Part 20

Then Lily read to her for a time out of Faure’s History of Art which undoubtedly bored her but gave Madame Gigon the greatest pleasure; and at last she left for her mysterious lunch. A little while later there arose from below stairs the tinkling melodies of the overture to Orpheus in the Underworld. Somewhere among the piles of old music in the drawing-room closet, Ellen had discovered the whole score and she played it now in a wild good humor. Sometimes the music became actually noisy in its triumphant violence. It was the playing of a woman who had achieved a victory.

LXII

It is possible that Madame Blaise felt for Lily the admiration which Madame Gigon attributed to her, but she was such a queer old thing that it was impossible ever to know for a certainty. It could not be said that she revealed these sentiments by any open demonstration, or even by an occasional word of approval. There are women whose manner of showing their devotion assumes an inverted character; it takes to displaying itself in sharp criticisms of the object they love or admire. There are women who nag their lovers, who deprecate the charms of their own children, who sharply denounce the behavior of their dearest friends. And if there be any truth in this theory of inverted demonstration, it could be said that Madame Blaise admired Lily. Indeed judging from her behavior it could be said that she experienced a profound affection for the younger woman.

The old woman seldom addressed Lily, yet when Lily politely assumed the initiative and inquired after the health of Madame Blaise or her plans for the summer, Madame Blaise was flattered and smiled with all the warmth of an August sun. To Madame Gigon she criticized Lily unmercifully. She called her indolent, without ambition. She accused her of having wasted her life and permitted her beauty to fade without using its power. It was not true that Lily had faded, yet Madame Blaise was convinced of it. To have heard her talk, one would have thought Lily was a withered old harridan.

“I understand these things,” she told Madame Gigon confidentially, “because I was a beauty myself ... a famous beauty.” And the memory of her triumphs led her to bridle and cast a glance at the nearest mirror. Yet she never spoke of these things to Lily, whose greater youth, already turning into middle-age, seemed to inspire the old woman with an awe tinged by actual worship.

“Why does she bury herself among these old women?” she would say. “Has she no energy ... no zest for life? If only she could capture some of Mees Tolliver’s _élan_. Mees Tolliver could spare her a great deal and be the more charming for it.”

And to all this, Madame Gigon had one answer which it was her habit to repeat over and over again. “Madame Shane is content. Is not that enough? What more can any of us wish upon this earth?”

So it ran, this perpetual and carping interest of Madame Blaise. Although she avoided Lily, she could not resist discussing her. And Madame Gigon, believing firmly that Madame Blaise was a little cracked, never mentioned these things to Lily.

There hung about Madame Blaise something of the mystery which envelopes people suffering from delusions. Not only was it impossible to know when she was lying and when she was speaking the truth ... it was impossible even to say, “Madame Blaise is thus and so. She is mean or she is benevolent. She is hostile or she is friendly.” It was impossible to reach any sensible opinion concerning her. She was subject to the most absurd whims which rendered impossible any anticipation of her actions. Besides, she lived in a world of her own which resembled in no way the world of her friends, so bound up in shopkeepers, food, laundry, housekeeping, etc. Her world was inhabited by all sorts of fantastic and imaginary creatures. She believed passionately that she was still a fine figure of a woman. Not even a mirror could persuade her otherwise. She asserted with a challenging pugnacity that she had once played a prominent part in European politics, and hinted that she was the last of the women who would go down in history as creatures who ruled kings; but what it was she had done or when she had done it, no one could discover. The tragedy was that no one took her seriously. When one spoke of her, there was always a suspicion in the speech of that comic gesture which Madame Gigon used to indicate that her friend was a little cracked. Yet they were kind to her. No one allowed her to suspect that she was accepted generally as a mere pack of highly animated hallucinations. Indeed her _faiblesse_ gave her the whip hand over her friends. People humored her. They submitted to her insults with a calm good-nature.

When she began one of her long tales, people smiled and feigned interest and remarked, “How wonderful! Who would have thought it?” Or with mock protests, they would say, “But my dear Madame Blaise, you are still a fine figure of a woman.” And she would go off home delighted that she had managed to preserve her figure and her youthful complexion, even if a bit of rouge was at times necessary. Her delight was always apparent. It was visible in every line of her seamed old face.

There were all sorts of stories concerning Madame Blaise, stories of the most fantastic and incredible nature, stories that she was well known in the generation which she had outlived, stories even that she had been the mistress of this or that politician. Indeed some of the most fantastic tales were contributed slyly by Madame Blaise herself. But no one really knew anything of her youth; and although every one repeated the stories with a certain relish, there was no one who really believed them.

