One morning, six months later, in April, I was busy writing in my study on the roof of my house at Cap Ferrat when a servant came up to say that the police of St. Jean (my neighbouring village) were below and wished to see me. I was vexed at being interrupted and could not imagine what they wanted. My conscience was at ease and I had already given my subscription to the Benevolent Fund. In return I had received a card, which I kept in my car so that if I was stopped for exceeding the speed limit or found parked on the wrong side of a street I could unostentatiously let it be seen while producing my driving licence and so escape with an indulgent caution. 1 thought it more likely then that one of my servants had been the victim of an anonymous denunciation, that being one of the amenities of French life, because her papers were not in order; but being on good terms with the local cops, whom I never allowed to leave my house without a glass of wine to speed them on their way, I anticipated no great difficulty. But they, for they worked in pairs, had come on a very different errand.
After we had shaken hands and inquired after our respective healths, the senior of the two—he was called a brigadier and had one of the most imposing moustaches I ever saw—fished a notebook out of his pocket. He turned over the pages with a dirty thumb.
"Does the name Sophie Macdonald say something to you?" he asked.
"I know a person of that name," I replied cautiously.
"We have just been in telephonic communication with the police station at Toulon and the chief inspector requests you to betake yourself there [vous prie de vous y rendre] without delay."
"For what reason?" I asked. "I am only slightly acquainted with Mrs. Macdonald."
I jumped to the conclusion that she had got into trouble, probably connected with opium, but I didn't see why I should be mixed up in it.
"That is not my affair. There is no doubt that you have had dealings with this woman. It appears that she has been missing from her lodgings for five days and a body has been fished out of the harbour which the police have reason to believe is hers. They want you to identify it."
A cold shiver passed through me. I was not, however, too much surprised. It was likely enough that the life she led would incline her in a moment of depression to put an end to herself.
"But surely she can be identified by her clothes and her papers."
"She was found stark naked with her throat cut."
"Good God!" I was horrified. I reflected for an instant.
For all I knew the police could force me to go and I thought I had better submit with good grace. "Very well. I will take the first train I can."
I looked up a timetable and found that I could catch one that would get me to Toulon between five and six. The brigadier said he would phone the chief inspector to that effect and asked me on my arrival to go straight to the police station. I did no more work that morning. I packed a few necessary things in a suitcase and after luncheon drove to the station.
On presenting myself at the headquarters of the Toulon police I was immediately ushered into the room of the chief inspector. He was sitting at a table, a heavy, swarthy man of saturnine appearance whom I took to be a Corsican. He threw me, perhaps from force of habit, a suspicious glance; but noticing the ribbon of the Legion of Honour, which I had taken the precaution to put in my buttonhole, with an unctuous smile asked me to sit down and proceeded to make profuse apologies for having been obliged to incommode a person of my distinction. Adopt-ing a similar tone, I assured him that nothing could make me happier than to be of service to him. Then we got down to brass tacks and he resumed his brusque, rather insolent manner. Looking at some papers before him, he said:
"This is a dirty business. It appears that the woman Macdonald had a very bad reputation. She was a drunkard, a dope fiend and a nymphomaniac. She was in the habit of sleeping not only with sailors off the ships, but with the riffraff of the town. How does it happen that a person of your age and respectability should be acquainted with such a character?"
I was inclined to tell him that it was no business of his, but from a diligent perusal of hundreds of detective stories I have learnt that it is well to be civil with the police.
"I knew her very little. I met her when she was a girl in Chicago, where she afterwards married a man of good position. I met her again in Paris a year or so ago through friends of hers and mine."
I had been wondering how on earth he had ever connected me with Sophie, but now he pushed forward a book.
"This volume was found in her room. If you will kindly look at the dedication you will see that it hardly suggests that your acquaintance with her was as slight as you claim."
It was the translation of that novel of mine that she had seen in the bookshop window and asked me to write in. Under my own name I had written "Mignonne, allons voir si la rose," because it was the first thing that occurred to me. It certainly looked a trifle familiar.
"If you are suggesting that I was her lover, you are mistaken."
“It would be no affair of mine," he replied, and then with a gleam in his eye: "And without wishing to say anything offensive to you I must add that from what I have heard of her proclivities I should not say you were her type. But it is evident that you would not address a perfect stranger as mignonne."
"That line, monsieur le commissaire, is the first of a celebrated poem by Ronsard, whose works I am certain are familiar to a man of your education and culture. I wrote it because I felt sure she knew the poem and would recall the following lines, which might suggest to her that the life she was leading was, to say the least of it, indiscreet."
"Evidently I have read Ronsard at school, but with all the work I have to do I confess that the lines you refer to have escaped my memory."
I repeated the first stanza and knowing very well he had never heard the poet's name till I mentioned it, had no fear that he would recall the last one which can hardly be taken as an incitement to virtue.
"She was apparently a woman of some education. We found a number of detective stories in her room and two or three volumes of poetry. There was a Baudelaire and a Rimbaud and an English volume by someone called Eliot. Is he known?"
"Widely."
"I have no time to read poetry. In any case I cannot read English. If he is a good poet it is a pity he doesn't write in French, so that educated people could read him."
The thought of my chief inspector reading The Waste Land filled me with pleasure. Suddenly he pushed a snapshot towards me.
"Have you any idea who that is?"
I immediately recognized Larry. He was in bathing trunks, and the photograph, a recent one, had been taken, I guessed during the summer part of which he had spent with Isabel and Gray at Dinard. My first impulse was to say I did not know, for I wanted nothing less than to get Larry mixed up in this hateful business, but I reflected that if the police discovered his identity my assertion would look as if I thought there was something to hide.
"He's an American citizen called Laurence Darrell."
"It was the only photograph found among the woman's effects. What was the connection between them?"
"They both came from the same village near Chicago. They were childhood friends."
"But this photograph was taken not long ago, I suspect at a seaside resort in the North or on the West of France. It would be easy to discover the exact place. What is he, this individual?"
