One-Act Plays Part 17

VALSIN [_with a soothing gesture_]. Being only her friend, you speak mildly. The d'Anville herself would call it blasphemy.

ELOISE [_with difficulty_]. She is--so vain--then?

VALSIN [_lightly_]. Oh, a type--an actress.

ELOISE [_her back to him_]. How do you know? You said--

VALSIN. That I had not encountered her. [_Glibly._] One knows best the people one has never seen. Intimacy confuses judgment. I confess to that amount of hatred for the former Marquis de Valny-Cherault that I take as great an interest in all that concerns him as if I loved him.

And the little d'Anville concerns him--yes, almost one would say, consumes him. The unfortunate man is said to be so blindly faithful that he can speak her name without laughing.

ELOISE [_stunned_]. Oh!

VALSIN [_going on, cheerily_]. No one else can do that, Citizeness.

Jacobins, Cordeliers, Hebertists, even the shattered relics of the Gironde itself, all alike join in the colossal laughter at this Tricoteuse in Sevres--this Jeanne d'Arc in rice-powder!

ELOISE [_tragically_]. They laugh--and proclaim her an outlaw!

VALSIN [_waving his hand carelessly_]. Oh, it is only that we are sweeping up the last remnants of aristocracy, and she goes with the rest--into the dust-heap. She should have remained a royalist; the final spectacle might have had dignity. As it is, she is not of her own cla.s.s, not of ours: neither fish nor flesh nor--but yes, perhaps, after all, she is a fowl.

ELOISE [_brokenly_]. Alas! Homing--with wounded wing! [_She sinks into a chair with pathetic grace, her face in her hands._]

VALSIN [_surrept.i.tiously grinning_]. Not at all what I meant.

[_Brutally._] Peac.o.c.ks don't fly.

ELOISE [_regaining her feet at a bound_]. You imitation dandy! You--

VALSIN [_with benevolence_]. My dear, your indignation for your friend is chivalrous. It is admirable; but she is not worth it. You do not understand her: you have probably seen her so much that you have never seen her as she is.

ELOISE [_witheringly_]. But you, august Zeus, having _never_ seen her, will reveal her to me!

VALSIN [_smoothly urbane_]. If you have ears. You see, she is not altogether unique, but of a variety known to men who are wise enough to make a study of women.

ELOISE [_snapping out a short, loud laugh in his face_]. Pouff!

VALSIN [_unruffled_]. I profess myself an apprentice. The science itself is but in its infancy. Women themselves understand very well that they are to be cla.s.sified, and they fear that we shall perceive it: they do not really wish to be known. Yet it is coming; some day our cyclopedists will have you sorted, cla.s.sed, and defined with precision; but the d'Alembert of the future will not be a woman, because no woman so disloyal will ever be found. Men have to acquire loyalty to their s.e.x: yours is an instinct. Citizen governess, I will give you a reading of the little d'Anville from this unwritten work.

To begin--

ELOISE [_feverishly interested, but affecting languor_]. _Must_ you?

VALSIN. To Eloise d'Anville the most interesting thing about a rose-bush has always been that Eloise d'Anville could smell it.

Moonlight becomes important when it falls upon her face; sunset is worthy when she grows rosy in it. To her mind, the universe was set in motion to be the background for a decoration, and she is the decoration. She believes that the cathedral was built for the fresco.

And when a dog interests her, it is because he would look well beside her in a painting. Such dogs have no minds. I refer you to all the dogs in the portraits of Beauties.

ELOISE [_not at all displeased; pretending carelessness_]. Ah, you have heard that she is beautiful?

VALSIN. Far worse: that she is a Beauty. Let nothing ever tempt _you_, my dear, into setting up in that line. For you are very well-appearing, I a.s.sure you; and if you had been surrounded with all the disadvantages of the d'Anville, who knows but that you might have become as famous a Beauty as she? What makes a Beauty is not the sumptuous sculpture alone, but a very peculiar arrogance--not in the least arrogance of mind, my little governess. In this, your d'Anville emerged from childhood full-panoplied indeed; and the feather-head court fell headlong at her feet. It was the fated creature's ruin.

