Lizzie

9: Paris — 1890

The peculiar thing about Lizzie’s illness was that it came without warning. In the hectic days that followed their visit to the Moulin Rouge, there wasn’t the slightest hint that her energy was waning; indeed, when finally she was stricken, it seemed that Anna’s predictions of ill health befalling one or all of them had been heeded by a vengeful God — and a capricious one at that, else He would most certainly have chosen Anna herself as the victim.

As had been the case with Geoffrey in London, Alison had immediately put herself at their disposal, taking them to tourist attractions she had surely tired of long ago, a favor for which Lizzie was enormously grateful, having discovered early on that Rebecca’s much vaunted French was as much a figment of her imagination as were Anna’s dire predictions of ill health. At the Louvre, where a French guide promised “I show you much in Anglais beautiful,” Alison answered him in fluent French (not a word of which Lizzie understood) that caused the man virtually to cower away from them, and then went on to lead them familiarly to all the treasures she felt they “absolutely must see”. Their heads were spinning when at last they came out into bright sunshine at the noon hour.

“You must on no account loiter under the arcade across the street in late afternoon,” she said, “for you shall certainly be mistaken for ladies of quite another sort,” but then proceeded anyway to lead them across the rue de Rivoli and to show them, in the various shop windows, the photographs of actresses “and other conspicuous people” (as she called them), many of them depicted in toilettes that recalled that of the Young Lady of Crete.

“But we must not stand about gazing and admiring,” she warned, “as it is incomprehensible to the French mind that nice girls should do so.” Whereupon she promptly hailed a pair of victorias, as the larger of the Parisian cabs were called, and gave the driver of the lead vehicle (carrying only herself and Lizzie) the address of a restaurant suitable for ladies — again the stress on the word — to frequent alone.

“Were that wretch Albert not occupied with business the livelong day,” she said in the cab, “we might lunch in style. As it is, we shall have to settle for one of the Bouillons Duval, where the company may not be terribly exciting, but at least it will be respectable. A woman must be even more careful here than in London,” she said, “making certain she dresses quietly and behaves with reserve and discretion. A married woman, of course, may go anywhere her husband chooses to take her, and read any book he doesn’t specifically forbid. But single women do not, as a rule, read French novels — it would be unthinkable for them to even glance at a single page of Maupassant’s Bel Ami or Daudet’s Sappho — far too wicked, my dear. Nor would an unmarried woman dare to go to the theater alone, unless the offered piece is entirely unobjectionable.

“Had you any desire to see Ibsen’s Ghosts, I should suppress it, were I you. Verboten, dear Lizzie, to lapse into my sainted mother’s language. But I’m sure something ‘harmless’ will be showing at the Theatre Français or the Odéon — I’ve already asked Albert to see to getting us tickets, in fact. We ladies shall have to sit in the orchestra stalls, of course, though we shan’t be allowed in the first three rows. And sans chapeaux, naturellement. Women are not permitted to wear hats in many of the theaters here, a rule prompted by necessity — oh, the towering absurdities some of them are wearing these days!

“On the whole, Lizzie, because so many American girls have begun studying and living here now, a young lady roving about alone won’t attract as much attention as she might have formerly. But I should nonetheless avoid walking on the boulevards in late afternoon, and never — I repeat never — look at any man, however well dressed and gentlemanly he might appear. But, oh how silly! I shall be with you every moment, and shall see to it that no harm befalls you.”

She was as true to her promise as Geoffrey had been in London, taking them to all the places they had planned to see, anyway — the Cathedral of Notre Dame, of course, and the Eiffel Tower, built only the year before for the great Paris Exposition; Sacré-Coeur and the Place des Vosges; the Luxembourg Gardens and the Conciergerie; Sainte-Chapelle... and St. Séverin... and St. Pierre... and St. Julien-le-Pauvre... and... all of it, everything she knew would delight their tourist eyes.

But she took them as well (as Geoffrey had in London) to places they might otherwise have missed. In the rue de Prony, she escorted them to the studio of a talented French painter who had died only six years earlier and whose journal had only recently been published in English and French. Here, the concierge led them up a dim, narrow staircase and into the gloomy studio itself, where she cranked a handle that caused a metal panel to slide back off the roof. Sunlight streamed in to fall upon the dead girl’s portrait — palette on thumb, an alert Parisian face (“She was twenty-four when she died,” Alison said), a somewhat disdainful, determined and inquisitive look about the painting’s eyes.

All around the room, there were charcoal studies and other paintings; the concierge indicated a large canvas standing apart from the others, and spoke to Alison in French. “It’s the one Miss Bashkirtseff was working on when she died,” Alison whispered in English. The painting showed a scene on the boulevards, men and women sitting on a bench, one or two of the heads and figures almost finished.

The concierge was speaking again.

“Her work killed her,” Alison translated. “She caught cold from sketching too much in the open air.”

Marie Bashkirtseff’s things were everywhere about the room: a pair of guitars with flaccid strings; a square, turntable bookcase with only a book of poetry upon it; a chiffonier with a glass front behind which were piled her shoes and slippers and a pair of boots with her initials worked into the front.

The concierge whispered something in French.

“Those are the boots she wore whilst shooting in Russia,” Alison said, and then, with sudden poignancy, “Oh, how sad!”

On one of their nighttime excursions, and of course in Albert’s company, she took them to a place called Le Rat Noir (which even Rebecca was able to translate as The Black Rat), a room with a large quantity of heavy black oak and a high Jacobean fireplace, a massive, highly ornamented bar, and long low beams — “Reminds me of the old Cock,” Albert said, “as it used to look by Temple Bar” — at the farthest end of which was an inner chamber from which they could hear laughter and loud voices and the sound of piano, cello and fiddle.