"An author," I said boldly. The inspector slightly raised his bushy eyebrows and I guessed that he did not attribute high morality to members of my calling. "Of independent means," I added to make it sound more respectable.
"Where is he now?"
Again I was tempted to say I didn't know, but again decided it would only make things awkward if I did. The French police may have many faults, but their system enables them to find anyone they want to without delay.
"He's living at Sanary."
The inspector looked up and it was clear that he was interested.
"Where?"
I had remembered Larry telling me that Auguste Cottet had lent him his cottage and on my return at Christmas I had written to ask him to come and stay with me for a while, but as I fully expected he had refused. I gave the inspector his address.
"I'll telephone to Sanary and have him brought here. It might be worth while to question him."
I could not but see that the inspector thought that here might be a suspect, but I was only inclined to laugh; I I was convinced that Larry could easily prove that he had nothing to do with the affair. I was anxious to hear more about Sophie's lamentable end, but the inspector only told me in somewhat greater detail what I already knew. Two fishermen had brought the body in. It was a romantic exaggeration of my local policeman's that it was stark naked. The murderer had left girdle and brassière. If Sophie had been dressed in the same way as I had seen her he had had to strip her only of her slacks and her jersey. There was nothing to identify her and the police had inserted a description in the local paper. This had brought a woman to the station who kept a small rooming-house in a back street, what the French call a maison de passe, to which men could bring women or boys. She was an agent of the police, who liked to know who frequented her house and what for. Sophie had been turned out of the hotel on the quay at which she was living when I ran across her because her conduct was more scandalous than even the tolerant proprietor could put up with. She had offered to engage a room with a tiny sitting-room beside it in the house of the woman I have just mentioned. It was more profitable to let it two or three times a night for short periods, but Sophie offered to pay so handsomely that the woman consented to rent it to her by the month. She came to the police station now to state that her tenant had been absent for several days; she had not bothered, thinking she had gone for a trip to Marseilles or to Ville-franche, where ships of the British fleet had lately arrived, an event that always attracted women, young and old, from all along the coast; but she had read the description of the deceased in the paper and thought it might apply to her tenant. She had been taken to see the body and after a trifling hesitation declared it was that of Sophie Macdonald.
"But if the body's been identified, what do you want me for?"
"Madame Bellet is a woman of high honourability and excellent character," said the inspector, "but she may have reasons for identifying the dead woman that we do not know; and in any case I think she should be seen by someone who was more closely connected with her so that the fact may be confirmed."
"Do you think you have any chance of catching the murderer?"
The inspector shrugged his massive shoulders.
"Naturally we are making inquiries. We have questioned a number of persons at the bars she used to go to. She may have been killed out of jealousy by a sailor whose ship has already left the port, or by a gangster for whatever money she had on her. It appears that sne always had on her a sum that would seem large to a man of that sort. It may be that some people have a strong suspicion who the culprit is, but in the circles she moved in it is unlikely that anyone will speak unless it is to his advantage. Consorting with the bad characters she did, such an end as she has come to was only too probable."
I had nothing to say to this. The inspector asked me to come next morning at nine o'clock, by which time he would have seen "this gentleman of the photograph", after which a policeman would take us to the morgue to see the body.
"And how about burying her?"
"If after identifying the body you claim it as friends of the deceased and arc prepared to undertake the expense of the funeral yourselves, you will receive the necessary authorization."
"I'm sure that Mr. Darrell and I would like to have it as soon as possible."
"I quite understand. It is a sad story and it is better that the poor woman should be laid to rest without delay. And that reminds me that I have here the card of an under-taker who will arrange the matter for you on reasonable terms and with dispatch. I will just write a line on it so that he may give you every attention."
I was pretty sure he would get a rake-off on the amount paid, but I thanked him warmly, and when he had ushered me out with every expression of esteem I went forthwith to the address on the card. The undertaker was brisk and businesslike. I chose a coffin, neither the cheapest nor the most expensive, accepted his offer to get me two or three wreaths from a florist of his acquaintance—"to save monsieur a painful duty and out of respect for the dead," he said—and arranged for the hearse to be at the morgue at two o'clock next day. I could not but admire his efficiency when he told me that I need not trouble to see about a grave, he would do all that was necessary, and "Madame was a Protestant, I assume," furthermore he would, if I wished it, have a pastor waiting at the cemetery to read the burial service. But since I was a stranger and a foreigner he was sure that I would not take it amiss if he asked me to be good enough to give him a cheque in advance. He named a larger sum than I had foreseen, evidently expecting me to beat him down, and I discerned a look of surprise, perhaps even of disappointment, on his face when I took out my cheque-book and wrote out a cheque without demur.
I took a room at an hotel and next morning returned to the police station. I was kept waiting for some time and then was bidden to go into the chief inspector's office. I found Larry, looking grave and distressed, sitting in the chair I had sat in the day before. The inspector greeted me with joviality. I might have been a long-lost brother.
"Well, mon cher monsieur, your friend has answered all the questions it was my duty to put him with the utmost frankness. I have no reason to disbelieve his statement that he had not seen this poor woman for eighteen months. He has accounted for his movements during the last week in a perfectly satisfactory manner as well as for the fact that his photograph was found in her room. It was taken at Dinard and he happened to have it in his pocket one day when he was lunching with her. I have had excellent reports of the young man from Sanary and I am besides, I say it without vanity, a good judge of character myself; I am convinced that he is incapable of committing a crime of this nature. I have ventured to offer him my sympathy that a friend of his childhood, brought up with all the advantages of a healthy family life, should have turned out so badly. But such is life. And now, my dear gentlemen, one of my men will accompany you to the morgue and when you have identified the body, your time is at your own disposal. Go and have a good lunch. I have a card here of the best restaurant in Toulon and I will just write a word on it which will assure you of the patron's best attention. A good bottle of wine will do you both good after this harrowing experience."
