Корнелл Вулрич - A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

Her hair was blonde, and was worn in tight little curls clinging closely to her head, as if someone had showered her with gilt wood-shavings and they had stuck to her there.

Her mouth was charming when she smiled, but smiles are always charming on a pretty face. When it was in repose, it hinted at the major defect she might possess. There was a stubborn cast to it, an overtone of thin but unyielding determination to have her own way. As if it were saying, “When things go my way, that’s all right. But don’t cross me, or you’ll have trouble.” It was a fair-weather mouth, good only for smiles.

She had about everything a woman would want: unlimited money, a magnificent home out near the Bois de Boulogne that was a show-place, lavish good looks; and if she was no longer in the full flush of youth, neither was she yet by any means within the gray overcast of its after-years.

She had everything but one thing. The one she loved no longer loved her.

The Daimler drove up and Boniface arrived home while she was supervising the final preparations for that evening’s festivities. She caught just a glimpse of him through several successive doorway-frames as he crossed the foyer and started up the stairs. He did not seem to see her, and she did not call out to attract his attention. It might be better if they did not meet until later, when she was dressed for the evening, she decided. She wanted him to receive the full impact of her completed appearance.

In any case, she reflected philosophically, cupping her palm underneath a bronze chrysanthemum as though she were weighing it, he did not come home to see me. He came home, yes, but not to see me. The two things are not quite the same.

Boniface was that absolute rarity, a mature man without a paunch. Whether this had to do with the gymnasium he attended or with his activity in sports, or was a judicious combination of both, the fact remained that his waist was as slim as a bullfighter’s after the sash has throttled it. Another unique thing about him, he was that almost nonexistent man who not only looks good in evening clothes but even looks better in them than in a business suit. Pictorially, they had a perfect marriage.

He was her Education, advisedly spelled with a capital. True, she had attended schools and seminaries as a child and young girl, but little she had learned there had remained with her. He had taught her the two main things a woman has to know: the art of living and the art of loving. And now the teacher seemed to feel his pupil had graduated. He was out seeking new classes.

And there you have the husband. The man who must have once loved Fabienne deeply, for he had married her.

He came into her dressing-room as she was just put-ing the finishing touches to her make-up. Richard, the hair dresser, had finished and gone. She was doing one eye, and had the other one left to do.

She turned around and smiled at him, and he smiled at her. They noticeably did not kiss.

“Too soon?” he asked sociably. “Shall I go down ahead of you?”

She crinkled her forehead at him in a sort of rueful appeal. “No, tonight’s my birthday. Wait for me and let’s go down together. I have only one eye left.”

They both laughed at the funny little expression.

He sat down, balanced one leg across the top of the other, and took out a cigarette.

She had stopped, was watching him in the glass. There was character, she thought, even in the way he went about lighting a cigarette. Not fussy or elegant, nothing like that. Sort of soothing, calming: it made you feel secure, protected, under his wing. Women, it suddenly occurred to her, really shouldn’t smoke. They didn’t know how to do it right at all. It was inborn in men, coming down through the generations.

He could make a feminine room like this seem even more feminine, just by coming into it. By contrast, of course. His intrinsic maleness provided the catalyst, the counterpoint to it. He was looking out the window now. Not bored, but quite genuinely curious, the way a man would be who is rediscovering the almost-forgotten view from a room he never enters any more.

I wonder what her name is this month, she thought poignantly.

What’s the difference what her name is? she told herself. Her name is love. The thing we all live and die by. And a strange fellow-feeling for him swept over her momentarily. Not the feeling of a wife for her husband, or of a woman for a man, but the feeling of two comrades, two fellow-beings, two alikes, both going down in the same whirlpool. But going down separately, not together. Not even clasping hands to ease their drowning.

Smiling, she held out her scarf to him.

Smiling, he put it around her shoulders.

Smiling, they went toward the door together; he opened it and saw her through.

Smiling, they started down the graceful, slow-curving staircase side by side. The smiles of compatibility: cordial, comfortable, companionable — even loyal to a point. But the smiles of friendship only.

Not the smiles of love.

It seemed as though half of Paris had stopped in to offer their congratulations. Or at least half of the Paris that she and Boniface knew, which of course condensed it a lot, but heightened it in quality. At eleven and even after, people were still arriving, and very few had left yet — always a sure sign of a successful party. But Fabienne had never given an unsuccessful party in her life.

And yet, as the evening advanced, a disturbed expression began to appear more and more often on her face. A sort of strained expectancy. It was too ephemeral to be noticed by others, or if they did notice it, to be accurately interpreted. Boniface however seemed able to do both. He disengaged himself and went over to her.

He put his hand on her arm as he joined her, in a touch intended to convey encouragement or reassurance, a lending of moral support.

“He didn’t come yet?” he murmured, with that unspoken understanding that, when it is shared by two people, requires no further clarification.

“As you can well see,” she answered sullenly.

“Perhaps he was delayed.”

“Yes,” she said, in a tone of cynical disbelief. “Oh, any time at all will do!” she went on resentfully. And as she turned away to join some of the others, she added over her shoulder: “To come here.”

He watched her go across the room with a compassionate look in his eyes. The look of one who sympathizes but is unable to help because it is not his problem and he is not permitted to interfere. He went back to his own business of being a congenial host.

A moment afterward a liveried manservant showed up in the doorway and announced: “Monsieur Gilles Jacquard.”

A number of heads turned. Not Fabienne’s, though. A snub of about forty-five seconds followed, but so adroitly delivered that only the recipient was aware of it, before she turned and went over to him.

He was a younger man than Boniface, and startlingly handsome, almost too much so. He had the dark eyes and hair of the Mediterranean peoples, but with that admixture of Celt and Teuton that is basic in most of the French to lighten the over-all effect, to keep him from being swarthy. When he smiled it was not a smile only, it didn’t stop there, it was a wide grin, wholehearted, a little too impudent, but boyish enough to be forgiven for it.

Her hand went out in greeting and he shook it.

“Many happy returns, Fab,” he said. He had a voice of magnificent resonance, which he still had to grow up to.

She smiled and inclined her head without answering. The smile was not the warmest one she was capable of giving.

“I’m a little late, I know.”

“Agreed,” she said.

“You have no idea what the traffic is.”

“The traffic,” she said. “That will do as well as anything else.”