Olivia (7 page)

 

“Laura,” I said to her one day towards the end of her stay, “do you love her?”

“Oh,” said Laura, “you know I do. She has been the best part of my life. My father’s too busy to talk to
me much. She has opened my eyes to all I like best in the world, showered me with innumerable treasures.”

“And tell me this, Laura. Does your heart beat when you go into the room where she is? Does it stand still when you touch her hand? Does your voice dry up in your throat when you speak to her? Do you hardly dare raise your eyes to look at her, and yet not succeed in turning them away?”

“No,” said Laura. “None of all that.”

“What then?” I insisted.

“Why,” said Laura, looking at me with her clear, untroubled eyes, which had a kind of wonder and a kind of recoil in them: “there’s nothing else. I just love her.”

 

“So,” thought I to myself, but I didn’t say it aloud, “my feeling is not just love. Is it something more or something less? My heart is not as great as Laura’s, but I won’t admit that it feels less. Surely, surely, it feels more —but perhaps not more, perhaps only differently.”

Laura’s visit came to an end unexpectedly soon. She had a letter from home calling her back. But to me she said privately:

“I think Mlle Cara is unwell. Or perhaps I tire or irritate her. I feel it’s better for Mlle Julie that I should go.”

“Oh, Laura,” I cried, “when shall I see you again?”

“When you leave school, we shall see each other very often. We’re going to be friends all our lives.”

And so, dear Laura, we have been.

No, it was not Laura I was jealous of; it was rather, for some inexplicable reason, of Cécile. Cécile was our American beauty. Tall, elegant, exquisitely dressed, with a lovely little head as perfectly finished as a Tanagra’s, a dazzling skin of cream and roses, and dark, lively, empty eyes. Why was I jealous of Cécile? She had, I thought, neither heart nor brains. She went on her way with a kind of impervious, serene, good-tempered aloofness. One felt she was absolutely secure in her own superiority. Mlle Julie was very fond of talking to her and trying to tease her. She used to admire her clothes, criticise her style of hair-dressing, constantly make remarks about her personal appearance.

“Personal remarks!” Mlle Julie exclaimed once. “I know you English have a horror of them. You’re brought up to avoid them. It’s ill-bred, you think, to say to someone, ‘Your hair’s beautiful, but you dress it unbecomingly.’ In fact, it’s indiscreet, an intrusion, almost an outrage to think at all about the person you are talking to —just as you must pretend never to notice what you’re eating. To my mind, the making of personal remarks is one of the most important things in life. How can one live without remarking other people, and accustoming oneself to remark them justly? And if some of one’s remarks come to one’s lips, it just gives salt and savour to one’s conversation. You’d rather I talked to you about your
clothes and your hair than about the works of Pascal, wouldn’t you, Cécile?”

“Oh yes, much,” said Cécile—though she hadn’t the least idea who Pascal was.

“Well, I’ll tell you what I think. I daresay you know more about it than I do, but I’ll give you my opinion for what it’s worth. You’re beautiful enough to justify your giving your whole time to the care of your beauty. But you must try, if possible, to do it intelligently. When you marry your duke—you do mean to marry an English duke, don’t you?”

“Yes,” said Cécile, with calm conviction. (And she did.)

“Well, when you marry him, remember that though fashion is important, you are beautiful enough not to be the slave of fashion. Some of your countrywomen are so admirably turned out, so extraordinarily ‘shop-finished’ that they lose all their charm. Try to be perfect without showing it too much. Or rather, remember you are so perfect that you needn’t bother too much about showing it.—Is there anyone else here who would like to marry a duke?” she went on, looking round.

“I should,” said I, “very much.”

“Ah,” said Mlle Julie, examining me critically, “I’m not surprised. But,
chère petite,
I’m afraid you never will. Haven’t you a second choice?”

“Yes,” I said, “the duke’s my second choice. I’d rather marry (I didn’t dare say ‘be loved by’ but that’s
what I meant) a great man—a poet, an artist. But I shall never do that either.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” she answered gravely.

And yet, though I knew I was respected more than Cécile, there were moments when I envied her for her beauty, for her finish, for that immense power she had, without any effort, of making herself felt, moments when it wasn’t respect I wanted but something more—human, I called it.

I was envious too, in a different way, of Signorina. I was conscious of a singleness in her passion of which I knew I was incapable. There was nothing in her which she had not devoted to her idol. Yes, I knew that with her, passion had obliterated every other feeling—jealousy even had been burnt up in the white heat of her adoration. I guessed that scruples, conscience, all idea of other duties, all other interests, engagements, affections, save as they related to this particular devotion, no longer existed for her. This gave her an extraordinary calm. There was nothing whatever conflicting in her. She was never traversed by those tempests of despair and resentment with their concomitant fits of self-contempt and self-loathing which so often shook me. I think she wanted nothing for herself but to be allowed to serve—to serve in any way—in every way. I think there was nothing else she wanted. If I too would have liked to serve, I was continually conscious that I was incapable and unworthy, continually devoured by vain humilities. And then there
was also in me a curious repugnance, a terror of getting too near. I should not have liked to help Mlle Julie at her toilette, to brush her hair, to put on her shoes for her. When I thought of the particular services which Signorina performed with such entire gladness, I found myself shuddering. And then, too, what about those other things that inhabited me? Wasn’t I likely to be caught up into excitement by a thousand extraneous causes? A curve of the river between its wooded banks, a mass of clouds in the sky, a line of poetry, a scene in a novel, the rapture of seeing the curtain roll back at the theatre, anguish for Swift’s madness, for Keats’ death—these were a few of my countless infidelities. I defended myself at the bar of my private tribunal by saying that all these emotions were but “the ministers of love” and that Love himself had created them “to feed his sacred flame.” But nevertheless I sometimes envied and very often admired Signorina.

