Part 19

“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?”

She took the photograph from Lily’s hand and thrust it under the circle of light, holding it at arm’s length and squinting in order to discern it properly. “Ah, yes,” she said. “_Cavalier Irlandais_.... That was his name. I don’t remember his other name, though I believe he had one.” She paused, thoughtful, as if trying by a tremendous force of will to recapture the thing which had escaped her. “His father was Irish, you understand.... Strange I can’t remember his name.” So she talked on crazily, answering Lily’s questions madly, tangling the answers hopelessly in a flood of insane philosophy and distorted observation. The look of mystery and the remnants of a grand manner persisted. Lily watched her with a look of intense curiosity as if she believed that, after all, the queer old creature might once have been young,--young, mysterious and lovely. But she learned little of the gentleman in the portrait. It was impossible for Madame Blaise to concentrate upon her subject. Lily learned only that the gentleman had been forced to leave the country following some unpleasantness arising out of a duel in which he had killed a relative ... a cousin perhaps. She did not remember. He had been in politics too. That played a part in his flight. He returned once, Madame Blaise believed, but she did not remember why he had come back.

Altogether it was hopeless. Lily replaced the photograph on the high mantel, powdered her nose and drew on her gloves. Presently there came an opening in the flood of Madame Blaise’ talk and Lily seized it sharply.

“I must really go, Madame Blaise. I have stayed much too long. It has been so interesting.”

She rose and began to move slowly backward in the direction of the door, as if she feared to rouse the old woman to fresh outbursts. She made her departure gently, vanishing noiselessly; but she got no further than the inlaid music box when Madame Blaise, detecting her plan, sprang up and seized her arm fiercely with her thin old hands.

“Wait!” she cried. “There is one more thing I must show you ... only one. It will take but a second.”

The patient Lily acquiesced, though she kept up a mild protest. Madame Blaise scurried away, rather sidewise as a crab moves, into a dark corner of the room where she disappeared for an instant through a door. When she returned, she bore two dusty paintings in oil. Each was surrounded by a heavy gilt frame and together the pair burdened the strength of the old woman. Her whole manner reeked of secrecy. With an air of triumph she smiled to herself as she took from the chair where she had been sitting a red silk handkerchief with which she dusted the faces of the two paintings. All this time she kept them turned from Lily. At last she stiffened her thin body suddenly and said sharply, “Now, look!”

Lily, bending low, discerned in the light from the fire the character of the two pictures. Each was the portrait of a woman, painted in the smooth, skilful, slightly hard manner of Ingres. Yet there was a difference, which the connoisseur’s eye of Lily must have detected. They were cleverly done with a too great facility. But for that one might almost have said they were the work of a genius. Clearly the same woman had posed for both. In one she wore an enormous drooping hat, tilted a little over one eye. In the other she wore a barbaric crown and robes of Byzantine splendor.

Madame Blaise stood by with the air of a great art collector displaying his treasures. “They are beautiful, aren’t they?” she said. “Superb! You know I understand these things. I have never shown them to any one in years. I am showing them to you because I know you understand these things. I have seen your house. I have seen your beautiful things. You see it is the same woman who posed for both.... The one is called ‘The Girl in the Hat’ ... the other is ‘The Byzantine Empress.’ Theodora, you know, who was born a slave girl.”

LXV

Lily, it seemed, had scarcely heard her. She had taken one of the pictures on her lap and was examining it minutely. She held it close to her and then at a little distance. Madame Blaise stood surveying her treasures proudly, her face lighted by a look of satisfaction at Lily’s profound interest.

“I wonder,” said the old woman presently, “if you see what I see.”

For a moment Lily did not answer. She was still fascinated by the pictures. At last she looked up. “Do you mean the woman is like me? Did you see it too?”

Madame Blaise assumed a secretive expression. “Yes,” she said. “I have known it all along ... ever since I saw you. But I never told any one. I kept it as a secret for you.” And she spread her skinny hands in an exhibitive gesture, full of satisfaction, of pride, even of triumph.

The likeness was unmistakable. Indeed, upon closer examination it was nothing short of extraordinary. It might have been the Lily of ten years earlier, when she was less heavy and opulent. The Byzantine Empress had the same soft bronze hair, the same green-white skin, the same sensuous red lips.

“It is like me when I was younger.”