ELOISE [_placidly_]. And it is because of her beauty that you drag her to the guillotine?

VALSIN. Bless you, I merely convey her!

ELOISE. Tell me, logician, was it not her beauty that inspired her to give her property to the Nation?

VALSIN. It was.

ELOISE. What perception! I am faint with admiration. And no doubt it was her beauty that made her a Republican?

VALSIN. What else?

ELOISE. Hail, oracle! [_She releases an arpeggio of satiric laughter._]

VALSIN. That laugh is diaphanous. I see you through it, already convinced. [_She stops laughing immediately._] Ha! we may proceed.

Remark this, governess: a Beauty is the living evidence of man's immortality; the one plain proof that he has a soul.

ELOISE. It is not so bad then, after all?

VALSIN. It is utterly bad. But of all people a Beauty is most conscious of her duality. Her whole life is based upon her absolute knowledge that her Self and her body are two. She sacrifices all things to her beauty because her beauty feeds her Self with a dreadful food which it has made her unable to live without.

ELOISE. My little gentleman, you talk like a sentimental waiter. Your metaphors are all hot from the kitchen.

VALSIN [_nettled_]. It is natural; unlike your Eloise, I am _really_ of "the People"--and starved much in my youth.

ELOISE. But, like her, you are still hungry.

VALSIN. A Beauty is a species of cannibal priestess, my dear. She will make burnt-offerings of her father and her mother, her sisters--her lovers--to her beauty, that it may in turn bring her the food she must have or perish.

ELOISE. _Boum!_ [_She snaps her fingers._] And of course she bathes in the blood of little children?

VALSIN [_grimly_]. Often.

ELOISE [_averting her gaze from his_]. This mysterious food--

VALSIN. Not at all mysterious. Sensation. There you have it. And that is why Eloise d'Anville is a renegade. You understand perfectly.

ELOISE. You are too polite. No.

VALSIN [_gaily_]. Behold, then! Many women who are not Beauties are beautiful, but in such women you do not always discover beauty at your first glance: it is disclosed with a subtle tardiness. It does not dazzle; it is reluctant; but it grows as you look again and again. You get a little here, a little there, like glimpses of children hiding in a garden. It is shy, and sometimes closed in from you altogether, and then, unexpectedly, this belated loveliness springs into bloom before your very eyes. It retains the capacity of surprise, the vital element of charm. But the Beauty lays all waste before her at a stroke: it is soon over. Thus your Eloise, brought to court, startled Versailles; the sensation was overwhelming. Then Versailles got used to her, just as it had to its other prodigies: the fountains were there, the King was there, the d'Anville was there; and naturally, one had seen them; saw them every day--one talked of matters less accepted. That was horrible to Eloise. She had tasted; the appet.i.te, once stirred, was insatiable. At any cost she must henceforth have always the sensation of being a sensation. She must be the pivot of a reeling world. So she went into politics. Ah, Citizeness, there was one man who understood Beauties--not Homer, who wrote of Helen! Romance is gallant by profession, and Homer lied like a poet. For the truth about the Trojan War is that the wise Ulysses made it, not because Paris stole Helen, but because the Trojans were threatening to bring her back.

ELOISE [_unwarily_]. Who was the man that understood Beauties?

VALSIN. Bluebeard. [_He crosses the room to the dressing-table, leans his back against it in an easy att.i.tude, his elbows resting upon the top._]

ELOISE [_slowly, a little tremulously_]. And so Eloise d'Anville should have her head cut off?

VALSIN. Well, she thought she was in politics, didn't she?

[_Suavely._] You may be sure she thoroughly enjoyed her hallucination that she was a great figure in the Revolution--which was cutting off the heads of so many of her relatives and old friends! Don't waste your pity, my dear.

ELOISE [_looking at him fixedly_]. Citizen, you must have thought a great deal about my unhappy friend. She might be flattered by so searching an interest.