“Yes, you told me. So did he. In the West Indies. But the West Indies” — her voice indicated the utmost limits of space — “are a long way off.”
If it were possible, her yawn propelled them even farther.
“And it is his money that pays for Caspar, not mine. Frederick cannot possibly lay claim to that.”
In the darkness there was a majestic and cat-like stir: Minna rousing, reassembling her pillows, propping herself to sit up and attend. The body that by day was heavy, ill-framed and faintly grotesque, at night achieved an extraordinary harmoniousness with its bed, became in suavity and sober resilience the sister of that exemplary mattress.
“Well? No, wait a moment! I think I must have a biscuit. Well?”
“So that all we need do is to find somewhere to put him, and have the bills sent to Frederick. Uncle Julius sends over a remittance twice a year, the money’s in the bank at this moment. And Frederick spending it, no doubt. My God, what a fool I’ve been!”
“Where would you put him?”
“In a school. A boarding-school. There must be plenty in the suburbs. To-morrow I will go out and find one. Uncle Julius only stipulated that the school should give a commercial education. One can get that in any language, I imagine.”
“Wouldn’t a day-school be better?”
“And have him back here every evening? Dangling round our heels and being rude to your friends? Eat another biscuit, you aren’t properly awake, you don’t understand what this means. Think how happy we were before he arrived, think how glad we shall be to be rid of him.”
“But you should consult your uncle.”
“I’ll write to him, of course, and say what I’ve done. But there is no need to wait, he gave me carte blanche. All he wants is for Caspar to be at school. No! Uncle Julius would be the last person to keep the boy hanging on our petticoat tails.”
“Rather than send that child as he is now to another school I would let him sell newspapers, run errands for the wineshop, apprentice him to any trade — any trade.”
“A sound commercial education, in fact. Unfortunately, his father wants him schooled. And anyhow, in this flourishing republic no trade can afford apprentices.”
“Poor child!”
“Tiresome cub!”
“So unhappy in one school that he runs away. To you. And now you put him in another.”
“Minna. Apart from the fact that we don’t want him and can’t afford him, can you seriously maintain that Caspar is benefiting by his stay with us?”
“Better than a school.”
Sophia leaped up in a fury.
“I shall write to Uncle Julius now.”
The letter took a little while to compose. She was in the mood, trembling with midnight and angry excitement, to dash off something incisive and eloquent, it was irritating to have to choose words carefully, compose a prudent epistle which would skirt round the facts that Caspar had run away from the Trebennick Academy, that she had run away from Frederick. And darkening over this was her wrath against Minna, her indignation that this solution of the problem of Caspar should be so grudgingly, so doubtfully received.
Signing the letter, laying down the pen, she looked sulkily in front of her. Over the writing-table hung a mirror, and there she saw reflected the half-open door into the bedroom, and Minna candle-lit in bed. Her hand had just conveyed another biscuit to her mouth. Her eyes were full of tears and she was munching slowly. Seeing that face, melancholy and gluttonous, Sophia forgot the anger of the one who is in the wrong. Her whole being was ravaged with love and tenderness. Still holding the pen she sat and stared into the mirror, beholding as though for a first and a last time the creature who, but a few paces away, hung in the mirror as though in the innocence of a different world.
She felt an intricate repentance. That jibe against the republic was a hit below the belt: not by any fair means would Minna’s resources of tongue and temper be so easily put out of action. On this she now heaped the equally illegitimate assault of love. Nevertheless, when the morning came she excused herself from hymn-singing, looked up a number of suburban schools in a directory, arrayed herself in the remains of her best clothes and set out to find another Trebennick Academy.
In one thing she had reckoned without her host. For though there were any number of obliging establishments, cheap, suitable, ruralised with vines and acacias, and yet not too far beyond the Barriers, not one of these would receive a pupil on the strength of her appearance and word only. There must be money paid down.
“These troubled days,” said Professor Jaricot, “these menacing horizons, destroy that confidence which is at once so typical of civilisation and so necessary to it. No one regrets this more than I.”
His parlour, so tidy, so bare, so polished, so lofty and so shady — for the window was screened with another of those vines — reverberated the noise of three blue-bottles circling high above his bald head. Modulating through their conversation came a heavenly smell of onion soup, a solid middle-class proclamation that though May weather, wafts of lilac, tilted summer parasols, cooing of doves, beckoning of blossomed trees, were all very well, yet the stomach demanded more of midday than flowers and flowery exhalations and the squeak of shears snipping suburban lawns to a neat edge.
My God, she thought, how hungry I am. I could lie down and fawn for a bowl of that soup, for a day of this assured middle-class comfort and sober repletion. So much emotion in the middle of the night, so much activity since, had made her indeed appallingly hungry. And while Professor Jaricot continued to expatiate on the political situation, explaining how his fatherly heart grieved for those whose most sensitive years must be exposed to an epoch so tumultuous and subversive, she passed her handkerchief across her lips to conceal the languishing yawns of appetite.
