Chapter Chapter 2 · THE MASK
. THE MASK
CAMILLA: You, sir, should unmask.
STRANGER: Indeed?
CASSILDA: Indeed it’s time. We all have laid aside disguise but you.
STRANGER: I wear no mask.
CAMILLA: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No mask? No mask!
_The King in Yellow, Act I, Scene 2_.
I
Although I knew nothing of chemistry, I listened fascinated. He picked
up an Easter lily which Geneviève had brought that morning from
Notre Dame, and dropped it into the basin. Instantly the liquid lost
its crystalline clearness. For a second the lily was enveloped in a
milk-white foam, which disappeared, leaving the fluid opalescent.
Changing tints of orange and crimson played over the surface, and
then what seemed to be a ray of pure sunlight struck through from the
bottom where the lily was resting. At the same instant he plunged his
hand into the basin and drew out the flower. “There is no danger,” he
explained, “if you choose the right moment. That golden ray is the
signal.”
He held the lily toward me, and I took it in my hand. It had turned to
stone, to the purest marble.
“You see,” he said, “it is without a flaw. What sculptor could
reproduce it?”
The marble was white as snow, but in its depths the veins of the lily
were tinged with palest azure, and a faint flush lingered deep in its
heart.
“Don’t ask me the reason of that,” he smiled, noticing my wonder. “I
have no idea why the veins and heart are tinted, but they always are.
Yesterday I tried one of Geneviève’s gold-fish,—there it is.”
The fish looked as if sculptured in marble. But if you held it to the
light the stone was beautifully veined with a faint blue, and from
somewhere within came a rosy light like the tint which slumbers in an
opal. I looked into the basin. Once more it seemed filled with clearest
crystal.
“If I should touch it now?” I demanded.
“I don’t know,” he replied, “but you had better not try.”
“There is one thing I’m curious about,” I said, “and that is where the
ray of sunlight came from.”
“It looked like a sunbeam true enough,” he said. “I don’t know, it
always comes when I immerse any living thing. Perhaps,” he continued,
smiling, “perhaps it is the vital spark of the creature escaping to the
source from whence it came.”
I saw he was mocking, and threatened him with a mahl-stick, but he only
laughed and changed the subject.
“Stay to lunch. Geneviève will be here directly.”
“I saw her going to early mass,” I said, “and she looked as fresh and
sweet as that lily—before you destroyed it.”
“Do you think I destroyed it?” said Boris gravely.
“Destroyed, preserved, how can we tell?”
We sat in the corner of a studio near his unfinished group of the
“Fates.” He leaned back on the sofa, twirling a sculptor’s chisel and
squinting at his work.
“By the way,” he said, “I have finished pointing up that old academic
Ariadne, and I suppose it will have to go to the Salon. It’s all I have
ready this year, but after the success the ‘Madonna’ brought me I feel
ashamed to send a thing like that.”
The “Madonna,” an exquisite marble for which Geneviève had sat, had
been the sensation of last year’s Salon. I looked at the Ariadne. It
was a magnificent piece of technical work, but I agreed with Boris
that the world would expect something better of him than that. Still,
it was impossible now to think of finishing in time for the Salon that
splendid terrible group half shrouded in the marble behind me. The
“Fates” would have to wait.
We were proud of Boris Yvain. We claimed him and he claimed us on the
strength of his having been born in America, although his father was
French and his mother was a Russian. Every one in the Beaux Arts called
him Boris. And yet there were only two of us whom he addressed in the
same familiar way—Jack Scott and myself.
Perhaps my being in love with Geneviève had something to do with his
affection for me. Not that it had ever been acknowledged between us.
But after all was settled, and she had told me with tears in her
eyes that it was Boris whom she loved, I went over to his house and
congratulated him. The perfect cordiality of that interview did not
deceive either of us, I always believed, although to one at least it
was a great comfort. I do not think he and Geneviève ever spoke of the
matter together, but Boris knew.
