the silence that told a tale

CLAUDE ANET

a secret is shared, yet never told, and a lady who lived abundantly is allowed to rest in peace

We were talking, that night at Mme. W-'s, of the Duchess of Villereal. Her tragic and absurd death, coming so grotesquely after a glittering, brilliant life—a life lived to its fullest extent—had brought her, now, into grim prominence. She had lived intensely, in the warm light of a universal admiration which she had always sought, and had found early in life. And now her premature death was the topic on all tongues from San Sebastian to Le Touquet, from the Lido to Deauville; it ran through every conversation as inevitably as the waters of the spas wound through the earth, as the swift brooks sparkled through the mountains.

Was she not known by everyone of importance on the Continent—the Egeria of more than one famous man, the cherished friend of the most distinguished artists? Had we not seen her in the company of Proust and Stravinsky, Rodin and Renoir, Valery and Einstein, and a host of others? Musicians dedicated their finest works to her, painters did her portrait (ten portraits of her fortunately remain, and they will surely hang, one day, in the Louvre—a posthumous honour which would have touched her deeply).

And this woman had just died, in her thirtyfifth year, in a stupid automobile accident. Is there a death more idiotic, more senseless for a beautiful and intelligent woman? That the man with her, a sporting spendthrift who found his only thrill in speed, should have driven his car into oblivion at eighty miles an hour surprised no one, and no one mourned him. But for the Duchess of Villereal, who had been so magnificently alive, to end in a frightful melange of blood, gasoline and oil, fragments of glass and twisted metal, was horrible, preposterous. ... As we talked of her, the dreadful picture grew in our minds of th6se noble lips torn by splinters of glass, that beautiful face contorted in agony and terror, that graceful head, once the abode of rich and simple thought, now crushed and broken. . . .

These were the macabre reflections that occupied us that evening at Mme. W-'s. The

Paris newspapers had just brought us word of the Duchess's death. We had all known her more or less, some of us by sight only; and now, as each of us contributed what he knew of her, we began slowly to assemble a kind of word-picture of this lovely woman—a spontaneous portrait from memory, accented by some rather subtle touches; for we, in France, excel in this kind of psychological study, and as in everything that we do well, we take a lively pleasure in doing it.

After discussing everything that was common knowledge about the Duchess, we began to go a little more deeply into the subject, to probe a little into what lay beneath the brilliant surface. We all agreed that this gifted woman had a quality, a je ne sais quoi, that was disconcerting. It was as though she had somehow escaped the laws that bound the rest of humanity, as though she were proof against the frailties that fettered us all. She was more admired than loved. . . .

Our hostess turned to Antoine Cely, a young writer who had already made a name for himself. He had taken less part in the conversation than any of us.

"You've said very little, Antoine, and yet who knew her better than you? You could shed some light on the subject, if you would. . . ."

"Did anyone really know her?" he answered evasively. "And if I did know anything, wouldn't it be indiscreet ... ?"

Mme. Wsmiled. "Come, Antoine, you have too many scruples. The Duchess is dead, and we are not asking you to betray her confidence. Upon my word, your air of embarrassment leads us to believe . . ."

Antoine Cely laughed. "God forbid! I suppose you are right—why shouldn't I speak freely? But I know less than you thinkthe Duchess was a woman who lived within herself. I have made a thousand guesses about her—but they were only guesses. I have built, out of tiny facts, frail suppositions which were all, perhaps, very far from the truth. Fundamentally, what you are interested in knowing is, whether she had lovers."

"You could not have expressed it more clearly," admitted Mme. W-.

"She loved to surround herself with men," said Antoine Cely, thoughtfully, "everyone knows that. She drank deep of their minds, their artistic gifts, the authority and the brilliance that dwelt in them. All that, they gave her lavishly; and she needed it—it was her spiritual food. But she was beautiful, and a woman, and no doubt there were many men who would have liked to give her more than that. Two or three were, to my knowledge, passionately in love with her . .. was she able to keep them at a distance? Or did she, on the contrary, want to attach them to herself wholly? She started badly ... a drunken and brutr.1 husband who was unfaithful to her; and a woman, unless she is ardently sensual— as the Duchess manifestly was not—does not recover easily from such a disillusionment. They separated a year after their marriage. The husband returned to his former loves, and she began a brilliant life divided between Madrid, Rome, London and Paris.

"It is probable that she never knew passion, that she had no difficulty in controlling the transports of her own heart. She was never Venus toute entiere a sa proie attachee. Perhaps the price of great intelligence, of acute sensibility in a woman is this inability to forget herself, to give herself entirely. ... I have known two gifted women who paid this price —the Duchess of Villereal had that much in common with them."

"My dear Antoine," interrupted our hostess, "we grant you that point. The Duchess was not a great lover—but that concerns only passionate love. Didn't she have her caprices? Did she satisfy them? We don't ask to know more than that."

Antoine Cely reflected for a moment, hesitated, then said:

"I wish I could answer that. What will you think of me when I tell you that, one day, the opportunity did come to me to know her— shall we call it her secret? And that I failed to take advantage of it."

"I should never have thought you so inept."

"Wait. . . . The story is a brief one, if you care to hear it. You can judge me afterward."

We drew our chairs closer to Antoine Cely, and disposed ourselves comfortably to listen.

