Olivia (11 page)

Ah, Bérénice! Can I ever think of your heart-rending majesty without hearing her intonation, without seeing her grey eyes and the quiver of her lips as she spoke the simple, immortal words of farewell?

 

———
Et pour jamais adieu!
Pour jamais! Ah! Seigneur, songez-vous en vous-même
Combien ce mot cruel est affreux quand on aime?
Dans un mois, dans un an, comment souffrirons-nous,
Seigneur, que tant de mers me séparent de vous,
Que le jour recommence et que le jour finisse
Sans que jamais Titus puisse voir Bérénice,
Sans que de tout le jour je puisse voir Titus?

 

Alceste and Célimène, it is thanks to her that you live in my life, and you too, dear, worthy Monsieur Jourdain, and you, Don Rodrigue. Often as I say to myself the opening stanza of
Le Lac,
it is never without remembering the lilt, the rapid horror and rush of her utterance in the first three lines, the slow knell-like toll of the last four monosyllables:

I remember the last time I heard her read aloud. It was our evening. She had missed several of late, but this time she did not miss it. There were six or seven of us. I did not take a seat near her, but where I could see her face, and this time, as on that first evening so long ago, she was holding her ivory paper cutter, and as on that first evening, she called me up to sit beside her:

“Come, Olivia, sit here.”

But of all that she read that evening, I remember only one poem:
Paroles sur la Dune.

Oh, if in my egoism, I have drawn a picture of myself rather than of her, let those who read me remember how distant she was from me, what a different world of experience and emotion she inhabited, how difficult, how almost impossible it was for me to imagine what she was suffering. Let them listen again to those tragic, heavy
words, so weighted with memory, regret, remorse, and realize that I came near to understanding them.

 

 

 

 

It was to me she was reading. I knew it. Yes, I understood, but no one else did. Once more that sense of profound intimacy, that communion beyond the power of words or caresses to bestow, gathered me to her heart. I was with her, beside her, for ever close to her, in that infinitely lovely, infinitely distant star, which shed its mingled rays of sorrow, affection, and renouncement on the dark cold world below.

T
he next day, Mlle Julie went to Paris; she hoped to be back for dinner; she wasn’t sure.

We gathered that Mlle Cara had one of her bad migraines. Frau Riesener was in and out of her room all day, looking after her. She was to have a sleeping draught at night—the usual thing in those days, before tabloids or cachets were invented. We were told to creep to bed as quietly as possible so as not to disturb her.

“Frau Riesener’s tired,” Signorina said to me after dinner. “She has gone to bed too and she wants me to prepare the draught and give it to Mlle Cara. But I’m not going to. I’ve told her she’d better give Miss Smith instructions. She’s quite trustworthy.”

Early in bed, I dozed off and slept restlessly for two or three hours. Once I thought I heard footsteps in the passage and listened eagerly. But no; it was some one else, and I didn’t hear Mlle Julie’s carriage drive up till much
later. I looked at my watch; it was nearly twelve. Then my listening began. I must hear her walk past my door before I should be able to sleep again. She delayed a shorter time than usual that night, and sooner than I expected I heard her step at the end of the long corridor. Rapid at first, it became slower and slower as it drew near, seemed to be faltering, came to a stop. She was outside my door. The handle turned and she came in. I could hardly see her in the dark. She came up to my bed and sat down on it. My arms were round her neck, my head on her shoulder. She pressed me to her.

“I’m tired; I’m weak,” she murmured. Then almost passionately, but below her breath, she cried:

“My purest joys have been spoilt. Even my thoughts have been spoilt. Even my inmost self. But I have no joys now. I must say good-bye now to everything I have loved. To you too, Olivia, Olivia.”

She bent her head to kiss me and I felt her tears on my cheek.

And so I lay a moment longer in her arms, my head upon her shoulder, weeping too.

Only a moment. She disengaged herself gently, and as I still clung desperately to her hands, holding them to my heart, she said, almost sternly, “Let me go, Olivia.”

I obeyed.

As the door closed behind her, I lay down in my bed and buried my face in my pillow.

