THE afternoon on which Lewis went to his florist to order the jasmin, chance, our worst enemy, brought Madame Magnac there, too. One cannot live in the closest intimacy with anyone for several years without acquiring a certain number of tradesmen in common. Elsie! In a flash she became again the plenipotentiary of pleasure, the woman at the same time stately and ludicrous, as elegant and up to date as ever; and everything else that Lewis wanted Irene to be, and which she was not. He stopped thinking that a legal wife is sufficient to console a man for all his mistresses. He felt that Elsie had become necessary to him again. Between them there was no question of quarreling, of separation, of points of honour or of equity. With the true spirit of worldliness and tact, Madame Magnac spoke to him as though she were continuing a conversation interrupted by chance the day before.
"Above all, don't come at the apéritif hour if it bores you, though you'll always be most welcome.... News? Marbot is in bed with his hind-quarters full of buck shot. Harbedjan put them into him a fortnight ago at Sologne. If the Armenians start massacring ..."
The florist's assistant interrupted them. She had been unable to get jasmin anywhere.
"Never mind," said Lewis, crossly. "Give me anything you've got; a lettuce if you like ..."
Lewis had been at Madame Magnac's for an hour, stretched on a divan; she went on, sitting by him, in the same airy tone of voice:
"Everyone says you've got a charming wife, Lewis; like a Ravenna mosaic.... So you want me to be the last person to know her? I am sure I shall like her very much."
"That's too much already."
"Come, Lewis.... Besides it appears that she is a marvellous business man. Do let me know her."
"Later on."
She murmured close to his ear, laughing:—
"After all, perhaps it would be an easy way to fix things up?"
LEWIS left Madame Magnac and went home on foot to disperse various scents which seem to have soaked into his skin. He was very late for dinner. Irene was stretched out in front of the fire, her head in her hands. Lewis thought she was crying, and took hold of her fingers. No, Irene never shed tears, but she was obviously forcing down her sorrow.
"When I come in," said Lewis, with infantile ferocity, "I like you to be pleasant. You're about as jolly as a dishonoured cheque. What is the matter?"
"I've been alone a long time this evening, and I know now that I was wrong to go back to business. Now it's too late to retrace my steps. It isn't a game which one is free to take up and drop again at will. Laziness is an accomplishment which only makes one more frivolous. Work is a hard law with serious consequences which I am only just beginning to realize...."
Lewis made a movement of impatience to avoid a sermon.
"Everything that happens is my fault," continued Irene, "even to have agreed to marry was wrong of me; and yet people say I am stubborn! I had an idea that ... I want to explain something to you which you daren't admit to me: that you married to be happy and quiet, not for your house to be turned into a bank, a counting-house; what did I say? Two Banks. To-day I am your competitor, and to-morrow? Perhaps in marrying me you were only seeking revenge, and having got it, you only asked to live in peace; in your heart, Lewis, you care for me much less than you think. Unfortunately, it's I who love you now ... (she stopped him interrupting), but that is my own affair. Give up work? You have seen me try, I can't go on doing nothing. I am a Greek, and for me every dream, every thought, must materialize. My ancestors of the Islands lived for centuries in the midst of carnage and outlawry on that very island on which you could not live. I, too, am an island, something very primitive and remote, and you cannot live there either. I hate everything which is merely amusing or childish. Vice, whether it be splendid or convenient, does not attract me. I have behind me centuries of trade, of liberty, of emigration.... Let me go away in my turn ..."
Lewis took hold of Irene's hair, fine as magneto wires.
"You would leave me like this ... without warning? When we are such friends, Irene?"
"No, not friends. I haven't time to wait for the affections of old age. Don't make any mistake. You are not a Russian to stagger across the flow of your feelings, crying out: 'Everything I touch crumbles.' Don't turn your back on the truth. The motto of humanity should be: 'Behold the truth, now everyone for himself!' The Greeks are the only exception. What are we, we two? During the day we are enemies. During the night ... yes, during the night also, but there we cannot choose our weapons. We can't go on like that. It will become too much of a strain. The path we are following is strewn with unhappiness! You with your character: civilized, nervous, often unreliable; and I with mine, full of savage instincts, passionate ..."