“Very much,” observed Madame Blaise, and then with the air of an empress bestowing a dazzling favor, she added, “I am going to give them to you.”

“But they are valuable,” protested Lily. “I can see that. They are no ordinary paintings.” She spoke without raising her eyes, continuing all the while to examine the pictures, first one and then the other as she frequently examined with infinite care the reflection in her mirror in the Rue Raynouard.

“I realize that you could not carry them home alone,” continued Madame Blaise, ignoring her protests. “You might appear ridiculous. You might even be arrested on suspicion. But I shall have them sent round. I must give them to you. What would you have me do? When I die they will be sold. I have no relatives ... no one. My sister is dead these ten years. I have no child ... nothing. I am alone, you understand, absolutely alone. Would you have my pictures knocking about some art dealer’s place?”

She shook her head savagely. “No, you must have them. You cannot refuse. It is the hand of God in the matter. I understand these things because there is in me something of the woman of all time. The pictures are for you. Nothing can dissuade me.”

Again the good-natured Lily was forced to yield, simply by the force of the old woman’s crazy will. She must have sensed the fantastic, uncanny quality of the entire affair, for she stirred uneasily and put the Byzantine Empress on the floor, face down. The Girl in the Hat lay across her knees, forgotten for the moment.

Madame Blaise had begun to walk up and down the room in a crazy fashion, muttering to herself. All at once she halted again before Lily.

“It was a famous woman who sat for those pictures,” she said. “You could never imagine who she really was.”

Vaguely, as if she had been absent from the room for a long time, Lily replied. “No. I’m sure I have no idea. How could I? She was evidently a great beauty.”

A look of delight swept the countenance of the old woman. “Wait!” she cried. “Wait! I will make it easy for you. In one moment you will understand!” And she scurried away once more into the dusty closet from which she had brought the pictures. While she was absent Lily leaned back in her chair closing her eyes and pressing a hand against her forehead. For some time she remained thus and when, at last, she opened her eyes at the sharp command of Madame Blaise she found the old woman standing before her with the big hat of the girl in the picture drooped over one eye.

The effect was grotesque, even horrible. Madame Blaise had arranged the dress of black stuff so that her breasts and shoulders were exposed in the fashion of the Girl in the Hat; but the ripe full breasts of the girl in the picture were in the old woman sunken and withered, the color of dusty paper; the gentle soft curve of the throat was shrunken and flabby, and the soft glow of the face and the fresh carmine of the caressing, sensuous lips were grotesquely simulated with hard rouge, and powder which had caked in little channels on the wrinkled face of the old woman. Even the bit of hair which showed beneath the big hat was travestied horribly by dye. Madame Blaise simpered weakly in imitation of the mysterious, youthful smile which curved the lips of the girl in the picture.

There could be no mistake. The features were there, the same modeling, the same indefinable spirit. Madame Blaise was the Byzantine Empress and the Girl in the Hat. The caricature was cruel, relentless, bitter beyond the power of imagination. Lily’s eyes widened with the horror of one who has seen an unspeakable ghost. She trembled and the Girl in the Hat slipped from her knee and fell with a clatter face downward upon the Byzantine Empress.

Madame Blaise had begun to walk up and down the room with the languid air of a mannequin. The big hat flopped as she moved. Turning her head coyly, she said, “I have not changed. You see, I am almost the same.”

And then she fell to talking rapidly to herself, holding unearthly conversations with men and women who stood in the dark corners of the room among the innumerable pictures and bits of decaying bric-a-brac. Crossing the room she passed near Lily’s chair where, halting for a second, she bent down until her painted cheek touched Lily’s soft hair. “You see,” she cried, pointing toward the dusty closet, “that one over there.... He would give his life to have me.” She laughed a crazy laugh. “But no ... not I. Never yield too easily and yield only for love. Live only for love.” And she moved off again on her mad promenade, gibbering, bowing and smiling into the dusty corners.

In the midst of a tête-á-tête which the old woman held with an invisible beau whom she addressed as “Your Highness,” Lily sprang up and ran toward the door. Opening it, she rushed through the upper hall down the stairway into the dark tunnel below. As the outer door slammed behind her, it shut in the sound of Madame Blaise’ cracked singing, punctuated by peals of crazy laughter.

Lily did not stop running until she passed the gate of the little enclosure and stood, breathless and fainting with terror, beneath the lights of the Rue de l’Assomption.

LXVI