Geneviève was lovely. The Madonna-like purity of her face might have
been inspired by the Sanctus in Gounod’s Mass. But I was always glad
when she changed that mood for what we called her “April Manœuvres.”
She was often as variable as an April day. In the morning grave,
dignified and sweet, at noon laughing, capricious, at evening whatever
one least expected. I preferred her so rather than in that Madonna-like
tranquillity which stirred the depths of my heart. I was dreaming of
Geneviève when he spoke again.
“What do you think of my discovery, Alec?”
“I think it wonderful.”
“I shall make no use of it, you know, beyond satisfying my own
curiosity so far as may be, and the secret will die with me.”
“It would be rather a blow to sculpture, would it not? We painters lose
more than we ever gain by photography.”
Boris nodded, playing with the edge of the chisel.
“This new vicious discovery would corrupt the world of art. No, I shall
never confide the secret to any one,” he said slowly.
It would be hard to find any one less informed about such phenomena
than myself; but of course I had heard of mineral springs so saturated
with silica that the leaves and twigs which fell into them were turned
to stone after a time. I dimly comprehended the process, how the
silica replaced the vegetable matter, atom by atom, and the result
was a duplicate of the object in stone. This, I confess, had never
interested me greatly, and as for the ancient fossils thus produced,
they disgusted me. Boris, it appeared, feeling curiosity instead of
repugnance, had investigated the subject, and had accidentally stumbled
on a solution which, attacking the immersed object with a ferocity
unheard of, in a second did the work of years. This was all I could
make out of the strange story he had just been telling me. He spoke
again after a long silence.
“I am almost frightened when I think what I have found. Scientists
would go mad over the discovery. It was so simple too; it discovered
itself. When I think of that formula, and that new element precipitated
in metallic scales—”
“What new element?”
“Oh, I haven’t thought of naming it, and I don’t believe I ever shall.
There are enough precious metals now in the world to cut throats over.”
I pricked up my ears. “Have you struck gold, Boris?”
“No, better;—but see here, Alec!” he laughed, starting up. “You and I
have all we need in this world. Ah! how sinister and covetous you look
already!” I laughed too, and told him I was devoured by the desire for
gold, and we had better talk of something else; so when Geneviève came
in shortly after, we had turned our backs on alchemy.
Geneviève was dressed in silvery grey from head to foot. The light
glinted along the soft curves of her fair hair as she turned her cheek
to Boris; then she saw me and returned my greeting. She had never
before failed to blow me a kiss from the tips of her white fingers,
and I promptly complained of the omission. She smiled and held out her
hand, which dropped almost before it had touched mine; then she said,
looking at Boris—
“You must ask Alec to stay for luncheon.” This also was something new.
She had always asked me herself until to-day.
“I did,” said Boris shortly.
“And you said yes, I hope?” She turned to me with a charming
conventional smile. I might have been an acquaintance of the day before
yesterday. I made her a low bow. “J’avais bien l’honneur, madame,” but
refusing to take up our usual bantering tone, she murmured a hospitable
commonplace and disappeared. Boris and I looked at one another.
“I had better go home, don’t you think?” I asked.
“Hanged if I know,” he replied frankly.
While we were discussing the advisability of my departure Geneviève
reappeared in the doorway without her bonnet. She was wonderfully
beautiful, but her colour was too deep and her lovely eyes were too
bright. She came straight up to me and took my arm.
“Luncheon is ready. Was I cross, Alec? I thought I had a headache, but
I haven’t. Come here, Boris;” and she slipped her other arm through
his. “Alec knows that after you there is no one in the world whom I
like as well as I like him, so if he sometimes feels snubbed it won’t
hurt him.”
“À la bonheur!” I cried, “who says there are no thunderstorms in April?”
“Are you ready?” chanted Boris. “Aye ready;” and arm-in-arm we raced
into the dining-room, scandalizing the servants. After all we were not
so much to blame; Geneviève was eighteen, Boris was twenty-three, and I
not quite twenty-one.
