The Enemies of Women (Los enemigos de la mujer)

The Prince began to laugh again. Wilson with wings! He imagined the President with his high hat, his glasses, and his kindly smile, and growing out from each shoulder of his long coat two enormous feathery triangles like those of the angels in religious paintings. What an amusing fellow the Colonel was!

Then suddenly he became thoughtful, while his features took on an expression of great seriousness.

"You are right," he said. "I can see him with wings, wings that are too long perhaps. A great thing when it comes to flying, but when one is obliged to live among men, and has to walk along on the ground!.. I am afraid he will drag his wings; I am afraid they will be stepped on some day, and that people will find them a great nuisance…"

And they dropped the subject.

The Prince wanted to break the confinement which he had voluntarily imposed upon himself. Why should he stay there at Villa Sirena, near certain people who constantly occupied his thoughts yet whom he did not wish to see? The best thing would be for him to return to Paris as soon as possible. The long range cannon was continuing to fire on the Capital; almost every week squads of German aeroplanes made night excursions about it, dropping explosives. Such a trip offered the inducement of danger and excitement to the lonely man, tormented in his perfect health by an inactive and monotonous life, which offered nothing more stimulating than the irritations to be derived from his recent experiences.

Every morning, when he got up, he formulated the same plan: "I am going to Paris." But the trip kept being put off from week to week. It was a case of abulia, the loss of will power of an invalid, who makes projects of active life, and no sooner attempts to carry them out, than he loses his strength again, and postpones them indefinitely.

The most insignificant details loomed gigantically before his diseased will. He had to go to Nice to make reservations at the Sleeping-car Office. He thought of sending Don Marcos; then refrained, considering it preferable to go himself. And days went by without his taking the short ride preliminary to his Paris trip. Both of them seemed equally long. He, who had thrice circumnavigated the globe, wearily shrunk at the thought of the slowness of travel due to the war. Just imagine sixteen hours on a train!

One afternoon, bored by his splendid gardens, – now so monotonous! – by the silence of his house, – now so deserted! – and by the increasing absent-mindedness of the Colonel, who was always having something to do either in Monte Carlo, or in the gardener's pavilion, Lubimoff started out on foot toward the City. And he met some one.

He had turned quite mechanically and without thinking in the direction of the upper boulevards, near the street in which Villa Rosa was situated. When he realized this, he decided to turn back. Just then he saw Lieutenant Martinez coming along on the opposite sidewalk, in the direction that he himself had been going a few moments before.

The soldier seemed to him taller, stronger, and as it were, surrounded by a halo of glory. His uniform was the same, frayed and old looking after some years of service; but to the Prince it seemed entirely new, even dazzling in its freshness. Everything about the Lieutenant looked magnificent and he seemed to illumine the objects about him by mere contact. His features perhaps were paler and more angular; but Michael imagined that he radiated a certain inner splendor, composed of pride and satisfaction. A sort of ethereal mask, enveloping him in astral light, made him appear handsome and gave him a new physiognomy, Apollo-like and triumphant.

They passed without speaking. The Lieutenant pretended not to see him, as Lubimoff's eyes followed him with a questioning glance. What was there that was new in this man? The Prince doubted that lack of sound health, that perilous condition which worried the doctors so much. It was all a lie made up to impress the ladies! He noticed the proud firmness of the soldier's step, the jaunty, boyish air with which he swung the rattan he used as a cane.

On losing him from sight, he could see him even more clearly. His imagination kept vividly recalling certain details over which his eyes had wandered carelessly. There was something that stood out in painful relief in his memory: a few roses, a little bunch of roses, which the soldier was wearing on his breast, between two buttons of his uniform. An officer with flowers seemed rather strange! That was what had shocked the Prince at the first glance, shocked him so violently that his whole vision had been deeply disturbed. Yes, those flowers!..

He spent the rest of the day thinking about them. As he stretched out in his bed that night, darkness clarified the maze of thoughts and doubts whirling in his brain. He could see it all in a cold clear light. "It has happened already!"

