The Desire of Life

by Matilde Serao

About Annie Clarke and her daughter Mabel, during their sojourn there of three weeks, there had been at least ten large scandals and twenty little ones. Their milliard, their eight hundred, or hundred, or hundred and fifty, or fifty, or thirty millions had formed an accidental variation to the scandals, and the birth and life of the very placid Mrs. Annie Clarke, so like a dumb and patient idol, had been time after time related in bizarre terms, telling how she had been an opera singer, or a nurse, or the daughter of a shepherd in the Far West, or an Italian foundling, and finally the widow of another millionaire, whom Mr. Clarke, on losing his wife, had ruined and forced to commit suicide.

And what an amount of potins, inside and outside the hotel, about the excellent Mr. Clarke, who remained on the other side of the ocean, in his palace on Fifth Avenue, and every two days sent a cablegram to his ladies, to tell them he was well and that all was well, and every two days received a very short telegram in reply—which simplified correspondence. What potins of the first order about Mr. Clarke, who was declared to be enormously rich or stupidly poor, an undeserving thief or a philanthropist, a king of rubber, an emperor of gutta-percha, a father eternal of aluminium for cooking utensils! What little potins every evening about the solitary jewel of the day of Mrs. Clarke—the pearl collar, the emerald pin, the ruby ring, the diadem of diamonds; and all of them enormous, colossal—pearls, emeralds, ruby, sapphire, diamond. What potins these were, and the principal potin of all that these jewels, too unique, too enormous, too colossal, were perfectly imitated from the real, that they were false: "Oui, ma chère, du toc, pas autre chose; du toc splendide, mais du toc!" And about Mabel Clarke,—so beautiful, so full of every grace, so amiable, so frank, the image and symbol of a race vibrant with youth, the image and symbol of a new femininity, different and differently graced and attractive—what a daily exercise of scandalmongers, whom her simplicity and loyalty did not succeed in disarming, created especially by mothers blessed with daughters; and how her virtue and her dowry suffered tremendous oscillations from one day to another. She was very rich, richer than Anna Gould or Gladys Vanderbilt; she was poorest of the poor; she had refused the Duke of Sairmeuse, because she wished to be a Serene Highness; she had had an intrigue with a tenor of the Manhattan theatre; she had been engaged to a son of a king of tinned goods; she was a cold flirt; she adored Italy, and would have married even a dandy of Lucca; she had been converted to Catholicism; she was making a fool of Vittorio Lante; she loved him. All this kept increasing towards the decline of the season, the more so as all the other potins had been consumed and some were threadbare; the more so as the now open love of Vittorio and Mabel exasperated so many people—hunters after dowries for silent, sad daughters who never found a husband, mothers of eligible young men—all were annoyed at another's fortune, another's love, another's happiness. On the evening of the great cotillon de bienfaisance at the Palace Hotel, with tickets at twenty francs, the night of the 25th of August, the last great ball at the "Palace," the chic night of chic nights, the love-making, engagement, and marriage of Mabel Clarke and Vittorio Lante, the no love, no engagement, the no marriage, were the greatest and most multiform source of gossip of the day, evening, and night.

CHAPTER XIV

Unfailingly every lady who entered, in all the splendour of her ball dress, stopped a moment at the threshold of the hall of the Palace Hotel, to give a glance at the hall, which is divided into two or three parts, curiously divided and united, where the fortunate inhabitants of this Olympus of the Engadine were standing, sitting, or walking about in pairs or groups. And by the lady's rapid and indicative glance, which embraced the spectacle, she was at once recognised as initiated or profane. The initiated was the lady of other hotels of the Bad or Dorf who, by her rank and habits, was constantly in touch with the Olympus of the "Palace," who often came there to dinner and took part in all the balls; she was the great lady living in a sumptuous private villa with her family, retinue, and carriages, and hence she was not only initiated, but was a goddess of an Olympus more Olympian than the "Palace," if it is possible to imagine it. The initiated halted a moment to look, at the threshold of the hall, merely to search with her eye for an especial friend; and she, if there, would come towards her with a rustling of silk, with a shining of sequins and diamonds, and would take the initiated away with her to a corner at the back to chat, as they waited for the ball.