The old women who came to Madame Gigon’s salon knew that she had come to Paris some twenty years earlier as the widow of a merchant from Marseilles. She was rich, respected, and at that time seemed wholly in her right mind, save for an overfondness to surround herself with mystery. A respectable Bonapartist, the uncle of Captain Marchand, acted as her sponsor. She settled herself presently into the respectable circle. She had her _salon_ and all went well. By now she had been accepted for so long a time that she seemed always to have been a part of that neat little society, so neat, so compact and so circumspect. She was a figure. Madame Blaise? Why, of course, every one knew Madame Blaise ... always. What had gone before became quickly veiled in the mists of the past, and Madame Blaise, whose life may have been after all one of the most romantic and exciting, found herself a part of a singularly dull and prosaic society.

Lily could have known no more than this concerning the old woman. Indeed it is probable that she knew even less, for her good nature and her tolerant indifference had long since stifled all her curiosity concerning people. She went to Madame Blaise on that Tuesday afternoon to please Madame Gigon, because she had no other engagement, and because she was accustomed to obliging her friends. She may even have suspected that the visit would give pleasure to Madame Blaise herself. She arrived very late as usual (it was impossible for Lily to be punctual) having lingered a long time over lunch and made an expensive tour of the shops in the Rue de la Paix.

In a little enclosure shaded by old trees and high, neglected shrubbery in Passy five minutes walk from the Trocadero, Madame Blaise had her house. The enclosure was shared by two other houses, less pretentious, which stood respectfully apart at a little distance. The dwelling was built of wood in imitation of a Swiss chalet, and ornamented with little carved balconies and fantastic ornaments in bizarre exaggeration of some cowherd’s house on the mountains above Lucerne. A wall ran about the enclosure with an opening which was barred at night by a massive iron gate. Here Lily stepped down from the fiacre, passing, on her way through the gate, Madame de Cyon and the Marchands, who were leaving.

“You are late,” observed Madame de Cyon, taking in Lily’s costume with her small green eyes.

“I have been hurrying all the way,” replied Lily. “I was kept by business.”

Captain Marchand and his wife bowed gravely.

“Every one has gone,” observed Madame de Cyon, waiting as though curious to see what Lily would do.

“Well, I must go in.... Madame Gigon was too ill to come. She asked me to convey her compliments.”

Madame de Cyon brightened. “Nothing serious, I hope.”

“No,” said Lily. “Madame is an old woman ...” And then politely, “She tells me Monsieur de Cyon is back from the Balkans.”

“Yes. He is full of wars and intrigues. You must come to me on Thursday. He has asked for you.”

Lily smiled. “Please remember me to him. I find him very interesting.” She turned suddenly. “But I must hurry on. It is disgusting to be so late. Good-by until Thursday.”

Madame de Cyon laid a hand on her arm. “Madame Blaise was eager that you should come. She has been asking for you.”

“It is good of her,” said Lily politely, at the same time moving away.

“Good-by until Thursday,” said Madame de Cyon, and as Lily hurried into the shadows of the enclosure the Russian woman turned and looked after her, her small green eyes alight with an interest in which there was a shade of malice and envy. It was well known that de Cyon admired Madame Shane.

When Lily had disappeared in the thick shrubbery surrounding the house, Madame de Cyon made a clucking noise and passed through the gate into the street on her way to the Metro. She had lost money again to the Marchands. She was planning to economize.

LXIII

At the door Lily was admitted by a fat Bretonne maidservant who ushered her through a dark hall and up a dark stairway where the light was so bad that she was unable to distinguish any of the furnishings. It might have been a tunnel for all the impression it made upon a visitor. At a turn of the stairs she was forced to press her body against the wall in order to allow pass two strangers whom she had never seen at Madame Gigon’s salon. At the top she was led through another hall lighted by a sort of chalice, with a gas flame burning inside a red globe suspended by Moorish chains from the low ceiling. Here it was possible to discern the most enormous quantity of furniture and decorations, bronze ornaments, bits of chinoiserie, pictures of all sizes in enormous gilt frames, umbrellas, cloaks, chairs, pillows and what not. At the end of the hall the maidservant opened the door of a large square room and silently indicated Madame Blaise who was seated before a gentle charcoal fire. Lily entered and the servant closed the door behind her.

Madame Blaise, dressed in old-fashioned gown of some thick black stuff, sat on the edge of her chair like a crow upon a wall. Her cheeks and lips were rouged and this, together with the red glow from the fire and the thick mass of dyed red hair, gave her an appearance completely bizarre and inhuman. She could not have heard Lily enter, for she did not look up until the younger woman came quite close to her and said, “Madame Blaise!”