The man behind the bar told them that the theater in the room above opened at precisely nine-thirty, and then sold them tickets at five francs each. They went up a narrow flight of stairs (a painted board halfway up read Passant, sois moderne) and into the theater itself, where there were a good many women present — but all of them French, Lizzie decided, since the place seemed hardly the sort any lady might come to, even accompanied by a gentleman. “Mesdames et messieurs,” the proprietor said to the gathered audience, “bienvenue aux Ombres Chinoises,” which Rebecca instantly translated as “Welcome to the Chinese Shadows,” mysterious enough until Alison explained they were about to see a series of shadow plays, quite popular in France at the moment.

The effect, she said (while the proprietor rattled on in French), was achieved by puppeteers manipulating cutouts between a bright light and the screen before which they now sat. Even as she spoke (the proprietor had stopped his prologue now, and bowed toward the screen), the lights lowered, and the first of the little plays began. The proprietor marched up and down the middle aisle, hoarsely describing in French the story of the silhouetted action they were viewing. Alison was hard put to keep up with a translation; laughing at one point, she said that the proprietor was really quite witty. The shadows on the screen caused Rebecca to blush and Anna to cough uncontrollably. Felicity watched in rapt but uncharacteristically silent fascination; Lizzie noticed that Albert’s arm was around the back of her chair.

Between each of the shadow plays, a poet or a singer came out to perform one of his original compositions. “They all look like broken-down French masters in a fourth-rate English school,” Albert commented, but Alison explained that they were for the most part students in ardent revolt against the reputations of the day, and that their compositions were moderne in every sense. The proprietor, realizing that they were speaking English, deferred to his foreign guests and announced, in a heavily accented voice, “I should like now to introduce my comrade, the good poet Henri Chaulet, who will recite one of his small poems. Do not laugh, please, at his Languedoc accent; it is his only defect.”

He repeated the same introduction in French, and a young man in a tight and seedy frock coat came up to stand by the piano. Fixing his soulful eyes on the ceiling, he began a long and seemingly endless poem which Alison could not possibly translate simultaneously without distracting others in the audience. When at last he concluded, she said merely, “It was all about joy and life and seizing the flying hours,” and Albert snorted and said, “Nothing very modern in all that, is there, Felicity?” and patted her knee.

The last of the shadow plays was, in Lizzie’s estimation, the best — and least objectionable — of the lot. It was called La Marche a L’Etoile (which Rebecca translated as The Walk of the Star) and it depicted, surprisingly enough, the progress of the star of Bethlehem across the sky to its position above the holy manger. A ringing tenor voice accompanied the graceful silhouettes. She sat transfixed.

On the way out of the theater, Alison said drily, “The French have a strange mania at present for sacred subjects. The exhibition of the Champ de Mars is full of them — do you think you might enjoy seeing it tomorrow?”

But more than anything else, Lizzie enjoyed the single afternoon she and Alison spent alone together. The women were eager to have clothes made in Paris, and sought Alison’s advice as to which of the dressmakers they should visit. She promptly popped them into two victorias and had them driven to an area she described as “a neutral ground which French politeness abandons to its guests,” somewhere near the center of the city, where she led them through a courtyard lined with Doric columns, and up a private staircase into an ebony-walled anteroom, and from there into a larger room walled with mirrors and paneled with Gobelin tapestries.

A receptionist showed the ladies to one of the mirror-lined galleries at the farther end, where they sat on brocaded seats in palm-enshrouded nooks. The air was redolent of a subtle perfume. The lighting was soft and unobtrusive. Beneath a cloud-filled sky-ceiling painted by Mademoiselle Abbema (or so they were informed in charmingly accented English), the models of the house glided past in exquisite gowns, languidly, imperturbably — and somewhat somnolently, it seemed to Lizzie. She had every intention of buying couturier clothes in Paris, and had indeed left space in her bags for new acquisitions. But she found as the showings progressed that she was feeling — not quite ill, but somehow uneasy with her own body. And before long she was surprised to find herself becoming a trifle headachey. In fact, all at once, she seemed to ache all over, and her throat felt suddenly sore. Alison, forever alert to her comfort, detected this at once, and suggested that she might like to step outside for a bit of fresh air, an invitation Lizzie pounced upon as though her very life depended upon it.

Making certain the ladies were in good hands, giving Rebecca the cards of several other couturiers should they not find anything to their liking here, Alison rehearsed again the fares they should expect to pay for hiring a victoria, asked repeatedly if they were sure they could find their way back to the hotel without assistance (“You take a cab with either a red or a green glass in its lantern — not the blue or the yellow, as their stables will be in other quarters of the city”) and, finally convinced that her charges could manage without her, led Lizzie out into the street again.

Arm in arm, they walked.

It was Friday, and a so-called bargain day at the Bon Marche in the rue du Bac. Hordes of determined women marched in and out of the doors, discouraging Lizzie and Alison from even entertaining the thought of shopping. As they passed the glittery shop windows with their array of merchandise, Alison said, “There’s a perhaps apocryphal story I’ve heard,” and placed her hand on Lizzie’s arm and leaned closer to her. “About the young American girl who, when asked what she had most admired in the Louvre, replied that on the whole she had preferred the gloves there to those at the Bon Marche.” She laughed, and then said, “There is a store called the Magasin du Louvre, you know, so perhaps her error was genuine — if the story has any merit at all.”

