The Enemies of Women Part 16

She pointed to the triangle of bare flesh visible at the throat of her low cut dress. A pearl necklace rested on her white bosom. Michael, as she insisted, finally looked at the pearls. False, scandalously false; all the l.u.s.ter gone, opaque and yellow as drops of wax. He knew something about pearls; he had given away so many necklaces! Then Alicia showed him her hands. Two artistically made finger rings, but without any jewels, and of slight intrinsic value, were all that adorned her fingers.

"This is a last year's dress," she added in a mournful voice, as though confessing something most shameful. "They won't trust me any more in Paris. I owe so much! Nothing but the hat is new. What woman, no matter how poor she might feel, wouldn't buy a hat! It is the most conspicuous thing about one,--something that changes all the time; and must be looked after at all costs. Luckily, on account of the war, they are not using plumes.... I'm poor, Michael, poorer than any woman you ever knew."

"And your mother?"

The Prince asked this instinctively, without thinking. A moment later he suspected that he had read, some years before, he didn't know where, perhaps while he was roving the seas, the news of the death of Dona Mercedes. He was not sure; but her daughter removed all doubt.

"Poor senora! Let's not talk about her."

But nevertheless Alicia did talk, but only to lament her mother's devout prodigality. She had given millions for the construction of an enormous hospital in Spain, on the advice of her Aragonese chaplain, the astronomer of the Champs-elysees. Marble was used in the construction for the mere masonry; the garden fence was forged by a celebrated Parisian artist who devoted himself to molding bronze statues for drawing-rooms. But when the vicar left, tired of such generosity, the monster building remained unfinished, and the precious fence lay on the ground in pieces, like so much old iron. Later, the "Monsignor" directed the worthy lady's funds into other channels. It was necessary to spread the faith by means of the "good book," and a new publishing house arose in Paris, which was most extraordinary and unheard of. Packages of books were stored on mahogany shelves, and the leaves were folded on lacquer tables.

"The priests got everything that belonged to me," Alicia continued. "At times they egged mamma on to the most absurd outlays of money just for the sake of collecting commissions from the contractors. From numerous belfries in both hemispheres chimes rang thanks to Dona Mercedes. One entire bell foundry was kept going just on mamma's gifts. Besides, she was often carried away by a sort of loving weakness for all the saints who were not especially famous.

"In her last years she devoted herself to 'launching' saints. Every one in the calendar who was little known, or of some unusual name, aroused in her the desire to repair a great injustice. She had their lives written, churches dedicated to them; and corresponded with the high dignitaries of Rome to push many a dead man, who had waited centuries in vain for the hour when he should become a Saint."

Lubimoff finally began to laugh at the resentful tone in which Alicia spoke of her mother's mystic pleasures. Dona Mercedes was a great one!

And finally she began to laugh likewise.

"In that way all our income, which was enormous, was spent. She should have left me a real fortune, unenc.u.mbered, in the bank. A lady that spent so little on herself! And nevertheless, I had to pay out huge sums for all the orders she had contracted before her death. You can be sure the Monsignor and the rest of them are much richer than I."

"How about your mines? And your lands in Mexico?"

The d.u.c.h.ess repeated the same gesture of despair. It was as though they did not exist! She was poor, absolutely poor.

"You say you are ruined, and you haven't suffered from the money shortage for more than the last two years, perhaps less. I haven't seen a cent of my fortune for some time before the war. Every one is talking about Russia, and Bolshevism, because it is something that concerns the Old World directly. But how about Mexico, and the situation there which goes back to the time when Europe was at peace?"

Her lands had been lost as though they were so much personal property, that could be transported and hidden. An agrarian revolution, the echoes of which had scarcely reached the Old Continent, had swallowed them up, suppressing all traces of her former property rights. The half-breeds had divided them to suit themselves, to work them, or leave them more unproductive than before. To whom could she appeal, if these lands were in provinces that were constantly changing hands, and the Mexican government had no authority over them?

The silver mines, which for three generations of Barrios had been the basis of their fortune, were in a still worse situation.

"One of the so-called 'Generals,' an Indian, has fortified himself in the territory where my mines are, and from there he defies the rulers in the Capital. They tell me that every month he takes out half a million francs in silver bars. He cuts them up in disks, puts his stamp on them and makes money thus to pay his men. You can imagine he has plenty of followers, with pure silver money, worth more than that of civilized countries! They will never be able to put him out; all he has to do to create armies for himself is to dig down into what belongs to me. This bad joke has gone on now for several years; I, who live in Europe, getting poorer and poorer every day, am paying for an endless war on the other side of the earth."

In spite of the fact that the Prince had never taken care of his own business he wanted to give her some advice. She ought to go over there and ask for a.s.sistance; she was born in the United States.

"I've already seen to that," she replied. "I have some one in New York who looks after my affairs. But would they go to war just on my account?

Perhaps I shall take the trip later. Not now: I haven't the strength.

There is something that is bothering me terribly just now, and it would be even worse if I were to leave France."

Her eyes began to fill with tears. Her face contracted with an expression of pain, and her hand moved toward her purse for a handkerchief. Michael recalled the young man that Castro had been noticing at Alicia's side during the last few years. Perhaps he was the cause of her emotion, and inability to make the trip.

"Love!" he thought to himself. "Love, even now when she's growing old."

He tried to change the conversation and asked about the Duke de Delille.

He knew that he was at the front; and even thought he remembered a report of his being wounded in one of the early battles. Was he still alive?

