteen, she’s very conspicuous. -There are already several <i>prétendants</i>—”</p> - -<p>“<i>Prétendants?</i>”</p> - -<p>“Yes. Hasn’t Philibert consulted you?”</p> - -<p>“No.”</p> - -<p>“It is as I thought.”</p> - -<p>“What do you mean, Aunt?”</p> - -<p>She pounded on the floor with her cane. She was almost impotent now and -spent her days in an armchair, from which she had to be lifted to bed -by two servants. And her temper was short.</p> - -<p>“Don’t be a fool! I am warning you. You’d better ask Philibert. Don’t -tell him I told you. Oh well—do if you like, what is it to me, to have -him angry?”</p> - -<p>I was very much disturbed but didn’t go to Philibert and ask him what -he was up to, because I wanted to gain time, and it didn’t occur to me -as possible that he would really commit himself without consulting me. -I wanted to gain time for Jinny herself. I had hopes for her of what -seemed to me the happiest of all solutions.</p> - -<p>Philibert thinks to this day that the poor little abortive romance of -Jinny and Sam Chilbrook was my doing. Poor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span> sweet babies. I had had no -hand in their falling in love. It had seemed to me to be the work of -God and I had kept out of it.</p> - -<p>Sam had come to Paris from the army for the peace conference. He -was attached to the President’s suite. I had known his father and -his mother and his grandfather and grandmother. Every one knew the -Chilbrooks. They lived in Washington and Philadelphia, and the men of -the family had a taste for the diplomatic service. The grandfather you -remember was the American Ambassador in London, years ago. They were -very well off.</p> - -<p>Sam was a romantic, with a humorous grin and the nicest voice in the -world. He had nice young eyes, and freckles on his nose. He liked to do -things in a hurry. He met Jinny at luncheon at the American Embassy and -fell in love with her at first sight.</p> - -<p>“Please ask me to tea alone,” he said to me after lunch. “I want to -talk to you. I want to marry your daughter”—and he cocked an eyebrow -like a puppy.</p> - -<p>I laughed and said, “But I don’t think you can.”</p> - -<p>“Please ask me to tea anyway and please Madame de Joigny don’t laugh at -me. Love at first sight is sometimes true love, you know.”</p> - -<p>I asked him to tea, and he put us into our car.</p> - -<p>Jinny wrapped in grey furs, her face flushed palest pink, her eyes -shining, snuggled up to me and took my hand.</p> - -<p>“What a nice lunch party, Mummy.”</p> - -<p>“Did you enjoy it, darling?”</p> - -<p>“Yes. I talked to the American with red hair. He has a face like a sky -terrier—he was very amusing.” Then with a little sigh, “Darling Mummy, -I do love you so.”</p> - -<p>When Sam came to tea—he had seen Jinny twice in the meantime—he -wasted no time.</p> - -<p>“I do seriously and truly want to marry your daughter, Madame de -Joigny.”</p> - -<p>“But you can’t, she’s a Roman Catholic.”</p> - -<p>“That’s easy. I’ll become one.” </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span></p> - -<p>I laughed again. I was beginning to adore him. “I will take care of -her,” he said, “as you would want me to take care of her. She would -be safe with me. She would be worshipped. I would kneel to her, and I -would make her happy. She would be happy, I vow to you, she would be -happy.”</p> - -<p>“I am afraid it is impossible.”</p> - -<p>“Why—?”</p> - -<p>“Her father has other ideas.”</p> - -<p>“Let me go to him.”</p> - -<p>“You may of course, but he will send you packing.”</p> - -<p>He flushed painfully and I saw in his eyes a deep shy hurt look, the -look of modesty and innocence—and faith.</p> - -<p>“But if she loved me, surely he wouldn’t refuse then—”</p> - -<p>“Perhaps not. I don’t know. He might all the same. It would depend on -how much she cared.”</p> - -<p>“I will make her care.”</p> - -<p>“But,” I broke off, I hesitated. Why should I have been so scrupulous? -What obligation had I to warn Philibert that his daughter might fall in -love with this eligible American? Still I did have a scruple.</p> - -<p>“It is not considered fitting, you know, in our French world, for -a young man to pay court to a <i>jeune fille</i> without her parents’ -approval.”</p> - -<p>“Then what am I to do?”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know.”</p> - -<p>We sat in silence a moment.</p> - -<p>Suddenly he got up. He stood there before me, tall, clean, honest.</p> - -<p>“You’re not against me, Madame de Joigny?”</p> - -<p>“No, I’m not against you.”</p> - -<p>“Well then, I guess I know what to do. I guess I can wait. You can -trust me, you know. I won’t bother your daughter. All the same, we are -all in Paris together, and I can’t help seeing her sometimes, can I?” -His eyes smiled, but he was very serious. I realized how serious he was -when Philibert remarked a few days later that he had met<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span> quite a nice -young American lunching at the Jockey Club, quite a man of the world, -a national polo player, a Monsieur Chilbrook. Did I know him? Yes, I -said I knew him, and had known his family always. Philibert thought -I might ask him to dinner with Colonel and Mrs. House, the following -week. I did so, but Sam made me no sign. He was perfectly correct. The -only thing that was noticeable was his successful effort to interest -Philibert. I myself was surprised. Poor Sam—little good it did him.</p> - -<p>Jinny seemed happy. She enjoyed being grown up and going to parties. In -June we gave her a coming out ball, for in spite of all my premonitions -we had again taken possession of our house. After that I took her to -a number of dances. She was surrounded by young men of course. Sam -was only one of a dozen; she treated them all with the same radiant -aloofness. She made me no confidences. Her intimacy with her father -was greater than ever. Together they had supervised the unpacking and -rearrangement of the household treasures. Philibert was educating her. -I observed that she had his flair for bibelots. She had already all the -patter of the amateur collector. They went shopping together a good -deal. More often than not, coming in from some luncheon I would find -that they had gone out together for the afternoon.