Lewis did not reply. This child was very dear to him at heart. He took her in his arms and passed his hand between her dress and her body.
"Irene, your name does mean Peace, doesn't it?"
Irene remained powerless, her head on Lewis' knees, like a little Greek city intoxicated by its tyrant.
THUS Lewis realized that Irene, with all her pride, could not resist him. He thought "They say that modern women cannot find men; they will always find plenty to make love to them, but what they won't find is the man who has time to sit beside them and put his arm round them and say: 'Why are you unhappy?'"
What puzzled him was that this melancholy conversation, with its hint of rebellion, should have occurred at the very moment when he first began to drift away from her. When we live in close intimacy with anyone, something more subtle than conscience tells us about him, and our actions, when they appear to us most inexplicable are often the result of a mysterious logic.
Irene and Lewis took up their life together again, but a strong barrier was growing up between them without their knowledge.
Irene never tried to check her thoughts:
"I don't think we shall ever succeed in being happy."
Lewis became exasperated:
"If I were as frank as you are we would have stopped being happy long ago; of course we'll be happy, we must be."
Then he took her hands in his and comforted her.
"Be patient. Don't live on the precious capital of your nerves. Life would be intolerable without sorrow. Would you like me to take you into Society? There are all kinds of quite new things to do there, all sorts of amusing or gorgeous sights which you have always refused to have anything to do with. People in the mass are a bore, but taken individually this is not so true. You are certainly not 'sociable,' as old ladies say; but there is no necessity for you to see old ladies. Won't you try a little pleasure?"
It struck Lewis with satisfaction, but not without resentment, that he had never taken such trouble with a woman. That is to say, he paid her those little attentions which are really only parlour tricks, and which he mistook for the impulses of his heart.
They went to dark houses on the left bank of the river, light houses on the right bank, hotels, theatres, concerts. They went away from balls at an hour when in the deserted streets the footmen shout out names famous in the history of France. For the first time since their marriage Lewis and Irene went the rounds of polite society in the autumn season.
Irene was a great success. Paris did not lack business women, but they were all clever dressmakers, lucky actresses, shrewd concierges, publicity agents; they all worked clumsily, with no more originality than a cook making jam, their only aim being to make money, to be received in Society, and to entertain well-known men, thus showing the limitations of their ambitions.
Irene pleased people by her charm, her disregard of the technique of finance, her straightforward methods, her simple and imperious character. She was sought out by everyone; Lewis was never jealous. Important people asked to be introduced to her. Amongst them the Italian Chargé d'Affaires, who was fond of pretty women, but who immediately regretted it because it was on the eve of the Græco-Italian conflict, and Irene turned her back on him.
Irene was not affected by her success. What she really liked was to stay at home and to entertain a few intimate Greek friends. When Lewis came home he would hear a guttural conversation punctuated by twitterings coming from the drawing-room; a committee meeting of a Philhellenic benevolent society. He could not understand a word, his recollection of Greek roots being quite useless. Olympus made a noise like a duck-pond. He would fly after catching sight of four or five people amongst whom was aunt Clytemnestra, all very dark and very rich, with blue eyebrows, eyes like chocolate caramels and emeralds the size of paving stones or diamonds like heaps of pounded ice on their fingers.
He would shut himself in his study, put his feet up on his table and think of Irene, wondering how he could give her proofs of his affection and at the same time get even with her.
OFFICIAL QUOTATIONS
THREE weeks after issue the Greek loan had been doubly subscribed at the offices of the Apostolatos Bank alone. One evening Irene and Lewis decided to celebrate this success and to emerge from their solitude.
There were no half-measures in their celebration.
Irene wore a silver tissue dress which contrasted with her face, deepening the warmth of her Oriental complexion: she was black and silver like the ikons of her country.
