The Beauties and Furies

by Christina Stead

  ‘It always ends, in two or three days, with her devoting herself to the embroidery entirely, and so she works at it day after day, week after week, month after month till she comes near the end, and then she falters. She sometimes lies in bed for a week and more, in a darkened room, speechless, without energy, wasted by the fever with which she has been designing, embroidering. Then she will put away that piece of work for months, and for months do nothing but sit in the garden, or if it is winter, sit in Coromandel’s studio, watching her or idly playing with a pencil. At last some day, she will take up one or other of her old unfinished pieces of embroidery and finish it. And soon the terrible fever starts again.’ He laughed, a bubble from the effusion of speech on his red underlip, and looked sideways down at Marpurgo. ‘She was beautiful, beautiful, as a girl,’ he continued, ‘always with that calm, grave, and yet seductive expression. She never spoke but sensibly, she was always charitable, never gave a hard opinion without a proviso: I only feared she was a little cold. Don’t you get that impression?’

  Marpurgo murmured: ‘No, not exactly: your wife is a most charming lady, but…’

  ‘Her parents warned me that she had a perfectly ungovernable temper: they spoke of it in hair-raising terms. Yet, knowing her as I did, and seeing how mild she was, I thought they were meek people who had been scared by a couple of tantrums. Not at all: a few months after we were married, I said something to her, joking, I don’t even remember now: it would have seemed nothing to anyone else. But it was true, she had an ungovernable temper. I shall never, till my dying day, forget the amazement and terror of that day: those calm, clear eyes looked at me golden with fury, insane pride, alien, animal: she did not get red but pale, alabaster-pale, and came after me quite unconsciously with the stealthy tread of a wild-cat. I was giddy four hours after, and she had violent migraine. A few months after, when I was teaching her to play chess, it occurred again. She wanted to beat me and was sure she could. She would neither eat nor drink till she had mastered several books of instructions and one by a chess champion. Then she came out one night armed for the fray; but she had no talent for it: the theory was useless to her. She thought at first she was winning, and in the end made a series of intelligent moves (I found after they came from the end-games of the chess champion), but her memory failed her, and evidently her natural talent for it was small. I beat her. She put up the board and said nothing: but when I looked at her she was once more that poisonous pale colour. She went into the bedroom, and when I followed her she gave me that look of delirious fury. “Don’t touch me, don’t dare touch me.” A terrible change took place and her face became the mask of a witch, evil, murderous. She went into the hall, and I heard a strange muffled bumping sound: she was beating her head against the wall. After a minute she stopped, turned round, came to me, calm again, mild, saying “I can’t help it.” She had the migraine again. Sometimes she is irritable, untouchable for a week: at other times nothing irritates her, and, strange to say, she is never irritated by children. She cannot stand much company, and after a little while retires to her room: the noise in the streets, the bustle of traffic also gives her bad headaches. For that reason she keeps to her room.

  ‘I came to her one day and found her trembling and feverish: she had heard a quarrel between a young married couple who have an apartment opposite us across the courtyard. She was nervous and ready to cry all the evening. For that reason she has to stay indoors. The country does her great good: but I have my shop, we cannot live in the country, and she cannot live without me and her daughter: without us she becomes frightfully restless.’ He said sadly: ‘When she was a child she was much worse than she is now: I think she is improving with age.’ Still talking, he unwrapped a tissue-paper and showed Marpurgo a book of Hours he had just acquired, and went on, sighing: ‘When she was ten years old she held her hand in the fire till one finger was burned to the bone and the others fearfully singed and blistered, because her only brother boasted he feared pain less than she did. Then, they had to pull her hand out of the fire. It festered for months after, and did not heal for a long time, but she never murmured once in all that time. I asked her once, when she was quietly, amusedly recalling her foolhardiness, “Did it hurt you?” “Very much,” she said, “but I was obliged to do it: it was stronger than me. And every moment I burned I was more joyful, as if I pushed a knife farther into my brother.”’

  Marpurgo asked, rather troubled: ‘Your daughter is like her mother in that?’