II
Some work that I was doing about this time on the decorations for
Geneviève’s boudoir kept me constantly at the quaint little hotel in
the Rue Sainte-Cécile. Boris and I in those days laboured hard but as
we pleased, which was fitfully, and we all three, with Jack Scott,
idled a great deal together.
One quiet afternoon I had been wandering alone over the house examining
curios, prying into odd corners, bringing out sweetmeats and cigars
from strange hiding-places, and at last I stopped in the bathing-room.
Boris, all over clay, stood there washing his hands.
The room was built of rose-coloured marble excepting the floor,
which was tessellated in rose and grey. In the centre was a square
pool sunken below the surface of the floor; steps led down into it,
sculptured pillars supported a frescoed ceiling. A delicious marble
Cupid appeared to have just alighted on his pedestal at the upper end
of the room. The whole interior was Boris’ work and mine. Boris, in his
working-clothes of white canvas, scraped the traces of clay and red
modelling wax from his handsome hands, and coquetted over his shoulder
with the Cupid.
“I see you,” he insisted, “don’t try to look the other way and pretend
not to see me. You know who made you, little humbug!”
It was always my rôle to interpret Cupid’s sentiments in these
conversations, and when my turn came I responded in such a manner, that
Boris seized my arm and dragged me toward the pool, declaring he would
duck me. Next instant he dropped my arm and turned pale. “Good God!” he
said, “I forgot the pool is full of the solution!”
I shivered a little, and dryly advised him to remember better where he
had stored the precious liquid.
“In Heaven’s name, why do you keep a small lake of that gruesome stuff
here of all places?” I asked.
“I want to experiment on something large,” he replied.
“On me, for instance?”
“Ah! that came too close for jesting; but I do want to watch the action
of that solution on a more highly organized living body; there is that
big white rabbit,” he said, following me into the studio.
Jack Scott, wearing a paint-stained jacket, came wandering in,
appropriated all the Oriental sweetmeats he could lay his hands on,
looted the cigarette case, and finally he and Boris disappeared
together to visit the Luxembourg Gallery, where a new silver bronze by
Rodin and a landscape of Monet’s were claiming the exclusive attention
of artistic France. I went back to the studio, and resumed my work.
It was a Renaissance screen, which Boris wanted me to paint for
Geneviève’s boudoir. But the small boy who was unwillingly dawdling
through a series of poses for it, to-day refused all bribes to be good.
He never rested an instant in the same position, and inside of five
minutes I had as many different outlines of the little beggar.
“Are you posing, or are you executing a song and dance, my friend?” I
inquired.
“Whichever monsieur pleases,” he replied, with an angelic smile.
Of course I dismissed him for the day, and of course I paid him for the
full time, that being the way we spoil our models.
After the young imp had gone, I made a few perfunctory daubs at my
work, but was so thoroughly out of humour, that it took me the rest
of the afternoon to undo the damage I had done, so at last I scraped
my palette, stuck my brushes in a bowl of black soap, and strolled
into the smoking-room. I really believe that, excepting Geneviève’s
apartments, no room in the house was so free from the perfume of
tobacco as this one. It was a queer chaos of odds and ends, hung with
threadbare tapestry. A sweet-toned old spinet in good repair stood by
the window. There were stands of weapons, some old and dull, others
bright and modern, festoons of Indian and Turkish armour over the
mantel, two or three good pictures, and a pipe-rack. It was here that
we used to come for new sensations in smoking. I doubt if any type of
pipe ever existed which was not represented in that rack. When we had
selected one, we immediately carried it somewhere else and smoked it;
for the place was, on the whole, more gloomy and less inviting than any
in the house. But this afternoon, the twilight was very soothing, the
rugs and skins on the floor looked brown and soft and drowsy; the big
couch was piled with cushions—I found my pipe and curled up there for
an unaccustomed smoke in the smoking-room. I had chosen one with a long
flexible stem, and lighting it fell to dreaming. After a while it went
out, but I did not stir. I dreamed on and presently fell asleep.
