Among the Daughters/Chapter 24
Chapter 24
MA DOUCE ANNETTE
High up under a painted Heaven where Eros sported with a not-too-garlanded Venus amid rosy clouds, and against a soft blue wall emblazoned with golden fleur de lys, bare-breasted Diane de Poitiers, occasional mistress of French kings, father and son, and others, sat in a gold frame and surveyed with complacent smile the long rectangular room below named after her chateau at Chennonceaux. Lining the walls under the gilded laurel molding on the same level to Diane's right and left hung her successors, the Mesdames d'Estrees, Montespan, du Barry, Pompadour, La Vallière and so on miscellaneously along the apparently inexhaustible but unacademic line through the court of the first Napoleon.
The living world began halfway down the two long sides where ran narrow candelabraed balconies reserved for mortals dining à deux. On the rose-carpeted floor under the balconies were grey plush banquettes, and around the small dancing space, marked off with a rose plush cord, were circled white tables, a tricolor ensemble bringing France from its past royal state above to the Republican present.
This was unintended symbolism as Piselli, the proprietor, regarded the Chennonceaux as elevation into the upper crust for himself and two sons, approaching Princeton. Proud of the spectacular rapidity of his rise in the land of free enterprise as No. 1 Bootlegger, Piselli had noticed the standoffishness of society customers and had hit on the Chennonceaux as his open sesame. Only time and a little more cash and he too would move over to the so-called law side, like those heirs of rackets of a hundred years ago. Providing of course some hophead didn't bump him off first. He had set up the Club for elite clients who didn't want to mix with no-class guys from anywheres who turned up in even the classiest Broadway speakeasies "sent by Joe." In the Chennonceaux the ubiquitous Joe had no in. Nominally a supper-dance club open to the public, the maitre d'hotel, a bona fide Prince, one of the legion of noble Russian émigrés, and the doorman, a bona fide Count who had been a Captain in the late Czar's army, knew how to size up and give the boot to outsiders.
But though Piselli considered the Chennonceaux the ladder to his respectability, his "socially-up" older Club members, particularly the women to whom heretofore night life had meant opera, theatre, dining at the Colony or one of three hotels, regarded his Club as a delightfully thrilling descent into an offbounds world which suddenly it was permissible to enjoy with the other new modes: comfortable girdles, bobbed hair, and smoking in public. What made this new night club additionally fascinating was that there were always present the queer people of Bohemia and Broadway, writers, painters, and stars. One could talk and dance with them, without becoming involved socially. It wasn't as dull as the opera.
On this night, to enthroned Diane de Poitiers, undoubtedly possessed of an immortal's vision of time's relativity', a somewhat different and older parlor game than the latest one begun by a Mr. Einstein, the fete below must have appeared a composite of two diverse centuries: a neo-Greco-Roman bacchanale of shorn boylike nymphs in short spangled chitons dancing with men in the 20th century's postwar humdrum uniform of black and white. Especially must Diane have noted a slender dazzling Aphrodite with golden hair lighted as if by a sun within and clad in a diaphanous midnight-blue gown shimmering with a milky way of dew. A twinge of jealousy must have affected Diane for she retreated behind the haze of rose and blue cigarette smoke, a winy glow soon after to be emulated by Broadway scene designers for those revue numbers exposing nudity even a little further than the law allowed and named, appropriately, "Special Lavender."
"Well, I must say the town's turned out for Calvette," Lucy said, surveying the room while deliberately avoiding the reproachful gaze of Rad Melford with whom she had broken a date to come with Figente. Rad was a nice boy and a good dancer but not the person with whom to see Simone Calvette for the first time.
At the last moment Figente had broken his rule of not going out, overcome by curiosity to witness the American reception of the singer who was of the essence of Paris from which he was forever exiled by the French police.
"Let's ask Vermillion too," Lucy had suggested. She wanted to see what happened when he watched Simone, to discover if he still was in love with her. Maybe why. Perhaps it was because of what she did on the stage, or of what she knew, being older.
Figente rejected her suggestion. "He has undoubtedly made his own plans by now. I'm only going because it's time you and Hal saw and heard a great artiste."
"Then I'd like Vida to come." She confessed to herself she would not have asked that Vida be invited if Vermillion were coming. "By all means, bring Boswell."
"We'll pick you up after the show—how's that for service?"
"You wear the white beaded dress again," she had said to Vida. "It's more becoming to you than to me. White needs a darker lipstick and blondes can't wear dark lipstick, can they, Mam'selle?"
Mam'selle was a hard-faced middle-aged bleached blonde engaged because Lucy wanted to learn French. Cleo had been fired after a spat precipitated by flagrantly unauthorized borrowings from Lucy's wardrobe for display at Harlem's Chennonceaux, the Savoy Ballroom.
"It's a question of taste," Mam'selle replied curtly through her own violent poppy lips.
"What will you wear?" Vida asked, wondering if Lucy really saw herself.
"Any old thing. I guess my dark blue." She minimized the twinkling sapphire chiffon which, Vida knew, would make her a lustrous pearl.
And later, at the Chennonceaux, the irridescent gown shimmering in the rosy lights made her think of the image of Odysseus' winedark sea. Lightheaded from champagne and approving male glances, she tried to compose a verse line in celebration of Lucy. Aphrodite, she thought, was too obvious, but how else could one characterize Lucy who in perpetual dewy freshness seemed to kiss the world impersonally with her eyes?
Lucy regarded the small stage where Reb Honeycutt and his Boys were playing the new "Limehouse Blues." The Chennonceaux appealed to Lucy, reminding her of their hotel apartment's colored engraving of an 18th century fete where a ballet was being performed on what was here a dance floor. The Club and the portraits above also recalled the de Goncourt book which she had been rereading. This room was a place in which she would like to perform because it was closer to the audience than a theatre stage where the deep orchestra pit and the intense spotlight and footlights separated you from the audience and made you feel alone except for the applause at the end of your dance. Maybe it took this kind of place to make one feel what being an artist is: a personal contact with the audience. She hardly could wait until Simone Calvette appeared, to learn firsthand what made her so special. Everyone she had met through Figente and Lyle was here except Mrs. Doyle. Carly, way over against the wall on the other side of the dance floor, fatter, and the color of that red wine he was so crazy about, what was it? Oh yes, Chateau Mouton Rothschild '07. All that excitement about some old wine! Lyle too. Those boys thought it proved they were something special because they knew things like that. Funny how you could be in love with someone like Carly and then, seeing him now, not feel a thing. Vida said that was infatuation. I wouldn't mind being infatuated right now, she thought, and caught unawares by Lyle's sullen glance smiled because it was only fair to be polite.
Figente raised a hand in response to a wave from a young woman next to Lyle in a party of six at a round table.
"Who's that?" asked Hal, all eyes.
"Clarissa van Horn, Lyle's fiancée."