In a charcuterie on a small and twisting side street away from the roar of the boulevards, they bought a cold roast chicken, and from another shop nearby a bottle of vin ordinaire. They wandered down to the Seine then, and sat on the embankment where men and women alike fished beneath signs that read Ustensile de pêche, and in the distance on the river they could see the floating baths side by side, with laundries for the poor. There, under an intensely blue and cloudless sky, they removed their gloves and tore apart the chicken with almost savage intensity. They ate in ravenous silence for several moments. Alison lifted the wine bottle to her lips, drank and then offered the bottle to Lizzie.

“I don’t drink alcohol,” Lizzie said.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Alison said. “Wine?”

“It would be against my principles?”

“Principles? A mild white wine?”

“I belong to the WCTU.”

“Ah, yes, that sober lot. I’m afraid we English, when thirsty, drink wine, beer or something stronger. Have you not been drinking all along? How unobservant of me. But you shall choke on your chicken, Lizzie. Do have at least a swallow.”

“I couldn’t.”

“You’re on holiday, for heaven’s sake!”

“I should feel guilty.”

“There’s scarcely enough alcohol in this entire bottle to...”

“Please, Alison.”

“A sip?”

Lizzie shook her head.

“I shan’t tell a soul,” Alison said, narrowing her eyes conspiratorially.

“It isn’t that.”

“Then what is it?”

“It would be wrong to value a precept, and then practice the exact opposite of that...”

“Practice, yes! Precisely what you need! Now take this bottle at once, or I shall become cross with you. The very idea! Wine? There’s wine in the Bible, is there not? No one is advocating that you lurch down the street in drunken disarray, but Lizzie, my dear, a teeny, tiny sip of wine will neither disorganize your senses nor compromise your beliefs. For God’s sake, take it, or I shall pour it all over your head!”

Lizzie took the bottle.

“Now, drink. Not too much mind you, for we wouldn’t want you falling down in the gutter.”

Lizzie took a sip, grimaced and handed the bottle back to Alison, who put it to her mouth and drank a great draught.

“Ladies quite,” Alison said, and to her surprise, Lizzie found herself laughing.

Afterwards, they bought a cheapback book from one of the stalls along the river (“Demandez le plan de Paris!” a street hawker shouted. “Les vues de Versailles! C’est pour rien, mesdames, vingt sous!”) and tore out the pages and used them as makeshift napkins to rid their hands of the chicken’s lingering grease (“Though I would much prefer to lick it off,” Alison said, and rolled her eyes) only to discover that their hands were now stained with ink and looked as black as any chimney sweep’s. They were obliged, at last, to stop into one of the Bouillons Duval where — to the proprietor’s obvious annoyance when they told him they wished only to use the lavatory — they washed their hands, and Alison, for the first time since they’d been together, actually allowed Lizzie to pay for something: the services of the old woman in attendance, who offered them towels and accepted four sous in return, with a wide toothless grin and a cheery “Merci beaucoup, mesdames.”

“De rien, madame,” Alison replied and when they were again on the street outside, told Lizzie that whereas in England, proper ladies and gentlemen only said “sir” or “madam” to persons of the blood royal, once across the Channel one could scarcely be too generous with this trifling compliment, and its frequent omission by the English had given rise to a longstanding French grudge. Remembering the hall porter’s look when she had addressed him as “sir”, Lizzie flushed, and Alison — detecting this at once — asked her what she’d said now to shock her. When Lizzie told the story, she hugged her close and said, “Oh, my dear Lizzie, be sure never to do that again!”

In the Café Procope on the Left Bank, they sat at an outdoor table, and Alison ordered thimblesful of Madeira, which Lizzie found sweeter and more to her liking than had been the wine she’d tasted at lunch. Still, she drank it sparingly, and not without feelings of guilt. The proprietor came to their table, introduced himself, commented on the lovely weather and then told them that this would be his last summer here, his large soulful eyes moisting with tears when he explained that this historic place would soon close its doors forever. He pointed out to them the table at which Voltaire used to sit to write his letters to the king of Prussia. He showed them through the smoke-stained rooms, where hung portraits of Rousseau, d’Alembert, Crébillon and Mirabeau. He led them back to their outside table again, and asked them to linger as long as they chose, for soon there would be no lingering here at all.

They drank more Madeira; they sat in silence and watched Paris go by. A bareheaded boy with the face of an angel offered matches for sale — “Des alumettes, mesdames, pas chèr—” and then drifted off to the next café. A man stopped at the table, pulled a pair of opera glasses from under his coat, said, “Une vraie occasion, mesdames, vous ne trouverez pas de deux,” and though Alison assured him in French that she had no need of opera glasses, merci, he insisted persuasively, and did not move on until she rudely turned her back to him. No sooner was he gone than a young woman approached, piping in a high childlike voice, “De jolies fleurs, de belles violettes, de jolies fleurs, de belles violetles.” Alison bought a nosegay and handed it to Lizzie. They sipped more wine in the golden lazy sunshine.

There was a man offering little terriers and green parakeets for sale. A confectioner’s boy came by, wearing a white apron and carrying glacéed apples on a stick. A young woman, carrying a baby in one arm, offered long-stalked roses for sale. There was a man selling canes, and another selling plaster figurines. An artist with long gray hair covered by a tam-o’-shanter, wearing gymnasium shoes and carrying a large oil painting under each arm, stopped at their table and explained in flawless English that owing to a momentary want of money, he wished to dispose of his work to a connoisseur in whose home it might be properly displayed.

And suddenly, inexplicably, it was four o’clock, the hour of the newspaper, and the boulevards burst into a fever of activity. All up and down the avenues, parcels of newspapers smelling of fresh ink were piled up before the iron kiosks, the carriers running along the sidewalks, the vendors folding the sheets and displaying one of them on a long pole, forbidden to cry out the news as was done in London, Alison explained, for fear they might excite the populace or become the mouthpieces of revolutionaries. Lizzie could well understand the law; the purchasers forced their way to the kiosks, using elbows — and fists, in some instances — seeming in a rage to get at the latest news.