In speaking of her husband, Alicia looked grave, to Michael's great surprise. Formerly she used to treat him with a certain scorn. He had accepted his wife's freedom, with all its consequences, in exchange for an enormous allowance. They lived apart, and although she found her independence very sweet, she could not help but feel a sort of feminine dislike for her accommodating husband, so little given to tragic jealousy. But at present her ideas seemed to have changed, and she spoke rapidly as though afraid of noticing Lubimoff smile as she used to smile herself, in mentioning the Duke.

"Yes; he joined the service. You know of course that he is some twenty years older than I. He was exempted from bearing arms on account of his age; but he remembered that he had been an officer in his youth, and was one of the first to go. Who would have thought it of a man who didn't seem to have any cares, and made fun of everything that didn't affect his own selfish pleasures!"

The Germans had picked him up in a dying condition during one of their victorious advances at the beginning of the war. He was covered with wounds. After two years as a prisoner they had exchanged him as useless, and he was living interned in Switzerland, with one arm gone.

"Poor man! He writes me every month. He fishes in Lake Geneva, and thinks of me more than he ever thought before. His epistles are almost love letters. What a transformation misfortune can make in a character.

He says that he sees life from a different angle; and hopes that after the cataclysm, which will have made us better, we shall be able to come together again, and be happy. Oh, if only I could want to!..."

Her tone was ironical as she spoke of this illusionary happiness, but at the same time there was in it a note of respect and admiration. The Duke whom she had known as a great dowry hunter, accommodating and unscrupulous, was forgotten. At present she saw in him only the white-haired warrior, the invalid, who according to the doctors, would not live long, owing to the operations he had undergone. And she was trying to keep up the exile's hopes, replying to his long letters, with brief, affectionate notes.

"So it's on account of your husband that you don't take the trip?"

Michael asked, pretending that he was inquiring in good faith.

Alicia was ruffled by such a supposition. Poor Delille! It was something else that was troubling her. Her husband wasn't the only one who had gone to war. There were others, who were younger, and had better reasons to love life, but who had suffered the same fate. How many hidden griefs there were these days!

The d.u.c.h.ess's eyes moistened, and her eyes and lips frankly expressed her sorrow.

"It's the little lover; there's no doubt of it," Michael said to himself. "It's the young chap Castro saw."

As though she read his thoughts and were anxious to switch them, Alicia began to talk once more about the reason for her visit, and about her situation.

The Prince nodded when she described to him her amazement at finding that wealth was not something infinite and immutable, and that it was slipping from her grasp ... slipping and slipping, without her being able to do anything to avoid the gradual ruin.

"I sold inopportunely; I took the money they cared to give me, without paying any attention to the conditions. All my jewels went; I sold some in Paris, others here in this very place. You say you are ruined. No, you don't know what it means; but I know all right! I've been shipwrecked longer than you; my boat was smaller. I don't want to bore you with an account of my poverty. I haven't a house in Paris any more.

I shall never go back there again, unless my affairs are straightened out. The only house I have is a villa here, which I bought in the good old days. Don't smile; there are two mortgages on it. Almost any day they may put me out of it. It was a very pleasant sort of house before, when I had money; but now, with everything so scarce on account of the war! There's no coal, and wood is dear; it gets cold at night, and it takes a fortune to keep the old furnace going. Besides, I haven't any servants except my former lady's maid, the gardener, and his wife who does the cooking. For that reason all the rooms are closed, and Valeria and I live our lives in two rooms on the first floor. We eat there, and sleep there. Valeria is a girl from Paris, a senorita whom I am 'protecting.' Imagine how poor she must be if she trusts her future to me!"

"But you gamble," said the Prince.

Alicia seemed shocked at these words. They sounded like an accusation.

"I play, but what can you expect me to do? I have to do something to keep body and soul together, to earn my living. How else could a woman like myself do it? I know what you're going to say to me: that I've lost a great deal. True; I sold my pearl necklace here, the real one, and a great many other jewels; I have lost large amounts, more than I care to think of. But at that time I didn't know all I know to-day.... When as luck will have it, I haven't much money to play!"

Lubimoff was astonished at the way this woman spoke in all seriousness of her present adeptness.

"Besides," she added in a tone of sadness, "what would become of me if I didn't play? Surely you haven't forgotten how I was when we saw each other last. You must have noticed certain tastes of mine."

Michael recalled the invitation to smoke "the pipe," and the odor that filled the "study" in the palace on the Avenue du Bois.

"I put a stop to all that: gambling and something else made me give it up. Now I think of it with disgust. That's why I live in Monte Carlo. I have a feeling deep down in my heart that fortune will come back in search of me here, and nowhere else. Don't you play?"

Michael was annoyed at this question. Hadn't he told her that he was ruined? Was he going to follow her example, and make his situation still worse by losing the remnants of his fortune?

"Ruined!" exclaimed Alicia. "Your hard times can't last long. This Russian business will finally be settled. The great powers have too large interests at stake there, not to take a hand in straightening everything out. It's this affair of mine that won't be arranged for years. The only hope I have is to enjoy a run of luck in the Casino and win some two or three hundred thousand francs, and, with that amount, wait for things to change."

The Prince shrugged his shoulders. He knew gamblers. This woman, dominated by her wild dream, would forget the object of her visit, and go raving on about the possible whims of fortune, like Spadoni, or like Castro himself.

"And what do you want of me?"

Alicia seemed to wake up, and once more her smile became bold, and engaging, as it had been at the beginning of the interview; the smile of a pet.i.tioner who comes with the firm determination to get what he wants.

She had already told him at the very beginning what her object was; that the Prince's agent shouldn't bother her any more in regard to that forgotten debt.

"I shall pay it some day, if it is possible for me.... But you had better count on my never paying it at all. Give it up as lost, and tell that horrid gentleman not to write me any more."