</p> - -<p>On one such day, when I was sitting alone, Sam Chilbrook was announced. -He was troubled. His eyes were dark, his young face tired.</p> - -<p>“Jinny loves me, I know she does, Madame de Joigny, but she is unhappy. -It is time I went to her father. You see I’m afraid,” he stammered, -“afraid that she won’t have the courage—if I don’t—”</p> - -<p>“But have you spoken to her—I thought you promised.”</p> - -<p>“I’ve not spoken—I’ve kept my promise, but I wish you hadn’t exacted -it. I know your daughter now. I know her character, and I love her. She -spoke yesterday in a way that frightened me—”</p> - -<p>“What did she say?” </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span></p> - -<p>“She said that she loved her father better than any one in the world.”</p> - -<p>“That was all?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, no—not quite.”</p> - -<p>“What else did she say?”</p> - -<p>“She said that if it came to a struggle between them, or between you -and him about her—she was sure she would do what he wanted.”</p> - -<p>“Well, then go to him!” He left me at five; it was that same afternoon -only a few minutes after he had gone, that you, Blaise, were announced.</p> - -<p>I understand now what it cost you to do what you did. <i>Tout simplement</i> -it cost you the affection of your family. You ranged yourself on my -side, against them. That was what it amounted to. That anyway was the -way they took it.</p> - -<p>I remember your face when you told me that I had best go round to your -mother’s flat at once, that Philibert and Jinny were there and some -other persons whom I ought to see. I didn’t at first grasp what you -meant. What other persons? The little Prince Damas de Barbagne of the -family des Deux Ponts and his uncle.</p> - -<p>“In your mother’s drawing-room?”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“With Jinny?”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“But I refused to present him to her only a few months ago.”</p> - -<p>“I know.”</p> - -<p>“What then—?” Suddenly it dawned on me.</p> - -<p>“Philibert!” I almost shouted, “Philibert has done this without -consulting me. That miserable little creature.”</p> - -<p>You nodded.</p> - -<p>I knew the Damas boy. Philibert and I had stayed with his uncle in -their dreadful old prison of a place.</p> - -<p>The young man had made on me a very disagreeable <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span>impression. His -reputation was of the worst, and his appearance did not belie it. He -was small and weak legged and had no chin. His skin was bad and his -eyes yellow. He professed in those days a great admiration for the -Crown Prince of Germany, and I fancy had taken the latter as his model. -One of the things that amused him was, I found out, the torturing of -animals. Fan had told me a tale about him that I had never forgotten.</p> - -<p>One day he was terribly bored. Not knowing what to do with himself -he brought all his dogs into the house. He had twelve, all kinds, -greyhounds, setters, great danes. He told his man to keep them in -one of the salons, while he went into the next one, and loaded his -revolver. Disgusted with life, he had become disgusted with his dogs. -He called them one by one. Then as they came through the door, shot -them dead. He didn’t miss one. He got each one between the eyes.</p> - -<p>“Pour parlers” of marriage were going on you told me, between Philibert -and the august uncle of this heir to a bankrupt principality. I saw -it all. The house of the Deux Ponts was royal. It was a branch of the -Nettleburgs but had maintained a strict neutrality during the war. With -nearly every throne in Europe crumbling into dust, Philibert still -wanted a crown for his daughter’s head. In the midst of the savage -passion of anger that had seized me, I could have yelled with laughter. -Philibert still believed in his ridiculous baubles. He wanted to put -his little girl on a throne. Well, I would stop him.</p> - -<p>She was mine. She was mine.</p> - -<p>I had borne her out of my body. She belonged to me. I remembered -the months before she was born, I remembered the child in my womb, -stirring—the obscure passionate tenderness welling up in me—the -mysterious sense of union. I remembered Philibert’s disgust with my -deformity, his constant absence. He had left me to myself during those -months. He had left me, of course, to go to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span> other women. I had brought -Jinny into the world alone. The pain had been mine, and mine the -ecstasy. What had Philibert to do with my child?</p> - -<p>Now they proposed to dispose of her without my consent. They proposed -to hand her over to a degenerate. Well, they wouldn’t, I wouldn’t stop -them.</p> - -<p>My entrance created something of a sensation in your mother’s -drawing-room. They were all there. I had time to take them all in, -while they stared at me. The august uncle who looked like the Emperor -Francis Joseph was standing in the window with Philibert. Your mother -had Jinny on one side of her, at the tea table, the Princeling on the -other. Her face blanched when she saw me. There was terror in her eyes, -physical terror, what did she think I was going to do?</p> - -<p>Philibert was of course the first to recover himself. He came forward -in his most perfect manner.</p> - -<p>“<i>Chère amie</i>, I am so glad that after all you were able to come. I had -explained to his Royal Highness about your terrible migraine—”</p> - -<p>I took his cue. The pompous uncle and the pimple-faced Damas kissed -my hand, first one then the other. I asked your mother for a cup of -tea, and drank it slowly, conscious of Jinny’s eyes on my face. What -did they mean, those great brown starry eyes? What was going on in her -mind? I hadn’t any idea.</p> - -<p>“I have interrupted you,” I said putting down my teacup. “Pray continue -your talk.”