The streets looking into it were packed with people. I could see above their heads. Troupes of gnomes, hunchbacked, fearfully deformed, with large, nodding heads, passed. Gigantic cabbages and carrots followed; devils mounted on horseback. Eight horses passed, dragging a red papier-mâché lion twenty feet high and long in proportion; and on the head of the creature, in a pose of sublime heroism, stood Tartarin of Tarascon. Behind came the washerwomen of the Var, with faces greater than a winebarrel, that smirked with a sort of Titanic glee, which the men under the disguise helped out by doing an absurd little step, holding their petticoats in the tips of their fingers like dancers.
I wished to get a little closer to the Avenue de la Gare, but I could not for the crowd of people and carriages immovable in the narrow street. I saw then the folly of going this night in a carriage. It became at once imbedded in the crowd, and one had to give it up and go on foot to see. I determined to get into the Place Masséna, so I could watch the procession enter it from the Avenue de la Gare.
As I forced my way out of the crowd I saw the Italian who sold masks, with his basket on his arm and his big body on tiptoe, stretching up over the crowd. He seemed to divine my intention and followed me. The Place Masséna was also crowded, and the stand of seats in the center was black with people. I understood then how only a Latin can make a fantasy in lights.
Vast, gorgeous, fluttering butterflies caught in golden webs hung across the Avenue de la Gare, suspended above it at every cross-street, with the effect, when one looked along it, of being laced over with the innumerable webs of some monster spider, in which were entangled every variety of beautiful and delicate insect. And inclosing the whole of the Place Messéna were vast fans of many-colored lights, radiating out from some grotesque head and standing above gorgeous draperies.
On the west side of the square stood the pavilion of the King of the Carnival, hung in purple velvet, surmounted by a great circle of lights, studded with huge jewels. The King of the Carnival was himself now passing before it—a great figure of a jolly monarch, in striped hose and a slashed doublet, grasping in his right hand the image of a jester in cap and bells, and seated in a gigantic fiacre. My attention was taken from His Majesty by a storm of laughter.
A mammoth float towering to the tops of the houses was entering from the Avenue de la Gare. An opera-bouffe pirate rode seated on the head of a great dolphin and preceded by a long boat of his crew, with their oars in the air. The thing was grotesque enough, for the leviathan had been caught with a thread of a fishline. But the roar of laughter was from another cause. Here was solved the immortal mystery that had baffled Paris: The jolly pirate carried the Mona Lisa under his right arm, and his left thumb to his nose, with its fingers extended—it is the oldest gesture in the world, to be found on a frieze in Pompeii, where the little boys salute with it those who come last in the chariot races of the circus.
And following at the heels of the Bandit de Pegomas came les Gardiens du Louvre, sound asleep in the big empty picture frames, the faces inconceivably stupid and covered with spider webs. They rode propped up against the side of a rough wooden box, such as pictures are packed in, and they were drawn by a donkey, also with an empty frame around his neck; while on top of the empty box, as a delicate suggestion to the authorities, were several varieties of watchdogs in elaborate Parisian uniforms.
“Voilà!” some one cried out. “How excellently they sleep in Paris! Have they, perhaps, also a Madonna of the Lotus!”
They were works of genius—those two floats; a piece of subtle, piercing sarcasm that only a Latin could have manufactured. And the whole of Nice shook, as Homer says, with inextinguishable laughter. There drifted behind them a horde of specters, ghosts, wraiths—as though all the cities of the dead had emptied themselves into the Place Masséna.
Then came the great fabric of a dream—the shimmering fantastic palace of Harun-al-Rashid, raised, as by some incantation, from the baked earth of Arabia, with splendid white domes, delicate, lacy porticoes and arches, and gorgeous silk canopies, under which the houris of some divine harem danced and sang a weird, haunting, sensuous love song, with a shrill, high, passionate refrain, ending in a cry of Allah! One got the very soul of the East, languorous and soft, dreamy with desire, steeped in perfume.