He jumped out of bed and turned on the light, pacing up and down his bedroom in a fury.

"It has happened already!"

He kept repeating the words with anguished obsession; he repented his generosity, as though it were a crime. "Why didn't I kill him?" Then in plaintive tones he would repeat his original affirmation, concluding that what had happened was irreparable. Then he put out the light again; and for a long time, in the darkness, which once more filled the bedroom, the curses of the Prince resounded, alternating with fierce exclamations of wounded pride and sobs of rage.

The following day his conviction still persisted. The childlike beauty of the morning, which always inspires optimism, meant nothing to him. How was he to know the truth about that thing which he had suspected and feared, but which he never imagined would really come to pass?

A desperate curiosity caused him to spend the entire day in Monte Carlo. He met Martinez again. The officer kept on walking, turning his glance away in order not to see him; but the Prince imagined he caught a fleeting look of generous pity in his eyes, an expression of compassion for an unfortunate and inoffensive rival. Again he was wearing flowers; doubtless different from those of the day before.

Lubimoff repeated to himself the laments of the previous night: "Yes, it had already happened." It was impossible to doubt it. But the thought of killing him did not recur, nor did he repent of his generosity. That was all so useless now! He merely thought with envy of people in the submerged classes of society, who feel the impulses of passion very simply, without any disturbing sense of honor and solemn promises. They were men who could act regardless of laws and customs. When they wanted to kill some one, they went and did so!

He saw that Martinez was thinner than ever, with a feverish look in his eyes. Oh, that indefinable something, that suggestion of youthful vanity, of triumph and satisfaction, which seemed to radiate from his features like a halo of glory!

That evening, Toledo found himself brusquely repelled by his Prince, when he tried to tell him about a letter which he had received from Paris. The Administrator of the Prince's estate was getting impatient; he was asking for a reply from his Highness in regard to the sale of Villa Sirena.

"I don't know; leave me alone. The best thing is for me to arrange the matter myself. I'll go to Nice to-morrow and see about my trip to Paris… No, not to-morrow: day after to-morrow."

He could not explain to himself why he had conceded that additional day to his idleness: it was an instinctive postponement, without any motive whatsoever. The following day, after breakfast, he regretted it; but it was already too late to find the chauffeur he had gotten the afternoon of the duel, and whom Don Marcos had just promoted to the rank of "purveyor to his Highness."

Where could he go, and be sure of not coming across the persons present so bitterly in his thoughts? Toward the end of the afternoon he went to the Casino terraces. There was an open air concert which was attracting a huge crowd. It was improbable that Martinez and the woman should show themselves in such a gathering.

It seemed as though he were living in peace times; as though he had gone back to one of those rare winters which used to attract all the wealthy people of the globe to the Riviera. Both terraces were filled with well-dressed people. The bombardment of Paris and the attacks of the German Gothas were keeping a great many elegant ladies in Monte Carlo who formerly would have felt they were losing caste if they stayed on the warm coast when winter was over.

Chairs were lacking. A large part of the audience was seated on the balustrades and steps. Around the orchestra kiosque there was a mass of pleasant colors, formed by women's hats, spring dresses, and fluttering fans. Opposite the terraces the sea stretched away between the rose-colored promontories. The far-away sails reddened by the setting sun seemed like so many flames. Across the violet surface of the Mediterranean and the crystal opalescence of the evening sky the music fell voluptuously.

Nobody was thinking about the war: that was a calamity that belonged to another world, to other skies. Even the convalescent soldiers in uniform, who were living entirely in the present moment, breathing the salt air, listening to the wail of the violins, and surrounded by gayly dressed women, did not seem to remember it. Many eyes were following the progress, along the horizon line, of a string of ships strangely painted like fabulous monsters, and escorted by several torpedo boats. But the lulling music that rang in the ears of the idlers took all significance away from the fearful disguise of the boats, and from the cautious slowness with which they were gliding along off the Shores of Pleasure.

