Jenny had stayed at home all morning. When Daniel proposed escorting her to the tennis-club she had emphatically declined, professing to be busy. But she felt listless, at a loose end, and the time hung heavy on her hands.
When, from her window, she saw the two young men crossing the garden, her first feeling was one of vexation. She had looked forward to having her brother to herself, and here was Jacques spoiling everything! Still her ill-humour was not proof against Daniel’s exuberance, as he cried to her through the half-open window:
“Guess whom I’ve brought back to lunch!”
I’ve time to change my dress, she thought.
Jacques was strolling to and fro in the garden; never as today had he appreciated the quiet beauty of Jenny’s home. After the park, studded with villas, it had all the charm of an old-world farmhouse secluded on the margin of the forest. The central portion with its tall windows had evidently been a hunting-lodge, many times restored; more or less incongruous annexes had been built onto it at different periods. A flight of wooden steps, like the open ladders clamped to barns, led under a penthouse to the more lofty of the two wings. Jenny’s pigeons scudded to and fro along the shelving tiles and the walls were rough-coated with a bright pink distemper which drank up the sunlight like an Italian stucco. A tangled conclave of tall fir-trees cast dry, cool shadows on the house and sunburnt grass, and the air beneath them had a brisk tang of resin.
Daniel was in great form at lunch and his gaiety was contagious; he had had an exhilarating morning and the afternoon promised well. He congratulated Jenny on her blue frock and pinned a white rose in her blouse, calling her “sister mine.” He was amused by everyone and everything, even his own high spirits.
He insisted on being escorted to the station and seen into his train by Jacques and Jenny.
“Will you be back for dinner?” she inquired. Sometimes, Jacques noticed with a vague distress, a jarring undertone—which certainly was not intentional—crept into Jenny’s voice, contrasting with her gentle, unassuming ways.
“It’s quite in the cards,” Daniel replied. “Anyhow I’ll do my level best to catch the seven-o’clock train. In any case I shall be back before dark, as I promised Mamma in my letter.” The small-boyish voice in which Daniel spoke the last words and his mature appearance were so charmingly incongruous that Jacques could not help laughing and even Jenny, as she stooped to clip the leash on her little dog’s collar, looked up with a smile of amusement.
When the train came in Daniel noticed that the front cars were empty and ran towards them; from where they stood they saw him leaning out of the window and waving with his handkerchief a frivolous farewell.
Now they were alone, and the situation found them unprepared to deal with it; Daniel’s high spirits had carried them off their feet. They managed, however, to keep up a tone of easy intimacy, as if Daniel still were serving as a link between them; and this new truce was such a relief to both that they were careful not to break its amity.
Rather depressed to see her brother leave, Jenny recalled his all too frequent absences from home.
“Couldn’t you get Daniel to stop spending his vacation running backwards and forwards like this? He doesn’t realize how sad it makes Mother, seeing so little of him this summer. But, of course, you’ll stick up for him,” she added, though without the least aggressiveness.
“No, I’ve not the least wish to do so,” he replied. “Do you imagine I approve of the life he’s leading?”
“Well, do you let him know that, anyhow?”
“Of course I do.”
“And he won’t listen to you?”
“He listens all right. But it goes deeper than that. I rather think he doesn’t understand me.”
“You mean, that he has ceased to understand you?”
“Very likely… . Yes.”
From the outset their conversation had taken a serious turn. With Daniel as their theme there was a mutual understanding between them, which since yesterday was no new thing, but it had never before been given such free play. And, when they were about to turn into the park, it was from her that the suggestion came:
“How about going by the highroad? Then you could see me home through the forest. It’s quite early, and such a lovely day!”
He made no effort to conceal the happiness that flooded his heart, but dared not let it master him. Fearing to snap the golden thread of sympathy between them, he hastily reverted to their common interest.
“Daniel has such a zest for living.”
“Yes,” she said, “I know it only too well. For living without control. But a life that’s uncontrolled is very—very dangerous.” Averting her eyes, she added: “And … impure.”
“Impure,” he repeated gravely. “Yes, I agree with you, Jenny.”
Impurity! A word he little cared to use, yet one which very often rose to his lips, and now on hers he heard it with a sudden thrill. Yes, all Daniel’s “affairs” were sullied by “impurity,” and so was Antoine’s passion. All carnal lusts were tainted in the same way. One thing, one only, in the world was pure—the nameless feeling which had been growing up within him for months and months and since yesterday unfolding, in gradual beauty, like a flower.