Lucy looked curiously at the slender Clarissa, noting the casual wave of her side-parted short bob, expensively simple beige chiffon gown that matched her hair, and the long pearl necklace wound once around a long neck. She must be almost as tall as Lyle. Society girls had a careless elegance as though it didn't matter how they dressed, she thought admiringly. It was especially noticeable in contrast to Tessie Soler in the same party. Tessie's hair, reddened for the show, glared, as did her emerald-green dress. She was even more stagily vivacious than usual. Tessie was always "on"—even at Sardi's. A stranger could tell she's a star. But maybe Tessie was right to be "on"—because people expected anyone who is a star to act the part. Beman's face was redder than ever in that tight high collar. Then, the other side of Tessie, there was a foreign-looking man, medium tall with a broad body, large head—heavy chinned—bulging eyes, and full lower lip, who was listening to what Tessie, playing up to him, was saying. The other side of him was the queerest-looking woman. Tall, with broad shoulders and enormous hanging bosom, tightly corseted and wearing a high-collared maroon lace gown, she had a flat-backed hawknosed small head on top of which was a coronet of false mahogany-color braids.
"And who's that fascinating woman on the other side of Lyle?" Hal was asking.
"Mrs. Cornwallis. You were out the day she came to call," said Figente.
"You never mentioned her—when was that?"
"Last week. Nino, the Marqués de Mendez y Avila—the dark man next to her—brought her. He's an old friend, and this Mrs. Cornwallis thinks he and Piselli can do business. The Mendez red wines are quite good, better but not so well known as certain Bordeaux. I hear she's quite—a middlewoman." He tittered. "In fact she even tried to nick me. I was showing them some of my things and she mentioned that Prince Gregorovitch was hard up in Nice and was planning to sell a Cellini cup. I said I knew him and the cup and that both were copies, the cup French 18th century, and the Prince a Georgian whose father was a village chief. He promoted himself to Prince after he escaped from the Bolsheviki. She was quick enough not to insist. It seems she has acted as go-between in introducing American parvenus to European third-class titles, and paintings. Her greatest coup to date was marrying off a middlewest merchant's daughter, with an astronomical dowry, to a Papal count."
"But who is she?" persisted Hal.
"No one knows much about her. She's American, sounds Western. She turned up about three years ago with tottering Countess von und zu Schwitzenburg. I knew Hilda in Potsdam before the war and thought her feeble-minded. Be that as it may, Cornwallis seems to have helped her out of Germany with her money when the inflation was at its height. Against the law, you know. They stayed with Hilda's relatives in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. From then on she had an entree, so to speak, even achieving the heights of the Faubourg Saint-Figente." He noted pleasurably that Boswell, laughing a little too loudly, thought it funny too.
"You really do know everyone!" Hal marveled. The respectful greetings his patron had received this night were a revelation. From the "names" scattered at Figente's parties he had had an inkling that Figente was someone but not really society page top-bracket. Ray hadn't been boasting.
Figente sensed his protege's awe, and it added to his feeling of reassurance and well being. He had hesitated to brave a first public appearance since the unpleasantness of the cabinet minister's imbecilic son five years ago when he had been ordered by the police to leave France in twenty-four hours. However, the respectful warmth of the greetings tonight was in the nature of a triumph. The intervening years apparently had misted his mishap with a romantic glow in the memories of friends who at the time had cut him. Tonight was proof, once again, that society admired anyone who could brazen out what it hypocritically disapproved. He must remember to point this out to Lucy. It was a pity that, able either to make a good marriage or to be a successful courtesan, she was so deficient in concentration, spreading thin her favors. Perhaps because she was so young she could not envision growing old. Now when she should be taking Lyle from Clarissa she looked only at the Hindu dancer with Nicholas Allwood and his new wife.
"Who is the woman with Nick Allwood?" Lucy asked about the prettyish thin woman who was vaguely familiar but returned her glance with an unfriendly stare.
"It must be his new wife. While Grace was in Reno divorcing him, he went to do a house in Oklahoma for an oil tycoon. He did the wife too. She divorced the oil man. They married, I imagine, she to get into society, he to spite Grace who married a movie actor the day after her divorce."
"Grace isn't the only one who thinks he's a stuffed shirt," Lucy commented. "The girls at the show say that sober he's too scared to have fun, and drunk he gets nasty and practically goes into retirement while he adds up the bill."
This portrait of Nick Allwood, a relative of his sister's husband, delighted Figente. Grasping the table with pudgy hands he pushed himself backwards to give vent to a long squeak, like that of a pricked toy balloon.
The band began Irving Berlin's latest.
"All alone," Tessie sang, her eyes inviting Lyle. Even if he did eventually marry Clarissa there would be no reason to let that stand in the way, now that he was rid of Claudel. Marrying Clarissa was virtually an incestuous merging of financial interests since they had been brought up together from childhood. A nitwit could see passion was not involved. What if Beman went off with a heart attack or stroke? Intercourse wasn't too easy for him even when fit. Not that that was so important. The worrying thing was what was going to happen in the too-fast approaching future when one was too old to be a romantic musical star. Only men could be perennial juveniles on Broadway. One ought to get a surefire dramatic play. Look at the reviews dramatic actresses received. Year after year until their dotage they were written about as artists. In fact, the older they were the more réclame. Considering some of the girls in the show Lyle had been with, it should be easy to get him into bed.
"Let's dance this, Tessie," Lyle said, hoping Lucy would be on the floor.
Beman and Clarissa followed them, and Mrs. Cornwallis turned her bird eyes toward Figente's table.
She can see in all directions and I'll bet she never forgets a thing, thought Lucy.
To her surprise Figente went over and invited the queer woman and the man who was a Marqués to join them. As they shifted, making room, she saw Ranna had been about to ask her to dance but, seeing what was going on, shrugged in disappointment and asked his hostess instead.
Mrs. Cornwallis lowered herself into the chair opposite Lucy, her pearls clicking like false teeth, Lucy thought, as Figente chanted introductions.
"Later," Ranna whispered in passing and Lucy nodded.
"I see Opal has the dancer Ranna with her. I met him at the Archduke Michael's in Paris," said Mrs. Cornwallis, her voice a harsh squawk.
"Well, of all things!" Lucy exclaimed. "That's Opal Hickenlofer from Denver. I thought she looked familiar."
Mrs. Cornwallis looked at her sharply and, sucking in her breath, a ghostly whistle emanated from between her bluish teeth. As she talked to Figente an eerie whistling falsetto broke in the squawky voice.
A parrot voice, Lucy thought fascinated, strangely familiar. Was it because it was like the ventriloquist's at the Palace? No, something else. Frightening and unplaceable. A nightmare recollection?
The Marqués was talking to her. What with his accent and the noise, she had missed what he said. He looked as a Marqués should, ugly and imposing, a special kind of handsomeness. His politeness was easy and friendly. He was what Figente tried to seem.
"No, madame," he was answering Mrs. Cornwallis.