  The father laughed heartily. ‘Oh, a little, but not in that way: Coromandel is proud, but not to the point of insanity. With Coro all that has gone into pure workmanship, and she is a first-class workman.’ The father rang the bell again, and when the maid appeared, said:

  ‘Ask Mlle Coromandel to come here if she is free now.’

  Marpurgo took two or three turns up and down the room with his hands in his pockets, thoughtfully, his eyes on the floor: he feared to show the tremulousness he felt. The door opened, and Coromandel appeared, with suppressed panting, flushed.

  ‘I just left Mamma: she is resting. She will come downstairs after dinner,’ she said when she had greeted Marpurgo. She smiled at him. ‘Mamma says you were charming to her: she was very happy to meet you.’

  Marpurgo had never been so ill at ease. He was ashamed of himself. He flattered himself on his smooth manners. He produced his parcel as awkwardly as a boy, and said: ‘Your father was kind enough to allow me to give you this book. I saw it in Blanchetière’s and thought your artistic eye would be pleased with it.’ She took it with excitement.

  ‘How lovely of you! I am so happy: I never get a present,’ she said naïvely.

  Marpurgo looked happy. He saw the father watching him closely and with some amusement, and he immediately turned to him and began to patter learnedly about types of illustration, surrealism and so many other things that presently the father had forgotten all about that moment when they had both looked so joyful. He came back to it later on, though, and for the first time began to wonder what sort of a man Coromandel would love. ‘It is not possible that Marpurgo—’ he said to himself several times, stopping short each time, recrossing his legs and starting again. ‘It couldn’t be that Marpurgo…no: and yet who knows? She’s an odd girl.’

  The dinner was gay, delightful: the father and daughter were a brilliant pair, full of poise: they were a perfect trio. After dinner the mother came down, in a handsome evening-gown, of silk plush encrusted on black ninon, the gown draped round the shoulders as before in an old-fashioned way: her hair was parted in the middle and dressed on the top of the head, and she wore brilliants in it now.

  ‘You look like one of the masterpieces of Ingres,’ said Marpurgo, making up now, in gallantry, for all the missteps before dinner.

  The lady became radiant. Coromandel explained that her mother, in fact, admired Ingres deeply: Marpurgo then remembered that in several of his portraits of ladies, the hair was dressed in both of the ways he had seen Mme Paindebled wear. Once or twice, when Marpurgo addressed himself particularly to Coromandel, he noticed a deep shade of pain and affront cloud the mother’s face, and, remembering that she rarely saw visitors, he set himself out to court her. He sang for them Arab songs and Chinese songs that he had learned in China when he had been there buying the Irish-pattern lace which is now made there. He told them stories of China—the cocoon raising, on which whole villages of hovels live, the anxieties of good and bad years, the usurers, closed mills, little girls sold for a few handfuls of rice, the floods, famine, the revolution. Coro’s face was a flame of joy, wonder and enthusiasm: the mother listened with a deep expression of joy and seemed inexpressibly flattered by his attentions: the father listened with approval; and presently they got on to politics. Then the lady’s attention wandered, and presently, saying she had a headache, she excused herself, begging Marpurgo to come soon and entertain her—‘they saw few friends so kind and interesting’—and asking for Coro’s arm as she left the room. Marpurgo
fancied she looked at Coro with a little jealousy, suspicion or pique. At any rate, Coro did not appear again until Marpurgo was about to leave, and then she excused herself, saying her mother had required her constant attention, her headache had been so bad.

  The next day, at his hotel, he received a note, in large pretentious handwriting on lavender monogrammed paper, from the mother, begging him to come to tea on the following Saturday, and to forgive the nonchalant invitation—‘she was so out of the world and saw so few people.’