Every variety of wonder followed—an endless procession of fairy extravaganza, until one believed himself come into the enchanted city of Morgana the Fay.
Midnight had arrived. The great floats were disappearing from the Place Masséna. Crowds of shouting, singing, dancing maskers were beginning to fill the streets. The gnomes and the goblins were now abandoning the city to the nymphs and the satyrs. Fancy costumes, dainty and beautiful, supplanted the grotesque. The whole world was masked and arsenaled with confetti and bags of plaster pellets. One was seized, bombarded, whirled into a maze of dancers.
Every moment the fun became more furious and abandoned. A hamadryad, standing in a bakers’ cart drawn by a donkey, declared that the donkey was a fairy prince that she would awaken into life when she could find a man to take his place. A dozen volunteered. She seized the hand of the one who arrived first, and drawing him up on to the platform of boards nailed across the bed of the cart, they began to dance le tango Argentino, the danse de l’ours, the marche de dindon; while the crowd hung the donkey with garlands and tramped slowly round the Place Masséna singing the songs of the carnival.
A madness as of drugs and wine was on the city, but there was no man either drugged or drunken, except now and then an English or American visitor, who staggered with champagne and, in a city full of shouting revelers, was alone brutal. One of these proved an instrument of destiny.
I was standing under the arch at the entrance to the Avenue de la Gare when I heard a woman cry out with a sharp exclamation of fear. I turned to see Madame Nekludoff struggling to free herself from the clutch of a big man in a black mask. He was dragging her by the arm, staggering, and shouting in English:
“Come on, you hussy! Come on, you hussy!”
The man was evidently inflamed with the riot of the carnival; and the woman, her hair tossed and her eyes distended, was in a very panic of terror.
I forced my way through the crowd, wrenched his hand loose and struck him in the chest. He reeled back, cursing me in English. I drew Madame Nekludoff away into the shelter of the arch. She was trembling violently.
“Oh,” she said, “it is you! I am so glad!”
She would have fallen, but I put my arm round her and held her close. Her body relaxed and her head sank on my shoulder. I stood back in the shadow of the arch while the carnival rioted round me—a man come upon the very treasure of his dream! The limp, soft body seemed to cling to me; the delicate perfume of her hair was on my face. A great possessing desire came over me to gather her up in my arms and find her mouth—and kiss her. It was my one chance, perhaps, in this world and forever more! Would I take it or let it go? But at that very instant the seizure of weakness passed. She swung out from me and stood up, but she still trembled a little and she kept hold of my hand.
“Oh! the brute!” she said. She put her free hand up to her hair. Then she began to speak, a little gasp still in her voice:
“I came out with my maid in a carriage, but the carriage could not move and we had to get out; we became separated, and I was caught in the crowd and carried along down the Avenue de la Gare. It was awful! I could not get out—and after that this beast caught me! What a horror!” She looked up into my face and smiled though her red mouth was still quivering. “I am sorry I was rude to you this morning.”
She was like a child smiling through tears. Something in my bosom smothered me. I began to stammer:
“I am all alone. I do not know any one. I saw you there—down there on the balcony. I never saw a woman like you anywhere! You won’t—you won’t go away now?” And my hand tightened on her fingers.
She looked at me strangely for a moment. Then she smiled.
“How can I go away, m
y friend? I can no more get out of this crowd now than I could before you came.”
“But to-morrow,” I said, “you will let me see you?”
She stood for some time before she answered; and when she spoke she did not look at me, and she seemed troubled and embarrassed.
“I don’t think you will understand!” She hesitated and faltered with the words. “I am not quite at liberty—to do—to do as I like. I must be careful—very careful—just now. And our women are not free as they are in your happy country. And besides, my friend, it would be no kindness to you—it would only involve you in—in—I cannot say what misfortune. You are free. Remain free, my friend! No, I must not be seen with you. I am sorry!”
“Then you need me!” I said. “Let me help you.”