He was by now positively beaming with good will. We walked to the mortuary with a policeman. They were not doing a lively business in that establishment. There was a body on one slab only. We went up to it and the mortuary attendant uncovered the head. It was not a pleasant sight. The sea water had taken the curl out of the dyed silvery hair and it was plastered dankly on the skull. The face was horribly swollen and it was ghastly to look at, but there was no doubt that it was Sophie's. The attendant drew the covering sheet down to show us what we both would rather not have seen, the horrid gash across the throat that stretched from ear to ear.
We went back to the station. The chief inspector was busy, but we said what we had to say to an assistant; he left us and presently returned with the necessary papers. We took them to the undertaker.
"Now let's have a drink," I said.
Larry hadn't uttered a word since we left the police station to go to the mortuary except on our return there to declare that he identified the body as that of Sophie Macdonald. I led him down to the quay and we sat in the cafe in which I had sat with her. A strong mistral was blowing and the harbour, usually so smooth, was flecked with white foam. The fishing-boats were gently rocking. The sun shone brightly and, as always happens with a mistral, every object in sight had a peculiar sparkling sharpness as though you looked at it through glasses focused with more than common accuracy. It imparted a nerve-racking, throbbing vitality to everything in sight. I drank a brandy and soda, but Larry never touched the one I had ordered for him. He sat in moody silence and I did not disturb him.
Presently I looked at my watch.
"We'd better go and have something to eat," I said.
"We've got to be at the mortuary at two."
"I'm hungry, I didn't have any breakfast."
Having judged from his appearance that the chief inspector knew where the food was good, I took Larry to the restaurant he had told us of. Knowing that Larry seldom ate meat, I ordered an omelette and a grilled lobster and then, asking for the wine list, chose, again following the policeman's counsel, a vintage wine. When it appeared I poured out a glass for Larry.
"You damn well drink it," I said. "It may suggest a topic of conversation to you."
He obediently did as I bade him.
"Shri Ganesha used to say that silence also is conversation," he murmured.
"That suggests a jolly social gathering of intellectual dons at the University of Cambridge."
"I'm afraid you'll have to stand the racket of this funeral by yourself," he said. "I haven't any money."
"I'm quite prepared to do that," I answered. Then the implication of his remark hit me. "You haven't been and gone and done it really?"
He did not answer for a moment. I noticed the whimsical, teasing glint in his eyes.
"You haven't got rid of your money?"
"Every cent except what I need to last me till my ship comes in."
"What ship?"
"The man who has the next cottage to mine at Sanary is the Marseilles agent of a line of freighters that run from the Near East to New York. They've cabled him from Alexandria that they've had to put off a couple of sick men there from a ship that's coming on to Marseilles and asked him to get two more to take their place. He's a buddy of mine and he's promised to get me on. I'm giving him my old Citroen as a parting present. When I step on board I shall have nothing but the clothes I stand up in and a few things in a grip."
"Well, it's your own money. You're free, white and twenty-one."
"Free is the right word. I've never been happier or felt more independent in my life. When 1 get to New York I shall have my wages and they'll carry me on till I can get a job."
"What about your book?"
"Oh, it's finished and printed. I made a list of people 1 wanted it sent to—you ought to get a copy in a day or two."
"Thank you."
There was not much more to say and we finished our meal in amiable silence. I ordered coffee. Larry lit a pipe and I a cigar. I looked at him thoughtfully. He felt my eyes upon him and threw me a glance; his own were lit with an impish twinkle.
"If you feel like telling me I'm a damned fool, don't hesitate. I wouldn't in the least mind."
"No, I don't particularly feel like that. I was only wondering if your life wouldn't have fallen into a more perfect pattern if you'd married and had children like everybody else."
He smiled. I must have remarked twenty times on the beauty of his smile, it was so cosy, trustful and sweet, it reflected the candour, the truthfulness of his charming nature; but I must do so once again, for now, besides all that, there was in it something rueful and tender.
"It's too late for that now. The only woman I've met whom I could have married was poor Sophie."
I looked at him with amazement.
"Can you say that after all that's happened?"
"She had a lovely soul, fervid, aspiring and generous. Her ideals were greathearted. There was even at the end a tragic nobility in the way she sought destruction."
I was silent. I did not know what to make of these strange assertions.
"Why didn't you marry her then?" I asked.
"She was a child. To tell you the truth, it never occurred to me when I used to go over to her grandfather's and we read poetry together under the elm tree that there was in that skinny brat the seed of spiritual beauty."
I could not but think it surprising that at this juncture he made no mention of Isabel. He could not have forgotten that he had been engaged to her and I could only suppose that he regarded the episode as a foolishness without consequence of two young things not old enough to know their own minds. I was ready to believe that the suspicion had never so much as fugitively crossed his mind that ever since she had been eating her heart out for him.
It was time for us to go. We walked to the square where Larry had left his car, very shabby now, and drove to the mortuary. The undertaker was as good as his word. The businesslike efficiency with which everything was accomplished, under that garish sky, with the violent wind bend-ing the cypresses of the cemetery, added a last note of horror to the proceedings. When it was all over the undertaker shook hands with us cordially.
"Well, gentlemen, I hope you are satisfied. It went very well."
"Very well," I said.
"Monsieur will not forget that I am always at his disposition if he has need of my sen.'ices. Distance is no object."
I thanked him. When we came to the gate of the cemetery Larry asked me if there was anything further I wanted him for.
"Nothing."
"I'd like to get back to Sanary as soon as possible."
"Drop me at my hotel, will you?"
We spoke never a word as we drove. When we arrived I got out. We shook hands and he went off. I paid my bill, got my bag and took a taxi to the station. I too wanted to get away.
A few days later I started for England. My intention had been to go straight through, but after what had happened I particularly wanted to see Isabel, so I decided to stop in Paris for twenty-four hours. I wired to her to ask if I could come in late in the afternoon and stay to dinner; when I reached my hotel I found a note from her to say that she and Gray were dining out, but that she would be very glad to see me if I would come not before half past five as she had a fitting.