"Don't call her Madam!" Lucy said, laughing. Careful, Lucy, she admonished herself, taken aback by Mrs. Cornwallis' deadly glare. Only Figente laughed at the old joke. The Marqués smiled uncomprehendingly.
"Do you think," Mrs. Cornwallis said evenly to Figente, "that Mrs. Perry might like Prince von Bummel as a house guest before Janice has him to Newport next summer? He would like to come over now. All he can manage is the fare—he was so hurt by the inflation, and our American loan only helps the industrialists."
"My dear Horta, I have infrequent communication with my sister. Moreover, I'm bored with Europeans who come here for a handout. In fact I've lost interest in Europe. I squeezed Europe dry of what I wanted, and will never go back." He squeezed his fat fist in demonstration, noticing belatedly the Marqués flush.
Lucy felt sick and shivery cold. The name—Horta—was what she had suspected without knowing. The woman was the scary voice on the telephone that terrifying night in the Crofter Hotel in Denver. As then, she shook now, for no reason. Or was it in remembrance of that awful night when Mother and she had no idea where to turn for help the next morning? Maybe it was having champagne on an empty stomach that made unimportant things stand out. Horta's too-even false teeth clacked and, like her voice, were scary as a horror sideshow in Coney Island. When she was six there was that Chinaman in Sacramento who, when Mother could only afford one bowl of soup, had given them free chop suey. He had given her a game, too. A dark toothless grinning face in a small glass box. The trick was to roll little sago balls into the gap. The last one was the hardest to get in. Horta had one gap in her teeth. And then this Horta was here with Lyle and there had been the two girls in the Crofter Hotel and the two girls in the apartment he had taken her to. But that didn't mean anything, except she felt sorry for them. And here was Opal coming past the table. It was like a mixed-up dream. Who would have thought Opal would have given up Freddie and tum up in New York?
"Hello, Opal, I didn't recognize you, you're so much thinner," Lucy said.
"How do you do," Mrs. Nicholas Allwood 3rd said distantly.
"How's your brother Frank?"
"He's at Princeton."
"Well, good for him!"
Horta and the Marqués rose.
Ever since the Bison Ball where, ignored even by her fiancee Freddie whose eyes, like the other men's, leered at Lucy Claudel showing off her legs, that blue tarlataned figure never had ceased to whirl in back of Opal's head as someone to beat. Memory of the anticipation with which she had gone to the Ball in her white crepe de Chine high school graduation dress as Freddie's soon-to-be bride and seeing that floozie's effect on the men had returned again and again to haunt her. It was only recently, after marrying Nicholas, that she could look back with equanimity to the time when she told Freddie, after Oscar the elderly Kansas sausage manufacturer had asked Pa for her, that she had no intention of being stuck in a cottage. But instead of gay social life in Kansas City, Oscar expected her to breed little Oscars in his Tudor-style mansion. Luckily he couldn't do anything about that and had had to consent to an annulment so she could many Milton, who had come to sell the cattle from his ranch when he struck oil. Oklahoma City was more fun and Milton was hardly ever home to bother her. Milton wasn't interested in culture or anything but wildcatting. When Nicholas came to plan the new house she realized she never could be happy except in New York, and that Milton would never leave his rough rancher and oil friends. She liked Nicholas because he seemed too refined to think of nothing but lovemaking, like Oscar and Milton. With him she could forget Freddie. She was still dazed by her good fortune in catching Nicholas and applied herself diligently to forgetting the past and learning how to be Mrs. Nicholas Allwood 3rd. Oscar and Milton had been very nice about financial settlements. Nicholas appreciated them too. At last she was ahead of that little tart, Lucy Claudel who, she saw in a Mode photograph, was up to her old tricks of trying to sneak in. But now, face to face, it was awful. Lucy could still make her feel dowdy.
"I didn't know you knew that charming girl," Horta Cornwallis said to Opal.
Opal lifted her delicately plucked eyebrows and drooped her thin lips in the wistful manner Alveg Dahl was painting her in a Lucy-blue tulle frock holding an open book of French poetry.
"I don't really, she was a tart who ran after my brother when I was a child in Denver."
Horta Cornwallis' hawk head on her plucked old hen neck gave a convulsive jerk. Careful questioning had disclosed that Opal had no knowledge that Horta Cornwallis ever had even been in Denver. That was absolutely for sure. But now this Lucy Claudel. That Madam joke was accidental on purpose. A tart! Fearful of exposure, she searched her memory for a clue which might connect the girl with a past shed with discarded bits of a cropped nose and disguised with the magnificent wig, both achieved in Berlin of 1922 in what was the period of her rebirth. The polite term for wig is "transformation," which accurately described the social graduation achieved by Horta Cornwallis. The winter of 1921 her Denver sporting house's most important client, a citizen of unimpeachable public character, found himself in danger of being exposed as principal in a crooked deal. The conferences in consummation of this venture had been held at Horta's house and she told Client X it was her duty to tell the federal investigators what she knew. Client X had thought it wise to buy the good will of Horta's sporting house. His only stipulation had been that she leave Denver and the United States.
In Berlin she had been welcomed as a supplementary American loan in the new role she gave herself of sympathetic millionairess which, because of the inflation, she actually was. Meeting at the Adlon war-impoverished German titles, she quickly realized she had hit the jackpot. Except for fancy manners, the desperate young aristocratic women were ready call-girls, and the men too would do anything for money. It was the same sporting-house racket but for bigger stakes: better yet, you could be a Madam in this aristocratic world and be respectable. By the time her compatriots began flocking back to European playgrounds Horta Cornwallis was an ensconced friend of international society, a woman to cultivate, particularly by those who wished to meet titles. Horta thus became a virtual one-woman exchange, being paid commissions two ways on sales of paintings, jewelry, and furniture. Clothed by leading couturiers in return for new customers, she was an honored guest at the luxury hotels she advertised to rich Americans. She helped American women to divorce millionaire husbands only interested in making dollars, and was rewarded in dollars by grateful French avocats. She shared in dowries of American girls whose mothers wished for their daughters social acceptance difficult of achievement in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and even Chicago, where the barriers were more formidable than in Paris, Berlin, and even Rome. And through it all, even when two years later she had returned to New York as familiar with the Social Register as the Almanach de Gotha, she never had been in danger of exposure until meeting this girl who surely would tell. You just don't make a Madam joke to a Madam without something up your sleeve. Blackmail? She hadn't been one of her girls, probably a sister or daughter of one, or she was from one of the other houses. Horta Cornwallis' horny chickens' feet fingers clawed down the string of bullet pearls. There always was some way to get around these girls, there always was something they wanted. And if that didn't work, there were other ways to shut their mouths.
The Marqués did not understand Opal's reference to Lucy. "A most beautiful girl. One has the feeling she is illuminated from within by a soft morning light."
"She is rather pretty, isn't she?" Clarissa said casually to Lyle. A dear friend had taken care to tell her about Lyle and the dancer.