I
remember the first éclat I witnessed between the ladies. For some weeks there had been whisperings among the girls that they were falling out; raised voices, angry words had been heard by people who passed by their door. But the first public scene took place at table. It was typical of all the others and started from a trifle.

Hortense, the maid servant, dropped a plate behind Mlle Cara’s chair, and Mlle Cara gave a start and a scream as if she had been shot.

“The girl did it on purpose. I know she did,” she exclaimed.

“Oh, Cara, I’m so sorry she startled you,” said Mlle Julie.

“No, you’re not,” shrieked Mlle Cara. “You’re laughing at me. And you encourage her clumsiness. It was you and Mlle Baietto who engaged her. You knew she was totally unsuitable. But of course, you never listen to me.”

Mlle Julie tried to turn the attack.

“Well, in the meantime, we’ll get her to wait at the other table.”

Another time Mlle Cara complained of the food. She pushed away her plate impatiently.

“No one ever pays the faintest attention to my regime,” she cried. “And yet I should have thought Mlle Baietto knew by this time that I can’t eat beef. I believe you’re all trying to poison me.”

“But, Cara,” said Mlle Julie, “here’s your chicken just been put on the table.”

“It’s too late. I can’t eat anything now.” She got up to leave the table. Mlle Julie rose too and made a movement to accompany her, but Frau Riesener was beforehand with her. She hurried up to give Mlle Cara a supporting arm, and as they walked slowly from the room, Mlle Julie dropped back into her chair.

My lesson with Signorina that afternoon was an agitated one.

“Oh,” she cried, “Heaven knows I do my very best to give her food she’ll like. But it’s no use. She’s determined to find fault with everything.”

“Why does she hate you?”

“Oh, it’s not me she hates, or only in the second place. What she wants is to torture
her
. It’s bad enough now at table, but upstairs she’s getting more and more uncontrolled. She sobs and cries. She says she’s dying, that we’re all killing her. I listened at the door the other day. It was dreadful. ‘You don’t love me,’ she kept repeating;
‘nobody loves me.’ And then I heard Mlle Julie answer so tenderly, so sweetly, ‘Yes, Cara, indeed I do. I long for you to be well and happy.’ And Mlle Cara went on again. I made it out through her sobs: ‘No, no. You take everyone’s affection away from me. First one and then the other. They begin by liking me and then they change. You steal them from me.’ And then, Olivia, I heard your name. ‘I thought Olivia would like me, but it’s you she likes, always you.’ ”

“It’s not my fault,” I cried. “How can I help it?”

It was during my Italian lessons (and it may be believed that I learnt to understand and speak that language with uncommon facility) that I managed to piece together odds and ends of facts over which my imagination first brooded and then built its fantasies. But how far they were really facts, or Signorina’s coloured version of them, I never knew. And from first to last of this obscure history, I was nearly always at the outside edge of it, trying to grope my way into its heart, trying with my inexperience of all the fundamental elements of human nature, and my ignorance of most of the actual circumstances, to understand what was going on, to figure to myself the feelings and motives of the actors in it. Of course I never succeeded. And even now. . . no, even now I am still in the same uncertainty. Clouds of suspicion and surmise gather and form round first one and then the other of the characters in the drama, but clouds so unsubstantial and so vague that they dissolve at a
breath and shape themselves in other forms and other colours, that they often seem to me to be the unwholesome exhalations of my own disordered heart and mind.

Mlle Julie, then, and Mlle Cara (so Signorina told me) had lived together for about fifteen years. They were both young, beautiful, and gifted when they first met and decided to become partners in starting a girls’ school. It was Julie who had the capital, the influential friends, the energy, the intellect, the commanding personality. It was Cara who had the charm that gained fond mothers’ hearts and the qualifications that made the enterprise possible. She had passed all the necessary examinations, and Julie none. They had begun in a small way, but had soon become surprisingly successful, increased their numbers, widened their circle, moved into a larger house, built a library and a music room. They were something of an institution among a certain set of Parisian intellectuals. Julie was the daughter of a well-known man of letters; her father’s friends had been distinguished and at his death had continued their friendship for his brilliant daughter. Julie was eminently sociable and Cara’s caressing, cooing manners softened her abruptness and sweetened her epigrams; together they made their drawing room an attractive place with the added charm of the
jeunes filles
who flitted in and out of it, ministering cakes and coffee to the guests. They were a model couple, deeply attached, tenderly devoted, the gifts of each supplementing
the deficiencies of the other. They were admired and loved. They were happy.

According to Signorina, this harmony had lasted undisturbed until the arrival of Frau Riesener three years ago. Signorina herself had come to the school a month or two earlier. At the beginning, being extremely young, she had filled a very subordinate position.

“Nobody thought anything of me then,” she said, “but I have eyes and I watched.” (Signorina’s eyes were indeed surprisingly bright. She reminded me of a little mouse, whisking along with such astonishing rapidity, appearing and disappearing so unexpectedly, picking up crumbs of information with such deftness.)

Frau Riesener had started by making herself agreeable and almost indispensable to both the ladies. A very capable, very intelligent woman, she had introduced new methods of organization, was informed of the latest theories of education, was extremely clever at finding good teachers, and spared no pains to do so efficiently. Mlle Julie had more time to devote to her special classes of literature and history, more time for visiting her friends in Paris. Mlle Cara was relieved of many household cares and not allowed to fatigue herself, as Frau Riesener said, uselessly.

“But I noticed,” said Signorina, “that these attentions had the effect—I don’t know whether they had the intention—of separating the friends.”