“Au revoir,” she said. “Don’t wait for me. I’m so hot that I might catch a chill if I started riding now.”
Without replying, he continued walking at her side.
Jenny disliked the clinging type of person; to be unable to dislodge a companion at the moment of her choice always annoyed her. Jacques had no idea of this; he meant to return for another game next day and cast about for a pretext to justify this sudden assiduity.
“Now that I’m back from Touraine …” he began awkwardly. The tone of mockery had left his voice. Last year she had noticed the same thing; when they were alone, he dropped his teasing ways.
“So you were in Touraine,” she repeated, for want of anything better to say.
“Yes. A friend’s wedding. But of course you know him; I met him at your place—Battaincourt.”
“Simon de Battaincourt?” Her tone implied that she was piecing together her memories of him. She summed them up bluntly. “Ah, yes—I didn’t like him.”
“Why not?”
She resented being cross-examined in this fashion.
“You’re too hard on him,” Jacques continued, seeing she would not answer. “He’s a good sort.” Then he thought better of it. “No, you’re right, really; there’s nothing much in him.” She vouchsafed an approving nod which delighted him.
“I didn’t know you were so attached to him,” she observed.
“Hardly that,” Jacques smiled. “He attached himself to me. It happened on our way back from some show or other. It was very late and Daniel had deserted us. Without a word of warning, Battaincourt launched out into a plenary confession. The way he unloaded his life-story on me made me think of a fellow handing his money over to a banker: ‘Look after my capital; I put myself-in your hands!’ ”
Jacques’s description interested her up to a point and, for the moment, she ceased wishing to shake him off.
“Do many people confide in you?”
“No. Why should they? … Well, perhaps they do.” He smiled. “Yes, as a matter of fact, quite often. Does that surprise you?” There was a note of defiance in his voice.
He was touched to hear her answer quickly:
“No, not at all.”
Gusts of warm wind wafted towards them the fragrance of the gardens beside the road, a fume of freshly watered mould, and the thick pungency of marigolds and heliotropes. Jacques found nothing more to say and it was she who broke the silence first.
“And by dint of all those confessions, you brought off the marriage?”
“Certainly not, quite the opposite. I tried my best to prevent him from doing anything so silly. Think of it! A widow, fourteen years older than he, with a child, what’s more! And now his people have dropped him completely. But there was no holding him.” He remembered that he had often used the word “possessed”—in its theological sense—when speaking of his friend and it had struck him as felicitous. “Battaincourt is positively possessed by that woman.”
“Is she pretty?” Jenny asked, disregarding the strong term he had used.
He pondered so deeply that she pursed her lips.
“I’d no notion I was setting you such a poser!”
But he remained, unsmiling, in a brown study.
“Pretty? Well, hardly that. She’s sinister. I can’t find any other word for it.” He paused again. “Oh, it’s a queer world!” he exclaimed. He caught the look of surprise on Jenny’s face. “Yes, I mean it. Every one’s so queer. Even quite uninteresting people. Have you ever noticed, whenever you speak of a person you know to others who know him too, how many small points that are really suggestive and revealing seem to have escaped them? That’s why people misunderstand each other so often.”
He looked at her again and felt that she had been listening attentively and was repeating to herself what he had just said. And suddenly the cloud of mistrust which hung over his relations with Jenny seemed to lift, giving place to radiant understanding. To make the most of her attention, so rarely given him, and rouse her interest further, he fell to describing certain incidents at the wedding which were still fresh in his mind.
“Where was I?” he murmured hazily. “Oh, I’d love to write that woman’s life one day—from the little I learned of her! She was once a shop-girl in one of the big stores, they say. That woman’s a ruthless climber” (he quoted a tag he had jotted down in his note-book), “a Julien Sorel in petticoats! Do you like Le Rouge et le Noir?”
“No, not a bit.”
“Really? Yes, I see what you mean.” After a pensive moment he smiled and spoke again. “But, if I switch off onto side-issues, I’ll never get to the end of it. Sure I’m not taking up too much of your time?”