I awoke to the saddest music I had ever heard. The room was quite dark,
I had no idea what time it was. A ray of moonlight silvered one edge
of the old spinet, and the polished wood seemed to exhale the sounds
as perfume floats above a box of sandalwood. Some one rose in the
darkness, and came away weeping quietly, and I was fool enough to cry
out “Geneviève!”
She dropped at my voice, and, I had time to curse myself while I made
a light and tried to raise her from the floor. She shrank away with a
murmur of pain. She was very quiet, and asked for Boris. I carried her
to the divan, and went to look for him, but he was not in the house,
and the servants were gone to bed. Perplexed and anxious, I hurried
back to Geneviève. She lay where I had left her, looking very white.
“I can’t find Boris nor any of the servants,” I said.
“I know,” she answered faintly, “Boris has gone to Ept with Mr. Scott.
I did not remember when I sent you for him just now.”
“But he can’t get back in that case before to-morrow afternoon,
and—are you hurt? Did I frighten you into falling? What an awful fool
I am, but I was only half awake.”
“Boris thought you had gone home before dinner. Do please excuse us for
letting you stay here all this time.”
“I have had a long nap,” I laughed, “so sound that I did not know
whether I was still asleep or not when I found myself staring at a
figure that was moving toward me, and called out your name. Have you
been trying the old spinet? You must have played very softly.”
I would tell a thousand more lies worse than that one to see the look
of relief that came into her face. She smiled adorably, and said in her
natural voice: “Alec, I tripped on that wolf’s head, and I think my
ankle is sprained. Please call Marie, and then go home.”
I did as she bade me, and left her there when the maid came in.
III
At noon next day when I called, I found Boris walking restlessly about
his studio.
“Geneviève is asleep just now,” he told me, “the sprain is nothing, but
why should she have such a high fever? The doctor can’t account for it;
or else he will not,” he muttered.
“Geneviève has a fever?” I asked.
“I should say so, and has actually been a little light-headed at
intervals all night. The idea!—gay little Geneviève, without a care in
the world,—and she keeps saying her heart’s broken, and she wants to
die!”
My own heart stood still.
Boris leaned against the door of his studio, looking down, his hands
in his pockets, his kind, keen eyes clouded, a new line of trouble
drawn “over the mouth’s good mark, that made the smile.” The maid had
orders to summon him the instant Geneviève opened her eyes. We waited
and waited, and Boris, growing restless, wandered about, fussing with
modelling wax and red clay. Suddenly he started for the next room.
“Come and see my rose-coloured bath full of death!” he cried.
“Is it death?” I asked, to humour his mood.
“You are not prepared to call it life, I suppose,” he answered. As
he spoke he plucked a solitary gold-fish squirming and twisting out
of its globe. “We’ll send this one after the other—wherever that
is,” he said. There was feverish excitement in his voice. A dull
weight of fever lay on my limbs and on my brain as I followed him to
the fair crystal pool with its pink-tinted sides; and he dropped the
creature in. Falling, its scales flashed with a hot orange gleam in
its angry twistings and contortions; the moment it struck the liquid
it became rigid and sank heavily to the bottom. Then came the milky
foam, the splendid hues radiating on the surface and then the shaft
of pure serene light broke through from seemingly infinite depths.
Boris plunged in his hand and drew out an exquisite marble thing,
blue-veined, rose-tinted, and glistening with opalescent drops.
“Child’s play,” he muttered, and looked wearily, longingly at me,—as
if I could answer such questions! But Jack Scott came in and entered
into the “game,” as he called it, with ardour. Nothing would do but to
try the experiment on the white rabbit then and there. I was willing
that Boris should find distraction from his cares, but I hated to
see the life go out of a warm, living creature and I declined to be
present. Picking up a book at random, I sat down in the studio to read.
