The Bloody Doll Page 6

“And I have forgiven him... I will just be more wary of him in future, that’s all!”

  “Yes, but the key… the key… and me!”

  She understood my stupefaction, and then something truly stupefying happened: she took hold of my hand and held it in her own, as if it were part of her, in a gesture that finally took possession of my entire being, and said to me:

  “Please be my friend... that is something I have desired for a long time!”

  Desired for a long time..! Never mind that when she used to pass by me for months, for years, she never once ‘raised an eyebrow’ and her gaze remained ‘immobile as a frozen lake’… Ah, pity me, pity me, Christine..! ‘Do not make me weep!’ as my wretched verses declare… ‘I am an orphan…I am a child! Do not draw me into your fire. ‘ Nothing could hold me back! ’ And perhaps you would not forgive me as easily as you have forgiven the Marquis.

  I was left bereft of a voice and I dared not move for fear of some catastrophe, for fear of a blunder on my part, or some clumsy caress; which, however humbly it might be proffered, could not be, coming from me, anything but a form of brutality… (I promise you, it was as much as I could do to control myself)… but my hand must have burned her, because she dropped it suddenly, as if it were a red-hot iron; although, even for this abrupt gesture, she had an excuse ready:

  “The Marchioness is coming!”

  I hadn’t heard a thing – but, sure enough, the white furs had, indeed, returned… they stood behind us, enveloping a restless figure, with a face smiling and distant, like an old pastel sketch.

  “So, have you decided to stay with us, Monsieur Masson?” was all she asked.

  “Yes, yes, of course, I’d like to stay here…!” (She can be sure of that!)

  VII

  The Marquis

  1st June. - I have seen the Marquis; he enjoys fine living, that’s for sure. Beforehand, I had only seen his portraits. It is a rather strange anecdote that I recount here because it was, for my part, the first occasion on which I was able to have some light thrown on the strange, singular intellect of the Marchioness.

  Christine was not there and I was feeling quite ill at ease: it was only the second time that I had been able to enter the mansion without encountering a living soul, because I did not think of the little cat-boy Sing-Sing and the caryatid Sangor as being living souls. Still, I did not dare to touch anything… so, in order to calm my anxiety, I tried to fix my attention upon four portraits representing the father, the grandfather, the great-grandfather and the great-great-grandfather of my host; in fact, the entire lineage of the House of Coulteray back to the time of Louis XV… There were others, it seemed, in the gallery on the first floor… but these were enough for me for the moment.

  These four images presented me with a history of masculine costume in France over a period of a hundred and fifty years, with the bizarre peculiarity that these different outfits all seemed to dress the same character, so closely did the Coulterays resemble each other, father and son.

  It wasn’t just in their formal manner but, I would go as far as to say, they repeated each other even in their very shades and tones: that, in short, under all the frills and embellishments of the Louis XV coat; underneath the cravat, coat and English gaiters of the year 1809; underneath the broad-collared frock coat from around the time of Charles X; in the clothing of the French Second Empire, the same Coulteray face was replicated – sanguine in colour, with a protruding nose, a fleshy mouth, which nevertheless had lines that bestowed a certain finesse; the strange, sinister and fiery eyes; the strong jaw; the forehead, a little narrow, but headstrong, emphasizing eyebrows that met in the middle, and above all, a grand vision of audacity and even a little insolence that seemed to proclaim: “the world belongs to me!”

  The only brief glimpse that I had obtained of the current Marquis, in the driver’s seat of a fast motor car, had been too fleeting for me to be able to say if he, as much as the others, continued the family resemblance to his great-great-grandfather. My thoughts expressed themselves aloud:

  “The portrait of Georges-Marie-Vincent is not here!” However, no sooner had I finished expressing my thoughts than, from somewhere behind me, I heard a voice:

  “Oh, but it is!”

  I turned around.

  It was the Marchioness, still shivering in her furs… I bowed to her.

  “Can’t you see him?” she asked.

  “Not really,” I answered, somewhat astonished at the tone in which she told me this…because she spoke as if entranced, or dreaming, though her eyes were open wide…

  “Where is he? Why, there, of course!” And she beckoned with her finger to the four portraits.

  “Which one is of him?” I asked again, more than a little stupefied.

  “It doesn’t matter which one – they all are!” she replied in a breathless whisper.

  Then, as if overcome by a great exertion, she allowed herself to fall down into an armchair.

  At that moment, a door opened and the Marquis made his entrance.

  I don’t know if he saw his wife. I don’t believe he noticed her. She had swooned in a place that he could not easily see. In any case, she made no movement. She cowered in her corner, like a little white creature, timidly holding her breath…

  As soon as I saw the Marquis in close-up, I understood what she had meant when she said “it doesn’t matter which one – they all are.” It was undoubtedly true that he resembled ‘no matter which one’ of all the images lined-up on the wall.