“Ah!” said the old woman suddenly, as if waking from a dream. “It’s you.”

Lily was smiling and apologetic. She lied about being detained on business. She explained Madame Gigon’s indisposition. Altogether she made herself charming, agreeable and insincere.

“Yes,” said Madame Blaise. “Madame Gigon is old,” in a tone which implied “much older than I shall ever be.”

“I shan’t stay but a moment,” said Lily, sitting in a chair on the opposite side of the fire.

“No, I suppose not.”

And then a silence fell during which it seemed that Madame Blaise returned again to her dream. Lily took off her gloves, straightened her hat and fell to regarding the room. It was an amazing room, full of shadows and indefinable and shapeless objects which danced in the dim gaslight. Gradually these things began to take shape. There were all sorts of chairs and tables and cushions of every fashion and period. The room fairly crawled with furniture. Near the fire stood a red lacquer table, exquisitely made, laden with the remnants of tea--a chocolate pot, a tea urn with the lamp extinguished and the tea growing cold, plates with sandwiches and gateaux. The windows were covered by thick curtains of some brocaded stuff which were drawn now to shut out the twilight. But the most remarkable feature of the room was the number of pictures. They hung in every conceivable nook and corner, standing upright in little frames of gilt bronze, tortoiseshell or ebony, leaning against the walls and against the mirror over the fireplace. Some, judging from the flamboyance and heroic note of the poses, were pictures of actresses and opera singers. Others from the pomposity of the subject were undoubtedly politicians. There were pictures of ladies in crinolines and gentlemen with beards or flowing mustaches. Some were photographs, faded and worn; others were sketches or prints clipped out of journals. There were at least a half dozen portraits in oil of varying degrees of excellence.

Lily occupied herself for a time in studying the room. At last Madame Blaise. “I am glad the others have gone. They weary me--inexpressibly.” She leaned forward a little in her chair. “You understand I have had an interesting life. These others ...” She made a stiff gesture of contempt. “What have they known of life? They go round and round like squirrels in a cage ... always the same little circle. Always the same dull people.”

Lily smiled agreeably. She was remarkably beautiful in the soft light. “I understand,” she said, with the air of humoring the old woman.

Madame Blaise rose suddenly. “But I forgot.... You must forgive me for not asking you sooner. Will you have some tea or some chocolate?”

“Nothing,” said Lily. “I must think of my figure.”

Madame Blaise sat down again. “I am glad you have come ...” And after a little pause, she added, “Alone.” A frown contracted her brow beneath a neatly clipped bang. “You understand.... I think we have some things in common ... you and I.”

Lily still sat complacently. “I’m sure we have!” she said, purely to oblige her companion.

“But not what you suppose,” said Madame Blaise looking at her sharply. “Not at all what you suppose. I am not speaking of the youth which we share ... you and I. I am speaking rather of the qualities which have nothing to do with youth. I mean the capacity to love.” This sentiment she uttered with a look of profound mystery. In spite of her eccentricity, there gleamed now and then through the cloud of mystery traces of a grand manner, a certain elusive distinction. It showed in a turn of the head, a gesture, an intonation ... nothing very tangible, indeed, little more than a fleeting illusion.

Lily’s eye began to wander once more, round and round the room to this picture and that, hesitating for a moment on one or another of the amazing collection which caught her fancy. When Madame Blaise fell silent once more for a long interval, she remarked,

“But have you no picture of yourself among all these?”

“No,” replied the old woman. “I am coming to that later.” And without pausing, she added, “You have had lovers of course.” And when Lily, astounded by this sudden observation, stirred nervously in her chair, Madame Blaise raised her hand. “Oh, I know. I am not going to reproach you. I approve, you understand. It is what beautiful women are made for.” Her eyes took on an uncanny look of shrewdness.

“Don’t fancy that I am ignorant. Some people of course say that I am crazy. I am not. It’s the others who are crazy, so they think that I am. But I understand. You have a lover now.... He is Madame Gigon’s cousin.” She looked fiercely into Lily’s face which had grown deathly pale at the crazy outburst of the old woman. She appeared frightened now. She did not even protest.

“I have watched,” continued Madame Blaise, in the most intimate manner possible. “I understand these things. I know what a glance can mean ... a gesture, a sudden unguarded word. You, my dear, have not always been as cautious, as discreet, as you might have been. You needn’t fear. I shall say nothing. I shall not betray you.” She reached over and touched Lily’s hand with an air of great confidence. “You see, we are alike. We are as one. It is necessary for us to fight these other women ... like de Cyon. She is a cat, you understand.”