  Marpurgo meanwhile was disturbed because it was clear that both parents thought him too old to court Coromandel, and he had as a rival Oliver’s great beauty and charm. As he played his games in the various chess cafés and in the chess-club in the rue de la Sorbonne, he pondered what he had better do to ruin Oliver’s chances with Coromandel. He wanted Coro to think he had a high moral character, and so he could not take all of the avenues which immediately invited him. He decided to go and see the mother on Saturday, for the sake of finding out more about the family. He also thought it likely that Coromandel would be there simply to keep her mother company. He had already perceived that the mother had developed a violent fondness for him, and he knew he would have to minuet with a delicate step to avoid engaging her too far in love or annoying and wounding her. He was glad he had heard already how passionate and unreasonable she was. Her face rose before him, larger than Coromandel’s, more irregular and coarser but at times commanding: the delicate long face of the father had modified this face in Coromandel. He dreamed about the young girl, and at times it seemed impossible that she would think seriously of him: he looked ruefully in the café mirrors, as he sat there or moved in and out in his cloak. Before Saturday he bought a new hat, a black one, and pearl-grey gloves, endeavouring to look more French: he found that he looked younger. On Saturday he turned up with a nosegay for the mother, and was disappointed to be received alone by her in her own sitting-room, with her maid in attendance. Coromandel was at an art class, the mother said, and was going for supper to what is called a ‘surprise-party,’ a gathering of young things in the house of one or the other, to which everyone takes food or drink. The mother mentioned the beauty of the book Marpurgo had given Coro, watching his face surreptitiously, and then said casually that she was much sought after by young men, but they had yet to find a youth of suitable position, and that Coromandel herself was proud and difficult to please: in fact, she had several times said that she had not the slightest intention of marrying for a long time.

  ‘I think a daughter should stay near her mother,’ she remarked soulfully.

  Marpurgo, with the noticeable but indescribable flickerings and movements of an animal stalking its game or being stalked, all attention and charm, succeeded in turning the conversation without allaying the mother’s suspicions: presently in the charm of his conversation, she had forgotten her dawning jealousy. He found it expedient to play a dangerous game, to court her and flatter her insistently: by the end of the hour she was content and her heart at rest. She showed him her laces and designs for laces, the pretext of his visit. He left, promising to come soon to dinner. When he left he remarked to himself that the mother could be, on occasion, when the discontent and restlessness had left her face, a beautiful and striking woman. He was in a difficulty: he felt he could not see Coromandel now as he had seen her before, unknown to her parents, now that he had become their friend. He would have to take her advice and speak to her father as soon as it was possible. In his eyes she was so full of youthful charm and talent that her chances of marrying her admirers must be numerous. He wanted to impress himself upon her and not frighten her with any suggestions for the future, or proposals of a serious kind. It was a laughable thing, that although he knew her mind, and her maturity, he had always in his mind her youth, and so, it seemed, her freshness, innocence and softness.

  Thinking about it now, he walked up and down until it was near twilight, and then, in his restlessness, he went to Oliver’s hotel to see him or Elvira and hear whether he had been out. If he found her alone, he intended to sow seeds of doubt in Elvira’s mind. Always before him stood the triumphant youth. He began to think of his old age and of how few warm fruitful days remained to him. Then, with a rush he began to accuse Coromandel. She might have waited in to see him, not left the house bare like that with nothing but a sentimental middle-aged woman to entertain him. And again, what did Coromandel really care for him? He was almost her mother’s age. He was so restless that he paced up and down in front of the door of the flat Oliver and Elvira had taken by the month in the old house in the rue Thouin.

  They were out. He went there before he went to work the next morning.

  The cleaner let him in. He called ‘It’s Marpurgo!’ and Elvira’s voice came from the bedroom:

  ‘Oh, come in, Annibale!’

  She was sitting before her glass, and saw Marpurgo standing hatless in the doorway. Her dressing-gown was carelessly open.

  ‘Come in, Marpurgo; you’re not intimidated by a woman’s throat, are you?’

  He sat down behind her, looking at their reflections in the triple mirror.

  ‘Don’t move, Elvira, I like to see your image this way.’

  ‘You’re dressed to kill: who is your quarry?’