She answered without thinking, reluctant to betray her desire-to hear more.
“Oh, no; we won’t lunch till half-past twelve today, on Daniel’s account.”
“So Daniel’s at home?”
She had to fall back on a downright lie.
“He said he might come,” she replied with a blush. “But how about you?”
“I needn’t hurry, as Father’s in Paris. Shall we take the shady side? What I really want to tell you about is the wedding breakfast. Nothing much happened, yet, I assure you, it was a very poignant experience. Let’s see! The setting, to begin with: an Old World château of sorts, with a dungeon restored by Goupillot. Goupillot was her first husband, a remarkable fellow too; he started as a haberdasher in a small way, but he had big business in the blood, and died a multimillionaire after providing every French provincial town with its ‘Goupillot’s Store.’ You must have come across them. The widow, by the way, is enormously wealthy. I’d never met her before. How shall I describe her? A thin, lithe, ultra-smart woman, with rather shrewish features and a haughty profile; pale eyes that showed up against a rather muddy complexion—eyes of a moleskin grey, with a sort of gloss upon them, like stagnant ooze. Does that give you an idea of her? She has the manners of a spoilt child—far too youthful for her looks. She has a shrill voice and laughs a lot. Now and again— how shall I describe it?—you catch a flicker of grey fire between her eyelids, along the lashes, and, all of a sudden, the childish smalltalk she reels off seems to have something macabre behind it and you can’t help recalling what people said soon after Goupillot’s death, that she had poisoned him by inches.”
“She gives me the shivers!” Jenny exclaimed, no longer trying to repress the interest Jacques’s narrative roused in her. He felt the change and was pleasantly elated by it.
“Yes, you’re right; she’s rather terrifying. That was just what I felt when we took our seats and I saw her standing with that mask of steel upon her face behind the white flowers on the table.”
“Was she in white?”
“Almost. It wasn’t absolutely a wedding-dress; more of a garden-party costume, rather theatrical, a rich, creamy white. Breakfast was served at separate tables. She went on asking people right and left to sit at her table, quite regardless of the number of places at it. Battaincourt, who was near her, looked worried. ‘You’re muddling everything up, my dear,’ he protested. You should have seen the look that passed between them—a curious look! It struck me that all that was young and vital had died out of their relations; they were living on the past.”
Perhaps, thought Jenny, perhaps he is not so spoiled as I imagined, not so callous and … In a flash it dawned on her that she had always known Jacques to be sensitive and gentle. The discovery thrilled her and now, as she listened to his narrative, she found herself snatching at each phrase that might confirm her new and kindlier judgment of him.
“Simon had made me sit on his left. I was the only one of his friends to turn up. Daniel had promised, but backed out of it. Not a single member of Simon’s family was present, not even the cousin with whom he had been brought up, and whom he had been counting on till the last train had gone. One felt sorry for the poor devil! He’s a sensitive, rather nice-minded fellow, really; I know a lot of decent things about him. He looked at
the people round him— strangers all! He thought of his family. ‘I never dreamt,’ he told me, ‘that they’d be so terribly unrelenting. They must have it in for me!’ He came back to it during the meal. ‘Not a word from them, not even a wire! It looks as if they’d blotted me out of their lives. What do you think?’ I didn’t know what to reply. ‘But,’ he made haste to add, ‘I don’t mention this so much on my account—I don’t care a damn! It’s Anne I’m thinking of.’ As luck would have it, the sinister Anne was opening a telegram that had just been delivered, when he spoke. Battaincourt went quite pale. But the telegram was really for her, from a friend. That was the last straw; regardless of all the people watching, even of Anne with her impassive face and steely eyes intent on him, he burst into tears. She was furious, and he realized it soon enough. He was sitting next to her, of course. Putting his hand on her arm, he stammered out excuses like a naughty child: ‘Do forgive me!’ It was dreadful to hear him. She never turned a hair. And then—-it was even more painful to witness than his fit of weeping—he began talking cheerfully, cracking jokes, and sometimes, while he was saying something or other in a tone of forced gaiety, you could see the tears come to his eyes and, still talking away, he brushed them off with the back of his hand.”