"That," Tessie said to the Marqués, "is what we call a 'come hither' look. I never thought I'd see Claudel without a man."
She regretted this remark, seeing the Marqués' eyes haze at the affront to his friend Figente, and noting the politeness with which he told Beman that he looked forward to seeing a revue graced by two such lovely women. Beman impatiently tapped the ash from his cigarette. He wished Tessie could be less obvious in her jealousy. If Claudel would only play along with Bigelow there wouldn't be any trouble about financing the play about a dancer. It would make her a star. What she needed was to be taken in hand by someone practical like Horta.
"At last we meet again," Ranna said to Lucy as they tangoed.
"I was surprised to see you here."
"Alveg Dahl is a friend from Europe. He is painting Mrs Allwood."
"I suppose you are planning a recital?"
"Not yet. I have been rather busy," he said, thinking how pleasurable it was to dance with this fragrant flesh after the tiresome routine of establishing relationships with dried-out women to whom he had letters. Skillfully he wound her out of a tangled knot of dancers. "I wished to telephone you but I have been so preoccupied finding a studio. Most difficult," he said frowning, without explaining that because of his color he had found it impossible to rent a hotel room except in Harlem. He had been rescued by Mrs. Custerd and was now occupying the studio apartment of a woman painter friend of hers who preferred to live in Florence. An unnerving introduction to the New World from which he was just recovering.
"Are you going to teach? If you do, I'd love to take lessons."
Ranna had no desire to tie himself to a monotonous routine of teaching, though it might prove necessary if Mrs. Custerd's family continued to be tiresome about the money she gave him. To avoid such a dreary eventuality he hoped to find a more lavish patroness, possibly Mrs. Nicholas Allwood, willing to invest in delightful projects he would propose but that need not be fulfilled. Failing that, he toyed with the idea of permitting an impresario to arrange engagements for fabulous dollars, after which he would return to Paris. Now, with this ravishing one in his arms, her breath sweet as fruit blossom, he wanted nothing but to continue her presence, even at the risk of offending Mrs. Custerd who had expressed dislike of her. If teaching would be a means to the end of love, he would indeed be a teacher.
"It would give me the greatest pleasure if you would allow me to teach you the dance of my country," he said.
"I'm really very interested because I admire your art," she said, conscious of the quivering of his fingertips.
"I will make for you the dance of a Hindu princess playing with the birds in the pleasure gardens of Kashmir. Will you come to my studio for tea Wednesday, and we will talk about it?"
"That's matinee day—but I could Thursday."
"So long? Why not Tuesday?"
"That's fine," she said, to their mutual satisfaction.
Then she saw that Vida was talking at a great clip to, of all persons, Paul Vermillion. Just like him to turn up when he wasn't expected, and in white tie and tails! She was missing something.
"Do you mind if we don't dance this one?" she said, and started off the floor with a haste most disconcerting to Ranna.
"What are you all jabbering about?" she demanded, moving her chair close to Paul's in what Vida thought too proprietary a manner.
"I've been telling Mr. Vermillion about Ilona's ideas on the dance."
"What's so funny about that?" Vida oughtn't drink any more, she wasn't used to it.
"She told a new pupil this afternoon that a pure dancer thinks with her muscles, not her mind. That the mind has no place in the dance. That the dance is the spirit of the spirit within the pelvic circle."
"You're making that up because you don't like Ilona," said Lucy, annoyed because it made Vermillion smile.
"I'm not, I couldn't. She talks like that now, ever since a composer named Alfred Vent read to her from Gertrude Stein. You know, 'a rose is a rose is a rose.' He's writing music to it."
"Well," said Vermillion, "that's part of a point in the use of language Stein is making, and there's a lot more to Stein than that line. She can't be held responsible for your dancer friend any more than for one of a group of batlike dancers I saw in Berlin who go in for yo-ho-to-ho without a bottle of rum. This one sat on the stage and moved around on her buttocks, a deep-seated emotional manifestation which appeals to many Germans. She also spun around interminably in another item appropriately titled 'Monotony.' Perhaps Ilona is a disciple."
"That is very hard to do," Lucy stated flatly, thinking of fouettés, annoyed at them for laughing at the art of the dance.
"Ilona is a disciple of that," Vida said eagerly to the kind of young man she had wanted to meet, artist and handsome too, in the manner of Renaissance young men in the Metropolitan. "Ilona has been studying a book about that German dance. She says her mission is to unite all schools to make a pure American dance. She says that just as America is the melting pot of different nationalities, it should be of the arts, especially of the dance because the dance is the mother of the arts. And she feels 'the Call' to unite the dance because she was born on the Great Divide."
This report did not have the hilarious effect Vida expected as everyone seemed to have wearied of the subject and Lucy, who could not keep her mind on any impersonal subject more than a few minutes, was unscrupulously distracting Vermillion's attention by examining the palm of his hand.
Lucy traced the lines with a naughty forefinger. "You have very strong lines for such a soft palm. I learned to read palms from a fortuneteller who comes backstage every week but I don't believe that stuff. Now some of the girls at the show are being psychoanalyzed, and one of them is psychoanalyzing me. I'll psychoanalyze you. What did you dream last night?"
"I had a poet friend who told his dream to his girl and she left him because she didn't want to be his mother," Vermillion said, her cool hand making him feel uncomfortably warm, and to end this trend of questioning.
"You're a coward," Lucy said, releasing him with a tap.
"Women's makeup and dress nowadays resembles that of the early Egyptians," broke in Figente, made fidgety by the overtones of this boy-girl exchange.
"You mean the 'boyish form' aspect?" Vermillion asked.
"You're a wicked boy!" said Figente, wiggling his rump back into his chair as Hal squealed.
Vermillion was nervous because of the delay. What was holding up Simone? His eyes ached with fragments of images in this fake French room, forms in a kind of anatomical chart of human behavior. Dressing, he had found a sketchbook with sketches of Simone in the tail pocket of the suit he had not worn since the last time he had been at a performance of hers. That was one thing about Paris, you could draw in public without attracting attention. Here memory would have to serve. He glanced at his watch and an elbow dug his ribs.
"Calm down," said Lucy, the Fragonard with the Byzantine eyes whose cool finger he could still feel tracing his palm. He sat taut with craving for Simone's success in the interminable minutes the musicians melted away.
Finally the lights dimmed, leaving only a pale flesh spotlight centered in the dark velvet stage where to the left stood the ebony convolute involute curve of a piano.
He heaved a sigh of relief as he saw the familiar figure of Jacques Vibert, Simone's pianist, take his place. A feeling of guilt gripped him for not having at least telephoned her welcome to the strange city. The hiss of expectation died down, broken only by fragments of hysterical feminine giggles. There were always those, he thought, and a tinkle of ice in a glass and clicking bracelets.