Lily, all her complacency vanished now, glanced at the watch on her wrist. She stood up and walked to the fireplace in an effort to break the way toward escape. She was, it appeared, unable to collect her wits so that she might deal with Madame Blaise.

“You must not go yet,” continued the harridan. “I have so much to tell you.” She pursed her withered lips reflectively and put her head a little on one side. “When I was a young girl, I was very like you. You can see that my hair is still the same. People notice and remark how beautifully it has kept its color. Oh yes, many have spoken to me of it. There is nothing like preserving your beauty.” And at this she chuckled a little wildly with an air of savage triumph.

LXIV

So she talked for what must have seemed to Lily hour upon hour. When the younger woman betrayed any sign of leaving, Madame Blaise thrust her tall thin body between her and the door. Even if Lily had desired to speak she would have found small opportunity, for Madame Blaise never once stopped talking. It was as if all the talk of years, repressed and hidden, was suddenly rushing forth in a torrent. The room became intolerably stuffy from the burning gas. Lily’s head began to ache and her face to grow more and more pale. If she had been less pleasant by nature she would have made her way by force past the old woman and out into the open air. As it was, she kept hoping, no doubt, that Madame Blaise would come to an end of her talk, that some one would come in and interrupt her ... the maid perhaps ... any one. She no longer heard what Madame Blaise was saying. The talk came to her in fragments, the inexpressibly boring chatter of a cracked old woman. To break the monotony she took up the pictures on the mantelpiece and began to examine them. During a brief pause, she observed. “Your pictures are interesting, Madame Blaise. I should like to call again when I have more time, in order to see them all.”

“Ah, yes,” said the old woman. “So they are ... so they are. The men ... they were not all lovers you understand. But I might have had them for lovers by the raising of my finger.”

“This one,” said Lily, holding up the portrait of a heavily built man wearing the mustachios of a dragoon. “He is interesting.”

“Yes ... yes. He was a Spaniard ... a nobleman, very aristocratic. Dead now.... Extraordinary how many of them are dead!”

Then all at once the attention of Madame Blaise was arrested by the most extraordinary change in her companion. So remarkable was the change that the old woman actually stopped talking and fell to observing the face of Madame Shane.

Lily held in her hand a small photograph, very faded and soiled, of a man in a black coat with sharp eyes, a high brow and a full black beard. It bore in one corner the stamp of a well-known photographer of the seventies, a gentleman with an establishment in the Galerie des Panoramas. It was a handsome face, fascinating, fanatic, which at once arrested the attention. Beyond all doubt it was the mate of a photograph which Julia Shane, dying, had left to her daughter. Across the face of the one Lily held in her hand was written, “_A la Reine de la Nuit de son Cavalier Irlandais_.” The ink was faded, almost illegible.

“You find that gentleman especially interesting?” asked Madame Blaise in a tone of unbearable curiosity.

For a moment Lily did not reply. She regarded the photograph closely, turning it this way and that under the gaslight.

“Yes,” she said at last in a low, hushed voice. “Who is he?”

Madame Blaise bridled. “He was a gentleman ... very interesting,” she said. “He admired me ... greatly. The inscription? It was a joke between us. He was full of deviltry and fun (_un vrai diable ... tout gamin_). I have forgotten what the joke was.... He was forced to leave the country by some unpleasantness.... I too went away for time.” And again her eyes narrowed in a mysterious look, invoking romantic, glamorous things. Lily, the picture still clasped in her hand, sat down weakly.

Above all else, old photographs have the power of calling up dead memories. It is so perhaps because they are so terribly, so cruelly, realistic. Those things which the memory, desiring to forget, succeeds in losing among the shadows of time, remain in a photograph so long as it exists ... the posture of a head, the betraying affected gesture of a hand, the manner of carrying oneself, the arrogance of countenance, the habit of dress ... all these things survive on a bit of paper no larger perhaps than the palm of one’s hand.

The photograph with “_A la Reine de la Nuit_” written across it must have invoked forgotten things ... memories of John Shane’s savage temper and whimsical kindnesses, of terrible scenes between him and his proud wife, of his contempt for the anemic Irene and his admiration for the glowing Lily, of a thousand things distant yet appallingly vivid.

While Lily sat thoughtful and silent, Madame Blaise kept up a stream of hysterical chatter, turning crazily from one subject to another, from personalities to anecdotes, from advice to warning. Lily heard none of it. When she had recovered a little, she said, “This gentleman interests me. I wish you could tell me more of him.”

But Madame Blaise shook her head ruefully. “I have forgotten so much,” she said. “It is terrible how one forgets. Do you know?” And again the look of mad confidence came into her face. “I have forgotten his name. What is it he calls himself in the inscription?”