Steadying his voice, he continued:
“Sometimes I’m furious with him for the attitude he has taken up towards life, a sort of-“
“Perverseness,” she added ingenuously; it was a word that often crossed her thoughts, her name for all that seemed obnoxious to her innocence.
“Personally, I’d rather call it cynicism,” he amended, using in his turn an incorrect expression which he had twisted to his uses. But no sooner had he spoken than he felt he was not being wholly loyal to himself. “Don’t imagine,” he exclaimed hastily, “that I approve of a nature that is always fighting against itself. I prefer—” He paused, and Jenny hung on his words, eager to take his meaning—as though what he had just said were of exceptional importance in her eyes. “I prefer people who make a point of living according to their natures. All the same, they shouldn’t—” He broke off. Several instances he did not think fit for Jenny’s ears had crossed his mind.
“Yes,” she agreed. “And I’m so afraid that Daniel may end by losing—what should I call it?—the sense of sin. Do you see what I mean?”
He nodded approval and now he could not refrain, either, from gazing at her intently, for the earnestness of her look added significance to her words. How she betrayed herself unwittingly, he mused, in that last remark!
She had her features well under control, but her set lips and laboured breathing vouched for the effort she was making to fight down one of those gusts of wild emotion which so often swept across her, emotion which she always did her utmost to conceal.
What can it be, Jacques wondered, that makes her face so apt to wear that hard, aloof expression? Is it because the line of her eyebrows is rather narrow, too precise? No, I fancy it must be the two dark cavities her pupils form in the grey-blue of the iris, when they contract. And, from this moment on he forgot about Daniel; his thoughts were all for Jenny.
For some minutes they walked on without speaking, and to them the silent interval, though it lasted quite a while, seemed very short. But, when they wanted to pick up the fallen strand of conversation, they found their thoughts had wandered far afield, almost, it seemed, in opposite directions. Neither could find a word to break the silence.
It so happened that they were passing a garage; the road was lined with cars under repair and the noise of running engines gave little scope for conversation.
A decrepit, mangy old dog shambled across the grease-stains on the road towards Puce, and began to show an interest in her; Jenny picked up her little dog in her arms. No sooner had they passed the workshop entrance than they heard cries behind them. A skeleton chassis, driven by a youngster of fifteen, had clattered out of the repair-shop and swung round so sharply that, despite the lad’s belated cry of warning, the old dog had no time to get out
of the way. Jacques and Jenny, who had turned round at the cry, saw the chassis catch the unfortunate animal in the side and two wheels pass over his body in quick succession.
Jenny gave a scream of horror:
“Oh, he’s killed! He’s killed!”
“No. He’s got up again.”
The dog had struggled up and fled in a blind panic, yelping and covered with blood. His shattered hindquarters trailed on the ground, making him move in zigzags, collapsing every few yards.
Jenny’s face was twitching and she went on crying monotonously:
“He’s killed! Oh, he’s killed!”
The dog turned into a courtyard, its cries grew less frequent, then ceased altogether. The garage hands, glad of an excuse for knocking off work, followed up the trail of blood. One of them went as far as the house with the courtyard and shouted:
“He’s dead! Not a kick left!”
With a gesture of relief, Jenny let her dog slip from her arms, and they set off again towards the forest. The emotion they had shared brought them still nearer to each other.
“I shall never forget,” said Jacques, “your face and your voice when you called out just now.”
“One loses one’s head—it’s silly. What did I say?”
“ ‘He’s killed!’ That’s an interesting point, isn’t it? You’d seen the dog run over by the car, pounded into a shapeless, bleeding mass— that was the really sickening part of it. And yet the real tragedy began only at the moment, the dreadful moment, when the poor beast who’d been alive a second earlier had to lie down and die. Don’t you agree? The most moving thing of all is the unknowable transition, the headlong fall from life into nothingness. It haunts us all, the terror of that moment; it’s a sort of—of mystical awe, always waiting on the threshold of our thoughts. Do you often think of death?”
“Yes. Well, I mean … not so very often. Do you?”
“Personally, I’m almost always thinking about it. Most of my thoughts bring me back to the idea of death. But”—he sounded discouraged—”however often one comes back to it, it’s only a notion of the mind… .” And there he left it. For the moment he looked almost handsome, his face aglow with fervour, a zest for life mingled with dread of death.
They walked a little way before she broke the silence.
“I can’t think what’s brought it into my head—really it has nothing to do with what you were saying,” she began in a hesitating voice. “But I’ve just remembered something … the first time I saw the sea. But perhaps Daniel’s told you already?”