</p> - -<p>No one spoke.</p> - -<p>“You were perhaps gathered together for a purpose that concerns my -daughter? No?”</p> - -<p>Philibert went crimson; the uncle coughed; I waited; your mother -rattled the tea things; she looked at Philibert, he looked at her. -“<i>Mon enfant</i>,” she quavered, at last, “His Royal Highness has honoured -you with a demand for your daughter’s hand in marriage, and as you -no doubt are aware, your husband,” her voice almost failed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span> her, but -she controlled it, “your husband, my son, is disposed to think that -possibly these two young people would be very happy together.”</p> - -<p>“Is it to ask their opinion that they have been brought here?” I asked -quickly.</p> - -<p>The uncle coughed again. The little shrimp at the table stammered—“Not -at all, not at all. My opinion is very well known to Monsieur de -Joigny. I should be honoured.”</p> - -<p>I rose to my feet. I knew now just how far matters had gone. They had -gone very far indeed! I had no choice. It was necessary to be quite -definite. I faced the older man.</p> - -<p>“There has been a mistake, your Highness, I do not approve of this -marriage.”</p> - -<p>Philibert made a jump towards me—an exclamation. I waved him off.</p> - -<p>“I have other ideas for my daughter. You must excuse me from explaining -what they are. And now I must beg you to let me take this child home. -Come Geneviève.” For a moment she hesitated, her poor little face -crimson, her eyes filled with tears. I took her hand and drew her with -me out of the door.</p> - -<p>That night Philibert and I had a terrible scene. I need not go into it -in detail. I cannot bear to recall it. It seems incredible now that -we should have behaved as we did. Things were said that will rankle -for ever, things that would have made it impossible, even if it hadn’t -been for the last ghastly episode of Bianca, for us to go on living -side by side. I look back with shame to that hour, I must have been -beside myself. What was goading me on more than anything else, was -the realization that Jinny was against me. She had been shocked by my -behaviour. That was how it had struck her. She had been horrified and -humiliated. That was all. I saw it in her eyes. She didn’t care to know -why I had done what I did. She only hated my having done it. She looked -at me with fear and almost, I thought, with a shiver of repulsion.</p> - -<p>I refused to give Jinny a penny if he married her off <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span>without my -approval. He informed me that I could not, by French law, disinherit -her and that he would find a way of bringing me to my senses. As for -Sam Chilbrook—Philibert dealt with him the next morning, I don’t know -what he said to him, but the boy never came back. I never saw him -again. It must have been something pretty horrible.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span></p> - -<h2>X</h2> - -<p>There is little more to tell you. You know about Jinny’s subsequent -marriage and how after all Philibert, if he did not secure Prince -Damas, his heart’s desire, is still well enough satisfied with the -young Duke, his son-in-law. Philibert wanted the Duke, so I let him -have him. Jinny wanted the house in Paris so I gave it to her. The -three live there together, quite harmoniously I am told. And I? I do -not pretend that Jinny’s husband is a cad. He is no doubt, as nice as -most young men about town. I merely regret that he does not love her -nor she him. Doubtless they will get on very well once that fact is -established between them.</p> - -<p>You see Jinny’s marriage was my supreme failure. I have lost her, I can -never do anything more for her. She will never turn to me in joy—or in -trouble.</p> - -<p>She hates me. It was because she came to hate me that I gave way. She -believed that I killed Bianca. I didn’t, but then I might have, I have -no way of knowing whether or not I would have killed her.</p> - -<p>I am trying to explain to you why I have come back to St. Mary’s -Plains. You remember Patience Forbes’ will. It read—“To my beloved -niece Jane Carpenter, now called the Marquise de Joigny, I leave the -Grey House and all that is in it, because some day, she may want some -place to go.” Well, she was right—I came back because I had no other -place to go to. I came back but I came too late. The people who lived -here and who loved me are all dead and I cannot, somehow, communicate -with them as I had hoped to. I do not know what Patience Forbes would -say of my life, and I shall never know. Her ghost does not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span> comfort me -because I failed her too. I let her die, here alone.</p> - -<p>They found her, you know on the floor by her bed, in her dressing gown, -the candle on the table burned down to its socket; she must have been -saying her prayers. Her Bible was open on the patchwork quilt; her -spectacles were beside it and three of my letters, some weeks old, -also, strangely enough, a facsimile (reduced) of the Declaration of -Independence, with a pencil note “To send to Jane.” You know how it -reads: “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for -one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them -with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate -and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God -entitle them.... We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men -are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain -unalienable rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit -of Happiness—”</p> - -<p>The last lines I have quoted were underlined. What did she mean by -them? What did she want them to mean for me, lying there, dying, going -out on the great journey alone from the empty Grey House—dead, alone -in the house through that long night with the Bible and the Declaration -of Independence beside her?</p> - -<p>I do not know what she meant—I only know that I left her alone to die.