Lady Diana shrugged her shoulders. “Madam, am I forcing you to live a life which is odious to you?”
Irina took a step forward. “Lady Wynham, we are two women fighting for the same man. That is one too many.”
“I agree with you.”
Madam Mouravieff drew still nearer to her rival. Lady Diana, impassive before her adversary, was fearlessly exposing herself to this outburst of mad jealousy. Irina, her revolver in her hand, like a panther at bay watching two suspicious shadows, darted piercing glances at Varichkine and me. Her clear eyes shone beneath the flat brim of her flesh-colored hat.
I interrupted the dialogue. “Madam Mouravieff, there is not the slightest doubt but that one of you would be de trop if you insisted on sharing the love of the same man. But let me affirm on my solemn word of honor that you are falsely accusing Lady Wynham. Mr. Varichkine has never been her lover. You have only to ask him.”
Varichkine cried out, his arms extended, “Irina, I swear to you that Lady Wynham and I have never—”
But Lady Diana did not allow Varichkine to finish. “Dear friend,” she said simply, “why make false vows with the idea of disarming Madam Mouravieff? Do you suppose that I want to have recourse to lies in order to appease her anger?”
I had turned toward Lady Diana and I suddenly understood what was going through her mind. She was accusing herself of wrongdoing with the idea of enraging her enemy more than ever and of thus attaining the death she so desired. I was about to speak but Lady Diana imposed silence with one crushing look. She went on:
“Madam, learn the truth from my mouth. I have been Varichkine’s mistress. And it is beyond me why these gentlemen should try to deceive you. I make it a principle never to deny my acts, my thoughts, or my loves. I wanted your lover from the moment I laid eyes on him. And he loved me too.… We have lived together in Berlin, London, and in this very castle; marvelous hours compared to those which he has spent with you. I have given him kisses which have doubtless made him forget the ones you gave him when you were nothing but a little student, envious of the great ladies who passed you in the street.… I, Lady Diana Wynham, the daughter of kings, I have given him caresses which you, daughter of the proletariat and nouveau riche thanks to the Russian revolution, couldn’t even contemplate in your most passionate moments. You have come all this distance to demand an explanation, you, a poor little girl who was walking the streets when they began to slaughter your Grand Dukes! Well, you have it and in minute detail.”
Irina stared at Lady Diana like a tigress about to spring. Fugitive lights flashed in her eyes. The lights of a hatred about to explode.
She cried, “Is that all?”
“Isn’t it enough to tell you that I have held your Varichkine, drunk with love, in my arms?”
“Is that all?”
“That his lips, tired of yours, have trembled on mine like those of someone in dire agony regaining his strength and that, one night, he laughed at the thought of you—you and your imbecile beliefs—your ridiculous ideals?”
Then the drama really began. I can visualize every detail to this day. Madam Mouravieff stood about six feet from Lady Diana. Varichkine was on the right, in front of an old piece of Chippendale, crested with the arms of some member of the family. I was on the left, breathlessly awaiting the tragic climax of this dialogue.
Lady Diana’s last words had succeeded in setting loose the criminal instinct in the Russian woman’s brain. She raised her right hand in which she firmly grasped her tiny silver-handled revolver. At the same instant Varichkine, having armed himself with a bronze paper-weight, dived for Irina’s arm and succeeded in striking her wrist. A miraculous stroke of luck? Or a remarkably well-turned stroke? The gun went off and, deviated, the bullet went between Lady Diana and me.
Irina was in such pain that she dropped her weapon on the floor. In one bound, Varichkine picked it up, pointed it at her head, and fired.
Irina Alexandrovna Mouravieff fell, stone dead.