It was chilly and raining off and on quite heavily, so that I presumed Gray would not have gone to Mortefontaine to play golf. This did not suit me very well, since I wanted to see Isabel alone, but when I arrived at the apartment the first thing she said was that Gray was at the Travellers playing bridge.
"I told him not to be too late if he wanted to see you, but we're not dining till nine, which means we needn't get there before nine-thirty, so we've got plenty of time for a good talk. I've got all sorts of things to tell you."
They had sublet the apartment and the sale of Elliott's collection was to take place in a fortnight. They wanted to attend it and were moving into the Ritz. Then they were sailing. Isabel was selling everything except the modern pictures that Elliott had had in his house at Antibes. Though she didn't much care for them she thought quite rightly that they would be a prestige item in their future home.
"It's a pity poor Uncle Elliott wasn't more advanced. Picasso, Matisse and Renault, you know. I suppose his pictures are good in their way, but I'm afraid they'll seem rather old-fashioned."
"I wouldn't bother about that if I were you. Other painters will come along in a few years and Picasso and Matisse won't seem any more up to date than your Impressionists."
Gray was in process of concluding his negotiations and with the capital provided by Isabel was to enter a flourishing business as vice-president. It was connected with oil and they were to live at Dallas.
"The first thing we shall have to do is to find a suitable house. I want a nice garden so that Gray can have somewhere to potter about when he comes home from work and I must have a really large living-room so that I can entertain."
"I wonder yon don't take Elliott's furniture over with you."
"I don't think it would be very suitable. I shall make it all modem, with perhaps just a little touch of Mexican here and there to give it a note. As soon as I get to New York I'll find out who is the decorator everyone's going to now."
Antoine, the manservant, brought in a tray with an array of bottles and Isabel, always tactful, knowing that nine men out of ten are convinced they can mix a better cocktail than any woman (and they're right), asked me to shake a couple. I pouted out the gin and the Noilly-Prat and added the dash of absinthe that transforms a dry Martini from a nondescript drink to one for which the gods of Olympus would undoubtedly have abandoned their home-brewed nectar, a beverage that I have always thought must have been rather like Coca-Cola. I noticed a book on the table as I handed Isabel her glass.
"Hullo!" I said. "Here's Larry's book."
"Yes, it came this morning, but I've been so busy, I had a thousand things to do before lunch and I was lunching out and I was at Molyneux's this afternoon. I don't know when I shall have a moment to get down to it."
I thought with melancholy how an author spends months writing a book, and may be puts his heart's blood into it, and then it lies about unread till the reader has nothing else in the world to do. It was a volume of three hundred pages nicely printed and neatly bound.
"I suppose you know Larry has been in Sanary all the winter. Did you see him by any chance?"
"Yes, we were at Toulon together only the other day."
"Were you? What were you doing there?"
"Burying Sophie."
"She's not dead?" cried Isabel.
"If she hadn't been we'd have had no plausible reason to bury her."
"That's not funny." She paused for a second. "I'm not going to pretend I'm sorry. A combination of drink and dope, I suppose."
"No, she had her throat cut and was thrown into the sea stark naked."
Like the brigadier at St. Jean I found myself impelled a trifle to exaggerate her undress.
"How horrible! Poor thing. Of course leading the life she did she was bound to come to a bad end."
"That's what the commissaire de police at Toulon said."
"Do they know who did it?"
"No, but I do. I think you killed her."
She gave me a stare of amazement.
"What are you talking about?" Then with the ghost of a chuckle: "Guess again; I have a cast-iron alibi."
"I ran across her at Toulon last summer. I had a long talk with her."
"Was she sober?"
"Sufficiently. She told me how it happened that she'd disappeared so unaccountably just a few days before she was going to be married to Larry."
I noticed Isabel's face stiffen. I proceeded to tell her exactly what Sophie had told me. She listened warily.
"I've thought of her story a good deal since then and the more I've thought about it the more convinced I am that there's something fishy about it. I've lunched here twenty times and you never have liqueurs for luncheon.
You'd been lunching alone. Why should there have been a bottle of zubrovka on the tray with the coffee-cup?"
"Uncle Elliott had just sent it to me, I wanted to see it I liked it as much as when I'd had it at the Ritz."
"Yes, I remember how you raved about it then. I was surprised, as you never drink liqueurs anyway; you're much too careful of your figure for that. I had at the time an impression that you were trying to tantalize Sophie. I thought it was just malice."
"Thank you."
"On the whole you're very good at keeping appointments. Why should you have gone out when you were expecting Sophie for something so important to her and interesting to you as a fitting of her wedding dress?"
"She told you that herself. I wasn't happy about Joan's teeth. Our dentist is very busy and I just had to take the time he could give me."
"When one goes to a dentist one makes the next appointment before leaving."
"I know. But he called me up in the morning and said he had to break it, but could give me three o'clock that afternoon instead, so of course I jumped at it."
"Couldn't the governess have taken Joan?"
"She was scared, poor darling, I felt she'd be happier if I went with her."
"And when you came back and found the bottle of zubrovka three parts empty and Sophie gone, weren't you rather surprised?"
"I thought she'd got tired of waiting and gone on to Molyneux's by herself. I couldn't make it out when I went there and they told me she hadn't been."
"And the zubrovka?"
"Well, I did notice that a good deal had been drunk. I thought Antoine had drunk it and I very nearly spoke to him about it, but Uncle Elliott was paying for him and he was a friend of Joseph's, so I thought I'd better ignore it. He's a very good servant and if he takes a little nip now and then who am I to blame him?"
"What a liar you are, Isabel."
"Don't you believe me?"
"Not for a moment."