</p> - -<p>And I do not know whether I have come back defeated or victorious. In -the conduct of life I was defeated. Whenever I tried to do right, I -did wrong. To the people I loved I was a curse. I had a few friends. -You remain, and Clémentine and Ludovic. But I must lose you too, now. -I feel it my destiny to be alone. I did not understand how to live -among men. But there are hours when sitting here in this shabby room, -I am conscious of a feeling of high stark bitter triumph. At such -times I think of my father’s grave over there beyond the horizon, on -a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span> wide prairie under a high sky. A stone. That stone and I are linked -together. I loved Philibert once, I love Jinny. I am alone now, but -I shall hold out. I shall not give in. My life has been wasted, but -I shan’t end it. I shall see it through. It stretches behind me, a -confused series of blunders. I try to understand. It is finished, but I -go on living. There is nothing left for me to do but wait. Maybe if I -wait long enough I shall understand what it is all for.</p> - -<p>I love France, but I had to come back here, and I know that I will -stay. It is right for me to be here. It is fitting and just. In some -way that I cannot explain the equation of my life is satisfied by my -coming, and the problem—I see it as clear, precise and cold as a -problem in algebra—is solved.</p> - -<p>Here, in St. Mary’s Plains there is nothing for me. The big bustling -awkward town is full of strangers who have no time to interest -themselves in a derelict woman who has drifted back to them from -“foreign parts.” My return seems to those who remember me to be a -confession of failure. They are not interested in failure, so they -leave me alone. It is as well. I did not come back to talk but to -think. I did not come back to begin something new, but to understand -something old and finished. I do not need these bright brave ignorant -young people. To do what I am doing it is necessary to be alone.</p> - -<p>But to go back to my story. Jinny had a shivering fit that night, -after the scene in your mother’s flat. Her maid called me. She lay on -her back in bed her teeth chattering, her knees drawn up and knocking -together. We put hot water bottles to her feet and her sides. It was a -warm night late in June, but she kept whispering that she was cold. The -doctor when he came said that it was nerves. He prescribed bromide and -perfect quiet for some time, afterwards a change. He told me that she -had a hypersensitive nervous organism, and should be protected always -as much as possible from excitement or emotional strain. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span></p> - -<p>She slept quietly towards morning. Her hair clung to her forehead in -little damp curls, soft pale golden hair like a child’s. Her closed -eyelids were swollen above the long brown eyelashes. She lay on her -side with both hands together under her cheek, her lovely young body at -rest. Beautiful Jinny.</p> - -<p>I sat watching her. The sound of her father’s voice and of mine, saying -hideous things rang in my ears.</p> - -<p>Beyond the open window, the darkness was turning to light. All about -were still shuttered houses filled with sleeping people, a million -sleeping men and women. Their dreams and their weariness, and their -disappointments seemed to be rising like a mist above the hot close -houses.</p> - -<p>I had promised Patience Forbes to love Jinny enough—enough for what? -Enough—for this—to save her this.</p> - -<p>I had failed, and I felt old, so very old, and at the same time -my heart was full of childish longings and weakness. If only some -one would come and comfort me. If only some one would take my -responsibilities from me. I wanted help and relief. I thought of you. I -knew that you, Blaise, would have helped me, but Philibert had shut the -door in your face that evening and had snarled at me horrible things, -saying he would never have you in the house again. He had accused you -and me of a criminal affection for each other. I remembered his livid -face and twitching lips. A feeling of sickness pervaded my body and -soul. Jinny, asleep, was fragrant as a flower. I was contaminated, -unclean.</p> - -<p>Suddenly she was there,—Patience Forbes, my Aunt Patience, standing -on the other side of Jinny’s bed. She had on her black mackintosh and -her bonnet with the strings tied in a knot under her chin. But she was -not quite as I had last seen her. The wisps of hair that straggled down -under her bonnet were white. There was something terrible and grand -about her. She was old, very old. Her face was brown and withered. -She looked thin, emaciated, her eyes sunken. She looked starved. Her -clothes were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span> very shabby, the clothes of a poor woman. She was grand -and terrible. Her sunken eyes shone with a splendour I had never seen -before. She was looking down at Jinny—I saw her smile an ineffable -smile of unutterable beauty, then I waited breathlessly, with such -longing, with an anguish of longing. Surely in a moment she would turn -to me, gather me into her arms—now—now she was turning—</p> - -<p>“Mummy—what time is it?” Jinny was sitting up in her bed rubbing her -eyes, yawning. Sunlight shone through the parted curtains. I looked at -my watch.</p> - -<p>“Seven o’clock, darling.”</p> - -<p>“I would like some coffee. Is any one about? I’m so hungry. Oh dear—” -She sank back onto her pillow. “I remember now, I remember—why did I -wake up?”</p> - -<p>The next day, I received a cable announcing my Aunt Patience’s -death. Jinny was lying on her “chaise longue” eating chocolates. She -said—“Poor thing, but she was very old, wasn’t she?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, seventy-five years old.”</p> - -<p>“Older than <i>grandmère</i>!”</p> - -<p>“Yes, several years older—” Jinny was not interested. There was no one -in Paris who had ever seen Patience Forbes.</p> - -<p>Jinny seemed quite well again; only a little languid and silent. She -spent most of the day on her chaise longue, reading, having her nails -manicured, having her hair brushed, eating sweets, dozing; she was -quite affectionate.