"During the war," he began, "when I was stationed near Verdun, I was sent on an important mission to St. Raphael, where the principal concentration camp of the black troops was situated. You can imagine my joy at escaping from the purgatory of the frontline trenches, and finding myself in a part of France where the noise of the cannons could not be heard; and my pleasure was increased by the knowledge that Mme. de Villereal had, as you know, a villa—Villa Tamaris—near Beauvallon. She had turned it into a hospital for convalescents. I telegraphed her, and when I arrived in the afternoon, her car was waiting for me—for I was to stay at the villa, the auto taking me to St. Raphael as often as it was necessary.

"At the villa, I was a little surprised to meet a man whom I knew slightly, and whom you will allow me to call simply X-, for he is still very much alive and would perhaps not want his name to he known in this connection. Xwas a good-looking boy, intelligent and, I thought, rather wilful. I was not unaware that he was very much attracted by the Duchess; before the war, they had been seen constantly together, and he was not very skilful in concealing his admiration. I learned now that he had convalescent leave on the Cote d'Azur, and that he had arranged to spend it with Mme. de Villereal—a natural and pleasant decision, since she had also staying with her an elderly Englishwoman, a friend of hers, who acted as chaperone.

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"X-did not seem greatly pleased to see me. He knew that I was an old friend of the Duchess's, and since he was of a jealous nature, the presence of another man near her was not too agreeable to him. We all had tea together . . . and I found her the same brilliant woman I had always known— sparkling, witty, playing with words and ideas with the graceful, enchanting ease which became her so well. No shadow of embarrassment, not one false note, not one look or inflection that might lead me to suspect that her relations with Xhad reached a more than friendly stage. He, on the contrary, was nervous; he insisted repeatedly on explaining his presence at Tamaris, on assuring me that he would be there only three days. I considered this unnecessary and ill-timed, for I had no right to explanations, and did not ask any. He was there; I was there, too. There was nothing further to add. But he went on talking, and talked a little too much, a little too sharply ... or else, he fell abruptly silent. In short, he had all the symptoms of a man who finds himself in an unusual situation, and who is not adroit enough to carry it off gracefully.

"I found it pleasant, nevertheless— this hour around the tea-table in an atmosphere of such charm. Fresh from Verdun, my ears were still ringing with the incessant din of bursting shells . . . but now, I forgot all that. Was there a war? Had I just come out of that roaring furnace? Would I go back into it tomorrow? I resolved not to think of it, for I was more pleasantly occupied in solving a problem of psychology in love—a problem with which my curiosity was at that moment tremendously engaged.

"Dinner, and the evening which followed, were equally agreeable. In spite of my weariness, I carried on a lively conversation with the Duchess—a little loo lively, perhaps, for I noticed that

Xlooked faintly annoyed. Before

eleven o'clock, he went to bed, and I asked permission to retire as well.

" 'But we are all going to bed,' cried Mme. de Villereal. 'We never stay up

late. Mr. Xis convalescing, and I

must be at the hospital at eight o'clock in the morning.'

"We said good-night in the corridor, and went to our rooms. The Duchess's suite was in one wing of the villa; my room was at the other end of the house, opposite the one occupied by

X-. Nearby, was an elaborately

equipped bathroom.

"Without delay, I stretched myself luxuriously between sheets whose fineness seemed heavenly to me. A warm, southwest wind had risen .... I was a little feverish, and in the langour which slowly enveloped me, the muttering of the wind sounded like the rumbling of heavy artillery. I began, confusedly, to dream of guns, of the trenches. . . . Suddenly—was I asleep? —I sat erect. I had heard a door bang in the corridor. Someone, I reflected, was returning to his room. . . . No, the door banged again.

"I could not go to sleep again. I kept thinking about that door, left open, probably, by some careless servant and blown this way and that by the prowling wind. Why did no one rouse himself to close it? Evidently, it bothered no one except me. After what seemed an endless interval of waiting I decided to get up and close it myself. I switched on the light, and saw by my watch that it was a little past midnight. Pulling my dressing-gown around me, I went into the corridor.

"I had not far to go. The banging door was that of the room occupied by Xopposite my own. The room was lighted, and I quickly saw that X-was not in it. From a feel-

ing of delicacy, I refrained from looking to see if the bed had been slept in, and contented myself with carefully closing the door, and going back to my room.

"But I had something to think about.

Where was X-? In the bathroom, or ... in the Duchess's room?

"I knew that I should have only a few moments to wait until the question would be decided for me. If X-

did not return immediately, he was certainly in the other wing with Mme. de Villereal.

"Yes, I had only to wait. . . . Well, think of me what you will, I did not wait. I don't know which was strongest in me, fatigue or the intolerable feeling of spying on someone else. I could not, somehow, see myself with my ear glued to the door like a servant, listening for a footfall on the carpet, intruding furtively upon a secret which was not mine. ... I did not wait."

"But your story is tantalizing!" protested our hostess. "You leave us in the air. I think you might have had a little more curiosity, my friend!"

Antoine Cely smiled briefly. "Ah," he said, "the poor Duchess is dead. Let her keep her secret safely . . . and let us occupy ourselves with the living."

A thoughtful silence fell upon us. We were all absorbed in our own thoughts, and—I knew—we were all thinking the same thing. Antoine Cely had told his story well, and it was decent of him to respect the Duchess's secret. But there was a kind of melancholy in such wasted gallantry . . . for there was not one of us who did not know the real reason why he had not listened for footfalls outside his door. It had been a rumour ... a tale ... a part of the dramatic conjecture of which the legend of Mme. de Villereal was woven. Now, alas, it had been confirmed by Antoine Cely himself, by the very fact of his reticence.

But none of who were there that night, at Mme. W-'s, ever spoke of it—not even to each other. The Duchess was a great lady, and she is dead. If Antoine Cely guarded her secret . . . so shall we.