The Woman with the Fan

CHAPTER I

IN a large and cool drawing-room of London a few people were scattered about, listening to a soprano voice that was singing to the accompaniment of a piano. The sound of the voice came from an inner room, towards which most of these people were looking earnestly. Only one or two seemed indifferent to the fascination of the singer.

A little woman, with oily black hair and enormous dark eyes, leaned back on a sofa, playing with a scarlet fan and glancing sideways at a thin, elderly man, who gazed into the distance from which the voice came. His mouth worked slightly under his stiff white moustache, and his eyes, in colour a faded blue, were fixed and stern. Upon his knees his thin and lemon-coloured hands twitched nervously, as if they longed to grasp something and hold it fast. The little dark woman glanced down at these hands, and then sharply up at the elderly man’s face. A faint and malicious smile curved her full lips, which were artificially reddened, and she turned her shoulder to him with deliberation and looked about the room.

On all the faces in it, except one, she perceived intent expressions. A sleek and plump man, with hanging cheeks, a hooked nose, and hair slightly tinged with grey and parted in the middle, was the exception. He sat in a low chair, pouting his lips, playing with his single eyeglass, and looking as sulky as an ill-conditioned school-boy. Once or twice he crossed and uncrossed his short legs with a sort of abrupt violence, laid his fat, white hands on the arms of the chair, lifted them, glanced at his rosy and shining nails, and frowned. Then he shut his little eyes so tightly that the skin round them became wrinkled, and, stretching out his feet, seemed almost angrily endeavouring to fall asleep.

A tall young man, who was sitting alone not far off, cast a glance of contempt at him, and then, as if vexed at having bestowed upon him even this slight attention, leaned forward, listening with eagerness to the soprano voice. The little dark woman observed him carefully above the scarlet feathers of her fan, which she now held quite still. His face was lean and brown. His eyes were long and black, heavy-lidded, and shaded by big lashes which curled upward. His features were good. The nose and chin were short and decided, but the mouth was melancholy, almost weak. On his upper lip grew a short moustache, turned up at the ends. His body was slim and muscular.

After watching him for a little while the dark woman looked again at the elderly man beside her, and then quickly back to the young fellow. She seemed to be comparing the two attentions, of age and of youth. Perhaps she found something horrible in the process for she suddenly lost her expression of sparkling and birdlike sarcasm, and bending her arm, as if overcome with lassitude, she let her fan drop on her knees, and stared moodily at the carpet.

A very tall woman, with snow-white hair and a face in which nobility and weariness were mated, let fall two tears, and a huge man, with short, bronze-coloured hair and a protruding lower jaw, who was sitting opposite to her, noticed them and suddenly looked proud.

The light soprano voice went on singing an Italian song about a summer night in Venice, about stars, dark waters and dark palaces, heat, and the sound of music, and of gondoliers calling over the lagoons to their comrades. It was an exquisite voice; not large, but flexible and very warm. The pianoforte accompaniment was rather uneasy and faltering. Now and then, when it became blurred and wavering, the voice was abruptly hard and decisive, once even piercing and almost shrewish. Then the pianist, as if attacked by fear, played louder and hurried the tempo, the little dark woman smiled mischievously, the white-haired woman put her handkerchief to her eyes, and the young man looked as if he wished to commit murder. But the huge man with the bronze hair went on looking equably proud.

When the voice died away there was distinct, though slight, applause, which partially drowned the accompanist’s muddled conclusion. Then a woman walked in from the second drawing-room with an angry expression on her face.

She was tall and slight. Her hair and eyes were light yellow-brown, and the former had a natural wave in it. Her shoulders and bust were superb, and her small head was beautifully set on a lovely, rather long, neck. She had an oval face, with straight, delicate features, now slightly distorted by temper. But the most remarkable thing about her was her complexion. Her skin was exquisite, delicately smooth and white, warmly white like a white rose. She did nothing to add to its natural beauty, though nearly every woman in London declared that she had a special preparation and always slept in a mask coated thickly with it. The Bond Street oracles never received a visit from her. She had been born with an enchanting complexion, a marvellous skin. She was young, just twenty-four. She let herself alone because she knew improvement—in that direction—was not possible. The mask coated with Juliet paste, or Aphrodite ivorine, existed only in the radiant imaginations of her carefully-arranged acquaintances.

