Jane--Our Stranger: A Novel

by Mary Borden

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.