When, after seven o'clock, the concert was over, the terraces gradually emptied. On the benches only a few couples remaining, putting off the time of parting by conversing quietly in the silence of the blue twilight.

The Prince succeeded in walking from one end to the other of the lower promenade without once having to submit to contact with the crowd.

Suddenly he stopped, with a feeling of surprise and pain, as though he had just received a blow in the breast. Down the wide steps which joined the two terraces, a couple were descending. His instinct recognized them even before he could see them clearly. It was a soldier. It was Lieutenant Martinez … and she!

Alicia was dressed in mourning, just as he had seen her near the church; but she was walking less resolutely, shrinking and timid, on finding herself on that spot which shortly before had been occupied by all her neighbors from the city.

They were talking as they slowly descended. Absorbed in the view out upon the sea, they did not turn their eyes toward the spot where Lubimoff was standing motionless. At the bottom of the stairs they chose to walk in the opposite direction, and the Prince was able to follow them.

He felt that some extraordinary power of divination was sharpening his faculties; a sort of second sight which was enabling him to see and study both their faces, in spite of the fact that their backs were turned toward him.

Alas, that walk! It was the desire for light and open air, which people feel after a sweet confinement. It was the insolent need lovers have of displaying their happiness in public, when the joyous hours, through monotonous repetition, begin to weigh on them. It was the desire of prolonging in the sight of every one the sweet intimacy enjoyed in secret and now spiced with the added incentive of being obliged to feign, and to hide all real feelings.

Michael considered his intuitions as beyond all question. Of course! It was the officer who had proposed that walk. How proud he would be to walk in a public place with a celebrated lady, and in full consciousness of the new rights he had acquired over her! It was no longer possible for him to question the visualization which had made him groan in the silence of the night… It had taken place! It had taken place!

Alicia's appearance dispelled all doubts in advance. She was walking along with a certain dismay like a person obliged to go on in spite of herself. He could see her invisible features. They were sad, profoundly sad, with a melancholy look of the woman who has fallen and is conscious of her abasement, but considers it irremediable, the result of an irresistible destiny, of a cause beyond the radius of the will's action.

Her head kept bending down to one side toward her companion, for her eyes to gaze on him. It must have been the gaze of a willing prisoner anxious to forget the pangs of remorse and taking a sensuous satisfaction in her shameful slavery. While her soul shrank away at the memory, her body was bending under physical attraction to that other body, instinctively seeking the contact that was causing her youth to bloom again in a new spring-time; a sad spring-time, like all the surprises of fate, but sweeter far than the dull gray hours of solitude.

Hate, repugnance, and indignant jealousy caused the Prince to stop. Why should he follow them? They might turn their heads and see him. He was ashamed at the thought of meeting them. The wretches! There must be Some One above to punish such things!

And he left them, walking toward the other end of the promenade in order to descend to the harbor of La Condamine.

He was just leaving the terrace when something happened behind his back which brought him to a stop. The couples seated on the benches suddenly rose and ran shouting in the direction whence he had come. He could hear people calling to one another. Some news seemed to be circulating through both levels of the garden, bringing people forth from the walks, from the clusters of palm trees, and the walls of vegetation.

Lubimoff allowed himself to be carried along by this alarm, and retraced his steps. He saw in the distance a noisy mass of people ever increasing in size, a group which was being joined by the winding lines of curiosity seekers running down the steps. The garden, which a moment before had been deserted, was pouring forth people from every opening.

As he drew near the crowd, he could hear the comments of various detached onlookers, who were telling the news to the new arrivals.

"A convalescent officer… He was taking a walk with a lady… Suddenly he fell in a heap, as though struck by lightning. There he is."

Yes; there was Martinez, in the center of that human mass, a pitiful object, lying on the ground, with his body bent into the shape of a Z: his head made a right angle with his breast, and his legs were doubled, making another angle. Lubimoff came forward until he could look over the shoulders of the first row of stupefied onlookers. A constant sound of hard breathing, a rattle like that of some poor beast in the death agony kept coming from his foaming lips. In his motionless body, the only sign of life was that moan, repeated with clock-like regularity, with no change in the tone.