Then, after that second of total silence awaited by all experienced performers, from, as always, a far-right corner Simone appeared as if from space and moved forward slowly, a somnambulist in a sheath of copper taffeta polished as the pots of Chardin kitchens. A great bow on her hip hung into a trail of embers and the stilled room was filled by the crisp silken rustle, as of autumn leaves settling, as she reached the barrier of the footlights. He hoped it was a good omen that she had discarded her uniform of black velvet. Her thin ivory arms hung straight from her high narrow shoulders, and her reposed pale face, slightly tilted right, balanced the bronze coxcomb over her left eyebrow: she seemed, he thought, a burnished Phoenix risen from the muddy black-velvet-clad Simone last seen in Brussels. Standing there, she was the essence of the disillusioned poets of her era with their wryly triste allusions to the corruptions in the flesh which corrode the spirit. Around her spun a blue aura complementing her copper; and also, because he had had too much to drink, multiple cobalt Byzantine eyes stared back at him, and all else was a distant chiffon night sky with myriad sequin galaxies.
An ectoplasmic waft of envy frosted the beads and spangles of each sheer gown as the smoldering figure stood remote, eyes half closed, listening to the seductive call for response from the piano.
My goodness, Lucy marveled, all that time to make an entrance before beginning! But seeing Vermillion absorbed, she did not voice the thought.
A stifled titter from a drunken woman unable to bear the suspense delayed for the fraction of a frowning second the first note which at last came, disarmingly thin and placed in the middle register of Simone's voice which descended from a French nasal high A to an unexpected low throaty F. She began with a simple song. With a magnetic timbre and the crystalline enunciation of her early coloratura days at the Opéra Comique, she narrated the naively understated double entendre thoughts of a young woman before a first extra-marital rendezvous. The song enraptured those who understood and puzzled a minority who did not and were familiar only with the stock French signals of Broadway, eye-rolling, winks, and oo la la lifting of a skirt. But the second song, an obvious and melodramatic Argentine tango, was vociferously received. Vermillion's tension lessened and he leaned back elated at her success. The first song was evidence of her undiminished magic as an artiste, the second of her showmanship. She was in her best form tonight, lie thought, watching her smile indulgently as to an audience of children before giving them as a reward "Sur Le Pont d'Avignon"—in which they joined her with resounding "comme ça's" carried along by her contagious simplicity. This, he knew, was a prelude to "Ma Douce Annette" for which she was celebrated. With an undefinable and complete change of mood she sang to a lover to release her hand so that she might continue alone down a road. A song of turbulent love exhausted, becalmed into friendship.
I hope she wasn't as nervous as I was for her, though I ought to know by now she never fails, Vermillion thought after the last mordant note died—and saw Lucy watching him.
"She's wonderful, isn't she?" His voice came with an effort.
"Yes, but I don't know what it is that makes her cast a spell because she doesn't seem to do much."
He's still in love with her, so that's that, she thought, seeing his pleasure at her being impressed.
Simone concluded with an ordinary music hall ditty "Viens, viens à Paris," but the audience would not let her go and, after an exchange with her pianist, she chose to everyone's surprise a song which was a standard in every school repertoire beginning "For we are the jolly gay students." Arriving at "from Cadiz to gay Barcelona" her eyes seemed to follow the points of those cities on the map. When Vermillion and she had traveled that identical route they had sat in a café in Seville watching three solemn little girls eat ice cream while they crossed themselves fervently each time a white horse jogged into view. Now recalling the scene, he laughed out loud. The familiar laugh reached Simone and searching as she sang she found him and then Lucy.
It was apparent the pianist expected her to assent to more encores but she refused. She left the stage more quickly than she had entered, the dry rustle of her receding figure leaving in its trail a curious silence until the lights came up.
Hal spoke first. "She's divine. Do you think, Ray, she would sing with a harp accompaniment?"
"I doubt it," said Figente, "don't you agree, Vermillion?"
"She'd probably enjoy doing it some afternoon at your place—but it isn't a question of a harp versus piano. She couldn't manage without Jacques. He's more than pianist, he's also a friend upon whom she relies when tired and ill. He knows how to iron out difficulties with managers, and where to find her and get her to the theatre on time," Vermillion said, remembering Jacques's appeals that he deliver her to the theatre after the afternoons of their first months as lovers. Imbued with the image of that happy time he went to her.
"I could do all that, I would adore taking care of her," Hal pouted.
"Nonsense, you can't even take care of yourself," Figente said sharply.
"Maybe we ought to go along with Vermillion to see her," Lucy hinted.
"We will shortly, when I've finished my chartreuse," Figente countered, to keep her from being present at the reunion. He sipped slowly to thwart her and asked idly, "You haven't said, Boswell, what you think of Simone?"
It was unusual of Figente to address her directly and Vida glanced at him suspiciously, wondering whether he thought her too countrified to grasp the meaning of the songs, most of which she had understood owing to Simone's clear-cut delivery.
"Perhaps it was that tight straight dress with the enormous trailing bow that seemed like a bustle, or maybe it was the lock of hair, but she seemed to me like a famous person coming from the past, as one imagines Bernhardt may have looked. And though the words she sang were not so beautiful, I thought of the Chansons de Bilitis and Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal."
His too-small mouth opened and he looked at her as if seeing her for the first time.
"I don't know as much French as Vida," Lucy said, "but she made me feel as though I'm just on the verge of learning about something exciting and like working hard until I know it. I feel excited all over."
"Another thing I liked was how she took the applause," Vida told Lucy. "She doesn't act humbly grateful, as Broadway performers do. The ones who say 'Thank you, thank you, thank you, you are the most wonderful audience in the world.' It's too obvious, they always say it."
"I guess we think every audience is the best because that's the one we've got right then. Kel Moyle told me Teddy Root can always cry when he thanks his audience because he has a slice of onion in his handkerchief. It makes a big hit," Lucy said practically.
Vermillion paused at the dressing-room door before knocking. Did he truly wish to begin this again, assuming she did? He knocked. No answer. He could feel his heart beating time against the stiff shirt. Smelling her perfume he marveled again that after all this time her Mitsuoko still clung to his suit as he had discovered when dressing. It had seemed quite strong at the table. Perhaps she had left immediately as was her custom. He knocked once more, listened, and heard the unmistakable murmur of Jacques's voice, followed by the turn of the knob.
"Paul!" The pianist embraced him, his frowning dark face lighting into welcome. "Look, Simone—it is Paul!"
Vermillion saw her over Jacques's shoulder standing, arms folded over her breasts as though warming herself in a garret, staring at him transfixed in indecision. He went to her, and unfolding her stiff arms, drew her to him. The familiar lines of her receptive body erased the image of the scratching angularities of their strident Brussels nightmare, as they swayed to Jacques's paean of joy.
"I said to her Simone, you will see, Paul will be there, he is but waiting to surprise you. As an artist he waits apart so not to take your mind from your work. He will tell you how great is your success this night. With him beside you, you will love New York. You will see its beauty. You will wish to remain."