“No,” she replied; “it is impossible. You cannot help me. No one can help me! You must go away.”
“That I will not do,” I said. “I must see you again somewhere.”
“Oh,” she said, “how I hate things like this! I cannot pretend. I wish I could be quite frank with you. I wish I could tell you. But how can I! How can I!”
Her voice trembled with emotion. I clung to the floating plank.
“Once more,” I pleaded; “somewhere!”
She wavered.
“To-morrow afternoon, then, at three—at the gate of the convent on the hill above Cimiez.”
She took my arm and we went out into the Place Masséna. A shower of plaster pellets fell over us. The Place Masséna was a maelstrom. Madame Nekludoff gave a little cry and covered her face with her arm. A voice spoke at my elbow. I turned to find again the big Italian and his basket of wire masks.
“Two, meester?” And he leered at me, holding up a pair of fingers.
2
There is a narrow open aqueduct threading along the great mountain over Nice—a tiny canal that carries the water for the city. I do not know in what far-off lake of snow water it begins, but one can follow it for miles, trailing gently through the olive groves, disappearing under a little shoulder of the hills to come out in the sun beyond. A stream of crystal, uncovered and flowing gently, now and then a leaf or a wisp of grass or a bit of an olive twig on its surface. The grade of the aqueduct is almost imperceptible as it rises to the gap in the mountains, a V of blue descending like a wedge into the remote skyline.
There is a path along this fairy water. I had come up on to the hill beyond Cimiez in the tram to the place where it ends abruptly in the middle of the road. There, a little farther on, I had found a white figure among the orange trees in the garden of the convent, and we had taken this path along the idling water into the mountains.
I had believed yesterday that there could be no better background for Madame Nekludoff’s beauty than black and the severities of dress; but I was mistaken in that fancy. To-day she was in white—a thing imagined in Paris, but surely tailored in Bond Street—a French adaptation of an English shooting costume; the skirt in wide plaits; the coat with a belt and patch pockets, but fitting to the figure. The material was heavy Chinese silk, as firm and thick as duck, and only to be had of a tailor in London.
Two things, however, were alluringly blended in this costume—the crisp freshness of out-of-doors and the softness of all things feminine and delicate, as, for instance, the first blossoms of the wild brier that go to pieces under the human hand. I thought the thing by its happy charm returned Madame Nekludoff to the first morning of some immortal youthfulness—as though on this afternoon, as in some Arabian story, cracking a roc’s egg, I had found her sleeping within it, her chin dimpling in her silk palm.
Moreover, the background of sadness in her face was gone. She laughed and chatted like a schoolgirl escaped from a convent. She stooped to gather the little flowers along the path, to show them to me and to point out their beauties. She would catch my arm and nestle down in the dry grasses when a bird sang, and hunt him out among the gnarled limbs of the olive trees; or she would pluck a reed and, kneeling by the aqueduct, steer the dead leaves that floated along as though they were elfin ships on some mysterious voyage. She would dip her fingers in the water and fling the drops in my face, and then spring up and run along the path, screaming with laughter like a naughty child. When I caught up with her she was changed again into a woman I had not the courage to touch.… And she would show me the Mediterranean, lying below like a sheet of burnished azure metal.
I think there must be some law in Nice against traveling on the path along this aqueduct, for we met no one. The whole enchanted world belonged to our two selves. We wandered on, following this lost path through the great deserted mountain of olive groves.
I do not know how the thing happened! We had come upon one of those narrow blades of the mountain that the aqueduct burrowed under. I had helped my companion over it, and we were now in a little sunny pocket, with an abandoned olive grove rising in terraces above us, and a great gorge below, full of reeds and opening like a door on the sea. There was no sound but the drone of far-off winged things in the air. I had Madame Nekludoff’s hand, when suddenly, taken by the great flood of an impulse, I swung her into the hollow of my shoulder, caught her up in my arms and kissed her. She gave a little gasping cry that I smothered on her mouth.
“I love you!” I whispered. “I love you! I love you!”