Isabel got up and walked over to the chimney-piece. There was a wood fire and it was pleasant on that dreary day. She stood with one elbow on the mantle-shelf in a graceful attitude which it was one of her most charming gifts to be able to assume without any appearance of intention. Like most French women of distinction she dressed in black in the daytime, which peculiarly suited her rich colouring, and on this occasion she wore a dress the expensive simplicity of which displayed her slender figure to advantage. She puffed at her cigarette for a minute.
"There's no reason why I shouldn't be perfectly frank with you. It was most unfortunate that I had to go out and of course Antoine should never have left the liqueur and the coffee-things in the room. They ought to have been taken away when I went out. When I came back and saw the bottle was nearly empty of course I knew what had happened, and when Sophie disappeared I guessed she'd gone off on a bat. I didn't say anything about it because I thought it would only distress Larry, and he was worried enough as it was."
"Are you sure the bottle wasn't left there on your explicit instructions?"
"Quite."
"I don't believe you."
"Don't then." She flung the cigarette viciously into the fire. Her eyes were dark with anger. "All right, if you want the truth you can have it and to hell with you. I did it and I'd do it again. I told you I'd stick at nothing to prevent her from marrying Larry. You wouldn't do a thing, either you or Gray. You just shrugged your shoulders and said it was a terrible mistake. You didn't care a damn. I did."
"If you'd left her alone she'd be alive now."
"Married to Larry and he'd be utterly miserable. He thought he'd make a new woman of her. What fools men are! I knew that sooner or later she'd break down. It stuck out a mile. You saw yourself when we were all lunching together at the Ritz how jittery she was. I noticed you looking at her when she was drinking her coffee; her hand was shaking so, she was afraid to take the cup with one hand, she had to put both her hands to it to get it up to her mouth. I noticed her watching the wine when the waiter filled our glasses; she followed the bottle with those horrible washed-out eyes of hers like a snake following the fluttering of a new-fledged chick and I knew she'd give her soul for a drink."
Isabel faced me now, her eyes flashing with passion, and her voice was harsh. She couldn't get the words out quickly enough.
"The idea came to me when Uncle Elliott made all that fuss about that damned Polish liqueur. I thought it beastly, but I pretended it was the most wonderful stuff I'd ever tasted. I was certain that if she got a chance she'd never have the strength to resist. That's why I took her to the dress show. That's why I offered to make her a present of her wedding dress. That day, when she was going to have the last fitting, I told Antoine I'd have the zubrovka after lunch and then I told him I was expecting a lady and to ask her to wait and offer her some coffee and to leave the liqueur in case she fancied a glass. I did take Joan to the dentist's, but of course we hadn't an appointment and he couldn't see us, so I took her to a newsreel. I'd made up my mind that if I found Sophie hadn't touched the stuff I'd make the best of things and try to be friends with her. That's true, I swear it. But when I got home and saw the bottle I knew I'd been right. She'd gone and I'd have bet any money in the world she'd gone for good."
Isabel was actually panting when she finished.
"That's more or less what I imagined had happened," I said. "You see, I was right; you cut her throat as surely as if you'd drawn the knife across it with your own hands."
"She was bad, bad, bad. I'm glad she's dead." She threw herself into a chair. "Give me a cocktail, damn you."
I went over and mixed another.
"You are a mean devil," she said as she took it from me.
Then she allowed herself to smile. Her smile was like a child's that knows it's been naughty, but thinks it can wheedle you by its ingenuous charm not to be cross. "You won't tell Larry, will you?"
"I wouldn't dream of it."
"Cross your heart? Men are so untrustworthy."
"I promise you I won't. But even if 1 wanted to, I shouldn't have an opportunity as I don't suppose I shall ever see him again in my life."
She sat bolt upright.
"What do you mean?"
"At this moment, he's on a freighter, either as a deck hand or a stoker, on his way to New York."
"You don't mean that? What a strange creature he is! He was up here a few weeks ago for something to do with his book that he had to look up at the public library, but he never said a word about going to America. I'm glad; that means we shall see him."
"I doubt it. His America will be as remote from your America as the Gobi desert."
Then I told her what he had done and what he intended to do. She listened to me open-mouthed. Consternation was written on her face. She interrupted me now and then with an interjection: "He's crazy. He's crazy." When I had finished she hung her head and I saw two tears trickle down her cheeks.
"Now I really have lost him."
She turned away from me and wept, leaning her face against the back of the chair. Her lovely face was twisted with the grief she did not care to hide. There was nothing I could do. I didn't know what vain, conflicting hopes she had cherished that my tidings had finally shattered. I had a vague notion that to see him occasionally, at least to know that he was part of her world, had been a bond of union, however tenuous, that his action had finally severed so that she knew herself for ever bereft. I wondered what unavailing regret afflicted her. I thought it would do her good to cry. I picked up Larry's book and looked at the table of contents. My copy had not arrived when I left the Riviera and I could not now hope to get it for several days. It was not in the least the sort of thing I expected. It was a collection of essays of about the same length as those in Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians, upon a number of famous persons. The choice he had made puzzled me. There was one on Sulla, the Roman dictator who, having achieved absolute power, resigned it to return to private life; there was one on Akbar, the Mogul conquerer who won an empire; there was one on Rubens, there was one on Goethe and there was one on the Lord Chesterfield of the Letters. It was obvious that each of the essays had needed a tremendous amount of reading and I was no longer surprised that it had taken Larry so long to produce this book, but I could not see why he had thought it worth while to give it so much time or why he had chosen those particular men to study. Then it occurred to me that every one of them in his own way had made a supreme success of life and I guessed that this was what had interested Larry. He was curious to see what in the end it amounted to.
I skimmed a page to see how he wrote. His style was scholarly, but lucid and easy. There was nothing in it of the pretentiousness or the pedantry that too often characterizes the writing of the amateur. One could tell that he had frequented the best authors as assiduously as Elliott Templeton frequented the nobility and gentry. I was interrupted by a sigh from Isabel. She sat up and finished with a grimace the cocktail which was now lukewarm.
