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.