The Portrait

The Story of a Strange Friendship Built Upon the Sands

COLETTE

AT one and the same moment they threw open the windows of their adjoining rooms, rattling the blinds, which were half closed against the sun. Then, leaning out over the railing of the balcony, they smiled at each other.

"What glorious weather!"

"Not a wrinkle on the ocean!"

"That's where it's in luck! Have you noticed how the Chinaberry tree has grown since last yearf"

"And the honeysuckle! There are tendrils twined in the shutters now!"

"Are you going to lie down, Lily?"

"Oh, no! I'm going to get a sweater and go out. The first day here I just can't stay put. What will you do, Alice?"

"Oh, I'm going through my linen chest. It fairly recks of last year's lavender. I intend to have a wonderful time in my own crazy way. You go and do likewise, dearie."

LILY jerked her blonde head, which was both bobbed and bleached, in a marionettelike salute; and one moment later Alice saw her—looking, in her sweater, somehow like a round green apple—down on the gravelled paths of the garden, which was open to the sea. Alice laughed to herself, but quite without malice, "My, but she's getting fat!"

She surveyed complacently her own long white hands and crossed her thin arms in front of her on the railing, drawing in long breaths of the sea air rich in iodine and salts. The breeze did not disturb so much as a lock of her hair, which was done up in the Spanish style. Drawn back smoothly in front, leaving her forehead and ears uncovered, and conforming to the line of her pretty nose, the mode was nevertheless a little unkind to all those things about her which were beginning to show age: the horizontal lines, for instance, just above her eyebrows, the sagging cheeks, the dark hollows of insomnia about her eyes. Her friend criticized the pitiless coiffure: "Why do you do it? I think that when fruit is getting a bit dry, it needs foliage."

To which Alice would reply: "Not every one can do her hair, at forty, like a little girl in a musical comedy."

They understood each other perfectly, and this daily teasing merely added zest to their friendship. Still elegant, even if a trifle thin and bony, Alice now volunteered nonchalantly: "My weight hasn't changed, to speak of, since the year my husband died. And I've kept one of the blouses that I had when I was a girl. As far as the size is concerned, it might have been made yesterday."

For the best of reasons, Lily made no reference to any marriage. In her fortieth year, after a wildly giddy youth, she had become undeniably and irrepressibly fat.

"It's true that I'm plump," said she. "But just look at my face. Not a wrinkle! That's something for a woman of my age, you must admit."

And she shot a faintly malicious glance at the lines in Alice's checks, and at the fur neckpiece designed to hide the scrawniness of her neck.

But a grand passion, even more effectual than a rivalry, united these two friends: the same man, handsome, famous, had spurned them both, even before they began to show the passing of the years. Certain letters from the great man to Alice bore witness to the fact that for a few weeks he had taken a fancy to the jealous magnetism of her eyes, to her slim brown elegance, so carefully draped. Lily had only one telegram, strangely curt and hurried, to cherish.

It wasn't long before he forgot both of them. But their mutual' exclamation, "What, you knew him, too!" was an overture to the confessions, almost completely candid, that now went on interminably between them.

"I have never understood his sudden silence," Alice said. "But there was a time, I'm sure, when I could have been really the friend, the inspiration, almost the spiritual guide of this fickle man, whom no woman has been able to hold."

"Well, my dear, I won't say to the contrary. T he friend, the inspiration— I don't know anything about those grand names ... all I know is that on that morning we were aflame. I don't want to appear foolish—but I knew then just as surely as I am now talking to you that I could rule him through his senses. And then—the bottom dropped out—it always docs drop out."

Satisfied, then, at sharing an equal disappointment; and since they had arrived at an age when women arc inclined to build a little shrine out of their memories, they had hung in the parlour of Lily's villa, of which they shared the expense for two months of the year, a portrait of the ingrate, the very best one obtainable, the picture that had appeared in all the rotogravures and illustrated reviews. It was a retouched enlargement with heavy smudges of black crayon, red lips, and eyes of the bright blue one sees in a watercolour.

"It isn't exactly a work of art," said Alice, "but when one knew him as I knew him—as zee knew him, Lily—it positively lives

For two years they gave themselves up cheerfully to a sort of reverent seclusion. They entertained only harmless women friends and equally harmless old beaux, who had become rather a habit. Growing old? Yes, it must be confessed. Growing old under the very eves of that portrait of youth, in the glow of that wonderful memory. Growing old in the best of health, with little quiet journeys, with little meals carefully prepared.

"Don't you think this is better than hanging around dance halls and beauty parlours and gambling rooms?" volunteered Lily. Alice acquiesced with a nod of her head.

"Everything is equally dull and flat after a great experience like ours," she said.

When the linen chest had been set in order, Alice changed her dress, and, as she bucklfcd her white leather belt, smiled to herself, "just the same size as last year! That's funny!" But she reproached herself for having put off for so long the greeting to their portrait in the salon on the ground floor.

"Alice! Alice! Are you coming?" Lily's voice called from below. She leaned over the railing and answered, "Just a minute. Why?"

"Come down quickly! Something very strange has happened. Do come!"

Excited and always vaguely expecting a romantic adventure, Alice ran down to find Lily standing before their portrait, which had been taken down from the wall and was lying across an armchair in the full light of day.

(Continued on page 106)

EDITOR'S NOTE: Colette, in private life Mme. de Jouvenel, wife of the Editor of "Le Matin", is perhaps the best known writer in France—one need not qualify and say the best known "woman" writer. One of her first successes was her "Claudine", which made a profound and lasting impression, and in which her collaborator was her husband, M. Willy, himself a writer of considerable renown. Her brilliant and penetrating little sketches owe much to the fact that, far from trying to overcome the supposed handicaps of her sex, she has, on the contrary, exploited her intimate knowledge of feminine psychology. She was, also, one of the first of the moderns to emphasize the importance of purely physical sensations and impressions. A list of her books would be long, but one should perhaps make especial mention of "Cheri", "La Vagabonde", and "L'Entrave". In addition, Colette has done some interesting journalistic work.

(Continued from page 47)

During the ten months in which the villa had been closed and dark, an unusually damp season had combined with the salty air and the colours of the portrait to work a feat of malicious and almost miraculous destruction. The moisture had traced on the classic chin of the great man the white beard of a very unkempt old man. The blisters in the paper made two bags under the eyes. Several grains of charcoal had smeared their way from the hair down over the face and had marked with age and wrinkles that conquering visage. Alice covered her eyes with her hands.

"Why! Why—it's vandalism!"

Lily, more prosaic, sighed, "Who ever in the wide world would have thought of such a thing!" Then she added feverishly, "We won't have to keep it here, will we?"

"Heavens, no! It would make us ill!"

"They gazed at each other. Lily thought that Alice looked very young with her slim figure; and Alice couldn't help envying Lily's complexion. "Just like a peach," she thought. * * * *

Their luncheon was full of unwonted chatter about massage, exercise, clothes. They talked casually, as it were, of the prolonged youth of certain actresses, of their alleged amours.

Lily suddenly exclaimed, apropos of nothing: "Good lord! A short life and a virtuous one! I prefer it long and merry!" and Alice referred several times to a man, one of their friends, "who should, unless I'm very much mistaken, be spending the summer near here."

A fever of evasion, of selfish scheming, took possession of them; to conceal which they ate, drank, smoked and talked more freely than usual.

Back in their little sitting room, Alice mercifully turned her head aside as she passed the portrait. It was the trivial Lily, rosy, fat, turning a little grey, who blew a scornful puff of smoke into its face and said

"The poor old thing !"