"If I don't stop crying my eyes'll be terrible and we're going out to dinner tonight." She took a mirror out of her bag and looked at herself anxiously. 'He’s, half an hour with an ice bag over my eyes, that's what I want." She powdered her face and reddened her lips. Then she looked at me reflectively. "Do you think any the worse of me for what I did?"
"Would you care?"
"Strange as it may seem to you, I would. I want you to think well of me?"
I grinned.
"My dear, I'm a very immoral person," I answered.
"When I'm really fond of anyone, though I deplore his wrongdoing it doesn't make me less fond of him. You're not a bad woman in your way and you have every grace and every charm. I don't enjoy your beauty any the less because I know how much it owes to the happy combination of perfect taste and ruthless determination. You only lack one thing to make you completely enchanting."
She smiled and waited.
"Tenderness."
The smile died on her lips and she gave me a glance that was totally lacking in amenity, but before she could collect herself to reply Gray lumbered into the room. In the three years he had been in Paris Gray had put on a good many pounds, his face had grown redder and his hair was thinning rapidly, but he was in rude health and in high spirits. He was unaffectedly pleased to see me. Gray's conversation was composed of cliches. However shop-worn, he uttered them with an obvious conviction that he was the first person to think of them. He never went to bed, but hit the hay, where he slept the sleep of the just; if it rained, it rained to beat the band and to the very end Paris to him was Gay Paree. But he was so kindly, so unselfish, so upright, so reliable, so unassuming that it was impossible not to like him. I had a real affection for him. He was excited now over their approaching departure.
"Gosh, it'll be great to get into harness again," he said.
"I'm feeling my oats already."
"Is it all settled then?"
"I haven't signed on the dotted line yet, but it's on ice. The fella I'm going in with was a roommate of mine at college, and he's a good scout, and I'm dead sure he wouldn't hand me a lemon. But as soon as we get to New York I'll fly down to Texas to give the outfit the once-over, and you bet I'll keep my eyes peeled for a nigger in the woodpile before I cough up any of Isabel's dough."
"Gray's a very good businessman, you know," she said.
"I wasn't raised in a barn," he smiled.
He went on to tell me at somewhat excessive length about the business he was entering, but I understood little of such matters and the only concrete fact I gathered was that he stood a good chance of making a lot of money. He grew so interested in what he was saying that presently he turned to Isabel and said:
"Look here, why shouldn't we cut this lousy party and us three go and have a slap-up dinner at the Tour d'Argent by ourselves?"
"Oh, darling, we can't do that. They're giving the party for us."
"Anyhow, I couldn't come now," I interrupted. "When I heard you were fixed up this evening I called up Suzanne Rouvier and arranged to take her out."
"Who's Suzanne Rouvier?" asked Isabel.
"Oh, one of Larry's gals," I said to tease her.
"I always suspected Larry had a little floozie tucked away somewhere," said Gray, with a fat chuckle.
"Nonsense," snapped Isabel. "I know all about Larry's sex life. There isn't any."
"Well, let's have one more drink before we part," said Gray.
We had it and then I said good-bye to them. They came into the hall with me and while I was putting on my coat Isabel slipped her arm through Gray's and, nestling up to him, looked into his eyes with an expression that imitated very well the tenderness I had accused her of lacking.
"Tell me, Gray—frankly—do you think I'm hard-boiled?"
"No, darling, far from it. Why, has anybody been saying you were?"
"No."
She turned her head away so that he shouldn't see, and in a manner that Elliott would certainly have thought very unladylike put out her tongue at me.
"It's not the same thing," I murmured as I stepped out of the door and closed it behind me.
When I passed through Paris again the Maturins had gone and other people lived in Elliott's apartment. I missed Isabel. She was good to look at and easy to talk to. She was quick on the uptake and bore no malice. I have never seen her since. I am a poor and dilatory correspondent and Isabel was no letter writer. If she could not communicate with you by telephone or telegram she did not communicate with you. I had a Christmas card from her that Christmas with a pretty picture on it of a house with a Colonial portico surrounded by live oaks, which I took to be the house of the plantation that they had been unable to sell when they wanted the money and which now they were probably willing to keep. The post-mark showed that it had been posted at Dallas, so I concluded that the deal had gone through satisfactorily and they were settled there.
I have never been to Dallas, but I suppose that, like other American cities I know, it has a residential district within easy motoring distance of the business section and the country club where the affluent have fine houses in large gardens with a handsome view of hill or dale from the living-room windows. In such a district and in such a house, furnished from cellar to attic in the latest mode by the most fashionable decorator in New York, Isabel certainly dwells. I can only hope that her Renoir, her flower piece by Manet, her landscape by Monet and her Gauguin do not look too dated. The dining-room is doubtless of a convenient size for the women's luncheons which she gives at frequent intervals and at which the wine is good and the food superlative. Isabel learnt a great deal in Paris. She would not have settled on the house unless she had seen at a glance that the living-room would do very well for the sub-deb dances which it would be her pleasant duty to give as her daughters grew older. Joan and Priscilla must be now of a marriageable age. I am sure that they have been admirably brought up; they have been sent to the best schools and Isabel has taken care that they should acquire the accomplishments that must make them desirable in the eyes of eligible young men. Though I suppose Gray by now is still a little redder in the race, more jowly, balder and a good deal heavier, I can't believe that Isabel has changed. She is still more beautiful than her daughters. The Maturins must be a great asset to the community and I have little doubt that they are as popular as they deserve to be. Isabel is entertaining, gracious, complaisant and tactful; Gray, of course, is the quintessence of the Regular Guy.
I continued to see Suzanne Rouvier from time to time until an unexpected change in her condition caused her to leave Paris and she too went out of my life. One afternoon, roughly two years after the events that I have just related, having spent an hour pleasantly browsing over the books in the galleries of the Odeon and with nothing to do for a while, I thought I would call on Suzanne. I had not seen her for six months. She opened the door, a pallet on her thumb and a paintbrush between her teeth, clad in a smock covered with paint.
