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?