Alas! I had found _The King in Yellow_. After a few moments, which
seemed ages, I was putting it away with a nervous shudder, when Boris
and Jack came in bringing their marble rabbit. At the same time the
bell rang above, and a cry came from the sick-room. Boris was gone like
a flash, and the next moment he called, “Jack, run for the doctor;
bring him back with you. Alec, come here.”
I went and stood at her door. A frightened maid came out in haste and
ran away to fetch some remedy. Geneviève, sitting bolt upright, with
crimson cheeks and glittering eyes, babbled incessantly and resisted
Boris’ gentle restraint. He called me to help. At my first touch she
sighed and sank back, closing her eyes, and then—then—as we still
bent above her, she opened them again, looked straight into Boris’
face—poor fever-crazed girl!—and told her secret. At the same instant
our three lives turned into new channels; the bond that held us so
long together snapped for ever and a new bond was forged in its place,
for she had spoken my name, and as the fever tortured her, her heart
poured out its load of hidden sorrow. Amazed and dumb I bowed my head,
while my face burned like a live coal, and the blood surged in my
ears, stupefying me with its clamour. Incapable of movement, incapable
of speech, I listened to her feverish words in an agony of shame and
sorrow. I could not silence her, I could not look at Boris. Then I felt
an arm upon my shoulder, and Boris turned a bloodless face to mine.
“It is not your fault, Alec; don’t grieve so if she loves you—” but
he could not finish; and as the doctor stepped swiftly into the room,
saying—“Ah, the fever!” I seized Jack Scott and hurried him to the
street, saying, “Boris would rather be alone.” We crossed the street
to our own apartments, and that night, seeing I was going to be ill
too, he went for the doctor again. The last thing I recollect with any
distinctness was hearing Jack say, “For Heaven’s sake, doctor, what
ails him, to wear a face like that?” and I thought of _The King in
Yellow_ and the Pallid Mask.
I was very ill, for the strain of two years which I had endured since
that fatal May morning when Geneviève murmured, “I love you, but I
think I love Boris best,” told on me at last. I had never imagined that
it could become more than I could endure. Outwardly tranquil, I had
deceived myself. Although the inward battle raged night after night,
and I, lying alone in my room, cursed myself for rebellious thoughts
unloyal to Boris and unworthy of Geneviève, the morning always brought
relief, and I returned to Geneviève and to my dear Boris with a heart
washed clean by the tempests of the night.
Never in word or deed or thought while with them had I betrayed my
sorrow even to myself.
The mask of self-deception was no longer a mask for me, it was a part
of me. Night lifted it, laying bare the stifled truth below; but there
was no one to see except myself, and when the day broke the mask fell
back again of its own accord. These thoughts passed through my troubled
mind as I lay sick, but they were hopelessly entangled with visions of
white creatures, heavy as stone, crawling about in Boris’ basin,—of
the wolf’s head on the rug, foaming and snapping at Geneviève, who
lay smiling beside it. I thought, too, of the King in Yellow wrapped
in the fantastic colours of his tattered mantle, and that bitter
cry of Cassilda, “Not upon us, oh King, not upon us!” Feverishly I
struggled to put it from me, but I saw the lake of Hali, thin and
blank, without a ripple or wind to stir it, and I saw the towers of
Carcosa behind the moon. Aldebaran, the Hyades, Alar, Hastur, glided
through the cloud-rifts which fluttered and flapped as they passed
like the scolloped tatters of the King in Yellow. Among all these,
one sane thought persisted. It never wavered, no matter what else was
going on in my disordered mind, that my chief reason for existing was
to meet some requirement of Boris and Geneviève. What this obligation
was, its nature, was never clear; sometimes it seemed to be protection,
sometimes support, through a great crisis. Whatever it seemed to be
for the time, its weight rested only on me, and I was never so ill or
so weak that I did not respond with my whole soul. There were always
crowds of faces about me, mostly strange, but a few I recognized, Boris
among them. Afterward they told me that this could not have been, but I
know that once at least he bent over me. It was only a touch, a faint
echo of his voice, then the clouds settled back on my senses, and I
lost him, but he _did_ stand there and bend over me _once_ at least.