</p> - -<p>One evening she said, “I think, Mummy, that I would like to go into a -convent.” She had on, I remember, a white satin négligé trimmed with -white fox, and emerald green brocade slippers. I must have smiled.</p> - -<p>“Don’t smile, Mummy. I’m not joking, I have thought it all out. ‘<i>Il -faut se connaître.</i>’ I am weak, I have a weak character. I liked Sam -Chilbrook, but I didn’t dare say so. I disliked the Prince very much, -I didn’t dare say so. If you and Papa could agree, I would be content -to do what you decided for me—but you can’t agree. No, no, don’t<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span> be -tragic. Don’t be so sorry. Let us be reasonable. If you never agree -on a husband for me, I must either choose one for myself and run off -with him and be married, or become an old maid. Neither seems a very -nice idea, does it—but to be a nun—that is beautiful. You remember -when I was little and tried to lead the saintly life—you thought it -ridiculous. You did not understand. There is something in me that -you do not take seriously because I am lazy and like pretty things -and marrons glacés. But it is there all the same. If you were a true -Catholic I could explain. To be a nun is beautiful—beautiful, and I -would be safe there, and out of the way. For you and Papa there would -be no more problem, you would not have to live together any more. And -the sisters love me; they would be glad to receive me. They are so -gentle, so sweet—you have no idea, and quite happy you know. Sometimes -they laugh and make little jokes, like children. It is much happier in -the convent than here.”</p> - -<p>It was I that broke down then, and cried. I cried miserably, ugly -tears, sobbing against Jinny’s languid knees. I, a middle-aged woman, -disfigured, with a swollen face, a great, strong, tired, drab creature, -in whose tough body life had gone stale, was humbled before my -beautiful child.</p> - -<p>I asked her forgiveness. Brokenly I begged her to be kind. And I -apologized to her. Kneeling beside her I tried to explain my inability -to believe in any creed, any dogma of the Church, I spoke of truth, -I proclaimed as if before a high spiritual judge, my honest search -for truth. Pitiful? Yes—but do you not believe that it is often -so—mothers kneeling to their children, avowing their mistakes, their -failures, begging for love?</p> - -<p>I was desperate to destroy the thing that separated us—I was so lonely -so alone—it seemed to me that this moment held my one chance, my one -hope of drawing my child close to me. I looked up at her. Cool, lovely -youth holding aloof, if only she would come, if only she would <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span>respond -and take me in her slim fresh innocent arms. Ah, the relief it would -be—the comfort!</p> - -<p>“Jinny—Jinny—love me—I need your love, I am your mother. I am -growing old. There is no one left for me to turn to—no one to advise -me, no one to care for me, except you. Do you realize what I mean? My -life is finished, it goes on only in you, only for you. Jinny, Jinny, -don’t you understand, I need you.”</p> - -<p>She stroked my hair lightly with delicate fingers, but looking up, I -saw that her face was contracted in a nervous spasm—of distaste. A -moment longer I waited staring up at her face with a longing that must -have communicated itself to her, a longing so intense that I felt it -going out of me in waves but she made no sign.</p> - -<p>“I do love you, Mummy—you know I do,” she said in a dull little voice.</p> - -<p>I stumbled to my feet and left the room.</p> - -<p class="space-above">Philibert had gone away, so when the doctor said a few days later -that Jinny should go to Biarritz it was I who took her, though I knew -she would rather have gone with some one else. I should have sent her -with a companion. Had I left her alone then things might have been -mended, but I was too jealous, and though I knew the truth in my heart -I couldn’t bear to admit that my child didn’t like being with me. I -kept on thinking of ways to win back her love, silly feeble ways. I -was like a despairing and foolish lover who cannot bring himself to -leave the object of his passion though he knows that everything he does -exasperates her. I had no pride. I gave her presents. I did errands for -her that the servants should have done. With a great lump of burning -pain in my heart I went on smiling and busy, avoiding her eyes and -fussing about her, and she was exquisitely patient and polite.</p> - -<p>I do not know to this day whether Bianca followed us to Biarritz -knowingly and with intent, or not. Clémentine<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span> told me afterwards -that she had seen Bianca with Philibert at Fontainebleau at the Hôtel -de France on the Sunday, the day he left Jinny and me, after our -scene, but whether she learned from Philibert during the week they -spent together of Jinny’s whereabouts and tracked her down, I cannot -tell. Probably not. Yet it may be.... It is all so strange that one -can believe anything. Philibert and Bianca together—after all those -years—that in itself is extraordinary. What sort of relationship could -have existed between them at the end? I don’t know. I do not attempt to -understand. They were people beyond my comprehension, but some thing -that they possessed in common, some bond, some feeling profound and -complex, had evidently survived.</p> - -<p>It is useless dwelling upon their problem. Revolting? Evil? I suppose -so, and yet their infernal passion has somehow imposed upon me a dread -respect. Philibert after Bianca’s death crumpled up as if by magic -into a silly little old man. I saw it happen to him, there in that -hotel where he came rushing on receipt of the news. He stood in my -room shaking and disintegrating visibly before my eyes, profoundly -unpleasant, pitiful. It was as if Bianca had held in her hand the vital -stuff of his life, and as if with her death he was emptied of all -energy and power.