“No. Tell me about it.”
“It’s ancient history, you know—when I was fourteen or fifteen. It was near the end of the holidays and Mamma and I were going to join Daniel at Treport. He’d asked us to get out at some station or other on the way, and met us there with a farm-cart. As he didn’t want to spoil my first impression of the sea by casual glimpses at the bends of the road, he blindfolded me—a silly idea, wasn’t it? After a while he told me to get down and led me by the hand. I followed him, stumbling at every step. A terrific gale lashed my face and there was a perfectly fiendish din roaring and shrieking in my ears. I was scared to death and begged him not to take me any further. At last we came to the summit of the cliff, and Daniel slipped behind me and untied the handkerchief. Before my eyes lay the open sea and far beneath, where the cliff fell sheer, the waves were breaking on the rocks. On every side was sea, sea everywhere as far as eye could reach. I stopped breathing and collapsed into Daniel’s arms. It took me some minutes to come to, and then I started sobbing, sobbing. They had to take me home and put me to bed; I had a temperature. Mamma was terribly upset. But now—do you know?—I don’t regret it one bit; I feel I really know the sea.”
Jacques had never seen her thus; no trace of melancholy on her face, her look unclouded, almost ecstatic. Then, suddenly, the fervour died from her face.
Little by little Jacques was discovering an unknown Jenny. Her abrupt changes of mood, from reticence to sudden outbursts, brought to his mind a choked but copious spring, which flowed only in sudden gushes. Here lay, he guessed, the secret of that innate sadness which gave her face its contemplative air and lent such charm to her rare, transient smiles. And suddenly the thought appalled him, that such a walk as this must have an end.
“No need to hurry, is there?” he tentatively suggested, now they had passed beneath the arch of the old forest gate. “Let’s take the long way round. I’ll bet you’ve never tried that lane.”
A sandy track, soft underfoot, led down into the darkness of a glen. Flanked at first by wide strips of grass, it narrowed as it went on. Here the trees thrived ill; their meagre leafage let the sunlight through on every side.
They walked on, not in the least troubled by their silence.
What’s come over me? Jenny was wondering. He’s so different from what I thought. Yes, he’s … he’s … But she could not find the word she wanted. How alike we are! she thought, with a strange thrill of certitude and joy. But then she grew anxious. What thoughts were in his mind?
But Jacques’s mind was empty, lulled by a bliss devoid of thoughts. He walked beside her and asked nothing more of life.
“I’m afraid I’m taking you into one of the ugliest parts of the forest,” he murmured at last.
She started at the sound of his voice and the same thought flashed across the minds of both: that their brief silence had been of crucial import for the vague dream that haunted both alike.
“Yes, I agree with you,” she replied.
“Why, it isn’t even real grass!” Jacques prodded the ground with his toecap. “It’s a sort of dog-grass.”
“Well, Puce certainly seems to take to it—just look!”
They spoke at random; common words seemed to have completely changed their sense and value for them.
That’s a charming blue, thought Jacques, looking at her dress. How is it that a soft, greyish blue is so exactly her colour? Then his thoughts flew off at a tangent.
“I want to tell you something!” he exclaimed. “What makes me so dense is that I never can switch my attention off what’s going on in my mind.”
“I’m just the same.” Jenny fancied she was capping his remark. “I’m nearly always daydreaming. I like it awfully; so do you, don’t you? The things I dream are quite my own and I like to feel I needn’t share them with anyone. Do you see what I mean?”
“Yes, absolutely!”
A sweet-brier grew beside the lane; some branches were in flower and on one the tiny hips were forming, Jacques was in half a mind to proffer them to her and quote: “I bring thee flowers and fruit and leafy boughs. And with them all … my heart!” Then he would pause, observing her. But his courage failed him. When they had passed the bush, he said to himself: “What a litterateur I am!”
“Do you like Verlaine?” he asked.
“Yes. Sagesse, which Daniel used to like so much, is my favourite.”
He murmured:
“Beauté des jemmes, lew faiblesse, et ces mains pâles
Qui font souvent le bien et peuvent tout le mal …
“And how about Mallarme?” he continued, after a pause. “I’ve quite a decent anthology of modern poets. Would you like me to bring it?”
“Yes.”
“Do you care for Baudelaire?”
“Not so much. He’s rather like Whitman. Anyhow, I don’t know much of Baudelaire.”
“Have you read Whitman?”