In appearance she was a siren. By nature she was a siren too. But she had a temper and sometimes showed it. She showed it now.

As she walked in slowly all the scattered people leaned forward, murmuring their thanks, and the men stood up and gathered round her.

“Beautiful! Beautiful!” muttered the thin, elderly man in a hoarse voice, striking his fingers repeatedly against the palms of his withered hands.

The young man looked at the singer and said nothing; but the anger in her face was reflected in his, and mingled with a flaming of sympathy that made his appearance almost startling. The white-haired woman clasped the singer’s hands and said, “Thank you, dearest!” in a thrilling voice, and the little dark woman with the red fan cried out, “Viola, you simply pack up Venice, carry it over the Continent and set it down here in London!”

Lady Holme frowned slightly.

“Thank you, thank you, you good-natured dears,” she said with an attempt at lightness. Then, hearing the thin rustle of a dress, she turned sharply and cast an unfriendly glance at a mild young woman with a very pointed nose, on which a pair of eyeglasses sat astride, who came meekly forward, looking self-conscious, and smiling with one side of her mouth. The man with the protruding jaw, who was Lord Holme, said to her, in a loud bass voice:

“Thanks, Miss Filberte, thanks.”

“Oh, not at all, Lord Holme,” replied the accompanist with a sudden air of rather foolish delight. “I consider it an honour to accompany an amateur who sings like Lady Holme.”

She laid a slight emphasis on the word “amateur.”

Lady Holme suddenly walked forward to an empty part of the drawing-room. The elderly man, whose name was Sir Donald Ulford, made a movement as if to follow her, then cleared his throat and stood still looking after her. Lord Holme stuck out his under jaw. But Lady Cardington, the white-haired woman spoke to him softly, and he leaned over to her and replied. The sleek man, whose name was Mr. Bry, began to talk about Tschaikowsky to Mrs. Henry Wolfstein, the woman with the red fan. He uttered his remarks authoritatively in a slow and languid voice, looking at the pointed toes of his shoes. Conversation became general.

Robin Pierce, the tall young man, stood alone for a few minutes. Two or three times he glanced towards Lady Holme, who had sat down on a sofa, and was opening and shutting a small silver box which she had picked up from a table near her. Then he walked quietly up the room and sat down beside her.

“Why on earth didn’t you accompany yourself?” he asked in a low voice. “You knew what a muddler that girl was, I suppose.”

“Yes. She plays like a distracted black beetle—horrid creature!”

“Then—why?”

“I look ridiculous sitting at the piano.”

“Ridiculous—you—”

“Well, I hold them far more when I stand up. They can’t get away from me then.”

“And you’d rather have your singing ruined than part for a moment with a scrap of your physical influence, of the influence that comes from your beauty, not your talent—your face, not your soul. Viola, you’re just the same.”

“Lady Holme,” she said.

“P’sh! Why?”

“My little husband’s fussy.”

“And much you care if he is.”

“Oh, yes, I do. He sprawls when he fusses and knocks things over, and then, when I’ve soothed him, he always goes and does Sandow exercises and gets bigger. And he’s big enough as it is. I must keep him quiet.”

“But you can’t keep the other men quiet. With your face and your voice—”

“Oh, it isn’t the voice,” she said with contempt.

He looked at her rather sadly.

“Why will you put such an exaggerated value on your appearance? Why will you never allow that three-quarters at least of your attraction comes from something else?”

“What?”

“Your personality—your self.”

“My soul!” she said, suddenly putting on a farcically rapt and yearning expression and speaking in a hollow, hungry voice. “Are we in the prehistoric Eighties?”