</p> - -<p>All this happened you see at Biarritz where Bianca came and found us.</p> - -<p>I am almost sure that I did not think of killing Bianca, even at the -very end, when I found myself in her room, standing over her. And yet, -if she hadn’t taken that overdose of morphine herself, that very night, -what would have happened I don’t know.</p> - -<p>It is very curious, her dying like that, whether by accident or intent, -no one will ever know, on just that night, and in just that place, -involving me in Jinny’s eyes, for ever. God knows there were plenty of -other places on the earth where she might more logically have chosen -to breathe her last. Why not in Venice in that great dark vaulted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span> -palace of hers with the black water lapping under her balcony? Or in -her castle in Provence, where she lived with her demons, or in Paris in -the red lacquer den with its golden cushions? Any one of those settings -would have been more in keeping—but in the Plage Hôtel—above the sea, -no, there was no poetic justice in her choosing that spot. And if it -was an accident, then the freakish spirit who planned it did it with -his diabolical eye on Jinny and me.</p> - -<p>We had been a week in Biarritz. Jinny had found some young people with -whom she played tennis in the afternoon. Occasionally I left her for a -game of golf. One day coming back I saw her sitting on the terrace with -a woman whose eccentric elegance was familiar, but whom I did not at -first recognize. I saw her back, long and narrow, a fur wrap slipping -from the shoulders, an attenuated arm hanging across the back of her -chair. Jinny, all in white, her hair a golden halo in the light of the -sun that was setting behind her, was facing her. Their faces were close -together. The older woman was leaning forward. She had Jinny’s hand in -both of hers. There was about this pose something intimate and intense. -Jinny started up at the sight of me, and the woman turned her small -dark head round and gave me a little nod. It was Bianca.</p> - -<p>She was very much changed. I remember every detail of her appearance, -her red turban, her soiled white gown, her fur coat that looked somehow -rather shabby. She was carelessly dressed, she had an air both tawdry -and neglected. Actually she didn’t look clean. Her face was startling. -The makeup was badly done. Once it had been a smooth even white, now -the eyelids were yellow and on the thin cheek-bones were spots of red. -The finger nails of the beautiful hand that hung limp over the back -of her chair were enamelled pink but dirty. She had obviously been -going down hill at a rapid pace, and for one instant this realization -in the midst of my panic at finding her with Jinny, gave me pleasure. -For Bianca to turn into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span> an untidy hag; that was something to make me -wickedly exultant.</p> - -<p>She looked at me calmly out of her monstrous eyes. “It is centuries -since we met,” she said. I did not reply. I was trembling and I saw -that she saw my trembling. Her discoloured eyelids lifted, and sent -out their old fiery blue light. Her eyes grew more enormous. She -stared into mine and her thin pointed lips curved into a smile. “Not -since Deauville, after the death of poor Fan Ivanoff—four, five, six -years—is it not? Before the war. I have been so little in Paris.” Her -eyelids fluttered, her eyes deadened, a curious lassitude spread over -her suddenly. She drooped in her chair, she was like a bruised soiled -faded plant, almost to me she seemed to exhale the odour of decay. -“I have travelled—I have wandered—Spain—Portugal—America—Buenos -Aires—I am so restless, I go anywhere—” her voice trailed off. She -gave herself a little jerk. Her eyes slid to Jinny, dwelt upon her. -“Your daughter and I have been talking. ‘<i>Quel amour d’enfant</i>’—so -<i>exaltée</i>, so sensitive.”</p> - -<p>Jinny, it seemed to me, was rather pale. She stood nervously clasping -her hands, her eyes moving from one of us to the other.</p> - -<p>“The Princess brought me a message from Papa,” she said in a shrill -defiant note.</p> - -<p>“Ah yes, I saw him just the other day—where was it? I cannot remember, -I have no memory, but he told me you were here.”</p> - -<p>The long unclean hand again went out to Jinny. It caressed her arm. I -shivered. “Don’t,” I muttered in spite of myself.</p> - -<p>Bianca jerked, a nervous twitch, and gave a little laugh.</p> - -<p>“Ah, you see, my child, your mother doesn’t like—” She broke off. -Jinny’s face was crimson now. “Never mind—she is perhaps right. I will -leave you now. I go to the Casino. It is all so boring. Perhaps later—”</p> - -<p>She did not look back at us as she trailed away. I thought<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span> to see -toads jumping up from the imprint of her feet.</p> - -<p>Upstairs, I said as quietly as I could:</p> - -<p>“How is it that you know the Princess?”</p> - -<p>“Papa introduced me to her long ago—when I was quite a little girl.”</p> - -<p>“You have seen her since?”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“Often?”</p> - -<p>“Several times.”</p> - -<p>“You admire her?”</p> - -<p>“Yes—she is strange. I like strange things.”</p> - -<p>“I do not like her at all,” I said curtly.</p> - -<p>Jinny sat on the edge of a table, poking into a box of chocolates.</p> - -<p>“Why don’t you like her, Mummy?”</p> - -<p>“Because she is a bad woman.”</p> - -<p>“Oh no, surely you are wrong. She is Papa’s oldest friend.” She popped -a sweet into her mouth.</p> - -<p>“Who told you that?”</p> - -<p>“She did herself—and besides, I know—I have known a long time. She -was his first romance, his—what do you call it,—his calf love.”</p> - -<p>I burst into harsh laughter. My laugh sounded to me ugly and terrible. -Jinny’s face went pale; I crossed to the window.</p> - -<p>“What else did she tell you?” I asked with my back to her.</p> - -<p>“She has told me about life in convents, she is very devout. She has -often been in convents to ‘<i>faire une retraite</i>.’ She says it is very -soothing there, but that I should not be in a hurry about making a -decision.”</p> - -<p>“Ah!”</p> - -<p>“Yes—she seems to understand me—she conveys much sympathy. She has a -magnetism—it draws one.”</p> - -<p>“I know.”</p> - -<p>“What is the matter, Mummy? You are angry. I feel sorry for the -Princess, she is so alone in the world, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span> she says she loves me, -that she is wonderfully attracted to me, that I would do her good. -She called herself laughing you know, but with a sadness—she called -herself ‘<i>une damnée</i>.’”</p> - -<p>I could contain myself no longer. “<i>Une damnée</i>—well, that’s just -what she is—” I wheeled about. I felt my voice rising in spite of me. -“I forbid you ever to speak to her again. Do you understand? You must -never speak to her again.” My child’s face hardened. The eyes widened, -the nostrils dilated. She was very pale. Something sinister seemed to -rise between us. She receded from me.</p> - -<p>“Don’t—don’t!” she whispered backing away.</p> - -<p>“Don’t—don’t what?” I cried back. “You don’t want me to stand between -you and this horrible woman who has ruined my life—ruined your -father—ruined us all—and who wants now to ruin you.”</p> - -<p>“No, no, no—don’t say such things.” She was screaming too now. “It is -wicked of you to say such things. I don’t believe it. I don’t believe -you. I won’t believe it. I love Papa, I love Papa better than you, -better than you. You have done it. You have ruined his life. I know it, -I have seen it. I have seen you look at him with hatred. How do you -think it feels to see one’s parents hating each other? Ruined? Yes, you -have ruined my life. You—you—you ought never to have brought me into -the world. I wish I were dead—I wish I were dead—” She rushed into -her room and banged the door.</p> - -<p>I told myself looking out over that horrible sea, immense, restless -and cold, that nothing irretrievable had happened, that Jinny would -come back to me, that she would forgive, that things would be the -same. But I had no faith, and what did that mean, if things were the -same. Was that sufficient as a basis for the future? What if we went -on and on having scenes—screaming at each other. I was ashamed, and -shaken, and I was afraid. Bianca had come back—Bianca was there, down -the corridor—close to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span> us, close to Jinny. “Une damnée”? she called -herself.</p> - -<p>I must take Jinny away in the morning, but what good would that do in -the end? Bianca would follow us sooner or later to Paris. Jinny would -be sure to see her. I had a ridiculous picture of Bianca pursuing us -from place to place, lying in wait for Jinny—laying infernal schemes. -I remembered what I had recently heard of her strange habits, her -vicious tastes, of the effect she had had on certain women. I saw her, -a restless, haunted damned soul, the slave of infernal passions, a -prowl in the world, hunting for victims, growing more implacable as she -grew old.</p> - -<p>I dressed for dinner. Jinny sent word she would dine in bed. On the -way to the lift, I saw Bianca go into her room. She looked back at me -over her shoulder, half smiling but with a curious look in her eyes. -Was it fear? Was it regret? I thought for a long time of that look, I -thought of it all evening sitting in my high window, listening to the -interminable boom of the waves. Her presence, near, under the same roof -was intolerable, like a dreadful smell, or an excruciating nagging -sound. I was feeling again, even now, through my terror for Jinny, and -in spite of my sickened sense of the woman’s decay, the impact of her -personality. She existed there beyond my door, special, vivid, intense, -and I began to feel her decrepitude as a reproach, her ruin as a -responsibility. Moment by moment I felt her, exerting on me a horrible -pressure. There had been in her dreary face, an appeal, a claim, a -despair that laid on me a weight. In her eyes, there had been, memory. -It was that that haunted me. Somehow, actually, her eyes had reflected -the past and had dragged my mind back, afar back to the days when we -had been friends. I remembered everything. In their deep burning blue -light that was like a lamp lighted inside a corpse, I saw her youth -and my youth glowing, and I remembered how we had been together, two -strong young things, curiously linked, responding to each other, with a -sympathy that should have been a good thing to us. She had said once, -“Jane, I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span> love you—you are the only friend I have ever had.” And I -remembered the day she had talked to me of herself in that old castle -in Provence, above the white road and dusty vineyard.</p> - -<p>I felt sick and was aware of an intolerable physical pain in my side. -Bianca, who had been so beautiful, and whom I had loved divinely once, -was a rotten rag now, soiled, dingy, bad smelling—and I hated her. We -hated each other. Our youth was gone—and all its beauty. There was -nothing under the sun but ugliness and hatred and the principle of life -was decay.</p> - -<p>I walked the room. Jinny was asleep—lovely youth—fresh and sweet. -What would become of her? Bianca and I were two old women, done for.</p> - -<p>To protect Jinny from her, Jinny who hated me, that was all I could do -now. I must go to Bianca. Either she would respond to me and give in to -me because of the memory that had stared out of her face, or I would -make her; I would force her to do what I wanted as I had done before, -but this was to be the last time—this must be the end.</p> - -<p>I looked in at Jinny. She seemed to be asleep. Out in the corridor some -one had turned the light low. The long red carpet of the corridor led -straight to Bianca’s room. I went out quickly closing the door after -me. It took an instant to reach the door of Bianca’s sitting room. I -knocked. There was no answer. I opened it and went in. To the right -another door was open, a light shone through. Bianca was in bed. I -could see her. Her eyes were closed. The lamp beside her bed shone on -her face, a peculiar odour pervaded the room. “I will wake her and have -it out with her,” I thought to myself.