‘No, Madame,’ I replied, ‘I fear it is something graver than that.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, courteously, but coldly.
Her husband threw the mantle over her shoulders. I heard her say to him in French as they went out: ‘Do not touch me, or speak to me, until tomorrow morning.’
Kóvacs went with me to the hotel, taking with us the syringe. We reported the case to the hotel-keeper and were shown to her room. On the toilet table was a small phial of morphia—quite full, except perhaps for a few drops: the cork was opened. These if taken at all must have been taken internally—not hypodermically.
I had to tell the truth to Kóvacs on that occasion, and he agreed with me that morphia could not possibly have been the cause of her death, especially as the syringe had no smell or trace of morphia about it.
Just concealed behind the looking glass there was a very small bottle of a milk and watery looking fluid. This was identical with what remained in the syringe. We took that at once to a neighbouring chemist's and commenced to analyse it. But it took us some time before we realized at last, that this was literally the poison of asps!
A very difficult task devolved on me. The theatrical company only knew La Girandola under the name of La Girandola or any pseudonym she chose to adopt for the occasion. No one knew who were her relations or connections. Of course they had now to be communicated with. It was known that she was English and I being English was commissioned to investigate her papers and remains. But I really forget what name she had adopted at the hotel. Anyhow, she was known as La Girandola: and as I was engaged in an official position no one objected to my inspecting what was left in her room.
There were some letters—not very many: and a really beautifully bound book with a cover of illuminated parchment—by book, I mean a manuscript book—in which, in a remarkably legible handwriting, though I noticed the twists and twirls were somewhat overdone, she had written an exhaustive diary containing the history of her life from day to day.
It was inscribed inside, ‘Ethel from her Aunt Matilda: on her sixteenth birthday.’
The first thing I picked up was a letter with the following contents.
‘Dear Ethel,
I enclose a £10 note. It seems rather ridiculous; but that is all I can possibly send. Anyhow you see I could not send you cheques, because then it could easily be traced who cashed them, and then you know—
Although I am allowed to spend as much as I like the Duke insists on having an exact account of every penny I have spent. Which is really rather too absurd, considering it is my money, not his! And indeed it is Aunt Matilda, not Aunt Jane, who makes the most bother in supervising my accounts. Aunt Jane occupies herself chiefly in my moral reformation. Indeed it is actually a fact, I could buy a diamond necklace tomorrow worth £1,000 or more and yet not be able to send you a single sovereign. In fact I have literally managed to scrape this little amount I send to you by buying yards of lace I didn't want—augmenting slightly, so as not to be suspicious, the price of each yard in my accounts.
Aunt Jane has ceased to dye her hair, and declares that on account of your infamous conduct her hair has turned suddenly white. Aunt Matilda, however, still continues to wear ringlets. By the bye, it is she who thinks it necessary to advise me about my dresses, though as you may well imagine, her notion of how a Duchess should be clad is not exactly, one may say, up to date.
But still Aunt Matilda is the more lenient of the two.
One day she said:
“Poor girl! I wonder what she is doing now.”
“Don't mention her name Matilda, please,” answered Aunt Jane.
“But I didn't mention her name,” said Aunt Matilda.
“But you evidently know whom I am referring to. Surely we are told that sins are forgiven if the sinner be truly repentant.”
“My dear Matilda,” answered Aunt Jane, “you speak like a Roman Catholic. There are some—”
Here her eloquence failed her. So she rang the bell and ordered tea. Isn't this deliciously characteristic of them?
My poor child, I am talking much more about myself than you. Do let me have a detailed account of how you are getting on.