Jacques’s emotion made it all so vivid that Jenny too was carried away.
“How horrible!”
Now, for the first time in his life, perhaps, he knew the thrills of authorship. An ecstasy. But he masked it disingenuously and made as if he had not heard her cry.
“Sure I’m not boring you?” He paused, then hurried on with his story. “That’s not all. When dessert was served, they started shouting at the other tables: ‘The bride and groom!’ Battaincourt and his wife had to stand up, smile, and go the round of the room, lifting their glasses of champagne. Just then I observed a little incident that was touching in its way. On their tour round the tables they overlooked her daughter by husband number one—a little girl eight or nine years old. The kid ran after them. They’d got back to their seats by then. Anne embraced the little girl rather roughly, rumpling the child’s collar. Then she pushed her daughter towards Battaincourt. But after that melancholy, unfriended tour of the room, his eyes were swimming with tears; he noticed nothing. Finally they had to put the little girl on his knee; then, with a ghastly, forced smile, he bent towards the other man’s child. The kid held her cheek towards him; sad eyes she had—I shall never forget them. At last he kissed her and, as she stayed where she was, he started tickling her chin in a silly sort of way, like this, with one finger—do you see what I mean? It was painful to watch, I assure you; but it makes a good story, doesn’t it?”
She turned towards Jacques, struck by the tone in which he had said “a good story.” And now she noticed that the brooding, almost bestial look that so displeased her had left his face; the pupils of his eyes showed crystal-clear, sparkling with emotion and vivacity. Oh, why isn’t he always like that? she thought.
Jacques began to smile. Painful as the experience had been, its poignancy weighed little beside the interest he took in other people’s lives, in any display of human thoughts and feelings. Jenny shared his taste and, perhaps in her case just as in his, the pleasure was now enhanced by the knowledge that she was not alone.
They had reached the end of the avenue and the outskirts of the forest were in sight. Under the sun the grass shone like a burnished mirror. Jacques halted.
“I’ve been boring you with all this talk.”
She made no protest.
But, instead of bidding her goodbye, he ventured a suggestion.
“As I’ve come so far, I’d like to have a word with your brother.”
The reminder of the lie she had told was decidedly ill-timed, and she was the more annoyed that he had so readily believed it. She did not answer him, and Jacques took her silence to mean that she had had enough of his company.
He felt chagrined, but could not bring himself to leave her thus, with an unfavourable impression of him—now, least of all, when it seemed to him that something new had come into their relations, something after which, for months, perhaps for years, he had been yearning unawares.
They walked in silence between the acacias lining the road that led to the garden gate. Jacques, who was a little behind Jenny, could see the pensive, graceful outline of her cheek.
The further he advanced, the less excuse he had for leaving her; minute linked minute in a chain. Now they were at the gate. Jenny opened it; he followed her across the garden. The terrace was deserted, the drawing-room empty.
“Mother!” Jenny called.
No one answered. She went to the kitchen window and, bound by her lie, inquired:
“Has my brother come?”
“No, Miss. But a telegram ‘ias just been brought.”
“Don’t disturb your mother,” Jacques said at last. “I’m off.”
Jenny remained stiffly erect, an obdurate look on her face.
“Au revoir,” Jacques murmured. “See you tomorrow, perhaps?”
“Au revoir” she said, making no move to see him to the gate.
The moment Jacques had turned to go she entered the hall, slammed her racket into the press, and flung it upon a wooden chest, venting her ill-humour in a display of needless violence.
“No, not tomorrow!” she exclaimed. “Certainly not tomorrow!”
Mme. de Fontanin, who was in her bedroom, had not failed to hear her daughter calling, and had recognized Jacques’s voice, but she was too upset to feign an air of calmness. The telegram she had just opened came from her husband. Jerome announced that he was at Amsterdam, penniless and friendless, with Noémie, who had fallen ill. Mme. de Fontanin had come to a speedy decision: she would go to Paris that very day, draw out all the money in her account, and send it to the address given by Jerome.