“We are in the unchanging world.”

“Unchanging! My dear boy!”

“Yes, unchanging,” he repeated obstinately.

He pressed his lips together and looked away. Miss Filberte was cackling and smiling on a settee, with a man whose figure presented a succession of curves, and who kept on softly patting his hands together and swaying gently backwards and forwards.

“Well, Mr. Pierce, what’s the matter?”

“Mr. Pierce!” he said, almost savagely.

“Yes, of the English Embassy in Rome, rising young diplomat and full of early Eighty yearns—”

“How the deuce can you be as you are and yet sing as you do?” he exclaimed, turning on her. “You say you care for nothing but the outside of things—the husk, the shell, the surface. You think men care for nothing else. Yet when you sing you—you—”

“What do I do?”

“It’s as if another woman than you were singing in you—a woman totally unlike you, a woman who believes in, and loves, the real beauty which you care nothing about.”

“The real beauty that rules the world is lodged in the epidermis,” she said, opening her fan and smiling slowly. “If this”—she touched her face—“were to be changed into—shall we say a Filberte countenance?”

“Oh!” he exclaimed.

“There! You see, directly I put the matter before you, you have to agree with me!”

“No one could sing like you and have a face like a silly sheep.”

“Poor Miss Filberte! Well, then, suppose me disfigured and singing better than ever—what man would listen to me?”

“I should.”

“For half a minute. Then you’d say, ‘Poor wretch, she’s lost her voice!’ No, no, it’s my face that sings to the world, my face the world loves to listen to, my face that makes me friends and—enemies.”

She looked into his eyes with impertinent directness.

“It’s my face that’s made Mr. Robin Pierce deceive himself into the belief that he only worships women for their souls, their lovely natures, their—”

“Do you know that in a way you are a singularly modest woman?” he suddenly interrupted.

“Am I? How?”

“In thinking that you hold people only by your appearance, that your personality has nothing to say in the matter.”

“I am modest, but not so modest as that.”

“Well, then?”

“Personality is a crutch, a pretty good crutch; but so long as men are men they will put crutches second and—something else first. Yes, I know I’m a little bit vulgar, but everybody in London is.”

“I wish you lived in Rome.”

“I’ve seen people being vulgar there too. Besides, there may be reasons why it would not be good for me to live in Rome.”

She glanced at him again less impertinently, and suddenly her whole body looked softer and kinder.

“You must put up with my face, Robin,” she added. “It’s no good wishing me to be ugly. It’s no use. I can’t be.”

She laughed. Her ill-humour had entirely vanished.

“If you were—” he said. “If you were—!”

“What then?”

“Do you think no one would stick to you—stick to you for yourself?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Who, then?”

“Quite several old ladies. It’s very strange, but old ladies of a certain class—the almost obsolete class that wears caps and connects piety with black brocade—like me. They think me ‘a bright young thing.’ And so I am.”

“I don’t know what you are. Sometimes I seem to divine what you are, and then—then your face is like a cloud which obscures you—except when you are singing.”

She laughed frankly.

“Poor Robin! It was always your great fault—trying to plumb shallows and to take high dives into water half a foot deep.”

He was silent for a minute. At last he said:

“And your husband?”

“Fritz!”

His forehead contracted.

“Fritz—yes. What does he do? Try to walk in ocean depths?”

“You needn’t sneer at Fritz,” she said sharply.

“I beg your pardon.”

“Fritz doesn’t bother about shallows and depths. He loves me absurdly, and that’s quite enough for him.”

“And for you.”

She nodded gravely.

“And what would Fritz do if you were to lose your beauty? Would he be like all the other men? Would he cease to care?”

For the first time Lady Holme looked really thoughtful—almost painfully thoughtful.

“One’s husband,” she said slowly. “Perhaps he’s different. He—he ought to be different.”

A faint suggestion of terror came into her large brown eyes.