They walked slowly back to her hotel.

They kissed each other’s cheeks before they parted, and Alison reminded her that she and Albert would be by at seven sharp.

“Well, make it seven-oh-one,” she said, and grinned and said, “Ta, Lizzie!” and walked swiftly and gracefully toward a waiting coupé.

The moment Lizzie entered the room upstairs, her headache returned. And all at once, without warning, she felt desperately ill. She took off her dress and hung it on one of the satin-covered hangers in the chifforobe. She was unlacing her corset when she became suddenly dizzy and blamed it at once on the wine. She took off her shoes and lay down on the bed. Felicity came into the room not a moment later and found her lying there that way — in her petticoat and chemise, her underdrawers and black cotton stockings, her corset only partially unlaced, her eyes glazed. When Felicity touched her forehead, it felt blazing hot to her hand.

She immediately telephoned Alison at the Binda and left a message with the concierge, asking him to have her phone back the moment she arrived. Alison returned the call not five minutes later; by that time, Felicity had removed Lizzie’s corset and stockings and had bathed her feverish brow with a cold, damp cloth.

“What’s the matter?” Alison asked at once.

“Lizzie’s burning with fever,” Felicity said. “I think we shall need a doctor. Should I call downstairs and ask them to fetch one?”

“You will do nothing of the sort,” Alison said. “Monsieur Foubrier is a dear man, and he operates his hotel beautifully, but I should sooner trust my health to a wild boar as to a French physician. You must immediately ring St. George’s Nursing Association in the rue de la Boche. They have English-speaking nurses there, and they will put you in touch with an English-speaking doctor. The last thing you want is some Frenchman putting his ear to Lizzie’s chest and muttering imponderables in a language they cherish as though sacred. I shall be there immediately; I should walk if the hour weren’t so late, but I’ll engage the nearest coupe, and hope the driver doesn’t become hopelessly snarled in traffic. Make your telephone call at once, Felicity.”

Alison was there some ten minutes later; the doctor had not yet arrived. She touched Lizzie’s forehead, said, “Oh, dear,” and then immediately unbuttoned her chemise. “Open some windows,” she said, “the child is burning alive. We shall need cold cloths; I’ll ring down for some ice.”

The doctor, when he arrived, looked as if he had just been shaken out of a deep sleep, though it wasn’t quite yet five o’clock. (Alison later suggested that perhaps they had interrupted his quatre à cinq.) He seemed to be just this side of fifty, a tall and rumpled Englishman who introduced himself as Dr. Charles Fawcett and then immediately set to work, further unbuttoning Lizzie’s chemise, spreading the lace-trimmed muslin open over her naked breasts, and then putting his stethoscope to her chest, causing her to let out a startled little gasp when the metal touched her flesh. He listened for what seemed an inordinately long time, and then said only, “Mm.”

Wiping a clinical thermometer with a swab of cotton he wet from a small vial of alcohol, he put it into Lizzie’s mouth and then asked, while her lips were closed about it and it was impossible for her to speak, “Have you been experiencing muscular pains, madam?”

Lizzie nodded.

“Headaches?”

She nodded again.

“Aches in the joints? Sore throat?”

Again she nodded. He took the thermometer from her mouth, studied it, said, “Mm” again, wiped the thermometer with the same cotton swab, put it back into its case, put stethoscope, thermometer and vial of alcohol back into his bag, and then said to Alison, whom he had undoubtedly singled out as being in charge here, “I frankly thought we’d seen the end of this — if indeed it’s what I think it is.”

“The end of what?” Alison asked.

“Influenza,” Fawcett said. “We had our first case of it last December, and it was rather prevalent during January and February. Did it not reach England as well, madam?”

“Indeed,” Alison said.

“Yes,” he said, nodding. “But, as I say, I thought it had long ago left Paris. Always seems to start in Russia, doesn’t it? Their beastly climate. Moves westward through all of Europe, always has, always will, I suppose. Probably depends more on easterly and northeasterly winds than it does on human intercourse. At any rate, it does seem your friend has come down with it.”

“With influenza?” Lizzie said, suddenly feeling sicker than she had before.

“Yes, indeed,” Fawcett said, “but I shouldn’t worry too much about it were I you. The course of the disease is a short one — four to six days, sometimes as many as ten days — and unless there are complications...”

“Complications?” Lizzie said.

“Well, don’t fret about those now,” he said, and smiled.

“What complications?” Alison asked.

“Bronchitis,” Fawcett said. “Pneumonia. But normally...”

“Pneu...” Lizzie started to say, but Fawcett’s voice continued on over hers.

“... normally, you needn’t worry about a grosser infection. I shall prescribe a proper laxative to cleanse the bowels, and the local chemist will let you have mustard for hot footbaths. You should drink plenty of liquids and fruit juices and unless the fever reaches alarming heights...”

“Alarming?” Alison said.

“It’s not uncommon for the temperature to fluctuate somewhere between the hundred-and-one, hundred-and-three range. It may fall one day, only to rise again the next. But, as I say, that’s all quite normal, and to be expected. Should the temperature rise higher than that, I should recommend sponging her down with alcohol. And if she still seems exceedingly hot to the touch, you should not hesitate to fill a tub with cold water and lower her into it. I suggest you see a chemist at once to buy a clinical thermometer and, of course, the mustard and alcohol. Do not hesitate to ring me should an exceedingly high fever persist. Were you planning on leaving Paris soon?” he asked Lizzie.

“Next Tuesday,” she said.