"How perfect she is," thought Lewis, going to fetch her in her room, and looking at her lithely curving body beneath the clinging dress.
They dined, too well, in the midst of dancing, rounded shoulders, and machine-like dinner jackets. Irene compared these stars from the Rue de la Paix, the laughter and the surfeit of make-up, with Trieste in the evening, with its two cinemas and the officers wrapped in their capes stalking up and down before the Café du Veneto. The whole evening they wandered from one cabaret to another, from the Rue Caumartin to Montmartre. Up there Lewis met some friends.
Whilst a dancer, caught in a bundle of limelight rays, was carrying his partner off round his neck like a deer, Irene found herself being introduced to a handsome, self-possessed, slightly faded woman with a geranium-coloured mouth and sly eyes, who immediately took an interest in her.
At the first opportunity she asked Lewis her name.
"Why, it's Elsie Magnac."
Lewis had often spoken of her. Without ever having met her Irene had taken a dislike to her.
"I don't even like to think of her being alive," she told Lewis one day.
What wrong opinions one can form of people! Elsie Magnac was charming. They became friends at once. She joined their party. They danced and drank together.
Towards one o'clock they found themselves, all three, on the Place Pigalle. The open air smote them. The carriages were half asleep; the luminous signs were becoming lethargic.
"I will drive you home," said Madame Magnac.
The car slid down the slopes of Montmartre, whitened by the snows of cocaine, through the streets lit up like a harbour in that feast of electricity punctuated by the spasmodic nervous jerkings of sky signs. Russian cabarets faced Argentine ranches, Moorish cafés and Brazilian dives stood opposite Caucasian cellars and Chinese restaurants. Occasionally, overwhelmed by this cosmopolitan glut, a gaunt scared Frenchman stole along.
Irene was seated between Madame Magnac and Lewis. She was conscious of them looking at each other behind her back, and uttering soundless words to each other. When Madame Magnac left them they went up to their rooms. Irene faltered and almost collapsed. She felt herself spinning like a Dervish: Lewis seemed to be all round her. She no longer had the strength to resist some force, some sequence of events which followed each other inevitably. She wanted to say to her husband: "Don't leave me, I feel so ill at ease, so wretched this evening." But he seemed so overwrought, so anxious to leave her that her courage failed her.
With a soft grace and supreme awkwardness she threw herself at his knees:
"I hate that woman! Swear that you will never see Madame Magnac again!"
Lewis reassured her with feline callousness.
"Of course not, if you don't want me to."
She threw her arms passionately round him.
"Now you must go to sleep," he said.
He went out. Irene felt stifled. She opened the window. The night was green and bitter as an apple. The street shone emptily. Only a red light glowed like some mysterious fire grate: the rear lamp of a car. With a feeling of uneasiness Irene went back into her room, put out the light and leant on the window sill once more.
A few moments later the house door opened and a man came out. There was no doubt about it; it was Lewis. He went towards the car standing a little way down the street. Then he stopped and looked up. Reassured, he opened the door of the car. Beneath the electric street lamp Irene saw Madame Magnac's hand, limp and white, as if it had Been severed. The car drove away.
"HAVEN'T you ever played tricks on those you love," thought Lewis, answering an imaginary antagonist, as he walked along the quais by himself. The night, deep as coffee grounds in which he could foretell no future, was over. He had spent it with Madame Magnac, as in the old days. Now he was on his way back to Irene for breakfast. What he liked about Irene was her purity; he had adored that purity for so long that he could not bear it any more. Indeed it protected Irene, unfairly he thought, from everything; it protected her from suspicion, from danger; it enabled her to remain herself; never to make an effort to serve him or to understand him; she went to bed completely enveloped in this carapace.... To go on living in Paris after the age of thirty one must accept being surrounded by complicity. Otherwise one must leave. Since Irene had agreed to come back to France, she must sooner or later get used to it.