“There’s a strong tie, you know, whatever people may say, a very strong tie in marriage,” she murmured, as if she were thinking out something for herself. “Fritz ought to love me, even if—if—”

She broke off and looked about the room. Robin Pierce glanced round too over the chattering guests sitting or standing in easy or lazy postures, smiling vaguely, or looking grave and indifferent. Mrs. Wolfstein was laughing, and yawned suddenly in the midst of her mirth. Lady Cardington said something apparently tragic, to Mr. Bry, who was polishing his eyeglass and pouting out his dewy lips. Sir Donald Ulford, wandering round the walls, was examining the pictures upon them. Lady Manby, a woman with a pyramid of brown hair and an aggressively flat back, was telling a story. Evidently it was a comic history of disaster. Her gestures were full of deliberate exaggeration, and she appeared to be impersonating by turns two or three different people, each of whom had a perfectly ridiculous personality. Lord Holme burst into a roar of laughter. His big bass voice vibrated through the room. Suddenly Lady Holme laughed too.

“Why are you laughing?” Robin Pierce asked rather harshly. “You didn’t hear what Lady Manby said.”

“No, but Fritz is so infectious. I believe there are laughter microbes. What a noise he makes! It’s really a scandal.”

And she laughed again joyously.

“You don’t know much about women if you think any story of Lady Manby’s is necessary, to prompt my mirth. Poor dear old Fritz is quite enough. There he goes again!”

Robin Pierce began to look stiff with constraint, and just then Sir Donald Ulford, in his progress round the walls, reached the sofa where they were sitting.

“You are very fortunate to possess this Cuyp, Lady Holme,” he said in a voice from which all resonance had long ago departed.

“Alas, Sir Donald, cows distress me! They call up sad memories. I was chased by one in the park at Grantoun when I was a child. A fly had stung it, so it tried to kill me. This struck me as unreason run riot, and ever since then I have wished the Spaniards would go a step farther and make cow-fights the national pastime. I hate cows frankly.”

Sir Donald sat down in an armchair and looked, with his faded blue eyes, into the eyes of his hostess. His drawn yellow face was melancholy, like the face of one who had long been an invalid. People who knew him well, however, said there was nothing the matter with him, and that his appearance had not altered during the last twenty years.

“You can hate nothing beautiful,” he said with a sort of hollow assurance.

“I think cows hideous.”

“Cuyp’s?”

“All cows. You’ve never had one running after you.”

She took up her gloves, which she had laid down on the table beside her, and began to pull them gently through her fingers. Both Sir Donald and Robin looked at her hands, which were not only beautiful in shape but extraordinarily intelligent in their movements. Whatever they did they did well, without hesitation or bungling. Nobody had ever seen them tremble.

“Do you consider that anything that can be dangerous for a moment must be hideous for ever?” asked Sir Donald, after a slight pause.

“I’m sure I don’t know. But I truly think cows hideous—I truly do.”

“Don’t put on your gloves,” exclaimed Robin at this moment.

Sir Donald glanced at him and said:

“Thank you.”

“Why not?” said Lady Holme.

It was obvious to both men that there was no need to answer her question. She laid the gloves in her lap, smoothed them with her small fingers, and kept silence. Silence was characteristic of her. When she was in society she sometimes sat quite calmly and composedly without uttering a word. After watching her for a minute or two, Sir Donald said:

“You must know Venice very well and understand it completely.”

“Oh, I’ve been there, of course.”

“Recently?”

“Not so very long ago. After my marriage Fritz took me all over Europe.”

“And you loved Venice.”

Sir Donald did not ask a question, he made a statement.

“No. It didn’t agree with me. It depressed me. We were there in the mosquito season.”

“What has that to do with it?”

“My dear Sir Donald, if you’d ever had a hole in your net you’d know. I made Fritz take me away after two days, and I’ve never been back. I don’t want to have my one beauty ruined.”

Sir Donald did not pay the reasonable compliment. He only stretched out his lean hands over his knees, and said:

“Venice is the only ideal city in Europe.”

“You forget Paris.”