“I ask only because the disease sometimes has a lingering debilitating effect, and I would not advise serious traveling for at least a week after the symptoms have disappeared. As for those,” he said, “I fear you will experience chills accompanying the high fever, and you will feel extremely weak, depressed and listless. There will also be all manner of bodily aches that will cause you to wish you were dead — but you won’t die, I shall see to that. There will be some dry coughing and rapid breathing, and your nose will be quite stuffed up, and your eyes will turn as red as your hair, and there may be a thin, watery discharge from them as well. All quite normal, however — if one can consider the routine course of any disease ‘normal’.”

“Ohhhhh,” Lizzie moaned, and closed her eyes.

“Tut-tut,” Fawcett said, “you will be healthy again in no time at all. I shall write you my bill,” he said to Alison, “and...”

“I’ll take the bill,” Lizzie said, and attempted to sit up.

“You will stay exactly where you are,” Alison said.

“I don’t believe you’ll need a prescription either for the mustard or the alcohol, but I shall write one out anyway,” Fawcett said. “Some of the chemists here in Paris are extremely sticky about dispensing medicines — especially to foreigners, whom they suspect of being raging opium eaters or worse. I shall write out one for aspirin as well, which will help bring the fever down. When the fever does start to break, incidentally, you’ll want to begin drinking hot lemonade to encourage further perspiration. Now then,” he said, to Alison, handing her a sheet of paper, “my normal fee for a hotel visit is twenty francs, which I should prefer having in cash since these odious French make cashing checks a virtual impossibility for foreigners. If you find yourself short, however...”

“I have the francs,” Alison said.

“Ah, excellent,” Fawcett said as she went for her purse. “Now then, here are the prescriptions. There’s a chemist not far from here — just down the street, in fact — and I’m sure the concierge will be happy to send someone round there for you. Ah, thank you,” he said, as Alison handed him the gold louis. “They still call this a Napoleon, you know, the French,” he said idly, looking at the coin, “even though the head of the Republic — such as it is — has adorned it for the past thirty years. Ah well, the French,” he said. “It’s a pity such a beautiful country is wasted on them, is it not?”

He pocketed the coin, snapped his bag shut, said, “You have my telephone number, do not hesitate to use it.” He turned to the bed then and said, “Cheer up, you’ll soon be up and around again. Did I mention absolute bed rest? Oh, yes, that is a must, I fear. Except for when you must relieve yourself, I don’t want you stirring from this bed. Au revoir, madam,” he said in French that sounded like Albert’s, and then turned, bowed stiffly to Alison and Felicity, said, “Au revoir” again and let himself out of the room.

The moment he was gone, Lizzie said, “I shall die, I know it. Just like that Marie what’s-her-name.”

“Nonsense, you will not!” Alison said sharply.

Monsieur Foubrier, for all his joviality and perfect English, was none too thrilled to learn that there was a sick American on the third floor of his fine hotel. His distress reached monumental proportions when he discovered that her illness had been diagnosed as the dread grippe. He paid an impromptu visit to the room (necessitating a hasty covering of Lizzie’s naked body before he bounded in after a single knock) and demanded at once that all the windows be closed lest the disease be transported through them and thence carried across the courtyard to the rooms on the other side. And whereas he was prompt to assure Lizzie that she might have as many changes of sheets as were required by her excessive perspiration (he did not have the English word for this; he used the more delicate French word — transpiration), he felt it necessary to inform her, nonetheless, that he could not provide the additional linen without adding a small surcharge to the bill; and should his chambermaids be required to make and remake the bed at frequent intervals, he would have to charge additionally for that as well. Lizzie’s friends were concerned only that she be as comfortable as possible while the disease ran its course; they would have paid Foubrier twice what he asked for, which knowledge — had only he possessed it — would have caused him many a sleepless night.

Her illness caused an immediate problem in that the women had planned to leave on the next leg of their journey on the coming Tuesday, and whereas Lizzie hoped she would be well by then (the doctor had said four to six days, hadn’t he?), she was mindful of the fact that he had recommended a convalescent period of at least a week before she might consider traveling again. On Saturday, her temperature surprisingly dropped to a shade above ninety-nine, which Fawcett assured her on the telephone was virtually normal. But the very next day, it shot up to a hundred and three again, and it became apparent to her that she would not be able to accompany the other women when they left on the twelfth — if indeed they decided to leave.

Anna, as was to be expected, never once ventured into the room, so fearful of contracting the disease was she. To Felicity’s credit, it was she who spent all night Friday, Saturday and Sunday lying half-awake beside Lizzie on sheets that became damp again almost the moment they were changed, escorting her to the toilet and back again, taking her temperature whenever she felt inordinately hot to the touch. But although she and Rebecca protested that they wouldn’t dream of leaving Lizzie behind while they voyaged further, Lizzie detected that they were all eager to get on their way, and that her illness was an inconvenience that posed a serious threat to their plans. Surely they were not supposed to linger here, were they, during the convalescent period as well? Assuming, of course, that the disease ran the minimum number of predicted days and not the maximum. (“And assuming,” Anna said pessimistically — as later reported by Rebecca — “that there are no complications.”)

By Monday, the eleventh, it became apparent that a decision simply had to be made. Lizzie’s fever showed no signs of breaking; it hovered at the hundred-and-three mark, and she required constant alcohol baths to keep her from burning to an absolute crisp. It was Alison who, during the daytime, ministered to her every need, relieving Felicity of her nursing chores and making certain that she caught up on the sleep she’d lost at night, though Felicity would much have preferred to accompany the other two women on their sightseeing jaunts around the city.