Officers were leaving their women companions to force their way into the center of the crowd. On recognizing Martinez, their surprise assumed a caressing brotherly expression.

"Antonio! Antonio!"

They bent over him to talk in his ear, as though he were asleep; but Antonio did not hear them. One of his eyes was hidden in the dirt of the walk; a small pebble was clinging to the eyelid of the other. All one side of his uniform was white with dust. The terrible harsh breathing was the only reply to their words of endearment.

A military doctor stepped through the crowd. He took hold of Martinez's hands, and felt his pulse. A look of helplessness came over the doctor's face. The Lieutenant had had many attacks like this one. They could only hope that it was not to be his last…

Lubimoff could see Alicia kneeling on the ground, stunned by the shock, showing the sinuous curves of her back, under her mourning garments, oblivious of everything about her, with her eyes fixed on the man who a few minutes before had been walking at her side, talking and smiling, convinced that life is happiness, and who now lay stretched in the dust, convulsed and inert, a pitiable vessel slowly emptying itself in dying gasps.

Suddenly she stood up, with an instinctive sense of danger. She did not care to remain in that posture before everybody's gaze. Her large eyes, with a blank, frightened look, began to move about over the crowd, without however recognizing any one. For a moment they rested on Michael and her gaze met his with an expression of anguished entreaty. But the Prince, lowering his head, concealed himself behind the front row of onlookers, and her eyes went on in their search about the circle, with a look that became dull and gray again. She believed, doubtless, that it had been an hallucination.

As Alicia remained standing there, people began to point her out. That was the lady who was with the officer. Some of them recognized her, and repeated her name: "The Duchess de Delille." Through an instinctive feeling of repulsion, or a cowardly desire not to get mixed up in any "affair," no one spoke to her. She was left alone in the center of the crowd, with a look of stupefaction in her eyes, that seemed to ask for help, though without knowing just what help.

Willing souls began to take the initiative with an air of authority.

"Air! Give him air!" They began to shove the crowd back in order to increase the circle around the fallen man. But the people immediately pushed forward again with useless suggestions of aid; and once more the space was narrowed, until the feet of the nearest spectators grazed the panting lips of the dying man.

A young girl had run of her own accord to the bar at the entrance of the Casino and was coming back with a glass of water.

"Antonio! Antonio!" his kneeling comrades vainly called the Lieutenant, using all their strength to open his jaws and force him to drink. His lips repelled the liquid, and went on repeating the painful moans.

Ladies, attracted by the news, began to arrive from the gambling rooms. They all knew the Duchess; and looked at her with a certain hostility, after gazing at the dying man. The Prince heard fragments of their comment: "A poor fellow rescued from death by a miracle… The slightest emotion… That woman…"

Beyond the group, park policemen were running about giving orders. The stretcher bearers had arrived; the same ones who, according to public rumor, were passed by magic through the walls of the Casino to carry away the gamblers dying in the play-rooms.

This time the stretcher was absent. The onlookers were separating to open the way for an extraordinary novelty. A hired carriage was coming across the terraces, which were forbidden to vehicles.

Suddenly Lubimoff saw the Duchess rise above the heads of the crowd. She had just gotten into the carriage and was standing in it, with a dazed look and the inexpressive features of a person walking in her sleep. Perhaps she had done it without thinking; perhaps the military doctor had invited her to get in, thinking she was a relative of the patient. Several men in uniform lifted the inert body of the officer.

The harsh breathing that rent his chest continued.

And then, in the presence of the crowd, whose eyes were sightless with stupefaction, the Duchess proceeded as though she were alone. She had just dropped to the seat. She had them lay the corpse-like body across her knees, and she herself, as she held Martinez with one arm, laid his panting head against one of her shoulders.

The carriage slowly started off in the direction of the officers' hotel, followed by a large part of the crowd. The doctor went along on foot, telling the driver to go slowly.