But what was this that suddenly disturbed me? What frightful clamour? My door was flung violently open. Mlle Julie was standing there, a candle in her hand, terror on her face.

“Quick! Quick!” she cried in a hoarse, unrecognizable voice. “Go and fetch Signorina and Frau Riesener. Something’s the matter with Mlle Cara. Run! Run!”

I dashed out of bed and without stopping to put on dressing gown or slippers sped down the dark passage, up the stairs, which were dimly lighted by night-lights top and bottom, and flung open Signorina’s door. I knew she would be awake.

“Quick! Quick!” I cried breathlessly. “There’s something the matter——Mlle Julie——Mlle Cara——She wants you.”

Signorina was out of bed, clutching me.

“The matter with whom?” she cried.

“Mlle Cara. Mlle Cara. I must go now and call Frau Riesener.”

She held me back. “What is it? What is it?”

“I don’t know. Go to her quick.”

Again I tore along the passage to Frau Riesener’s room at the other end. I had a harder task there. I knocked at the door; I almost battered on it. Then I opened it and called:

“Frau Riesener! Frau Riesener! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!”

“What is it?” she said at last.

“You’re wanted downstairs. Quick!——Mlle Cara——There’s something the matter.”

I saw her light the candle deliberately.

“What is it?” she said again.

“I don’t know—I don’t know, I tell you. But you’re wanted—quick—quick!”

When I got downstairs again, Signorina was there in her neat little dressing gown and slippers, bustling about with hot-water bottles, hot cloths and so on, and she was soon joined by Frau Riesener. I was despatched to wake the housekeeper and tell her to send for the doctor, but first Signorina made me put on a skirt, a woollen coat, and shoes.

“What has happened?” I asked.

“An overdose of chloral,” was the answer, as I knew it would be.

“And how is she?”

“Unconscious. That’s all I can say. We can’t do anything more till the doctor comes.”

But in those days, there were no telephones, no motorcars. The gardener’s boy would go to the town on his bicycle; the doctor would drive out in his carriage. An hour must elapse at the very least before he could possibly arrive. I stayed in my room, waiting, not daring to enquire, sometimes standing at my door listening,
sometimes restlessly walking up and down my little bedroom, or lying face downwards on my bed. After the first confusion and agitation, the bustle died away and was succeeded by a deathly silence. Once, kind little Signorina put her head into my room for a second, but all she said was, “No change.” I saw no more of Mlle Julie.

At last I heard the doctor’s step, a brief, whispered colloquy between him and Frau Riesener in the passage, the sound of a gently shutting door. I nerved myself for another long wait. There would certainly be all kinds of things to do—emetics, stomach pumps, artificial breathing. I imagined all this, but no. Dreadful as the delay of his coming had been, the shortness of his stay was more dreadful still. I heard him and Frau Riesener walking down the passage together. It was he who was talking this time.

Signorina came to my room then.

“I can only stay a second, Olivia. It’s all over. She’s dead. She’s been dead for hours.”

I don’t know how I got through the night. This was no personal grief, but I was hardly aware of that. It was my first contact with death and death with some of its worst terrors, unexpected, unapprehended—the brutal stroke of some awful, malignant power lying in wait for us, ready to pounce when we were least prepared. Not the slow natural death of elders, not the anticipated, inevitable result of disease, but an accident. An avoidable, unnecessary accident. An accident! But was it an accident?
A fresh horror chilled me. Supposing it were not an accident. Supposing she had taken the overdose on purpose? Could she have? No, it was impossible. Why should she do such a thing? And yet I knew she had often threatened to. But then I had heard that people who threatened never did it—it was a common saying. And nobody had ever seemed to take her threats seriously. It must be an accident. Miss Smith was to pour out the dose for her. She had made a mistake. Professor Tyndall, I remembered, had died in that very way from an overdose of chloral given him by his wife, who had nearly gone mad with grief afterwards. What were the others thinking? Mlle Julie? Oh, let me turn away my thoughts from her! Signorina? Frau Riesener? And the doctor? Should I ever know what had happened? Would they tell me? Would they know themselves?