XV
When he reached the hotel he felt an urgent need of warmth. By turns he entered the library, the reception hall, the dining-room. All these places were well heated, but their warmth did not suffice him. He attributed his chill to walking so long in the damp.
He took the lift and rode up to his own rooms. He changed his clothes, wrapped himself warmly, and sat down beside the radiator, in which the steam hissed like a caged animal.
Yet he did not grow warm. At last he knew that his shivering was not due to the moisture and the fog, but to some inner cause.
Toward eleven o’clock he arose and went out into the corridor. The stuccoed walls were divided into great squares by gilt moulding; the floor was covered by pieces of carpet that had been joined together to appear continuous. Christian felt a revulsion against all this false splendour. He approached the wall, touched the stucco, and shrugged his shoulders in contempt.
At the end of the long corridor was Eva’s suite. He had passed the door several times. As he passed it again he heard the sound of a piano. Only a few keys were being gently touched. After a moment’s reflection he knocked, opened the door, and entered.
Susan Rappard was alone in the room. Wrapped in a fur coat, she sat at the piano. On the music rack was propped a book that she was reading. Her fingers passed with ghostly swiftness over the keys, but she struck one only quite rarely. She turned her head and asked rudely: “What do you want, Monsieur?”
Christian answered: “If it’s possible, I should like to speak to Madame. I want to ask her a question.”
“Now? At night?” Susan was amazed. “We’re tired. We’re always tired at night in this hyperborean climate, where the sun is a legend. The fog weighs on us. Thank God, in four days we have our last performance. Then we’ll go where the sky is blue. We’re longing for Paris.”
“I should be very happy if I could see Madame,” Christian said.
Susan shook her head. “You have a strange kind of patience,” she said maliciously. “I hadn’t suspected you of being so romantic. You’re pursuing a very foolish policy, I assure you. Go in, if you want to, however. Ce petit laideron est chez elle, demoiselle Schöntag. She acts the part of a court fool. Everything in the world is amusing to her—herself not least. Well, that is coming to an end too.”
Voices and clear laughter could be heard. The door of Eva’s rooms opened, and she and Johanna appeared on the threshold. Eva wore a simple white garment, unadorned but for one great chrysoprase that held it on the left shoulder. Her skin had an amber gleam, the quiver of her nostrils betrayed a secret irritation. The beautiful woman and the plain one stood there side by side, each with an acute feminine consciousness of her precise qualities: the one vital, alluring, pulsing with distinction and freedom; the other all adoration and yearning ambition for that vitality and that freedom.
Tenderly and delicately Johanna had put her arm about Eva and touched her friend’s bare shoulder with her cheek. With her bizarre smile she said: “No one knows how it came that Rumpelstilzkin is my name.”
They had not yet observed Christian. A gesture of Susan’s called their attention to him. He stood in the shadow of the door. Johanna turned pale, and her shy glance passed from Eva to Christian. She released Eva, bowed swiftly to kiss Eva’s hand, and with a whispered good-night slipped past Christian.
Although Christian’s eyes were cast down, they grasped the vision of Eva wholly. He saw the feet that he had once held naked in his hands; under her diaphanous garment he saw the exquisite firmness of her little breasts; he saw the arms that had once embraced him and the perfect hands that had once caressed him. All his bodily being was still vibrantly conscious of the smoothness and delicacy of their touch. And he saw her before him, quite near and hopelessly unattainable, and felt a last lure and an ultimate renunciation.
“Monsieur has a request,” said Susan Rappard mockingly, and preparing to leave them.
“Stay!” Eva commanded, and the look she gave Christian was like that she gave a lackey.
“I wanted to ask you,” Christian said softly, “what is the meaning of the name Eidolon by which you used to call me. My question is belated, I know, and it may seem foolish to-day.” He smiled an embarrassed smile. “But it torments me not to know when I think about it, and I determined to ask you.”
Susan gave a soundless laugh. In its belated and unmotivated urgency, the question did, indeed, sound a little foolish. Eva seemed amused too, but she concealed the fact. She looked at her hands and said: “It is hard to tell you what it means—something that one sacrifices, or a god to whom one sacrifices, a lovely and serene spirit. It means either or perhaps both at once. Why remind ourselves of it? There is no Eidolon any more. Eidolon was shattered, and one should not exhibit the shards to me. Shards are ugly things.”
She shivered a little, and her eyes shone. She turned to Susan. “Let me sleep to-morrow till I wake. I have such evil dreams nowadays, and find no rest till toward morning.”