Oh, by the bye, I had an awful scare last week. The Duke actually offered to take me to the Opera. I fortunately managed to have a sudden headache. For, my stars! what would have happened if he had seen you! Although he has been bullied into submission by Aunt Jane, his old military instinct is not totally extinct. He would, probably, have kicked up a row, and oh!—
I am only too glad for my sake as well as yours, that you're going out of England. It is awfully decent of La Cagliari to take you with her to Naples! She seems from your description to be rather a nice sort of woman. As a matter of fact, I envy you your independent living. It must be much more fun to be a ballet dancer than a Duchess. It was my own fault that I ever became a Duchess: I suppose I must bear the consequences. Well now goodbye dear,
I remain,
Your venerable and respectable aunt,
Virginia.
P.S. By the bye, of course one always forgets the chief thing one meant to say, viz. address letters to No. 2, Vigo St. as usual: but don't address them “Fifine” but “Coralie”. It appears that Fifine has a clandestine correspondence too: and although she must know your handwriting, she opens your letters to me, on the excuse that she thought they were addressed to her and she had made a mistake. I do not mistrust her. I do not believe for an instant she could be a spy, paid by Aunt Jane: and indeed Aunt Jane with all her faults would not do a thing like that, but merely the ordinary curiosity of servant-maids. But if you put “Coralie” she cannot possibly pretend they could have been for her.’
This letter without address, date or real signature, was not much of a clue to find the whereabouts of the family of La Girandola. The only deduction one could draw was that she was aristocratically connected: and that her aristocratic relations would not be particularly pleased to be communicated with.
Of course, I thought the Duchess of Morlaix might give some information. Still I shrank from applying to her: and Kóvacs agreed with me that it would be better not to do so except in the last extremity. It had been easy to see that whatever acquaintance she may have had with La Girandola she did not wish it to be generally known.
So the whole thing would be a rather delicate and difficult matter. So I agreed to go on with the papers.
With the aid of a few letters and especially the diary, I managed to piece out her whole story. The diary at the beginning sparkles with mischievous humour; a merely rather naughty child under the care of two dragon aunts.
The diary begins: ‘Aunt Matilda gave me this to-day. I have now reached the mature age of 16. Aunt Jane said “I don't approve of giving girls diaries: it encourages sentimentalism”.
‘“Really my dear Jane,” said Aunt Matilda, “Ethel is not at all sentimental. And to keep a diary will encourage her in methodical habits.”
‘“Yes,” said Aunt Jane, “if you had given her a diary with the days marked and a place for accounts on the other side, it would have been a very good thing: indeed, I was thinking of giving her such a diary myself: but as you said you were going to give a diary, I gave her a workbox instead. A big book like that which girls call a commonplace book, they write a great deal of nonsense in: and read it over and over again to themselves. Let us pray that Ethel may be preserved from temptation.”
‘“But,” said Aunt Matilda—this time singularly audacious—“I always found it a great comfort myself to write in a book like that: to say what books I had read, and what I had felt and that sort of thing.”
‘“My dear Matilda,” said Aunt Jane, “I am afraid you were always inclined to be a little sentimental—a thing I never approved of. Indeed, you were at that time I remember continually reading foolish novels like ‘Clarissa Harlowe’ &c.”’
Of course Miss Ethel goes at once and ransacks the Duke's Castle to find the novel ‘Clarissa Harlowe’ w
hich had amused her Aunt Matilda in her youth. But it does not seem to have impressed her much, for we find the following entry:
‘No, not another word! If books like this were considered amusing in those days, what must the dull books have been like?’
It was easy to gather from the first pages that she was the niece of a Duke, and was left an orphan at a very early age: and was left under the guardianship of her Aunt Jane. The Duke himself was the baby of the family, and at the time her mother died he was considered too youthful and gay to have the charge of a little girl.
After the death of his first wife, who died very soon after her marriage, he perhaps, broken down with grief, asked his elder sisters Lady Jane and Lady Matilda to come and keep house for him. And gradually he seems to have succumbed entirely to their influence—especially to that of that sane-minded person, Lady Jane, who was considerably older than himself. (Though it appears at the time the diary begins, the Duke himself was by no means particularly young.)
Then followed an account of the daily life there. Perhaps a little too satirical: the routine of Family Prayers, where occasionally Aunt Matilda played upon the harp, ‘an elegant accomplishment of bye-gone days,’ writes Ethel.