Lady Diana was as pale as a ghost. The astonishment, the indescribable sensation which she had experienced, had almost made her faint. I hurried to her assistance. In the meantime, Varichkine was carefully placing the revolver on the floor beside the dead woman’s hand. In the calmest manner possible, as though he had been an indifferent witness to the drama we had just lived, he declared:
“That woman committed suicide in your house, Lady Diana. It is the best thing she could have done after her unsuccessful attempt to murder you. In proof of that, the bullet hole in the wall there, near that picture, will satisfy the most inquisitive investigation. And we won’t fail, the Prince Séliman and I, two honorable witnesses, to give our testimony to the coroner when he arrives. Madam Mouravieff shot herself before our very eyes, because of disappointed love, after having attempted to assassinate you and before we could intervene to prevent the fatal gesture. The revolver, made in Russia before the war, will go still further toward convincing the Scotch juries. With all these incontestable proofs, they will pronounce their customary verdict: ‘Suicide due to temporary insanity.’ ”
The tranquillity with which Varichkine spoke was astounding. When Lady Diana finally regained her self-control, he asked her:
“I trust, my darling, that you are not angry with me for having diverted the bullet which Destiny had reserved for you?”
She replied, “I thank you, Varichkine. I had thought that this evening I had found the way to quit this life on equal terms. When I saw that woman aim at my breast, I had a clear vision of Death. Now I know what it is like and I shall not call for it again until it comes to take me.”
Lady Diana walked toward the door. On the threshold she turned and, the way one asks a servant to remove a tea tray, she said:
“Gerard, please give me the key and dispose of that woman’s body while Varichkine telephones to the local police.”
The door closed behind her.
Varichkine reflected for a second. Then he decided. “Look. The bullet is lodged in the brain. There is very little blood on the wound. There are traces of powder. That always helps a lot with official doctors. Let’s see. Is everything in order? Is the body in a natural position? Yes. Then let’s tell that sad-faced butler what happened, and have him send the chauffeur for a doctor, although, as a matter of fact, his services will be utterly useless.”
Varichkine’s sang-froid seemed little short of supernatural. I followed him in silence.
“Do you suppose that, after all this, Lady Diana might consent to marry me?”
“I doubt it, old fellow.”
He sighed. He went out first. I turned back to have one last look at that little woman, dressed in beige, coiffed in flesh-colored felt, stretched out on the rug, her arms crossed, her hands inert. It seemed to me that a melancholy specter, convulsed with grief, was flitting around her; it was the executioner of Nikolaïa, the silent monster with the low forehead, the gorilla of the Tcheka, his fist tattooed with a Red star.
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE MADONNA OF THE SLEEPING CARS
THE GARE DE L’EST. A LITTLE WHILE BEFORE, AT the Hotel Crillon, where we were staying, I had informed Griselda that I had one more duty to perform. We had not attended the marriage which was to have taken place in the drawing-room of Glensloy Castle. But I did want to say goodby to Lady Diana, who was leaving by the Orient Express, at exactly two o’clock for an unknown destination.
I was waiting for her on the platform. It was half past one. The early arrivals were wandering through the corridors of wagon-lits, placarded Vienna, Belgrade, Bucharest, Constantinople. Suddenly I saw a little truck laden with two valises and a toilet case of mauve crocodile which I recognized. I spied Lady Diana following the porter. She was a symphony in pearl gray, from her tiny hat, stabbed through with a diamond ornament, to the tips of her little shoes of alligator skin.
Lady Diana, togged out for a long voyage, tripped lightly along the sunny platform. A smile brightened her lovely face. A perfect indifference
to what the future held in store made the blue of her eyes more dazzling than ever. What a miraculous change since that gruesome day when we had exchanged remarks, draped in deep mourning, on the shores of a lake surrounded by wild roses!
“Ah, Gerard! Here so soon! How nice! Really you have been for me, from start to finish, one of those faithful cavaliers the chatelaines used to dream about in the days when Mary Stuart carried on with Bothwell.… Porter! Put these three valises in compartment number four.… Here are twenty francs. Play them on the races next Sunday.”
She took my arm and half dragged me toward the head of the train.