At last, one morning I awoke to find the sunlight falling across my
bed, and Jack Scott reading beside me. I had not strength enough to
speak aloud, neither could I think, much less remember, but I could
smile feebly, as Jack’s eye met mine, and when he jumped up and asked
eagerly if I wanted anything, I could whisper, “Yes—Boris.” Jack moved
to the head of my bed, and leaned down to arrange my pillow: I did not
see his face, but he answered heartily, “You must wait, Alec; you are
too weak to see even Boris.”
I waited and I grew strong; in a few days I was able to see whom I
would, but meanwhile I had thought and remembered. From the moment
when all the past grew clear again in my mind, I never doubted what I
should do when the time came, and I felt sure that Boris would have
resolved upon the same course so far as he was concerned; as for what
pertained to me alone, I knew he would see that also as I did. I no
longer asked for any one. I never inquired why no message came from
them; why during the week I lay there, waiting and growing stronger, I
never heard their name spoken. Preoccupied with my own searchings for
the right way, and with my feeble but determined fight against despair,
I simply acquiesced in Jack’s reticence, taking for granted that he was
afraid to speak of them, lest I should turn unruly and insist on seeing
them. Meanwhile I said over and over to myself, how would it be when
life began again for us all? We would take up our relations exactly
as they were before Geneviève fell ill. Boris and I would look into
each other’s eyes, and there would be neither rancour nor cowardice
nor mistrust in that glance. I would be with them again for a little
while in the dear intimacy of their home, and then, without pretext or
explanation, I would disappear from their lives for ever. Boris would
know; Geneviève—the only comfort was that she would never know. It
seemed, as I thought it over, that I had found the meaning of that
sense of obligation which had persisted all through my delirium, and
the only possible answer to it. So, when I was quite ready, I beckoned
Jack to me one day, and said—
“Jack, I want Boris at once; and take my dearest greeting to
Geneviève....”
When at last he made me understand that they were both dead, I fell
into a wild rage that tore all my little convalescent strength to
atoms. I raved and cursed myself into a relapse, from which I crawled
forth some weeks afterward a boy of twenty-one who believed that his
youth was gone for ever. I seemed to be past the capability of further
suffering, and one day when Jack handed me a letter and the keys to
Boris’ house, I took them without a tremor and asked him to tell me
all. It was cruel of me to ask him, but there was no help for it, and
he leaned wearily on his thin hands, to reopen the wound which could
never entirely heal. He began very quietly—
“Alec, unless you have a clue that I know nothing about, you will not
be able to explain any more than I what has happened. I suspect that
you would rather not hear these details, but you must learn them, else
I would spare you the relation. God knows I wish I could be spared the
telling. I shall use few words.
“That day when I left you in the doctor’s care and came back to Boris,
I found him working on the ‘Fates.’ Geneviève, he said, was sleeping
under the influence of drugs. She had been quite out of her mind, he
said. He kept on working, not talking any more, and I watched him.
Before long, I saw that the third figure of the group—the one looking
straight ahead, out over the world—bore his face; not as you ever saw
it, but as it looked then and to the end. This is one thing for which I
should like to find an explanation, but I never shall.