We get glimpses of her childhood too. ‘The bishop,’ she writes, ‘talking about something or other with the parish clergyman said it was like trying to dance before you could walk! But when I think of myself, I think, I really could dance before I could walk, or at least quite as soon.
‘Whenever I heard the sound of any sort of music I felt an irresistible desire to dance. My old nurse used to tell me I used to dance before I could speak, to a barrel organ played outside the house. Indeed, I scarcely could restrain myself when Aunt Matilda played the harp at Family Prayers—which she did not do particularly well.’
There is an entry much later on, where poor Ethel has grown sentimental, when she says, speaking of La Cagliari, ‘Ah! Why cannot I play her accompaniments? I delight in music so much, but never could learn to play the piano. Somehow I could never touch a note without an irresistible desire to dance; music and motion seem to me as one. It is only with an effort that I can sit still at a concert or even in a Church.’
Then reverting to her old style, she adds, ‘I shall never forget when I was a little girl how I danced in the side-chapel of the cathedral during the anthem, and Aunt Jane!—’
This was followed by asterisks. From her graphic descriptions generally, it would not be hard to imagine what Aunt Jane said or did, and especially looked like!
Then she had to be presented. She is very funny about her presentation: making burlesque accounts of her appearance in various newspapers.
Altogether so far, there was nothing of settled sadness or melancholy: only perhaps, every now and then, a slight bitterness in her sarcasm.
The Duke writes to her if common-placely, at least with kindly intent.
‘I always thought you loved dancing. But I hear from Lady Ludlow that when she takes you to Balls you will not dance at all: indeed she tells me you were positively impolite to Lord . Now my dear child, I must put the matter before you plainly. With no children, in case of my death, the entail goes to my cousin: and so you will not be provided for: and I don't know whether you know or do not know, we are not by any means as rich as we have to pretend to be. So the one thing for you to do is to contract a suitable marriage. Lord would, in my opinion, be a most desirable person, &c.’
She is merciless in her persiflages on this letter.
Then again the Duke marries a beautiful American heiress. Of her she writes:
‘I am not pretty: and Virginia likes to use me as a foil to her. Then she looks resplendent.’
This seems an unkind remark, as Virginia appears to be the one who covers her with benefits.
The next day she repents: ‘I ought not to have written that about Virginia,’ she says: ‘I don't think I am jealous, merely envious. No! certainly not jealous, there is certainly nothing I love to see more than a beautiful woman. But then I should so like to be beautiful too! And I should so much rather that Virginia should be fond of me, because I was myself attractive, than that she should seek my society because she is, not unnaturally, bored unmercifully by Aunt Jane and Aunt Matilda.’
‘Anyhow,’ she adds by way of postscript, ‘Aunt Virginia is an improvement on Aunt Jane.’
Anyhow, it is this Aunt Virginia who stands as her friend in time of trouble. And very soon after this the trouble begins.
Lady Ludlow asks her to stay with her during the season. The Duke and Duchess have gone abroad. Aunt Jane will have none of this: she does not like to offend the Countess of Ludlow, so she makes a compromise. She will live in London, and keep Ethel with her. But she shall be allowed to go out with Lady Ludlow, provided she gives an exact account of her actions.
‘Ah!’ writes Ethel at this period, referring to a Bab Ballad she had just been reading.
“Come virtue in an Earldom's cot!
Go vice in Ducal mansion!”
‘It is precisely the reverse with me. I will underline that passage. But I am afraid the virtue in Ducal mansion is getting rather too much for me.’
Shortly after this the tone of the diary changes. She goes with Lady Ludlow to the Opera. She sees La Cagliari, as ‘Arsace’ in ‘Semiramide’. Then she intrigues to get Lady Ludlow to take her to the Opera every time La Cagliari performs. She is curiously reticent here, she who used to be so diffuse. She does not gush about La Cagliari, but merely says in one brief sentence, ‘No one has ever fascinated me so much.’