“My dear Gerard, I have done a great deal of thinking since Madam Mouravieff failed to carry out my wish that day. Can you believe that the drama at Glensloy gave me an entirely new desire to live? Just another twist of my topsy-turvy brain, you will say. Oh, yes! When one has defied something stronger than himself and when that something has failed to take advantage of the situation, he is essentially imbued with respect. When I think that, in order to assure my death, I deliberately accused myself, before that impetuous Slav, of having been mistress of that gentle little Communist! What utter folly! Of course, it’s true that the ruin of my projects in the Caucasus had made me lose my head.”
We had arrived beside the locomotive. We turned around.
I replied, “When all is said and done, Varichkine saved your life even if he didn’t make you rich.”
“He most certainly did. Between me and the ritual of death there was very little but a smile of resignation. Do you still dream of that drama, Gerard? I have been haunted the last three nights by the vision of that cold steel bar suddenly leveled at me. I have seen Mouravieff stretched out on my carpet like an infuriated doll finally lulled to sleep. And then the verdict of the jury, convinced, as is the coroner, that the Russian really shot herself always calms me. It hurt me more to refuse Varichkine’s proposal than to have been the cause of the death of his unfortunate mistress.”
“How did he take your decision?”
“Stoically.”
We had once more paced the length of the platform. We turned again.
Lady Diana continued, “I talked very sensibly to Varichkine. I said to him, ‘My dear, what possible use is there in deliberately entering into an unhappy, complicated, difficult life? You, a political failure, since you aren’t even capable of utilizing your position of eminent Communist to pad your bank account, and I, an outcast of High Society, since I have nothing to show but my pearls and some hypothetical and unsalable possessions? I don’t care enough for you to debase you to the point of making you my penniless lover. On the other hand, I respect you enough not to want to make a fool of you. So take my word for it—it’s best that we part good friends. You will return to Moscow where your comrades will doubtless save you a slice of the Tcheka pie, and I will spend what money I have left in indulging my foremost passion, which is travel. I will take up again my former errant existence, and be the slave only of my caprices.’ ”
“Seriously, Diana, where are you going?”
“I have a ticket for Constantinople. But I may stop off at Vienna or Budapest. That depends absolutely on chance or on the color of the eyes of my neighbor in the compartment. I have reserved rooms at the Imperial, on the Ring, and at the Hungaria, on the quay at Budapest; but I am just as likely to sleep in some horrible hotel in Josephstadt or in a palace on the hillside at Budapest.… I am, even more than usually, open to suggestion. My life has been monotonous, these last six months. Don’t you agree with me, Gerard? It is high time that I changed the menu and dug my spurs into my beloved adventure. A migrating bird, weary of capitals and watering-places, I shall make my nest at the will of my desire, I shall sing in the moonlight when the spirit moves me, and I shall seek illusions far from the lying world I know so well. I proudly withdraw the pessimistic avowals I made at Glensloy, my dear.… Life is always beautiful, after all. Men will never be any less stupid. And I’m giving myself exactly six weeks to discover the imbecile who will cater to my whims and ripen in my safe deposit box some golden apples from the garden of the Hesperides.”
“Diana, I am more delighted than I can say to find you in such an optimistic frame of mind. I always knew that a woman of your spirit would never admit defeat or die of despair like an amorous midinette or a dowager who has lost her lover.”
“There is only one shadow in my path, Gerard, and that is my sincere regret in leaving you. For six months now, we have lived the same life. Had we been married, we could scarcely have been closer to each other. Our mental union, our spiritual union has been complete. That affection, so very tender, that friendship colored with a tiny ray of passion, those are things one does not forget.… In the course of future sleepless nights, I shall console myself with the marvelous memory of a friend who was a gallant man. When I look at your picture, which I carry in my absurd crocodile toilet case, my heart will beat hard and I shall murmur somewhat as Hamlet did of Yorick, ‘That was a man of infinite tact and loyalty! He knew the most awful secrets of my life and yet he risked his own so that Luxury with its eyes of gold would not go out the door of my house.’ Yes, Gerard, I shall say all that when I look at that old photograph you gave me on Christmas Eve in exchange for our first kiss under the mistletoe in Berkeley Square.”