“Well, he worked and I watched him in silence, and we went on that way
until nearly midnight. Then we heard the door open and shut sharply,
and a swift rush in the next room. Boris sprang through the doorway
and I followed; but we were too late. She lay at the bottom of the
pool, her hands across her breast. Then Boris shot himself through the
heart.” Jack stopped speaking, drops of sweat stood under his eyes, and
his thin cheeks twitched. “I carried Boris to his room. Then I went
back and let that hellish fluid out of the pool, and turning on all the
water, washed the marble clean of every drop. When at length I dared
descend the steps, I found her lying there as white as snow. At last,
when I had decided what was best to do, I went into the laboratory,
and first emptied the solution in the basin into the waste-pipe; then
I poured the contents of every jar and bottle after it. There was
wood in the fireplace, so I built a fire, and breaking the locks of
Boris’ cabinet I burnt every paper, notebook and letter that I found
there. With a mallet from the studio I smashed to pieces all the empty
bottles, then loading them into a coal-scuttle, I carried them to the
cellar and threw them over the red-hot bed of the furnace. Six times
I made the journey, and at last, not a vestige remained of anything
which might again aid in seeking for the formula which Boris had found.
Then at last I dared call the doctor. He is a good man, and together we
struggled to keep it from the public. Without him I never could have
succeeded. At last we got the servants paid and sent away into the
country, where old Rosier keeps them quiet with stories of Boris’ and
Geneviève’s travels in distant lands, from whence they will not return
for years. We buried Boris in the little cemetery of Sèvres. The doctor
is a good creature, and knows when to pity a man who can bear no more.
He gave his certificate of heart disease and asked no questions of me.”
Then, lifting his head from his hands, he said, “Open the letter, Alec;
it is for us both.”
I tore it open. It was Boris’ will dated a year before. He left
everything to Geneviève, and in case of her dying childless, I was to
take control of the house in the Rue Sainte-Cécile, and Jack Scott the
management at Ept. On our deaths the property reverted to his mother’s
family in Russia, with the exception of the sculptured marbles executed
by himself. These he left to me.
The page blurred under our eyes, and Jack got up and walked to the
window. Presently he returned and sat down again. I dreaded to hear
what he was going to say, but he spoke with the same simplicity and
gentleness.
“Geneviève lies before the Madonna in the marble room. The Madonna
bends tenderly above her, and Geneviève smiles back into that calm face
that never would have been except for her.”
His voice broke, but he grasped my hand, saying, “Courage, Alec.” Next
morning he left for Ept to fulfil his trust.
IV
The same evening I took the keys and went into the house I had known
so well. Everything was in order, but the silence was terrible. Though
I went twice to the door of the marble room, I could not force myself
to enter. It was beyond my strength. I went into the smoking-room and
sat down before the spinet. A small lace handkerchief lay on the keys,
and I turned away, choking. It was plain I could not stay, so I locked
every door, every window, and the three front and back gates, and
went away. Next morning Alcide packed my valise, and leaving him in
charge of my apartments I took the Orient express for Constantinople.
During the two years that I wandered through the East, at first, in our
letters, we never mentioned Geneviève and Boris, but gradually their
names crept in. I recollect particularly a passage in one of Jack’s
letters replying to one of mine—
“What you tell me of seeing Boris bending over you while you lay ill,
and feeling his touch on your face, and hearing his voice, of course
troubles me. This that you describe must have happened a fortnight
after he died. I say to myself that you were dreaming, that it was part
of your delirium, but the explanation does not satisfy me, nor would it
you.”
Toward the end of the second year a letter came from Jack to me in
India so unlike anything that I had ever known of him that I decided
to return at once to Paris. He wrote: “I am well, and sell all my
pictures as artists do who have no need of money. I have not a care of
my own, but I am more restless than if I had. I am unable to shake off
a strange anxiety about you. It is not apprehension, it is rather a
breathless expectancy—of what, God knows! I can only say it is wearing
me out. Nights I dream always of you and Boris. I can never recall
anything afterward, but I wake in the morning with my heart beating,
and all day the excitement increases until I fall asleep at night
to recall the same experience. I am quite exhausted by it, and have
determined to break up this morbid condition. I must see you. Shall I
go to Bombay, or will you come to Paris?”
I telegraphed him to expect me by the next steamer.
When we met I thought he had changed very little; I, he insisted,
looked in splendid health. It was good to hear his voice again, and as
we sat and chatted about what life still held for us, we felt that it
was pleasant to be alive in the bright spring weather.