Albert had concluded whatever business had delayed the couple here, and when he came to see Lizzie that Monday, he seemed eager to get down to their villa on the Riviera. He came bearing roses and chocolates for the patient — who could not smell the roses and who would have vomited up the chocolates — and he sat beside the bed and patted her hand, which rested on the sheet dampened by her naked body beneath it.

“Now, dear lady,” he said, “you must get well soon, do you hear? We simply won’t have you lying about this way.”

Lizzie, her eyes and her nose running, her brow beaded with sweat, nodded weakly.

“It has been such a pleasure knowing you,” he said, and his words had an ominous ring of finality to them.

But Alison showed no indication of wanting to leave Paris before Lizzie was entirely well again. It was she who suggested to the others, quite firmly and in Lizzie’s presence, that they leave as scheduled on the morrow. She would personally see to it that Lizzie was well taken care of until she was able to catch them up later. If necessary, she would ask Geoffrey to come over from London when Lizzie was well enough to travel again, and he would accompany her to wherever the ladies might then be, avoiding any risk of misinterpretation that might result from the sight of a woman traveling alone. The ladies protested (but not overly, Lizzie felt) and finally were persuaded to pack their bags in preparation for their departure in the morning.

On Tuesday, the twelfth, the ladies left for the Loire valley and Albert left for Cannes. Alison had her things moved from the Binda, surprising Monsieur Foubrier when she announced that she was moving into the room he felt contained the decaying body of a plague victim. Day and night it was Alison now who regularly took her temperature; Alison who changed the sheets when the chambermaids were too slow to respond to the summons of the bedside button; Alison who soaked rags with alcohol and bathed Lizzie’s trembling body from head to toe; Alison who slept beside her each night, alert to every moan or sigh.

The fever lingered, though on the Friday after the others had left — a full week after she’d taken ill — it dropped again to below a hundred (“Ah, splendid!” Fawcett said on the telephone. “I’m sure we’re seeing the last of it.”) Then, on Saturday, it soared to a hundred and four, which Alison considered to be in the alarming range they’d been warned about.

When she first saw the reading on the thermometer, she thought it was surely a mistake. Something had gone wrong with the instrument; the mercury wasn’t properly recording Lizzie’s temperature. Or perhaps she wasn’t properly translating centigrade to Fahrenheit. She shook down the thermometer, stuck it once again into Lizzie’s mouth, timed a full five minutes by the ornate gilded clock hanging on the wall opposite the bed and then studied it again.

A hundred and four — in fact, a trifle over that!

She went immediately into the bathroom, soaked a cloth with alcohol, came back into the bedroom to lower the sheet covering Lizzie, and began bathing her hot and naked body, soaking the cloth again and again, moving it over Lizzie’s brow and neck and shoulders and breasts and belly and thighs. Lizzie recoiled each time the cloth touched her flesh. Alison murmured soft, encouraging words, “Yes, dear, I know, dear, yes, yes,” her hands moving, her eyes darting to the clock again and again. She took the wet top sheet off the bed, and replaced it with the last cool, dry one in the room. When she took Lizzie’s temperature again a half hour later, it had risen to a hundred and five.

Truly frightened now, she went immediately to the telephone and asked the concierge to ring Dr. Fawcett for her. A woman speaking with a clipped English accent told her that doctor was out on a call and would telephone her as soon as he returned. She told the woman it was urgent and went to the bed again and put her hand on Lizzie’s forehead. It was scalding to the touch, and now she had begun trembling violently. Alison looked up at the wall clock. Then she went into the bathroom and began running cold water into the tub.

She was struggling to lift Lizzie from the bed when a knock sounded at the door.

“Entrez!” she shouted, and the chambermaid she had summoned to change the sheets an hour earlier opened the inner door and peered into the room.

“Avez-vous sonné, madame?” she asked.

Alison had one arm under Lizzie’s knees, and was attempting to get a firm hold across her back and under her arms.

“Yes!” she shouted in English, without turning toward the door. “Lend me a hand here!” And then immediately, in French, “Aidez-moi! Madame est en danger! Vite!”

The chambermaid, terrified by the stories she had heard of the gravely ill woman in room 305, hesitated in the doorframe.

Alison turned to look at her. Her green eyes flashed. “Come help me!” she said in English, and then immediately in French, “Je vous ferai couper la tête, espèce de salope! Je vous ordonne de venir ici immédiatement!”

The chambermaid rushed to the bed, her eyes wide. Together they lifted Lizzie and carried her into the bathroom. “Be careful with her now,” Alison said in English, and then in French, “Attention, doucement, doucement,” and they lowered Lizzie into the tub. Her back arched when the cold water touched her naked buttocks. For a moment Alison thought she might go into convulsion and feared she was doing exactly the wrong thing — but wasn’t it what the doctor had advised? Or wasn’t a hundred and five alarming enough to warrant such emergency action? And then, as they lowered her still further into the tub, as the water covered her knees and her belly (the sleeves of their garments soaked to the elbows) and then her breasts (the nipples puckering from the shock) and her shoulders, submerging her to the neck, Alison’s supporting hand behind her head now, she seemed suddenly to relax. A great sigh escaped her body on a shiver that rushed through it like a fleeting wind. Where an instant earlier she had been trembling, her body now became still — so still that it frightened Alison again. Her eyes fluttered open. She gazed up into Alison’s face, and then closed her eyes again, and again sighed deeply.

The chambermaid said, “Je crois que ça va mieux maintenant.”

They lifted her out of the tub. The chambermaid supported her limp body while Alison toweled her dry, and then they carried her to the sofa, and Alison sat on the edge of it, holding Lizzie’s hand while the chambermaid put fresh, clean sheets on the bed. Together they carried her back to the bed again, and Alison said to the chambermaid, “Merci, madame, vous m’avez rendu un grand service,” and the chambermaid answered, “Mon plaisir, madame” and left the room as quickly as she could.