Lady Diana’s hand was resting on my arm. I stopped, far more moved than I appeared. I answered, my voice trembling a little:
“Your words touch me very deeply, Diana. Let me tell you that our secret affection is a sacred chapel in which I love to kneel and where I pray for your future happiness.”
“Nonsense! Happiness is an enigma. Those who want to badly enough become millionaires or misogynists. All I want is to become a millionaire again. As for you, Gerard, you can smile forever. Love and money. The Princess Séliman awaits you, revanquished. The most perfect serenity is ready for you in a corner of Eldorado.”
“I am not thinking of myself, Diana, I, who am completely happy with Griselda. But of you.”
The hour of departure was imminent. Whistles were screeching and excited arms were tossing valises through the open windows. The car was swallowing baggage and vomiting the friends of travelers.
Lady Diana put her two gray suede hands on my shoulders and, her eyes glistening with big tears, murmured, “Gerard—Our last kiss perhaps?”
I was so overcome that I did not move. Then very gently, her lips touched mine. A caress of velvet on my beating heart. A marvelous solace for the wound of departure.
I stammered, “Diana—God bless you.”
She closed her eyes to hold back the tears and said, “Thank you, Gerard—my great friend—mon chevalier errant.”
The conductor asked us to get aboard. Lady Diana jumped in, lightly. She reappeared in the frame of the open window, while the engine whistled furiously. I can still see that beautiful face and those blond curls between her hat and her flowing gray scarf. I can still see those great wet eyes, as sad as those of the virgins of Correggio. That look replete with tenderness. A mute farewell from the Woman in quest of a Grail of certified checks. Her last thought as she traveled along a road of damask flanked with flowered palaces and dazzling gems. What did chance hold in store for her at the journey’s end? A park full of orchids or a corner in a cemetery shaded with cypress trees? A massive golden throne or an operating-table? A lover’s arm or a strangler’s bony fingers?
The train started. The dear little gray-gloved hand still waved. My hat answered. For a long time I stood on the platform, my head bare, looking after an affection which was departing, perhaps never to return. I did not move. A great melancholy weighed me down. My eyes followed the rails along which the train had disappeared, the train de luxe bearing the “Madonna of the Sleeping Cars” toward a new destiny.
AFTERWORD
BY RENÉ STEINKE
In the years between World War I and World War II, Maurice Dekobra was perhaps the most popular writer in France. He made his name with The Mado
nna of the Sleeping Cars in 1925, which was translated into thirty languages and sold more than 15 million copies around the world. Dekobra was also handsome, a trilingual journalist who interviewed such luminaries as Thomas Edison and John D. Rockefeller; he was a hob-knobber with the likes of Marlene Dietrich, Charlie Chaplin, and Errol Flynn, and an adventurous world-traveler, who invented his pen name (his real name was Maurice Tessier) in 1908, when he met a snake charmer in North Africa who commanded two cobras.
In one of Henry Miller’s novels, there’s a scene in which a man, trying to pick up a woman at a café, implies that she wouldn’t be intelligent enough to read Céline or Proust: “You’d prefer Maurice Dekobra, no?” It’s no wonder that Miller may have held a snobbish grudge, considering Dekobra’s book sales. But Dekobra, even if he wasn’t a modernist like Miller, was no less invested in the modern world, especially its women.
Dekobra interviewed the French novelist Colette, just after she wrote The Vagabond (1910), a story about an independent, divorced, music hall artist, a heroine anyone would call a self-empowered female. When Dekobra asked Colette if she was a feminist, Colette replied, “Me, a feminist? You’re kidding!” She explained that the suffragettes repulsed her, that their behavior was unacceptable in France. “You know what the suffragettes deserve? […] The whip and the harem.” Colette’s self-contradiction was emblematic of the general conversation around women.
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