Lewis used to think that the peccadillos which seemed to him necessary with women who only attracted him physically, would automatically cease if he ever really fell in love. He had counted without that eagerness to surpass ourselves which dominates us and which is perhaps nothing but habit disguised.
No, he was not complicating his life, he was simplifying it.
HE was simplifying it more than he imagined, for when he got home he found the house empty. He waited for two days. Then seized with a remorse and despair of which he would not have been thought capable, in forty-two hours he scoured Paris, London and Trieste. But without result. There was not the slightest trace of Irene.
On the eighth day he received a telegram from her asking him to come and join her at Corfu.
Would she forgive him? No pilgrimage would have been too long for him if she would relieve him of his misery. With some difficulty, the relations between Italy and Greece still being strained, he obtained a permit, and after further efforts he succeeded in getting on board an Italian vessel at Brindisi, laden with troops.
The next day at sundown Corfu appeared, set in the swelling sea. In the leaden channel they dipped their ensign toCount Cavour,Julius Cæsar,Saint Mark,Leopardiand all kinds of Italian celebrities painted iron-grey, armed with naked guns trained on the old citadel protected by its interlacing vines. The principal buildings sought shelter under the white flag. The whole town was peacefully doing its laundry. The Italians had just declared a blockade against the island.
At the Hôtel de la Belle Venise, Lewis heard that the Greek ships with their passengers were confined to the south, in the Khalkiopoulo Bay. He went there at sunset.
It was raining. Confusedly, in the westerly wind, the Greek destroyers with their financiers' names and their metal masts through the lattice work of which the sky shone like new wine, jostled transport ships, cargo boats from Patras, unable to proceed on their journeys, and even feluccas laden with flour and asphalt stopped in their island coast trade and guarded by searchlights from Italian hydroplanes.
Like a belated sailor returning to his ship, Lewis, in a boat rowed by two men on the bilious sea, was looking with the aid of a pocket lamp for theBasileus II, on board which Irene was. In the darkness he strayed amongst screw-blades, beneath the stiff figure-heads and amongst the anchor cables; one heard concertinas, forecastle songs, the creaking of masts and the barking of dogs on the sailing ships. A trimmer emptied a scuttle of clinkers almost on top of him. Idle passengers, to relieve the boredom of quarantine, gazed at him over their black bulwarks and cursed him in Greek.
At last a searchlight swung the night round and the wordBasileus IIappeared on a poop in letters of gold.
HE found her in her cabin. A bunk with a wooden frame, a screwed-up porthole, washing soaking in the basin, open trunks. A fan churned the exhausted air. He faltered:
"Irene!"
"Don't touch me!"
"But you sent for me ..."
"I know.... Don't let's waste time. I have something important to say to you. Come on to the upper deck."
On the upper deck they had difficulty in keeping their feet for the wind seemed to seize them by main force; the ship was straining at her anchors. In the distance an intermittent flash of red alternating with green. Above them the lifeboats hanging like black airships in the empty sky, lit up for one moment by stars; round the ship the sea was making a noise like nuts rolling about.
"Why are you here?"
"We were held up by the Italians. I embarked, at Marseilles, I was going to Athens ..."
"To escape?"
"Of course."
"Irene, do forgive me."
"Don't you understand that I am no longer your wife? I didn't ask you to come here on this January night merely to tell you that that account between us is closed for ever. Once again, don't let's waste time. Here are some telegrams from Trieste. They confirm information we have received during the last few days. You are aware of the political situation. You know that the Italians have been disappointed in their demand for an indemnity against us. To-day they are having their revenge. It is just like them. They are going to put an embargo on all Greek property in Italy. We shall be compelled to sell San Lucido just at the moment when it is doing well. After all, that is what the Italian Government cannot forgive us. We bought the mine at a period when Italy was half Communist, the victim of a depreciated currency. To-day we are facing a Nationalist Italy, foreigner-hating, intoxicated with her 'Rights.' TheCredito Milanesewith whom we are in close touch, and of whose Fascist leanings you know, has been making proposals in which their threats are ill-concealed, to buy us out."