"Hah!" tossed Simone to him over her shoulder as she leaned comfortably against Vermillion. "What stupidity! One would think that I am sick for days on the ship only to come in search of this one. Well, let us at least offer him a glass of champagne—but examine carefully the bottle to be assured it is not the jus de pomme offered us at rehearsal."
Jacques padded out happily, certain now that, with her lover present, Simone would not insist on returning immediately to Paris before he had been able to accumulate some dollars.
Simone's face became an accusing mask. A tear from her eye rolled down Paul's cheek as she pushed from him and groped on the dressing table for a handkerchief, refusing his. His wave of affection was being held off, and he didn't know what to say first. That was part of the incomprehensibility of the love relationship: intimacy made communication not less but more difficult; almost any innocent word might lead to recrimination. You had to choose the right word and it never was right. She sure was keyed up, and working herself up to a j'accuse torrent. As the Elizabethan poet said, "For God's sake, hold your tongue and let us go to bed."
Simone, leaning toward the mirror of the dressing table and discovering that mascara had settled in a fine line under her eyes, sighed deeply at this further evidence of aging. Then she recalled having once noted in the Tuileries that an ill child too had lines under its eyes. Hers was but a temporary disfigurement remediable with rest which now she could have in Paul's love. His occasional brutalities, as in leaving her alone in Brussels, were those of unthinking masculine youth. One must forgive the self-indulgent child he sometimes was, as now waiting for her to speak first. But she would grant him this largesse since he had returned of his own volition, which was an asking of pardon. Yet was it not of a great callousness that he should expect not only to be received but to find her living after the brutal manner in which he had left her alone in Brussels and where she might have drowned in the torrential gutter when, distraught, searching for him, she slipped and fell? If not for the derelict who, thinking her dead, had turned her over searching for plunder, she might be dead. But one could not tell him of this, not now. With him one had to weigh every word, a fault of his generation which rejected as romantic blague the heart's lavishing of love.
He watched her straighten, turn slowly to face him, her train an obedient swirl about her feet, and pose for a moment with the perfect timing and design of her stage performances. It was like watching an outmoded drawing-room drama of an injured woman in the act of forgiving; one knew the lines before they were spoken.
"It seems it is not only good fortune which is inconstant, but bad also," she said as lightly as she could, quoting Madame de Pompadour, the only neutral remark she could think of at the moment to avoid the words of accusation which could escape from oneself without intention. This time she had proved to him she no longer was the weeping drenched Simone of Brussels. Confident now by reason of victory over herself which made her feel refreshed and young, she smiled at him conspiratorially and went to lock the door.
"One need not answer every knock."
He could not but marvel at the dissolution of his qualms and how in this simple act the ardor, understanding, and companionability of their first days surged again.
"Let's go to your place or mine, as you wish, before Jacques returns. Figente and his guests will be here shortly."
"Why did you not tell him we were leaving immediately?"
"I didn't know then whether you'd wish to see me."
"But you know I do not like to receive in my makeup."
"I forgot, and it never occurred to me you wouldn't want to see Figente, you always did in Paris."
"Do not think to deceive me, Paul. I know Figente is but a camouflage." She heard her voice change and, hating its ugly sound, breathed in deeply, as in singing, to recover the affectionate tone, but inhaled at the same time the scent on his sleeve. "I find it uncongenial that your companion tonight uses the same perfume as I."
"I haven't worn this suit since Paris and when I dressed tonight your scent was still on it," he said, wondering what she was talking about.
"The Mitsuoko has remained remarkably fresh indeed." Her mouth twitched as in a twinge of pain and, lighting a cigarette, she drew the smoke deep into her lungs to steady herself. She looked at him defiantly, then squashed the cigarette. "I forgot, you detest the taste of tobacco on my lips."
"You must be tired. It was thoughtless of me to come back without warning so soon after your performance," he said.
His tone of solicitousness annoyed her. "Not at all," she said contrarily. She threw her long black cape over her freezing shoulders, hoping he would sense it was a signal she wanted to leave with him now, and tried wildly to think of something impersonal to say to carry them back to safety. But she could think of nothing but the image which had been corroding her spirit from the second she had heard his laugh during her song, seeing him sitting at the table illuminated by the golden hair of the girl next to him. To keep her fingers still she began to draw on her long white kid gloves.
"Do you know," she began, as though struggling to keep conversation flowing with an unresponsive dinner partner, "that when I sing, though I do not hold my eyes open, nothing escapes me? I see everything. I can tell you what everyone in that room was doing. For example, a waiter took a drink behind the maître d'hôtel's back. A girl in black and silver combed her hair at the table. Quelle elegance!"
She stopped abruptly and paused, and his impulse to smile at the derisive afterthought died for, in the mirror, he saw over her back the black cape as a kind of Nemesis mesmerizing her inexorably to self-destruction.
"But you!" she resumed, speaking as though the words were being pulled out of her, her body swaying back and forward under the burden of repeating a message from someone she could not bear. "I never thought you would be so graceless, and unkind, as to bring your mistress to my performance and, with her, to laugh at me."
She looked at him wild-eyed, and his expression of bewilderment made her feel even more terrified of the malignant demon within her that made her say the words. Mother of God, save me! she thought. Make him strike me so I can fall and hide my head in shame.
With an eerie scream she turned into the enveloping folds of the cape and, for a second, he thought she had collapsed onto the dressing table; then he saw that the violent movement of her arms was a searching in her bag for the drug which could be her only release. Mounds of flowers gave off a suffocating funereal odor and he saw her wrap herself in the black shroud in which the only live thing was her shaking white-gloved hand scratching a match on the wall to light a cigarette dangling from her smeared red lips. It missed its mark and he leapt forward, scorching his hand on her burning forehead, while from her came little cries which might earlier have been those of love.
He became aware of Figente's voice calling discreetly, "Are you decent?"
"Snap out of it," he ordered. Automatically she jerked upright at the makeup table and, dabbing her face which she could see the drug was revivifying, exerted herself to carol "Come in, come in" as Vermillion turned the key and opened the door. Figente's upturned nostrils sniffed the distraught air.
"Simone has been waiting for you and I was about to leave when there was a slight accident," Vermillion explained, resentful of Figente's patent curiosity, and also of Lucy's candid eyes at this awkward moment. Unwavering, probing eyes, like those above Greek Orthodox altars. Having to pretend anything he did not feel always put him off but he could not walk out without a word, and that certainly belonged to Simone.
"You'd better put some oil on that burn right away." He put his hand lightly on her hair.
"It is nothing. It will be gone tomorrow. Telephone me when you are free," she said in that casual tone which had become their signal in Paris to meet later in her apartment.