When her daughter entered the room, she was dressing. Jenny was shocked by the anguish on her mother’s face and the sight of the telegram lying on the table.
“What ever is the matter?” she exclaimed, while the thought flashed through her mind: Something’s happened and I wasn’t there. It’s all Jacques’s fault!
“Nothing serious, darling,” Mme. de Fontanin replied. “Your father … your father’s short of money, that’s all.” Then, ashamed of her own weakness and, most of all, thus to disclose a father’s failings to his child, she blushed and hid her face between her hands.
VII
BEHIND the misted windows dawn was rising. Huddled in a corner of the railway-car, Mme. de Fontanin watched with unseeing eyes the green plains of Holland slipping past.
She had gone to Paris on the previous day and found another telegram from Jerome awaiting her at home: “Doctor given Noémie up. Cannot stay here alone. Implore you come. Bring money if possible.” She had not been able to get in touch with Daniel before the night train left, and had scribbled a note telling him she was leaving and he must look after Jenny.
The train stopped. Voices were crying: “Haarlem!”
It was the last stop before Amsterdam. The lights were switched off. The sun, invisible as yet, sheeted the sky with a pearly lustre, mottled with rainbow gleams. Her fellow-travellers awoke, stretched their limbs, and bundled up their things. Mme. de Fontanin remained unmoving, trying to prolong the apathy which spared her still, to some extent, from realizing what she had undertaken. So Noémie was dying. She tried to peer into her mind. Was she jealous? No. For jealousy—that meant the fiery gusts of feeling that had seared her heart during their early years of married life, when she still kept open house to doubt and blinded herself to reality, fighting back a hateful horde of visual obsessions. For many years past not jealousy had rankled, but a sense of the injustice done her. And had it really rankled, truth to tell? Her trials had been of a quite different order. Had she in fact been at any stage a jealous woman? Her real grief had always been to discover—ever too late—that she had been duped; her feeling towards Jerome’s mistresses was oftener than not a
rather distant pity, sometimes touched with fellow-feeling, as towards sisters in distress.
Her fingers were trembling when it was time to fasten up her luggage. She was the last to leave the compartment. The rapid, startled glance she cast about her did not meet the look whose impact she expected. Surely he had got her wire? It might be that his eyes were fixed on her, and at the thought she pulled herself together and followed the outgoing stream of passengers.
Someone touched her arm. Jerome stood before her, looking diffident but delighted. As, with bared head, he bowed towards her, despite his careworn features and the slight stoop he had developed, he had still the exotic charm of some eastern potentate. They were caught in the rush of travellers before he could shape a phrase of welcome for Thérèse, but he took her bag from her hands with tender solicitude. So she is not dead, Mme. de Fontanin reflected, and shuddered at the thought that she might have to watch her die.
They entered the station yard in silence and M. de Fontanin hailed a cab. Suddenly, as she was stepping into it, a wave of emotion that was almost joy flooded her senses: she had heard Jerome’s voice. While he was talking to the cabman in Dutch, telling him where to go, she paused a moment on the step in vibrant immobility, then, opening her eyes again, she sank onto the seat.
No sooner was he seated in the open carriage than he turned in her direction; once again she looked into the darkly glowing eyes she knew so well and felt their ardency envelop her like a caress. He seemed about to take her hand, to touch her arm; the gesture was so ill assorted with the courteous reticence of his demeanour that she felt almost shocked, as if he had offered her an insult, yet thrilled by the intimation of a living love, all hope of which had died.
She was the first to break the silence. “How is …?” Stumbling at the name, she hastily went on: “Is she in pain?”
“No, no. That’s all over now.”
Though she would not meet his eyes, the way he spoke convinced her that Noémie was much better; it seemed to her that he was feeling some embarrassment at having summoned his wife to the bedside of a sick mistress. A pang of regret shot through her heart. Now she could not imagine what evil genius had prompted her to take this ill-considered step. What business had she here—now that Noémie would recover, and life go on its way again, unchanged? She decided to leave at once.
The Thibaults Page 42