Lying on the bed, Lizzie was vaguely aware of Alison standing beside it. She opened her eyes. Alison was staring down at her. She closed her eyes again a moment before Alison raised the top sheet over her naked body.

She could later remember very little about her immersion in that tub of icy cold water, except that, oddly and contradictorily, the first touch of it had felt scaldingly hot to her. She confided to Alison, too, that she had imagined she was being abducted by a pair of swarthy French bandits who were intent on drowning her, this until she looked up into Alison’s face and saw her green eyes wide in alarm as great as her own had been. But, as little as she could recall, she knew for certain that somehow, as the waters closed about her naked body, she felt the fever magically breaking, and she had sighed in relief with the knowledge that the worst of her illness was behind her.

She became now an undemanding convalescent who gratefully accepted Alison’s mother-hen fussing. Alison was with her constantly — fluffing up a pillow, smoothing a sheet, feeding her (though she wasn’t yet quite up to eating anything much), helping her to change her nightdress, reading to her from the English-language books she found in the stalls along the Seine, taking her temperature at regular intervals to make certain the recovery was not an illusion — and Lizzie was beginning to realize that she had never had such a friend in her life and possibly might never have again.

In the evenings, after their meal had been served and Alison had changed into her own nightdress, they sat listening to the sounds of the Parisian night flooding through the open courtyard windows, and they talked together — talked as Lizzie had never before spoken to another woman, indeed to any other human being. She was surprised to learn that she was not alone in the mixed feelings she felt about her stepmother, with whom her relationship was cordial, but not what she would have termed “loving”. Alison’s own mother — the German woman who had so influenced her early years — had died when she was barely fifteen, admittedly much older than Lizzie had been when she’d lost her mother, but her father’s subsequent remarriage had had the same profound effect upon her. Lizzie was quick to point out that she had never, before this moment, given much thought to her relationship with Abby, as her stepmother was called—

“Is that short for Abigail?” Alison asked.

“No, it’s Abby,” Lizzie said. “That’s the whole of it.”

“What odd names you Americans have,” Alison said.

— and that she would hardly call her father’s remarriage an event that had had a “profound effect” upon her, since she could, in all honesty, not remember her true mother at all. Of course, her sister Emma remembered her well, and often told stories of their childhood, but as for any personal knowledge—

“And yet, you call her your ‘true’ mother,” Alison said.

“Well, she is,” Lizzie said. “Or, rather, was.”

“And what do you mean by loving?” Alison asked.

“Abby’s not a particularly demonstrative or affectionate woman,” Lizzie said, “Not that I would particularly want her to be.”

“Are you?”

“Affectionate, yes... I suppose. I’m very fond of my sister, and I can’t begin to tell you how much I appreciate all you’ve done for me.”

“Ah, but appreciation isn’t quite affection, is it?”

“One who denies a compliment only seeks the same compliment twice,” Lizzie quoted, smiling.

“How quickly my dear Lizzie learns,” Alison said, and burst into laughter. “But demonstrative? Do you consider yourself demonstrative?”

“Well, I don’t go about hugging and kissing total strangers,” Lizzie said, “but, yes, I should say I’m affectionate and demonstrative with people I know, good friends, yes. I should think it strange, wouldn’t you, if we failed to embrace in greeting? Or when saying good-bye?”

“I should think so, yes,” Alison said.

Lizzie found herself talking of Fall River then, the city as it was now and the city as her father recalled it when he was growing up there. She explained that the town stood at the head of what was called Mount Hope Bay, on both sides of the Quequechan River, which was the Indian word for—

“I keep forgetting you still have Indians in America,” Alison said.

“Yes, but not in Fall River.”

“But you said...”

“There were Indians there, yes, but very long ago. Quequechan is the Indian word for Fall River...”

... from which the town had taken its name, and from which it derived the power that drove its mills and factories. She described in glowing terms the rapid waters of the river, the fish that could still be seen leaping over the falls, the two big lakes—

“Well, we call them ponds,” Lizzie said, “but actually they’re lakes. North Watuppa and South Watuppa...”

“Indian names as well?”

“Yes, but I don’t know what they mean. They’re quite pretty, actually, the ponds. And, of course, the town is surrounded by beautiful hills and valleys, and at certain times of the year — the spring and fall — it can all be very lovely.”

But she spoke far less generously of the cotton mills, and the rolling and slitting mills, and the nail factory and the ironworks and the oil manufactory, and the granite quarries, and all the various other commercial enterprises that had turned what had been a peaceful village in her father’s youth to what was now a bustling port of entry concerned only with business. She rather imagined it had all changed after the Great Fire of ’43, which had consumed the town and necessitated its reconstruction.

Her father (and she smiled now with the memory) had told her stories of what it had been like to be a boy back then, walking the dusty sidewalks of the village, listening for the sound of the fire-alarm bell — fire was always a hazard in a town constructed almost entirely of wood, as it was then — rushing out into the streets, barefooted more often than not, to race after the horse-drawn engines. Back then, all of the engines — even those still drawn by hand — had names as well as numbers, mysterious names that conjured all sorts of derring-do for Lizzie when her father repeated them, names like Hydraulion Number Two and Cataract Number Four and Torrent Number Two and — her favorite because she always visualized an Indian lashing the horses — Mazeppa Number Seven.