A time, Vermillion thought moodily as he walked home, not four years past, when the lingering bouquet of the era of Simone's prewar youth had distilled intoxicatingly for him dazzling essences of the Paris of yesterdays. Simone had fascinated him, still did, with the modes and manners she wore with such elegance. But these were of yesterdays and, in her femme fatale behavior, smothering. It was as if in her person she piled layer over layer of mode and manner petticoats of second Empire romantics à la George Sand down to Mata Hari. She was too often the crime passionelle heroine of a Sardou stageset. Sardoodledum, as Shaw had characterized it. And Iris March was the same. He had lived with Simone long enough in that past world. She wouldn't, perhaps couldn't, come over into the present. The past lived only if it continued into the present. Between them was the chasm, not of the unimportant difference in their physical ages, but her inability to move beyond a certain point in artificial time. In the end it had taken New York with its thrusting stony contrasts of light and shade to reveal the chasm between Simone's world and his. Her Paris was a footlight one, Pucciniesque, with shadows of images left over from past worlds posing as persons. The world which exists makes its own images. Gauthier's Mimi originally was not operatic and might have been a girl of today. Like Lucy Claudel, who was no swooning Mimi or Camille. She was nonetheless of the theatre, like Simone, and to be avoided.
Simone had not turned as the four entered the room but, buoying herself with a flurry of reparative cosmetic feints, addressed Figente through the mirror as though the others were not present.
"See how I have burned myself! Everything in New York is so strong, the matches are as torches."
"At least they light and do not sputter out as in Paris. Allow me to present Miss Claudel, Miss Boswell, and Mr. Pierce."
She nodded briefly, scarcely glancing. The shaking had gone and with it import to the quarrel. Why was it Paul had left? Oh, yes, his feeling of privacy where he and she were concerned. He said he would telephone which meant he would come later to the hotel. With a sweep she again bruised the wall with a match and lighting the cigarette perceived Lucy watching her solemnly. No one could have such perfection. It must be because the girl was standing in half light. She snatched a glimpse of herself and, seeing that she too looked well with refreshed makeup, turned.
"Cigarette?" Her eyes met Lucy's gaze.
"No thanks, I don't smoke much because it's bad for the wind."
"Ah?"
"Lucy is, as you may not yet know, our most extraordinary ballerina and star of the current Beman revue."
Lucy wished Figente hadn't given her higher billing than her due. It was as though being première danseuse wasn't much. He hadn't even seen the show. Besides Calvette didn't want any of them barging in, even Figente, because anyone could see they had come at the wrong time.
"Don't pay any attention to him, Tessie Soler is the star. I'm the première danseuse."
Simone looked at her sharply. Frankness could be a form of deception. She stared at one as a child at a curious object. Or as oneself had observed the aged Duse. One always could recognize these little ballet girls, scampering in and out the Opera stage door, straight-backed, breasts thrust out. They never lasted long with any man because their brains were in their feet.
"I hope soon to have the pleasure," she said with formal graciousness.
Figente, who had sensed a lack of warmth in her greeting, due obviously to an altercation with Vermillion, decided they had best withdraw.
"We've come for only a moment. I don't suppose I need tell you how superb you were tonight."
"Yes," broke in Hal, "I said to Figente it would be wonderful to hear you with harp instead of piano. To me the harp is the only instrument for the modes of some of your songs. For example, I would like to transcribe 'Ma Douce Annette' into the hypodorian or Phrygian mode. Of course I don't mean those sickening arpeggios some harpists would play—but using the Greek modes, in a new way, to bring out the tragic, heroic, and joyous tonalities in your voice. Or the harp could be plucked for troubadour songs without the tinniness of a mandolin. Or there could be a chinoiserie effect for rococo songs. All sorts of effects. I think a piano is too blunt to do you justice."
Simone, while flattered by the pretty blond boy's enthusiasm, was not ccitain whether to countenance any intimation that her performance could be improved. "It is an idea," she said noncommittally.
Observing Hal's flushed enthusiasm, Figente's pride was marred by alarm at the sudden premonition of being abandoned for Simone. It must be, he thought, the second chartreuse that had caused the pressure on his heart.
"Hal is naturally enthusiastic about the harp, as that is his instrument. One day when you come for lunch you may find some of his arrangements interesting. Jacques no doubt could adapt them to the piano," he offered reluctantly.
Lucy stared at Hal as if seeing him for the first time. To think he saw all that in Simone's songs. He never had offered to play for her.
Vida kept in the background as one from whom no comment was expected. Simone Calvette, she thought, was truly an extraordinary artist and woman. She had expressed in the shadings of tone longings of a girl like oneself, though Calvette was a mature woman. She was the kind of woman one read about in Balzac and even Remy de Gourmont. Even more interesting here than on the stage. A woman exuding the essence of that phrase femme du monde. No wonder those silver- and green-painted eyelids were heavy and half closed considering what their topaz eyes had seen and, seeing, understood. It must have been many lovers who had taught her to understand the human heart. Mature men, whatever their nature, not like those college boys who took Lucy out. Lucy was certainly the most beautiful girl and knew a lot about men too, but here she seemed like what she was, a girl. Well, that wasn't precisely the right contrast. Simone had refined what she knew into an art except that one didn't know where the artist or woman was separate, or were they? One couldn't expect Lucy to be an artist yet. After all, Simone was so much older. She suddenly felt dizzy and mixed up. Probably the humid scents of the full American beauties, spidery chrysanthemums, sprays and sprays of orchids, to say nothing of Lucy's overpowering Mitsuoko, on top of all that champagne, confused everything.
The accompanist entered, followed by a waiter bearing glasses and champagne. "Pardon for the delay. When I see Monsieur Figente I return for another bottle," Jacques burbled with forced gaiety, his teeth with several black gaps going up and down like piano keys. Vermillion had evaded him in the hall and now, looking anxiously at Simone, he observed the stage of the drug she had taken in his absence.
"Monsieur Pierce is a harpist extraordinaire. He has such ideas for me as you never dream of," she said captiously because she suspected him of having been discussing her with Vermillion.
During the tinkle, pop, and fizz exchanges Lucy reflected on the phenomenon that was Simone, cataloging and weighing in the mirror the physical attributes in contrast to her own that made the singer fascinating. The loosely curled coxcomb lightly washed with henna so that the real light-brown hair shone through was unusual in these days when everyone had a neat marcel or slicked boyish bob. The silver and green shining makeup that probably could be bought only in Paris and the gold-flecked teal-colored eyes gave her pale skin a clear greenish cast, especially next to the heavy burnt-orange taffeta. She not only was an artist, though why was a mystery because all she did was stand still and sing, but she looked the way a toast of the town should. Of course she was older than she appeared on the stage, you could tell by the way her makeup was settling in lines on her face, but she looked like a woman who knew all about love. Maybe that made her an artist. She must have been beautiful when she was younger, with that delicate thin nose, tiny close ears, and that pointed face. Of course she was old for Vermillion, though she was still beautiful in an exotic way and maybe, because he was an artist too, he liked older, more interesting women. It was hard to talk with people who knew a lot, but it wasn't polite just to stare and say nothing about her performance.