“Paris!” said Sir Donald. “Paris is a suburb of London and New York. Paris is no longer the city of light, but the city of pornography and dressmakers.”

“Well, I don’t know exactly what pornography is—unless it’s some new process for taking snapshots. But I do know what gowns are, and I love Paris. The Venice shops are failures and the Venice mosquitoes are successes, and I hate Venice.”

An expression of lemon-coloured amazement appeared upon Sir Donald’s face, and he glanced at Robin Pierce as if requesting the answer to a riddle. Robin looked rather as if he were enjoying himself, but the puzzled melancholy grew deeper on Sir Donald’s face. With the air of a man determined to reassure his mind upon some matter, however, he spoke again.

“You visited the European capitals?” he said.

“Yes, all of them.”

“Constantinople?”

“Terrible place! Dogs, dogs, nothing but dogs.”

“Did you like Petersburg?”

“No, I couldn’t bear it. I caught cold there.”

“And that was why you hated it?”

“Yes. I went out one night with Fritz on the Neva to hear a woman in a boat singing—a peasant girl with high cheek-bones—and I caught a frightful chill.”

“Ah!” said Sir Donald. “What was the song? I know a good many of the Northern peasant songs.”

Suddenly Lady Holme got up, letting her gloves fall to the ground.

“I’ll sing it to you,” she said.

Robin Pierce touched her arm.

“For Heaven’s sake not to Miss Filberte’s accompaniment!”

“Very well. But come and sit where you can see me.”

“I won’t,” he said with brusque obstinacy.

“Madman!” she answered. “Anyhow, you come, Sir Donald.”

And she walked lightly away towards the piano, followed by Sir Donald, who walked lightly too, but uncertainly, on his thin, stick-like legs.

“What are you up to, Vi?” said Lord Holme, as she came near to him.

“I’m going to sing something for Sir Donald.”

“Capital! Where’s Miss Filberte?”

“Here I am!” piped a thin alto voice.

There was a rustle of skirts as the accompanist rose hastily from her chair.

“Sit down, please, Miss Filberte,” said Lady Holme in a voice of ice.

Miss Filberte sat down like one who has been knocked on the head with a hammer, and Lady Holme went alone to the piano, turned the button that raised the music-stool, sat down too, holding herself very upright, and played some notes. For a moment, while she played, her face was so determined and pitiless that Mr. Bry, unaware that she was still thinking about Miss Filberte, murmured to Lady Cardington:

“Evidently we are in for a song about Jael with the butter in the lordly dish omitted.”

Then an expression of sorrowful youth stole into Lady Holme’s eyes, changed her mouth to softness and her cheeks to curving innocence. She leaned a little way from the piano towards her audience and sang, looking up into vacancy as if her world were hidden there. The song had the clear melancholy and the passion of a Northern night. It brought the stars out within that room and set purple distances before the eyes. Water swayed in it, but languidly, as water sways at night in calm weather, when the black spars of ships at anchor in sheltered harbours are motionless as fingers of skeletons pointing towards the moon. Mysterious lights lay round a silent shore. And in the wide air, on the wide waters, one woman was singing to herself of a sorrow that was deep as the grave, and that no one upon the earth knew of save she who sang. The song was very short. It had only two little verses. When it was over, Sir Donald, who had been watching the singer, returned to the sofa, where Robin Pierce was sitting with his eyes shut and, again striking his fingers against the palms of his hands, said: “I have heard that song at night on the Neva, and yet I never heard it before.”

People began getting up to go away. It was past eleven o’clock. Sir Donald and Robin Pierce stood together, saying good-bye to Lady Holme. As she held out her hand to the former, she said:

“Oh, Sir Donald, you know Russia, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“Then I want you to tell me the name of that stuff they carry down the Neva in boats—the stuff that has such a horrible smell. That song always reminds me of it, and Fritz can’t remember the name.”

“Nor can I,” said Sir Donald, rather abruptly. “Good-night, Lady Holme.”

He walked out of the room, followed by Robin.