But in the glance of the profane, at the threshold of the sacred vestibule, which they had seldom crossed in the daytime or never, and who were certainly crossing it for the first time at night, everything was to be seen: uncertainty, curiosity, vanity, humility, embarrassment, fastidiousness, and perhaps even a slight feeling of pain. The more vainly audacious of the profane adored and hated the "Palace" from afar, and they were dying to go there to mix with those Olympian surroundings, yet none of them ever succeeded in being invited there; so they pretended not to mind and spoke badly of the "Palace," though they would have walked on their knees to enter and remain there on one or all of the guest nights. Other profane were anxious to gain an intimate knowledge of an atmosphere famous for its refined luxury, for its exquisite pleasures, for a sense of exclusiveness, and secretly tormented by curiosity and desires beyond their station, had eagerly waited the chance of living there for one evening only, even as intruders. Some other profane living at St. Moritz apart from great festivities, meetings, and amusements, wishing for one night to show the rich dress they had never put on, and the hair tiring they had never tried, wishing for one evening not to be bored, had firmly believed in satisfying this complex desire of theirs by passing an enchanting evening at the "Palace." And since for twenty francs one could reach this lofty, closed Olympus, since for only twenty francs one could enter this terrestrial paradise, all the profane—the vain, the covetous, the dreamers, the curious, the bored—had been preparing themselves for a week for this supreme approach, had been agitated about their dress, their hair tire, their cloak, their carriage, and their escort. In appearance they were happily agitated, but secretly they were preoccupied about cutting a poor figure in some way, and they pretended ease, distraction, simplicity, as if from time immemorial they had been frequenters of the "Palace." But the moment they penetrated the first vestibule of the temple dedicated to the god "Snob," in that temple which seemed to bear written, in its shining lights, in the superb wealth spread around, in the powerful luxury of its atmosphere and its people, the prophetic and violent motto of an ardent and feverish society: "EVVIVA LA VITA!"

When these profane, these intruders, entered there, all their emotion, all their fervour, in the long glance, changed into doubt, regret, and pain, and they would almost have turned back, as if they felt themselves profane, more than ever and eternally profane. However, hesitation, contrition, and pain were but for a moment: with the deep, civil courage of which women give a hundred proofs every day, of which no one is aware, though often it reaches to heroism; with an act of resolution and valour, with feigned indifference and ingenuousness, the profane entered and advanced, as if they were initiated. No one came forward to meet them; they knew not where to direct themselves, whether to right or left or to the rear; but followed resolutely by their husbands and brothers, they went and sat down in some place, fanning themselves or playing with their shawls, tranquil in appearance, as if they were of the house, as if they had lived for years at the "Palace."

Soon the profane were in every corner; and if their number increased, their worldly condition at that festival was not bettered. No one knew them there, they knew no one—they remained isolated. After chatting a little with a husband or brother or son who accompanied them, appearing to smile and joke, to be interested and amused, they became silent and discouraged. They watched with badly concealed anxiety the elegant crowd that surrounded them, that was seated or grouped together or divided, as it greeted each other or chatted livelily; the poor profane watched to discover a face they knew of man or woman, to exchange, if not a word, a greeting, a smile, a nod with a human being of that crowd, and, disconsolate, finding none, they lowered their eyes upon the figures of their Louis XVI fans. Still more deeply irritated were the profane who by chance knew someone at the "Palace." The loud, presumptuous, very wealthy Frau Mentzel came from the Stahlbad, and as she held a privileged court there, she had succeeded sometimes, merely by chance, in having at her luncheons, her goûters, and her dinners some gentleman of the "Palace" itself, or some initiated of the "Badrutt," of the Grand Hotel, the Château, the villas, on days in which one of these gentlemen had absolutely nothing better to do; this Frau Mentzel was absolutely scandalised because among the three or four of those she knew one had greeted her, saying two words, and had turned on his heels; another had merely bowed to her without speaking; another had not seen her; and the last had openly pretended not to have seen her. Covered with jewels, in a sumptuous Parisian toilette, with an enormous feather in her hair, she did nothing but grind her teeth, chewing curses against the four lâcheurs, while her husband and her two cavalieri serventi, two colourless and humble parasites, listened terrified and silent, as they bowed their heads servilely.

As for Donna Mercédès de Fuentes, profane of the profane, who looked very beautiful in a white satin dress trimmed with silver, who was always beautiful, in spite of too much rouge, bistre, and pearl powder, with which she spoiled her brown, Spanish face, she had seen three or four faces pass before her; and among them her Italian friend, Don Giorgio Galanti. Every time the perfidious Italian gave his arm to a different lady and only once had he directed at Donna Mercédès a greeting and a distinctly cold smile. And she had hoped to be led round in triumph by him through the salons of the "Palace"; she had dared to hope to dance the cotillon with him. Deluded and deeply snubbed, she had not even the strength to quarrel in Spanish with her poor husband; her beautiful black eyes, which were too much underlined with bistre, filled with tears.