"Ah, c’est vous, cher ami. Entrez, je vous en prie."
I was a little surprised at this formal address, for generally we spoke to one another in the second person singular, but I stepped into the small room that served both as living-room and studio. There was a canvas on the easel.
"I'm so busy, I don't know which way to turn, but sit down and I will go on with my work. I haven't a moment to waste.
You wouldn't believe it, but I'm giving a one-man show at Meyerheim's, and I have to get thirty canvases ready."
"At Meyerheim's? That's wonderful. How on earth have you managed that?"
For Meyerheim is not one of those fly-by-night dealers in the Rue de la Seine who have a small shop that is always on the verge of closing for lack of money to pay the rent. Meyerheim has a fine gallery on the moneyed side of the Seine and he has an international reputation. An artist whom he takes up is well on the way to fortune.
"Monsieur Achille brought him to see my work and he thinks I have a lot of talent."
"À d'autres, ma vieille," I replied, which I think can best be translated by: "Tell that to the marines, old girl."
She threw me a glance and giggled.
"I'm going to be married."
"To Meyerheim?"
"Don't be an idiot." She put down her brushes and her pallet, "I've been working all day and I deserve a rest. Let us have a little glass of porto and I'll tell you all about it."
One of the less agreeable features of French life is that you are apt to be pressed to drink a glass of vinegary port at an unseasonable hour. You must resign yourself to it. Suzanne fetched a bottle and two glasses, filled them and sat down with a sigh of relief.
"I've been standing for hours and my varicose veins are aching. Well, it's like this. Monsieur Achille's wife died at the beginning of this year. She was a good woman and a good Catholic, but he did not marry her from inclination, he married her because it was good business, and though he esteemed and respected her it would be an exaggeration to say that her death left him inconsolable. His son is suitably married and is doing well in the firm and now a marriage has been arranged between his daughter and a count. Belgian it is true, but authentic, with a very pretty chateau in the neighbourhood of Namur. Monsieur Achille thought his poor wife would not wish the happiness of two young people to be deferred on her account, so the marriage, notwithstanding that they are in mourning, is to take place as soon as the financial arrangements are completed. Evidently Monsieur Achille will be lonely in that large house at Lille, and needs a woman not only to minister to his comfort, but also to run the important establishment necessary to his position. To cut a long story short, he has asked me to take the place of his poor wife, for as he very reasonably said: 'I married the first time to eliminate competition between two rival firms, and I do not regret it, but there is no reason why I should not marry the second time to please myself.' "
"I congratulate you," said I.
"Evidently I shall miss my liberty. I have enjoyed it. But one has to think of the future. Between ourselves, I don't mind telling you that I shall never see forty again. Monsieur Achille is at a dangerous age; where should I be if he suddenly took it into his head to run after a girl of twenty? And then there is my daughter to think of. She is now sixteen and promises to be as beautiful as her father. I have given her a good education. But it is no good denying facts that stare you in the face; she has neither the talent to be an actress nor the temperament to be a whore like her poor mother; I ask you then, what has she to look forward to? A secretaryship or a job in the post office. Monsieur Achille has very generously agreed that she should live with us and has promised to give her a handsome dot so that she can make a good marriage. Believe me, my dear friend, people can say what they like, but marriage still remains the most satisfactory profession a woman can adopt. Obviously when my daughter's welfare was concerned I could not hesitate to accept a proposition even at the cost of certain satisfactions which in any case, as the years go by, I should find it more difficult to obtain; for I must tell you that when I am married I propose to be of a ferocious virtue [d'une vertu farouche], for my long experience has convinced me that the only basis of a happy marriage is complete fidelity on both sides."
"A highly moral sentiment, my pretty,” I said. "And will Monsieur Achille continue to make his fortnightly visits to Paris on business?"
“Oh, la la, for whom do you take me, my little one? The first thing I said to Monsieur Achille when he asked for my hand was: 'Now listen, my dear, when you come to Paris for your board meetings it is understood that I come too. I am not going to trust you here by yourself.' 'You cannot imagine that I am capable of committing follies at my age,' he answered. 'Monsieur Achille,' I said to him, 'you are a man in the prime of life and no one knows better than I that you have a passionate temperament. You have a fine presence and a distinguished air. You have everything to please a woman; in short I think it better that you should not be exposed to temptation.' In the end he agreed to give up his place on the board to his son, who will come to Paris instead of his father. Monsieur Achille pretended to think me unreasonable, but he was in point of fact enormously flattered." Suzanne gave a sigh of satisfaction. "Life would be even harder for us poor women than it is if it were not for the unbelievable vanity of men."
"All that is very fine, but what has it got to do with your having a one-man show at Meyerheim's?"
"You are a little stupid today, my poor friend. Have I not told you for years that Monsieur Achille is a highly intelligent man? He has his position to think of and the people of Lille are censorious. Monsieur Achille wishes me to take the place in society which as the wife of a man of his importance it will be my right to occupy. You know what these provincials are, they love to poke their long noses in other people's affairs, and the first thing they will ask is: who is Suzanne Rouvier? Well, they will have their answer. She is the distinguished painter whose recent show at the Meyerheim Gallery had a remarkable and well-deserved success. 'Madame Suzanne Rouvier, the widow of an officer in the colonial infantry, has with the courage characteristic of our Frenchwomen for some years supported herself and a charming daughter deprived too soon of a father's care by means of her talent, and we are happy to know that the general public will soon have the opportunity to appreciate the delicacy of her touch and the soundness of her technique at the galleries of the ever perspicacious Monsieur Meyerheim.'"
"What gibberish is that?" I said, pricking up my ears.