Whenever her father heard the cry “Fire!” he would rush through the streets echoing it, “Fire!” Fire!”, hoping to be the first to reach the bell rope and ring the alarm bell, the hero who would save the town from destruction. He could vividly recall — and recreated for Lizzie as she did now for Alison — the two men who drove horse-drawn wagons in the performance of street-work for the city. Whenever the fire bell rang, those two would leap down from their high seats, unhook the whiffletrees, leave the wagons wherever they stood and drive their horses bareback — the horizontal wooden crossbars clattering behind them — to the nearest station, there to harness them to engines and race off to the conflagration. Her father—

“You love him very much, don’t you?” Alison said softly.

“Yes, I do,” Lizzie said.

“And Fall River? Do you miss it terribly now?”

“Not in the slightest,” Lizzie said. “Why? Do I sound nostalgic?”

“Not in the slightest,” Alison said, and smiled.

And when later each night, they crawled into bed and turned out the bedside lamps and lay together in their nightdresses side by side in the darkness, they still talked, though with lowered voices now lest the sound carry across the courtyard to awaken other guests. Lizzie wanted to know what it felt like to be a twin, and Alison told her she had once heard twinship described as “a gang in miniature”, which wasn’t too far from the truth.

“You have no idea how uncomfortable it is for anyone to be with Geoff and me when we’re rattling on together. It’s as though we were some sort of two-headed monster controlled by a common brain. Our speech overlaps, we will make the same gestures, the same grimaces; it’s as if we speak with a single tongue and with no real awareness of each other except as an echo of sorts. I’m told we drive people to distraction. You’re fortunate, truly, in not having had to put up with us à la fois. But he’s such a darling, and I truly love him to death. And when it comes to hugging and kissing, oh my, you have never witnessed such affection or demonstration! Were we not brother and sister, I’m sure we should have been arrested and imprisoned ages ago! I must telegraph him soon, you know, to arrange for your escort through the wilderness.”

As the days stretched into a week and Lizzie’s strength gradually returned, she knew she could no longer postpone the journey that would reunite her with her friends. Moreover the virtually daily telephone calls from the south of France made it apparent that Albert was not enjoying the overseeing of a household full of servants and would most earnestly welcome Alison’s presence in as near the future as she could manage. When he asked to speak to Lizzie on the telephone one day, he brusquely asked, “Well, then, Lizzie, how much longer do you suppose it’ll be till you’ve fully regained your health?” When Lizzie reported this to Alison afterwards, she said, “Oh, the rude bastard!” thoroughly shocking Lizzie, who had never heard profanity from the lips of any woman, whatever her social class.

But still they procrastinated.

They consulted Lizzie’s itinerary and figured it would be so much easier to catch the other women at such and such a place rather than at such and such, and then revised their estimate when they realized that this or that train would take seven or eight or nine hours as opposed to this or that which would take only six should she decide to meet them here rather than there. Alison kept promising Albert on the telephone that she would be there momentarily, and then asked to speak to Moira, and the gardener, and the coachman and the cook, giving them long-distance instructions on how to maintain the equilibrium of the household in her absence. She sent a tin of Russian caviar to Albert as well as a box of expensive cigars.

When she suggested one night — as though the idea had suddenly occurred to her, an inspiration purely out of the blue — that Lizzie accompany her to Cannes to complete her recuperation there at the villa, Lizzie was too astonished to speak for a moment.

“Well?” Alison said.

“But I’m already fully recuperated,” Lizzie said.

“Nonsense!” Alison said. “I’m sure you’ll suffer an immediate relapse on these abominable French trains — unless your friends are already in Italy, whose rail system is even more wretched. Where are they now, anyway? I have such a difficult time keeping up with them, and truly I don’t care where they are!”

The bedside light snapped on. Alison sat up abruptly. She was wearing a white linen nightdress with lace tucking and pink ribbon ties, its yoke neck cut low over her breasts. Her hair was tied back with a ribbon that matched those on the nightdress, and her eyes were flashing with the familiar intensity Lizzie now associated with anger or resolve or both.

“Now listen to me,” she said. “I have no desire to spoil your first trip abroad or to deprive you of the obviously enchanting company of sour-faced Anna, voluptuous Felicity-Twit, or Rebecca and her exquisite German, which she tells me is even superior to her French, God help us! Nor am I suggesting for a moment that you miss the splendors of Italy — I should be a cruel and unfeeling friend if such a thought ever once crossed my mind. But, surely, Lizzie, you can spend a fortnight with us on the Riviera, can you not? In a sun-washed villa on a promontory overlooking the sea, with rooms enough to house the entire royal family, and gardens so lush they are virtually edible? I have rooms and rooms full of orchids, too, my pride and joy, unless that idiot gardener has allowed them to wither and die in my absence. Oh, Lizzie, do you wish me to wither and die in your absence? How shall I face each morning without my dearest child to greet me with those pale gray eyes in her round pale face — you must have sunshine, Lizzie, or you will perish! I promise I shall telegraph Geoffrey the instant you weary of our hospitality, and he will lead you to your sheeplike companions — do forgive me, I know they are dear to you — wherever they may be grazing at the time, be it Florence, Venice, Berlin, Siberia, wherever! You must grant me this single wish or I shall fill the tub with water again and drown myself in it, even as those swarthy French bandits might have drowned you. Say yes or I shall open the faucets at once!”

Her chest was heaving, a faint flush running across it just above the yoke neck of her nightdress and spreading upward toward her shoulder bones. Her cheeks were flushed as well, a stray strand of blond hair falling loose from the pink ribbon to cascade across one of them, as though lending rebellious support to the ardor of her speech and the flaming intensity of her eyes.

“Well, then?” she demanded.

“Well... yes, then,” Lizzie said, and Alison clutched her fiercely, and showered kisses upon her cheeks and her hair, and said, “Oh my, perhaps there is a God after all.”