“Daniel read me some of his poems last winter. I can quite understand Whitman’s appeal for him. But, as for me—” Again the word “impurity,” which they had used a little while ago, rose to their minds. How like me she is! Jacques thought.
“As for you,” he went on, “that’s just the reason why you don’t like Whitman so much as he does, isn’t it?”
She nodded, grateful to him for uttering her unsaid thought.
The pathway, wider now, debouched into a clearing where a bench was set between two oak-trees
stripped of their foliage by caterpillars. Jenny threw her wide-brimmed hat of supple straw onto the grass, and sat down.
“There are times,” she exclaimed impulsively, as though she were thinking aloud, “when I almost wonder how it is you’re such a bosom friend of Daniel’s!”
“Why?” He smiled. “Do I strike you as being so very different from him?”
“Very different indeed—today.”
He lay down on a grassy bank a little way from her.
“My bosom friend …” he repeated musingly. “Does he ever talk to you about me?”
“No. I mean, yes. Now and then.”
She blushed; but he was not looking her way.
“Yes,” he continued, nibbling a blade of grass, “nowadays there’s a solid bond of affection between us; it’s calm and tolerant. But we weren’t always like that.” Pausing, he pointed to a snail, translucent as an agate, which, clinging to a grass-haulm, timidly probed the sunlight with its viscid horns. “When I was working for the exam, you know,” he added inconsequently, “I often used to think for weeks on end that I was going off my head; my brain was seething with such a ferment of ideas. And then—I was so lonely!”
“But you were living with your brother, weren’t you?”
“Yes, luckily enough. And I was quite free—that, too, was a stroke of luck. Otherwise I think I’d have gone mad, really mad. Or else run away.”
For the first time in her life she recalled the Marseille escapade with something like indulgence.
“I felt misunderstood.” His voice grew sombre. “Misunderstood by everyone, even by my brother; often enough even by Daniel, too.”
Just as I did! was her unspoken comment.
“When I was in those moods I couldn’t summon up the faintest interest in my studies. I doped myself with reading—everything in Antoine’s library, all the books Daniel could supply. I must have sampled nearly every modern novelist, French, English, and Russian. You simply can’t imagine the thrills I got from books! And, afterwards, everything else seemed so deadly dull—my tutors, all their pedantic fumbling with texts, their precious cult of respectability. No, most decidedly that wasn’t in my line at all!” He talked about himself without a trace of self-conceit; like all young people he was full of himself and could imagine no keener pleasure than to dissect his personality under attentive eyes; and his pleasure was infectious. “Those were the days,” he continued, “when I used to write Daniel thirty-page letters that I’d spent all night concocting. Letters where I poured out all my day’s enthusiasms and, most of all, disgusts. I suppose I ought to laugh at all that, now. But, no, I can’t.” He pressed his hand against his forehead. “The life I led in those days made me suffer far too intensely for me to make my peace with it, as yet. I had Daniel give me back my letters and I read them over again! They read like the confessions of a madman in his lucid intervals. Sometimes there were several days between them, sometimes only a few hours. Each was a sort of volcanic outburst, the eruption of a mental crisis, and, often as not, in flat contradiction with the one that went before it. A religious crisis, really, for I’d just been soaking myself in the Gospels or the Old Testament—or else in Comte and positivism. What a letter I wrote just after reading Emerson! I’d been through all the usual maladies of youth; a galloping ‘Baudelairitis,’ a sharp attack of Vinci. But none of them was chronic; they came and went! One day I rose a classicist and went to bed romantic, and made a secret holocaust of my Boileau and Malherbe in Antoine’s laboratory. I performed the rite in solitude, laughing like a fiend. Next day everything that had to do with literature seemed to me utterly stale and unprofitable. I started delving into geometry, from the primers on; I’d set my heart on unearthing new laws that would turn all previous theories inside out. Then I had a spell of poetizing. I wrote odes for Daniel, Horatian epistles of two hundred lines, dashed off with hardly one erasure. The oddest thing of all”—his voice had suddenly grown calm—”was a pamphlet I composed in English, yes entirely in English, and entitled ‘The Emancipation of the Individual in Relation to Society.’ I gave it a preface, a short one, I grant, in—would you believe it?—modern Greek!” (The last detail was untrue; he remembered merely his intention to compose such a preface.) He burst out laughing. “No, I’m not really so mad as I seem!” he exclaimed after a pause. Then he fell silent again and, half laughingly, but without the least trace of vanity, declared: “Anyhow, I was quite different from the rest of them.”
The Thibaults Page 45