"That, my dear, is the advance publicity that Monsieur Achille is putting out. It will appear in every paper in France of any consequence. He has been magnificent. Meyerheim's terms were onerous, but Monsieur Achille accepted them as if they were a bagatelle. There will be a champagne d'honneur at the private view and the Minister of Fine Arts, who is under an obligation to Monsieur Achille, will open the exhibition with an eloquent speech in which he will dwell upon my virtues as a woman and my talent as a painter and which he will end with the declaration that the state, whose duty and privilege it is to reward merit, has bought one of my pictures for the national collections. All Paris will be there and Meyerheim is looking after the critics himself. He has guaranteed that their notices will be not only favourable but lengthy. Poor devils, they earn so little, it is a charity to give them an opportunity of making something on the side."
"You've deserved it all, my dear. You've always been a good sort."
"Et ta soeur," she replied, which is untranslatable. "But that's not all. Monsieur Achille has bought in my name a villa on the coast at St. Rafael, so I shall take my place in Lille society not only as a distinguished artist, but as a woman of property. In two or three years he is going to retire and we shall live on the Riviera like gentlefolks [comme des gens bien]. He can paddle in the sea and catch shrimps while I devote myself to my art. Now I will show you my pictures."
Suzanne had been painting for several years and she had worked through the manner of her various lovers to arrive at a style of her own. She still could not draw, but she had acquired a pretty sense of colour. She showed me landscapes that she had painted while staying with her mother in the province of Anjou, bits of the gardens at Versailles and the forest at Fontainebleau, street scenes that had taken her fancy in the suburbs of Paris. Her painting was vaporous and unsubstantial, but it had a flowerlike grace and even a certain careless elegance. There was one picture that took my fancy and because I thought she would be pleased I offered to buy it. I cannot remember whether it was called A Glade in the Forest or The White Scarf and subsequent examination has left me uncertain to this day. I asked the price, which was reasonable, and said I would take it.
"You're an angel," she cried. "My first sale. Of course you can't have it till after the show, but I'll see that it gets into the papers that you've bought it. After all, a little publicity can do you no harm. I'm glad you've chosen that one, I think it's one of my best." She took a hand mirror and looked at the picture in it. "It has charm,* she said, screwing up her eyes. No one can deny that. Those greens—how rich they are and yet how delicate! And that white note in the middle, that is a real find; it ties the picture together, it had distinction. There's talent there, there can be no doubt of it, there's real talent."
I saw that she was already a long way on the road to being a professional painter.
"And now, my little one, we've gossiped long enough, I must get back to work."
"And I must be going," I said.
"A propos, is that poor Larry still among the Redskins?"
For that was the disrespectful way in which she was accustomed to refer to the inhabitants of God's Own Country.
"So far as I know."
"It must be hard for someone like him who is so sweet and gentle. If one can believe the movies life is terrible over there with all those gangsters and cowboys and Mexicans. Not that those cowboys haven't physical attraction which says something to you. Oh, la la! But it appears that it is excessively dangerous to go out into the streets of New York without a revolver in your pocket."
She came to the door to see me out and kissed me on both cheeks.
"We've had some good times together. Keep a good recollection of me."
This is the end of my story. I have heard nothing of Larry, nor indeed did I expect to. Since he generally did what he proposed, I think it likely that on his return to America he got a job in a garage and then drove a truck till he had acquired the knowledge he wanted of the country from which he had for so many years absented himself. When he had done that he may very well have carried out his fantastic suggestion of becoming a taxi driver: true, it was only a random idea thrown across a café table in jest, but I shouldn't be altogether surprised if he had put it into effect; and I have never since taken a taxi in New York without glancing at the driver on the chance that I might meet Larry's gravely smiling, deep-set eyes. I never have. War broke out. He would have been too old to fly, but he may be once more driving a truck, at home or abroad; or he may be working in a factory. I should like to think that in his leisure hours he is writing a book in which he is trying to set forth whatever life has taught him and the message he has to deliver to his fellow-men; but if he is, it may be long before it is finished. He has plenty of time, for the years have left no mark on him and to all intents and purposes he is still a young man.
He is without ambition and he has no desire for fame; to become anything of a public figure would be deeply distasteful to him; and so it may be that he is satisfied to lead his chosen life and be no more than just himself. He is too modest to set himself up as an example to others; but it may be he thinks that a few uncertain souls, drawn to him like moths to a candle, will be brought in time to share his own glowing belief that ultimate satisfaction can only be found in the life of the spirit, and that by himself following with selflessness and renunciation the path of perfection he will serve as well as if he wrote books or addressed multitudes.
But this is conjecture. I am of the earth, earthy; I can only admire the radiance of such a rare creature, I cannot step into his shoes and enter into his inmost heart as I sometimes think I can do with persons more nearly allied to the common run of men. Larry has been absorbed, as he wished, into that tumultuous conglomeration of humanity, distracted by so many conflicting interests, so lost in the world's confusion, so wishful of good, so cocksure on the outside, so diffident within, so kind, so hard, so trustful and so cagey, so mean and so generous, which is the people of the United States. That is all I can tell of him: I know it is very unsatisfactory; I can't help it. But as I was finishing this book, uneasily conscious that I must leave my reader in the air and seeing no way to avoid it, I looked back with my mind's eye on my long narrative to see if there was any way in which I could devise a more satisfactory ending; and to my intense surprise it dawned upon me that without in the least intending to I had written nothing more nor less than a success story. For all the persons with whom I have been concerned got what they wanted: Elliott social eminence; Isabel an assured position backed by a substantial fortune in an active and cultured community; Gray a steady and lucrative job, with an office to go to from nine till six every day; Suzanne Rouvier security; Sophie death; and Larry happiness. And however superciliously the highbrows carp, we the public in our heart of hearts all like a success story; so perhaps my ending is not so unsatisfactory after all.
+-mymaughamcollection.blogspot.com-+ | | | | \|/ | | \~|~/ | | ,#####\/ | ,\/§§§§ | | # #\./#__|_§_\./ | | # \./ # _|_§ \./ | | # #/ # | § \ | | # # # | `~§§§§§ | +--------mmccl.blogspot.com--------+