The entries at this time are all brief, like this: ‘Lunch at Lady So & So's: Dinner at home, after dinner we went to the Opera and saw her.’
Then quite a commonplace entry:
‘Good Heavens! what will Aunt Jane say about the florist's bill! And then how shall I account for my pocket money. Fortunately I still have the jewels Virginia gave me. (Oh! how I wish I had Virginia to talk to—no, upon reflection I think I would not). Anyhow, I can raise money on the diamonds to make up the deficit.’
Next day she says simply, briefly, or rather spasmodically (continuing her last entry)—
‘No, but why?—This is my one chance of escape. O yes, I could.’
Next day: ‘Yes, I will.’
Then she appears to have left house and home, leaving a letter for her aunt, saying she was going on the stage. This part is a little obscure, because of course the writer is in possession of all the facts which the reader is not: and therefore it is only through allusions we can guess what happened. Anyhow, her behaviour seems to have caused the utmost indignation to her family. The Duke cancelled her entirely from his will, and disowned her: and the only person with whom she had any communication was the young Duchess, who managed by means of her French maid to send her a little money on the sly. She here becomes sentimental and enthusiastic:
‘What does it matter if I live upon bread and water? I have still enough to pay for a seat in the Gallery.’
One day she takes an extraordinary resolve. She has seen ‘Faust’, where La Cagliari played the part of Siebel, and thinks she might figure in the ballet, ‘or anything in that kind,’ she writes: ‘even as a mere figurante—so that I could be near her. But still,’ she adds, and one almost sees the smiles through her handwriting, ‘I can dance.’
She goes straight to the Opera House and demands an interview with the Manager. He is a kindly-disposed man, a German, but rather worried just now.
‘What is it you want?’ he asked rather brusquely.
‘I want an engagement in the corps de ballet,’ she answers.
‘Well, it is true we have some vacancies,’ says the German carelessly. ‘Let me have a specimen of how you can dance.’
‘Well of course someone must play first of all,’ she answers.
The manager somewhat mollified at finding a lady to deal with instead of a common girl, as he had had several applications lately, accorded her request; and likewise asked her to
dress—or rather undress—in the next room. The assistant, who was also a member of the orchestra, began to play instinctively the ballet music of ‘Faust’, the opera that was to be done that very evening. She danced.
(I can imagine how she did!) Anyhow, without any demur, he engaged her directly for that evening, as the première danseuse being ill, the whole ballet was going to be omitted.
The German seems to have thought that without any further trial she could take the principal part, except for one little rehearsal in the afternoon. And it was obvious she could.
The two next pages of the diary were lined with printed notices of her extraordinary success. Then after those two, another blank page.
She heads the diary—‘Vita nuova’—and begins upon a totally different subject.
The press notices, though complimentary, do not seem to have pleased her very much. There are satirical notes on the margin.
That night who should walk into her dressing room but La Cagliari herself: she, having taken the part of Siebel, was long finished before the ballet, which she had seen from a box. All the following she reports in extenso, so on the whole it would be better to give it in narrative form than in the ipsissima verba of the diary.
‘My dear child,’ said La Cagliari, ‘you are simply a wonder, a phenomenon. I am really quite surprised to find you standing on the earth. I began really to think you were one of those aerial spirits you represented.’
‘Then,’ says the diary, ‘she actually kissed me.’
‘Oh, how I thrilled with delight!’
‘I am really very interested in you,’ La Cagliari continued. ‘One never sees a good ballet dancer now. At least certainly not in this country, nor in France, or Germany: and I am not quite sure whether I would make an exception of Italy.’
‘Well, as a souvenir, take this,’ she said, taking a bracelet of beautiful Ceylon aquamarines from her arm. ‘They are just the same colour as your eyes.’
‘No,’ stammered Ethel, ‘I would rather not take those—’
‘Why?’ said La Cagliari.
Of Kings and Things Page 14