</p> - -<p>I went into the bedroom. A number of bottles, a small aluminum saucepan -and a hypodermic syringe were on the night table beside her. She was -breathing heavily and noisily, drawing quick, regular, snoring breaths. -It was obvious that she was drugged; the noise of her <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span>breathing was -very ugly. Her face was sharp and pinched and evil. An extraordinary -disorder prevailed in the room. I remember now being astonished by it. -Untidy heaps of underwear about, not very clean, dragged lacey things -on the floor, a high-heeled slipper on the centre table, a litter on -the toilet table that reminded one of an actress’s dressing room, a -tray with a champagne bottle and a plate of oyster shells on the end of -the chaise longue. And pervading every thing that horrid odour of drugs -and the sound of snoring.</p> - -<p>I stood for a moment looking down at the woman in the bed. The sight -of her filled me with loathing. How unclean she was! She was like a -corpse. Already she was half dead. She was something no longer human, -scarcely alive. Her sleep had the quality of a disease, her breath was -poisonous.</p> - -<p>Suddenly I felt some one beside me. It was Jinny, wrapped in her -dressing gown. White as a sheet, she stood staring down at that -dreadful face. “I heard you open the door,” she whispered, “I followed -you. What is it? What is the matter?”</p> - -<p>“Nothing,” I murmured. “She is drugged, that is all.” I pointed to the -bottle of ether, the syringe in its little box. “Come,” I repeated -nervously, “come away.” It was horrible to have Jinny in that room.</p> - -<p>“But, Mummy, can’t we do something, oughtn’t we to do something?”</p> - -<p>“No—come—it’s nothing—I mean she’s used to it.” I dragged Jinny away.</p> - -<p>The next morning, the people in the hotel were informed that the -Princess was dead. She had died in the night of an overdose of morphine.</p> - -<p>It was Marie, Jinny’s maid, who burst in on her with the news, while -she was having her café au lait in bed. I heard Jinny give a shriek and -ran in to her—she had fainted.</p> - -<p>Isn’t it strange the way it all happened? One would think that God -had a hand in it, but if there is a God, why<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span> should He want my child -to believe that I had committed a murder? It is that that I do not -understand.</p> - -<p class="space-above">Jane’s narrative was ended with those words. She had talked that last -night of my visit to her in St. Mary’s Plains, until nearly morning. -Her forehead grew damp as she talked and her lips dry and her words -carried along the sustained note of her voice like little frightened -sounds.</p> - -<p>And during all those hours that she talked, I remember hearing no other -sound. I heard no voice in the street, nor the sound of trams going -by nor of dogs barking. In our concentration we were as cut off from -contact with the living world as if the whole city of St. Mary’s Plains -had been turned to stone.</p> - -<p>That was just a year ago today. I suppose she is still there in that -meagre faded room, I can see her there, sitting in the high wooden -chair that belonged once upon a time to Patience Forbes. The wind is -hurrying across the immense prairies of her awful wide empty country. -It rattles the windows of that frail wooden house. She is alone there.</p> - -<p>Last night we talked of Jane in Ludovic’s rooms. Clémentine was there -and Felix, we had been to Cocteau’s ballet. Jane would have enjoyed it, -they said; she would have understood the joke, and perceived the beauty.</p> - -<p>Clémentine moved restlessly about. “What is she doing now, I wonder? -Surely she is doing something—”</p> - -<p>“She is thinking things out.”</p> - -<p>“Good God!” groaned Felix. “Our Jane—our great haughty creature—she -wasn’t meant to think. She was meant to be looked at—she ought never -to have had an idea in her head. What a waste—what a wicked waste.”</p> - -<p>Clémentine on a footstool by the fire nursed her knees. “She did really -think we were immoral. We took life as a joke. She couldn’t understand. -She believed in the Bible—all the part about being wicked. She didn’t -know it,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span> but her creed was the ten commandments. She is a victim of -the ten commandments.”</p> - -<p>Ludovic shook his head. “She was right,” he said, “all her life she -wanted to do right—now she has done it. She has gone back to her -people. She should never have come here. There was nothing for her -here, but ourselves.”</p> - -<p>“And were we nothing?” cried Clémentine, “didn’t we love her well? -Didn’t we understand?”</p> - -<p>“No, we didn’t understand. And we didn’t count. We didn’t count for -her.”</p> - -<p>Ah, Jane, Jane, it was true. We didn’t count. In all your story, you -scarcely alluded to us. We were just your friends who loved you, and -we didn’t count. If only you could know what we know about yourself; -if only you knew how we cared for you beyond all the differences of -conduct; if only you could have realized that life is not a thing to -fear, that it is a little trivial thing, or again, just a thing like -food, an element like air, to be eaten, or breathed or enjoyed. But you -thought it a mysterious gift, a terrible responsibility, a high and -serious obligation, with a claim on your soul. You thought it a thing -you could sin against. You confounded life with God.</p> - -<p>This little street is so quiet tonight, so quiet and small. It shuts -me in. It shuts me comfortably in, but beyond it there is a great -distance—a great land—a great sea—a high and terrible sky.</p> - -<p class="center space-above">THE END</p> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JANE--OUR STRANGER ***</div> -<div style='text-align:left'> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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