"I want to tell you how much I enjoyed your singing. I thought it was very interesting. I've heard so much about what you do but I couldn't imagine it and I was surprised when you came on in that beautiful burnt-orange dress because I thought, from your painting, you always wore black velvet."
Simone put down her glass and arched her fine penciled brows as she listened to this voice, so like a child's reciting a lesson in politeness. At mention of the black velvet dress, which she had not worn since Brussels, her hand jerked, toppling the champagne glass, and its sound against the cuticle scissors crashed in her ears. With a short gasp of anguish she brushed the broken glass into the jumble of makeup paraphernalia, telegrams, and cards cluttering the table.
Figente was now certain she had taken narcotic. The feverish brilliance in her tortoise-shell eyes and the frenetically audible exclamations of impatience, excessive in relation to minute irritations, as that of the fallen glass, were obvious symptoms of her super-sensitized nerves. More than that, it was the elaborately sensuous slowness with which she was more and more performing each gesture and uttering each word. He had always discounted as envy the rumors brought from Paris, the first by that yokel painter Clem something, later Cynski, that Vermillion had been distracted from work because of her avidity. It might explain why Vermillion hedged about showing his work. Perhaps there was none. The boy hardly could wait to rush back to her tonight, and to a drug addict. The least he could do for Vermillion was to scare hell out of her.
"Vermillion brought me a print of his drawing of you one day when Lucy was posing for me as Leda, and we spoke of you," he said, and leaned back to enjoy the effect. That would get her, he thought, to be told that Vermillion, who she and everyone knew was almost pathologically secretive about his private life, would speak of her at all to a younger woman.
"Don't forget the swan!" Lucy chimed in with a lightsome trill.
"Indeed!" Each needle-prick letter in the word came from her small sharp teeth as Simone grasped a bottle near at hand to steady herself. A wild desire to push them all out swept through her but that would require rising to her feet, and the outrage and desolation of Paul's betrayal—speaking of her to this empty little nothing—had paralyzed her. If she swayed unsteadily they would think her drunk. Moreover, it would be unclever, however wounded, to reveal oneself as vulnerable. She splashed the wine into a tumbler, drank it, and then set the tumbler down with exaggerated carefulness, defying them all to affect her. It was unbelievable that Paul would discuss her with these two. Oh! to see her innocent expression change if she were to tell her that at this moment he was awaiting her. Let him wait for his effrontery in flaunting this girl.
"Pah! this champagne is nothing, cognac would improve it, Jacques." Her voice was frayed and a little indistinct.
"Mr. Bigelow and his party wait—you promised," he said, but observing her mounting frenzy, shrugged.
An orchid broken from a spray lay on the sodden table and, picking it up, she thrust it suddenly into the tumbler of champagne. She was a great cell of controlled power, like the dynamo one heard and felt throbbing on narrow rue Caumartin as one walked holding Paul's arm. But she was more clever than a machine. Far more clever than the four observing her with their puppet faces. Sagging fat Figente and his musical boy toy who would leave him if she snapped her fingers. The hot intelligent one in the mischosen frosty gown. And the Leda whose twilight gown revealed more than it concealed, but without subtlety, as was her speech. One could easily learn from her what Paul had done and said.
"Drink before it is warm," she invited the puppet of her will.
"I shouldn't because I have two shows tomorrow, but here goes."
Lucy was glad Simone was a little drunk because it was making her more friendly.
Simone drained the orchid glass and confided, "It is good to put Scotch or cognac in their water, it revives them as it does us. I adore the scent of orchis, it is a waiting jungle stillness."
"I'll remember that. I never noticed their odor, I suppose, because I use too much perfume. To tell you the truth, I don't think they suit me as well as you."
"You are too modest, though perhaps les muguets would suit you better."
"I don't know what they are. The only French I know is bon jour, bon nuit, oui oui, non non, and oo la la," Lucy said, feeling less constrained because of Simone's increasing friendliness.
"Lilies of the valley," Vida murmured dryly, jealous of being out of it and, at the same time, further revising her opinion of Lucy who, until the advent of Simone, had appeared the paragon of worldly wisdom. Seeing her respond too naively to the older woman, who suddenly and for some undetectable reason was playing up to Lucy, was provoking. Or was it that Lucy's naivete made her a kind of Candide, seemingly willing to submit to the thoughts and wishes of others to attain answers to the two questions which obsessed her: the meaning of love; and what made you an artist?
Lucy eyed Simone, wondering whether a compliment had been intended or whether she appeared too kiddish for orchids.
"I realize how much I missed in not knowing French even though you made me understand something by the way you sang. Now more than ever I want to learn so that the next time I hear you it will mean even more to me, because I think you are such a great artist it's a shame to miss a word."
Simone took a deep draught of cognac and smiled with an intimacy that made Lucy prickle. No wonder Vermillion had been attracted, she seemed to have a kind of power over anyone she looked at.
"You must come," Simone was saying, "and let me explain my songs. After all, we artists of the theatre must collaborate."
Figente could hardly believe his ears: Simone collaborating with another performer, anyone, except perhaps with a lover. It proved that the woman was drunk as well as drugged. Or was she no longer interested in men, was that why Vermillion had hurried away?
That here, unexpectedly, someone as famous as Simone Calvette should apply that magic word artist to her was overwhelming to Lucy, because it meant the singer thought it possible for her to become one. "I would like that better than anything in the world."
"We really must go, Lucy!" Figente no longer could control his impatience. It always was better having parties at home where when people became tiresome, as after a time everyone invariably did, one could go to bed.
A tall woman with clipped black hair, pomaded and sleek as a man's, and wearing a man's black opera cape, strode into the room. It was, Figente saw, Maxine Purcell, of opposite predilections to his own, and he nodded distantly, as she to him, as though members of separate branches of a secret society. His intuition concerning Simone was confirmed: in such relationships he was, he applauded himself, infallible.
"Simone dear, Jacques says you are too exhausted and so I've ordered a carriage if you think a drive would rest you. There is a most amusing place in Harlem that might relax you—we could go there through the Park."
Through the haze of the third cognac Simone recalled the promise to the persistent millionairess, one of several promises for after the performance. But Paul was waiting.
"Not tonight, but if you wish you may drive me home."
"Good. I'll go and see if the carriage has come."
Lucy didn't want to leave without fixing a definite time for the meeting. "I can come any time that is good for you."
Simone looked into the waiting blue gaze. How stupid to have forgotten that cognac depressed, negating the medicinal powder. The sense of doom returned: Paul might not be waiting and for what reason only the girl whose voice tinkled could perhaps reveal. Sundays in a foreign land were dreadful eternities.
"On Sunday then, late in the afternoon."
"Mr. Bigelow and his party are still waiting." Jacques was as persistent as the accusing angel, and she put out her hand to ward him off.
"Tell them something."
"And the flowers?" he asked resigned, fixing the cloak on her shoulders.
"Let them die in peace, poor things."