  “Ah! Monsieur Masson, I presume..? Yes? Very well, I am most honoured to meet you! Mademoiselle Norbert has often spoken to me about you, and I am most obliged to you for being willing to dedicate a little of your time to me! You’ll find plenty here to keep you occupied…

  “I see you were deep in contemplation of the Coulterays! They are a spectacle quite unlike any other! They don’t look as if they were bored, those fearless fellows! As a matter of fact, they always had a very bad reputation… I have nothing against them for that! A noble line, are they not, sir? And always faithful to their King. You know our motto: ‘More than enough.’

  “It is a most worthy motto! Always more than enough, in good as in evil, in war as in pleasure! And I speak of times when there were many pleasures! These gallants were well-known in their time. I envy them! Today, all we have are a few petty distractions: one can no longer even go out shooting! Can you imagine Georges-Marie-Vincent shooting a slater down from his roof as his ancestor once did? You cannot? Indeed, neither can I! Why, in those days, there was no such thing as a police constable to arrest you for doing such things!

  “My word! he was quite a character, that Louis-Jean-Marie-Chrysostome, first equerry to His Majesty... we were so fine... so fine! Monsieur, now we are cursed in all the textbooks of the history of France, that are compiled by the Freemasons of today… all because of the Freemasons of yesterday! More or less all of us have been Freemasons… I remember it well – something that happened to my grandfather, who was the premier gentleman of the Chamber of Louis XVIII – I will tell you the story, I remember how we laughed that night! One evening, during an initiation, my great grandfather ran his sword, ‘once and for all,’ through the body of an initiate who had been heard, in the town, making some most disagreeable remarks about the honour of a lady who happened to be, at the same time, the mistress of His Majesty and of my great-grandfather: does that not prove what kind of a character he was? Naturally, the poor chap died, and on account of this there was a large uprising of the peasantry against Marie-Joseph-Gaspard. All things considered, he is none the worse off for it – as you can see.”

  And as he pronounced these last words, he turned to face me in such a way that, upon my word, I could not rightly say of whom he spoke when he said “as you can see:” did he mean the portrait of Marie-Joseph-Gaspard, or... himself?

  Then he laughed, he laughed very heartily, opening his mouth, full of bright teeth… and those sharp canines… Ah, here is a man of good humo
ur; one who would drink fine, dry wines and eat rare meats..!

  “No doubt you will have noticed how closely we all resemble each other..? Ah, the line continues…” (My private feeling was that the Marquis appeared to have been drinking enough to honour the family motto, more than enough (or plus aequo, as they used to say in Latin). In any case, this one had no mystery about him… at least he, unlike the Marchioness, did not make you ‘think of ghosts,’ as the simple women in the town said.

  Then, abruptly, he left us – Sing-Sing ran before him, opening the doors, so that we could hear his tremendous laughter, which seemed to be the only living thing that could be heard in this drowsy mansion. Then everything fell silent once more, all life was effaced anew, and the small white cloud behind me said:

  “Do you not find him frightful?”

  “Not in the least”, I answered with a smile… “I find Monsieur the Marquis to be in excellent health…”

  “He should be! He should be!” she said in a whisper… “that is exactly what I was just trying to tell you: he is in frightfully good health!”

  I understood less and less of what she was trying to tell me, and the affected tone of mystery in which she spoke seemed rather puerile. What was she trying to make me understand by her repetition of “He should be! He should be?” She resumed, gathering the fur over her bare shoulder, with a gesture that suggested she was feeling the cold.

  “Didn’t you notice how often the Marquis, while he was speaking of the Coulteray family, this one or that one, it doesn’t matter which, said: I..?”

  “By God, Madame, he undoubtedly did, but he spoke to me as if he included himself in a ‘we’... as in we, the Coulterays...”

  “No! No... that’s not what I meant! He said: I… I remember… and then he related the anecdote as if those things had happened to him...”

  Where was she going with this? She still had those immense eyes, opened wide as if reflecting on a thought that was hers alone to contemplate.

  “Madame, when the Marquis said ‘I remember,’ evidently, he meant ‘I remember the evening when the story was told to me’… It couldn’t be anything else… Milord the Marquis could not remember something that happened long before he was born…”

  “That is the voice of reason itself,” she murmured with a sigh... “the voice of reason itself...”

  She stood up…

  “The reason he left immediately,” she explained, “is because Christine was not here..! Please Monsieur Masson, I beg you, when Christine is here, do not leave her on her own under any pretext… Goodbye, Monsieur Masson. Ah, Sing-Sing is behind us, listening!”

  I turned around…

  Indeed, the jade-green eyes of the little Indian monkey peered out from behind the half-opened door. I drove him away by clapping my hands, just as Christine had advised me.

  Before leaving me, the Marchioness held out her hand with an extremely weary gesture…

  “I have spoken to you in the utmost confidence, Monsieur Masson… I have spoken to you of things… of things… of which you will not understand the importance until much later… not even Christine would understand them, not even her... I feel very fortunate to know that you are here!”