She threw out her arm with her hand against my shoulder, as though she would free herself—but the force of resistance seemed to go out of her hand; it crept up on my shoulder, then round my neck. She hid her face to escape the smothering kisses; but she clung to me, murmuring something I did not understand. I held her with my left arm, put the hollow of my right hand under her chin, and turned her face out where I could see it.
It was like the face of some dream woman rising out of a mirage of opium—the great wealth of glorious silken hair massed round it; the eyes closed; the sensitive red mouth trembling; and the delicate satin skin bloodless as a ghost. I kissed her again, bedding her soft throat in the trough of my hand.
At that moment a great voice bellowed out in the gorge under our feet. Madame Nekludoff wrenched herself out of my arms and sprang up. Far below us a big peasant slouched along a path through the reeds, on his way to Nice with a brace of pullets. He was lonely and had broken out into one of the booming songs of the carnival. He had a voice that would have filled the magnificent distances of opera; and all unconscious of us, having the great stage to himself, he bellowed notes that boomed through the cathedral of the hills.
Madame Nekludoff stood breathing deeply and staring wide-eyed at the distant singer. She put her hands up to her hair and adjusted it with little deft touches. The color came and went in her face. Finally she went over to the little bank running along the aqueduct carpeted with dry grasses and sat down. She covered her face with her hands.
There was something too personal and delicate in this simple act to intrude upon. She was so little and sweet, and the attitude so wistful and appealing, that I sat down on the grass beside her and waited with all the restraint that I could summon to my aid. It is not easily that one, a step across the sill from Paradise, waits at the door!
Presently, with her hands remaining over her face, she began to speak hurriedly, her voice nervous, tense—running in and out of a whisper. And a story—big, vital, packed with tragedy—emerged. She etched it out with sure, deft strokes, leaving silences and inaudible words to furnish the background and the shadows. Her voice now scurried along like a frightened thing; now took the cover of silence; now crept along in the shadow of evil vaguely to be suggested; and then it became firm and sure, where a desperate resolution had been taken and carried out; and again fearful and hurried; then low and apprehensive.
I got the story warm and pulsing with life, as though, by some divine surgery, the woman had been thrown on to the slab of an amphitheater and the thing vivisected out of her bosom; and I listened, motionless and without a sound. But this equanimity was but an aspect of the shell of the man, as the body sometimes in sl
eep lies prone and motionless while the mind within it lives the wildest life.
She had been sold to the Grand Duke Dimitri Volkonsky, that abandoned and profligate noble whom the Czar had banished out of Russia. Why soften the term? Sold was the only word for it! Her mother she had never known. She had lived with a decayed aunt on a little wasting estate a hundred and fifty kilometers east of Moscow.
She had been educated in a convent and very carefully watched over. Poverty seemed to lie about her, but there had been money enough to give her every comfort, even in the dreary convent. There was always something sinister in this extreme care—in the good quality of the food always somehow provided—in the fire that always burned in her room—in the exaggerated attention given to her person.
Now and then her father came to visit her. He seemed to be a man of the world, always elegantly dressed; but she was not attracted to him, uneasy in his presence and always happy when he went away. His comings did not seem to be at the call of a paternal love for her. They appeared rather to be visits of inspection. He made the minutest inquiry into all the details of her daily life, and into her studies and accomplishments, and gave precise directions. He was particularly anxious that she could speak English, French and Italian as perfectly as she spoke Russian; and being himself an accomplished linguist he always spoke to her in these languages, changing from one to the other in the middle of a sentence and at the half of an idea.
His principal concern, however, was for her person. He wrote down instructions about her food, her baths, her exercise. When he had believed her throat to be too thin he had ordered it massaged. He had prescribed gymnastics to develop her arms. She should walk but little, for he wished her feet to remain small and delicate. Thus her life ran until she was nineteen, when—two years before—her father had appeared, ordered her possessions packed and carried her to Paris.
Monsieur Jonquelle Page 5