Michael saw Alicia pass, upright and rigid in her seat, her eyes wide open, with terror, her mouth tense with grief, and holding the dying man on her knees. Her attitude reminded him of the Divine Mother at the foot of the cross; but there was something impure and shameful in Alicia's sorrow that made the comparison inadmissible.

"Oh, Venus Dolorosa."

The Prince was interrupted in his reflections. He felt himself rudely shoved aside by a woman in uniform. It was Mary Lewis, running, as fast as her legs could carry her, to overtake the carriage. The Amazon of Good Deeds always arrived in time to catch up with suffering.

Lubimoff saw how the vehicle slowly drove away with its embroidery of people. Its journey as far as the hotel would be endless; all Monte Carlo would see it go by.

He felt sad, very, very sad. That officer was his enemy; but death!..

He was not so sorry for Alicia. He smiled a malicious smile as he looked for the last time at the carriage and its following, which was constantly increasing.

In the line of scandals there was nothing commonplace about this latest of the Duchess de Delille.

CHAPTER XI

TWO days later, in the morning, Lubimoff saw the Colonel go out dressed in black.

He was going to the funeral of Martinez. He and Novoa felt it was their duty, as Spaniards, to accompany the hero on his last earthly journey.

On his return he told his impressions, with painful conciseness, to the Prince. A few convalescent officers had followed the bier. The Professor and he were the only ones in civilian clothes present. In spite of his garb, those kindly heroic boys, seeing that he was a Colonel and a compatriot of the dead man, had obliged him to preside over the funeral services.

The Beausoleil Cemetery lay half way up the slope of the mountain on the crest of which La Turbie is situated. On account of the war, it had been necessary to enlarge it by several level plots of ground that formed a series of terraces. From these esplanades the eye embraced a magnificent view: Monte Carlo, Monaco, immediately below that, Cap-Martin advancing out over the waves, finally the infinite expanse of sea that rose and rose until it mingled with the sky. A monument with a rooster arrogant and victorious on its summit held the remains of the combatants who had died for France. Don Marcos was still much moved by the speech he had delivered, while all stood hushed, at the entrance to this common tomb, which was about to swallow up forever the body of Martinez.

"It was a speech for men," said Toledo, with pride, "for men who had been crippled in warfare. Nothing but heroes before me! There wasn't a single woman at the funeral."

This was the detail that interested the Prince most: "Not a single woman." And he asked himself again what could have become of Alicia.

Toward the end of the afternoon, as he was walking about his gardens, he saw Lady Lewis coming, preceded by the Colonel.

The Prince took refuge in his house. The nurse was undoubtedly arriving with a group of convalescent Englishmen, and wanted to run about among the trees and pick flowers. He did not feel he had the strength to listen to her chatter, which was like the twittering of a gay but wounded bird and was filled with a happiness that persisted tenaciously in the midst of grief, and continued even to the threshold of death.

The Prince was going up the stairway to retire to the upper rooms, when the Colonel overtook him; but before the latter could speak Lubimoff turned on him in a rage. He didn't want to see the nurse! Let her take her Englishmen over the gardens; she might go about in them as though they belonged to her; but as for himself, he wanted her to leave him alone.

"Marquis," said Toledo, "the noble woman has come alone and must talk with your Highness. She has something important to say to you."

The Prince and the nurse sat down in wicker chairs out of doors in a little open space surrounded by leafy trees. A fountain was laughing as great drops of water scattered from its lazy jet.

The greenish light reflected through the grove made Lady Lewis appear weaker and more anæmic. What was left of life seemed concentrated in her eyes, before taking flight and vanishing like some volatile fluid, into space. The Prince was beginning to forget his recent anger. Poor Lady Mary! Once more he had a feeling of tenderness and respect for her. Her physical wretchedness finally changed his pity into the kind of admiration that disinterested sacrifice always inspires.

Accustomed to living amid the deepest sorrows, to witnessing the greatest catastrophes, Lady Lewis paid little attention to the conventions prevailing in ordinary life and spoke at once, with a certain military abruptness, of the reason for her visit.