  I watched her glide away, then disappear… poor little thing, shivering on this beautiful, warm June day. Through an open window, the embalmed scent of the garden infused the library, like life entering a tomb stripped of its mummy… and it was life that, in an instant, once again entered the room in the form of Christine, radiant with youth… with florid cheeks, her lips in bloom.

  She held out her hands to me:

  “I hope you have not been too bored without me…” I did not answer her, what could I have said? That there was no life for me at all, save when I was near her..? My tumultuous heart was choking me.

  Did she notice what was troubling me? Yes, without a doubt, she did… but, if that was the case, she did not appear to notice…

  She took off her hat with an adorable, characteristic gesture, in which she folded the bright, pink crown of her arm over the top of her head...

  “Let’s get to work!” she said to me… “Well, have you seen the Marchioness?”

  “I have! And the Marquis, too…t he Marquis didn’t seem to be particularly difficult to understand… but the Marchioness!...”

  “Ah! Oh, so all that has already begun! Tell me what she told you…”

  I gave her a full account of the interview…

  “That poor woman!” she sighed, “didn’t she seem to you to be… a little… a little... mad?”

  “She’s a strange one, in any case: how can it be that she’s so cold all the time?”

  “I have already told you that she’s a woman full of imagination, of imaginary ailments…she imagines herself to be cold… and then she is cold... do you know her idea?... the idea that moves her?… the idea that makes her go walking through this house like the shadow of a sleeping beauty in the woods? It is hardly believable…and I wouldn’t have believed it either, until the Marquis himself opened my eyes to his strange monomaniac of a wife…he was the first to be made to suffer for her delusions, for he loves her very much. Well, my dear Monsieur Masson, the Marchioness imagines that those four Coulterays, whose pictures you have seen on the wall, and today’s Georges-Marie-Vincent… are one and the same person…”

  “Ah, now I understand! Now I understand!”

  “You do? If you do, you will begin to understand what she meant when she said ‘it doesn’t matter which one.’ She has already spoken the exact same words to me and, when I repeated it all to the Marquis, he explained everything with great sadness.”

  “In other words, she’s insane!”

  “That’s right: in her eyes the Marquis from the time of Louis XV, the one you can see on the wall, the famous Louis-Jean-Marie-Chrysostome… is not dead… and neither are any of the others...and the Georges-Marie-Vincent of today is still, and will always be, Louis-Jean-Marie-Chrysostome! I say and always will be because, now, she has convinced herself that he cannot die... until… until…”

  “Until..?”

  “Ah!” said Christine, “this time you have asked me too much… Here we would enter a realm of ideas that I do not yet have the right to speak of with you! The Marquis, who will seem so carefree to you, who lives well, does not want anyone to know about his life’s miseries… You know, when I see him being over-exuberant, I suspect that he is just trying to forget…I told you that he loves his wife very much… I’m sure that he still loves her… and her alone! Sometimes he tries to joke with me about what has happened… but I’m not taken in by the false bravado of his humour… ‘Look at me!’ I have heard him say to me, ‘and tell me if you think that I have the face of a Cagliostro… or a count of Saint-Germain… it’s a droll farce! Well, all of a sudden, this idea has occurred to my wife… and now she can’t rid herself of it! Before then, she looked at me with love in her eyes…now she can’t look at me without horror! It is so funny, Christine, that it means that I am going to have to kiss you...’

  “It’s just silly talk of that order, my dear Monsieur Benedict, but, I... I didn’t want the Marquis to kiss me… because, you see, I’m engaged…”

  “That’s true, you are engaged... and you have been engaged for quite some time, I believe….”

  “Yes, for quite some time.”

  “And for quite some time to come?” I heard myself ask...

  She did not answer me. She returned to the subject of our conversation.

  “The Marchioness is a sentimental little English woman, who was raised in a part of India where the most extravagant spiritualist theories ravage the salons of high society. She must certainly have attended some of those seances, that celebrate a kind of Fakirism, that would turn some uncertain brains inside out… and the Marchioness, certainly, has an uncertain brain.

  “Furthermore, she reads too much! She fills her head with dreadful novels about the Beyond. On the other hand: the Marquis, with his e
xuberant living, has perhaps never come to understand the need to handle this fragile mind, suspended between the two worlds, with extreme delicacy. In short, the rupture between them is either complete today… or it will be very soon. There were some strange stories written about what went on in the hunting lodges of the famous Louis-Jean-Marie-Chrysostome who, like many of the aristocrats of his time, dabbled in the Occult. The poor little woman has read them all… then she saw these four portraits in here, that bear a strange resemblance to one another. And there you have it! Now you know the Marchioness. I wish you could try to cure her of this obsession of hers, Monsieur Masson.”

  “I have one last question to ask you, miss Christine… Is the Marchioness jealous?”

  “No, what makes you say that?”

  “Because, as she was leaving, she said to me: ‘When Christine is here, do not leave her on her own under any pretext.’”