"Cannot you arrange a fictitious transfer of stock and administration by a third party until the crisis has passed?" asked Lewis.
"No, what they want is that the undertaking should no longer be in Greek hands. It is a policy which they are extending to the whole of the Eastern Mediterranean. We have no choice. Read the telegrams; we must sell immediately at the best price we can."
"What conditions does theCredito Milaneseoffer you?"
"They are not too good. But at any rate they are the best we can get. But, you understand, we will never sell to Italians. To come to the point. What I propose is this: are you disposed to take it over again?"
"What a shifting venture ..." thought Lewis.
This San Lucido enterprise had come and gone in his life during the past year like an absurd romantic refrain. He saw again the glittering sea and a young woman sounding with brown arms. He saw again the pure profile of the Sicilian hills and the shimmering blue sky. A cry burst from him, the first in his life:
"Irene! don't leave me!"
"Come. You heard what I said. Think it over. Let your words be measured by the thought that this is our last conversation. Make your calculations. That is what you are here for. It was much more difficult for me to ask you to come ..."
"You needn't go on. I have already had proof of your pride."
Irene in her turn felt herself weakening under the bitterness of their words. But she controlled herself.
"Let us try to keep the balance between insolence and affliction, if you don't mind?"
Softer thoughts passed between them after this.
"Here we are," she went on, "back in life as single combatants. Let us play our parts. Let us fight a good battle."
"Irene, I lo ..."
"You must stop before you utter that word, which would make the heavens fall on us. Love is not made for you or for me. For a moment I allowed myself to be on this earth for something else than to labour: my punishment was bound to come. Do you want the mine, yes or no? Answer me."
"I shall have to think it over," said Lewis. "In any case we could not take over the shares diluted last June except at par. As to profits carried into the reserve, I am afraid these cannot be taken into account..."
And he broke down, sobbing.
An oily moon came out of the clouds and appeared through the rigging.
"Sorrow does not confuse his mind," thought Irene. "His conditions are even harder than those of the Italians."
THE Apostolatos Bank sold the San Lucido mines. The Franco-African bought them at the lowest possible price, with the tacit consent of the Italian Government (with whom, by the way, they concluded an important financial pact in Asia Minor). During the whole time the negotiations were going on, and they were long, only an impersonal correspondence passed between the two houses; but Irene first, and then Lewis, drafted and signed for each other various notes and memoranda which kept them constantly in communication. As these conversations carried on from a distance became gradually more steady, carried on without jarring note or passion, their views on business policy in the Mediterranean were soon found to be identical in many particulars. Their interests began to coincide. The results were profitable, just as though Fate, which had done its utmost to separate them and to prevent them from being happy, was eager to give her blessing to this financial union and to make their fortunes as soon as they consented to give themselves only to an ordinary life. Fickle fortune ministered to them. They sometimes wondered why they had not always worked together; all their constraint fell from them and they went so far as to admit that if they had been destined to love perfectly they would probably at the moment be standing amongst the ruins of their fortunes. For Love never hesitates to ruin the lives of those who do not want him.
Since Corfu, Lewis and Irene have never seen one another, but they write to each other every day.
GOSSIP FROM THE BOURSE
Everyone knows that there has for some time been talk of a fusion between the Apostolatos Bank of Trieste and the great French firm, the Franco-African Bank; we think we may safely say that this will soon be an accomplished fact. The new combine will take the title ofMEDITERRANEAN CONSOLIDATED.In the course of the Extraordinary General Meeting, which is to take place next month, it will be suggested, if our information is correct, that the shareholders shall be entitled to receive one new share for two old ones, and one new share for four old ones, of the Apostolatos Bank and the Franco-African, respectively. Shortly after these come on the market, which will be about January, we are confident that the shares of the new combine will be quoted so favourably that they will be sought after as gilt-edged securities.
(Financial Information.)