We stayed in Paris together a week, and then I went for a week to Ept
with him, but first of all we went to the cemetery at Sèvres, where
Boris lay.
“Shall we place the ‘Fates’ in the little grove above him?” Jack asked,
and I answered—
“I think only the ‘Madonna’ should watch over Boris’ grave.” But Jack
was none the better for my home-coming. The dreams of which he could
not retain even the least definite outline continued, and he said that
at times the sense of breathless expectancy was suffocating.
“You see I do you harm and not good,” I said. “Try a change without
me.” So he started alone for a ramble among the Channel Islands, and I
went back to Paris. I had not yet entered Boris’ house, now mine, since
my return, but I knew it must be done. It had been kept in order by
Jack; there were servants there, so I gave up my own apartment and went
there to live. Instead of the agitation I had feared, I found myself
able to paint there tranquilly. I visited all the rooms—all but one.
I could not bring myself to enter the marble room where Geneviève lay,
and yet I felt the longing growing daily to look upon her face, to
kneel beside her.
One April afternoon, I lay dreaming in the smoking-room, just as
I had lain two years before, and mechanically I looked among the
tawny Eastern rugs for the wolf-skin. At last I distinguished the
pointed ears and flat cruel head, and I thought of my dream where
I saw Geneviève lying beside it. The helmets still hung against
the threadbare tapestry, among them the old Spanish morion which I
remembered Geneviève had once put on when we were amusing ourselves
with the ancient bits of mail. I turned my eyes to the spinet; every
yellow key seemed eloquent of her caressing hand, and I rose, drawn
by the strength of my life’s passion to the sealed door of the marble
room. The heavy doors swung inward under my trembling hands. Sunlight
poured through the window, tipping with gold the wings of Cupid, and
lingered like a nimbus over the brows of the Madonna. Her tender face
bent in compassion over a marble form so exquisitely pure that I knelt
and signed myself. Geneviève lay in the shadow under the Madonna, and
yet, through her white arms, I saw the pale azure vein, and beneath her
softly clasped hands the folds of her dress were tinged with rose, as
if from some faint warm light within her breast.
Bending, with a breaking heart, I touched the marble drapery with my
lips, then crept back into the silent house.
A maid came and brought me a letter, and I sat down in the little
conservatory to read it; but as I was about to break the seal, seeing
the girl lingering, I asked her what she wanted.
She stammered something about a white rabbit that had been caught in
the house, and asked what should be done with it. I told her to let it
loose in the walled garden behind the house, and opened my letter. It
was from Jack, but so incoherent that I thought he must have lost his
reason. It was nothing but a series of prayers to me not to leave the
house until he could get back; he could not tell me why, there were the
dreams, he said—he could explain nothing, but he was sure that I must
not leave the house in the Rue Sainte-Cécile.
As I finished reading I raised my eyes and saw the same maid-servant
standing in the doorway holding a glass dish in which two gold-fish
were swimming: “Put them back into the tank and tell me what you mean
by interrupting me,” I said.
With a half-suppressed whimper she emptied water and fish into an
aquarium at the end of the conservatory, and turning to me asked my
permission to leave my service. She said people were playing tricks on
her, evidently with a design of getting her into trouble; the marble
rabbit had been stolen and a live one had been brought into the house;
the two beautiful marble fish were gone, and she had just found those
common live things flopping on the dining-room floor. I reassured her
and sent her away, saying I would look about myself. I went into the
studio; there was nothing there but my canvases and some casts, except
the marble of the Easter lily. I saw it on a table across the room.
Then I strode angrily over to it. But the flower I lifted from the
table was fresh and fragile and filled the air with perfume.
Then suddenly I comprehended, and sprang through the hallway to the
marble room. The doors flew open, the sunlight streamed into my face,
and through it, in a heavenly glory, the Madonna smiled, as Geneviève
lifted her flushed face from her marble couch and opened her sleepy
eyes.
IN