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.