  ‘I’m sorry you’re not out this lovely summer weather. Are you two going to the country? Yet you have a lovely colour when the rest of us are as yellow as jaundice or red as apoplexy.’

  She smiled and looked at herself, speaking to him and making slight graceful movements among her toilet articles.

  ‘Help yourself to an apéritif, or some brandy: there’s some in the dining-room. Jeanne will find it for you if you can’t.’ She sneezed.

  ‘A cold? Funny weather for colds now: it seems as hot as an oven, and you begin to sniffle.’

  She shook her tendrilled head, damp with the heat of a bath.

  ‘I wore my nightdress under my pillow, and that gives me a cold. Andrew Fulton’s girl says she never wears a nightdress summer or winter. She seemed to think I was an old fogey.’

  ‘Where’s the man of the house?’

  ‘At the Archives to verify some dates. It’s quite as boring to listen to Oliver’s trade-unions as to Paul’s cases. Why are men’s jobs so boring? I darn Oliver’s socks, I darned Paul’s socks. At home I studied German to please Paul, here I look up the verbs in “Salammbô” to convince Oliver I’m not lazy. Only at home I had enough linen, and here I have wine with every meal. It’s odd, isn’t it! I think life is a pattern, and you have to weave the thread you’re intended to.’

  ‘And that’s how you spend your days? You spend them in reposing, in quietude, in philosophy, in stitching, reading, gilding refined gold, in waiting for your man to come back, in happy pensiveness without anticipation or remorse? You are really a happy woman, Elvira?’

  ‘More or less: I suppose so. I’m not actively unhappy, at the moment. That’s because I have time still. I still have time. Paul won’t let me divorce yet. He says I’m a child: he will wait. If I made a false step now, it would be too late in after years to regret it. I should be too old then. He writes to me once a week.’

  ‘If he stopped writing, would you mind?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘If someone else darned Paul’s socks, your old home was closed to you, you saw your old friends clustering round a new ménage, Paul’s tenderness raining on the head of another woman, Paul’s face lighting up in the evening at some other girl’s smile? You will never regret that settled life, the retirement of English life, the peace of living lawfully, the countryside in the twixt-season, the gardens, long-fingered trees, the late high spider-light of summer, the soot-faced houses and Georgian porches?’

  ‘In a way, I have had enough of Paris and yet I know I’ll regret that too. Oliver will be going home soon. Then he says he’ll look round for an apartment straightaway, in Gordon Square or some nice place. We’ll send for my household things and I’ll be just as happy a
s before.’

  ‘Paul is very kind to you: so are they both.’

  ‘He is very kind to me: I suppose people would say, too kind. But I don’t see why not; we have always been friends. What good does it do to take umbrage?’

  ‘He is too kind to you.’

  Elvira withdrew chillily.

  ‘Yes, that’s what you all think. A woman has no right to freedom. She is someone’s property. She has no right to tolerance. Blanche d’Anizy said months ago, A woman has to fight for everything she has, fight or scheme. That’s true. I used to sneer at women with their cheap truisms. Travel and learn.’

  ‘Oliver is such a charming fellow. I am sure you’ll be happy with him in your new life in London. You have been wise. You’ll be surrounded by young people. Oliver won’t make as much money as Paul for some time, but he has the advantage of not loving furniture too much for its own sake. I fancy he has a little I.W.W. in him—the mobility of the hobo, you know. You should see the world with him. But then, travelling with a loving faithful husband is like having a home away from home all over the country. And you will always move in radical circles where the people are much kinder than in the conformist world of Paul. And a delightful woman, yourself, who is anxious to develop her mind and take an interest in things, will be very happy, I should think.’ He leaned forward impressively: ‘I rarely talk of personal physical attributes. I don’t think they’re important; beauty is of the mind. Oliver is beautiful, impulsive; he could turn any woman’s head and easily fall a victim to their advances—that is one’s first impression. It is illusory. One sees that though he has the charm of a Don Juan, the brilliance and headiness of Julien Sorel, he has yet the fidelity of the Chevalier des Grieux.’