These Englishwomen, thought he, sprinkling a few parting reverences on her retreating flounces, how shameless they are! One would say that she had no maternal feeling, no warmth at all. And yet she had had an illegitimate child by a negro. Strange! Strange of the negro, too. Sophia’s type of beauty had no appeal for Professor Jaricot, so little impression had it made on him in their first encounter that he did not recognise her as the hymn-singing beggar to whom, in an irresistible impulse of sentiment, he had given a five centime bit. And as Professor Jaricot’s type of beauty had no appeal for Sophia either, they parted in ignorance that they had met before.
Money must be paid down. Well, there was nothing else for it. Frederick who was responsible, must be invoked.
“It would be surer, it would be far less painful, to write to your lawyer.”
“It would be much slower. And now that I have made up my mind to get Caspar off my hands, and now that you have made up your mind to disagree with me, the sooner it is settled the better. Besides, Minna, Caspar is not so utterly to be pitied. If you had smelled that soup ... ”
“Smelled that soup? I have smelled it a thousand times! There is scarcely a city in Europe where I have not smelled that persuasive, that fatal soup. What is it made of? — ledgers, prayer-books, dividends, death-sentences, the bones of the poor, the flesh of the young, the tears of prisoners, mouldy bread and black beans; and when it is scummed and cleared and flavoured they serve it up in a plated soup tureen. And you hankered for it. Shameful!”
“A good nourishing soup — not a metaphor in it. And, Minna — Can you look at those people there and tell me that they too are not hankering for Professor Jaricot’s soup, that a bondage to a regular dinner would not mean a great deal more to them than the liberation of Poland?”
A straggling procession of demonstrators was moving slowly down the street. The cross-traffic halted them, and the outmost man heard Sophia’s words. He turned towards her a placard which he was carrying. Scrawled on it in large characters were the words, Bread or Lead.
“As you say, Madame.”
His voice was dry and fatigued, the voice of a schoolmaster nearing the end of a lesson. Hunger had painted him of any age,
but he was probably young. He had small adder-coloured eyes, pungently bright.
“A regular dinner, soup without metaphors. That is what the workers want, is it not? The ten-hour day, two francs a day from the National Workshops, the blessing of Marie and a little organisation from Thomas — that is a prospect to keep them peaceable, eh?”
“Two francs?” said Sophia.
“If there is work, naturally. We are told that perhaps, in time, with organisation, with the good-heartedness of employers, there may even be work every other day.”
“I cannot understand,” she exclaimed, “why there is no work. For though an old lady and her spiritual director in the Faubourg St. Germain assured me that the republic was doomed to ruin because no one would have sufficient confidence to buy jewellery or have their window-boxes repainted, I cannot be ninny enough to believe that. Work! The paving of this street alone and the repair of these houses should be enough to employ a hundred men. And the city has got to go on, hasn’t it? — people be fed, and clothed, whether it is a republic or a kingdom?”
She spoke excitedly, forgetting that she was addressing a perfect stranger; it seemed to her that this wry fellow with the adder-coloured eyes was the sort of person she wanted to question, and that she could get from him tougher answers than Minna’s circle could supply. For though it is no affair of mine, she said to herself, yet here I am in the middle of this vaunted republic which is so obviously going wrong; and at least I might know why.
“However, your friends in the Faubourg St. Germain might have given you an inkling,” he said. “They assured you that the republic was doomed to ruin — that is to say, they meant to ruin it. They were even frank enough to inform you how they meant to bring that ruin about. Really, Madame, for an Englishwoman, reared at the very hearth of political economy, you have been a little dense.”
While he was speaking the procession had been released, and moved on, he with it. It went the faster for having been stemmed, she had some ado to keep up with him, hauling Minna along with her.
“But their trumpery patronage, their twopenny-halfpenny effect on trade — what difference can that make? And anyhow, they must still buy essentials, they must still buy bread.”
“So must others, with shallower purses ... (Bread or Lead,” he shouted, displaying his placard). “Have you never heard of a lock-out, Madame? It is a simple enough system. There is a difference of opinion between the workers and their employer, and the employer says, in effect, Since I can afford to go without my profits longer than you can afford to go without your wages I will close the manufactory until such time as hunger shall compel you to agree with me. The employing class, not only of France but of Europe, the investors, the manufacturers, the middlemen, the banks, the officials, mislike the republic. And so they are using the lock-out against it.”
“Charmingly clear, is it not?” said the boy beyond him, gazing on Sophia with fatherly interest. Not even want had dimmed his good-hearted impertinence, he was one of those Gallic radishes like the porter who had so much pleased her at Calais. Suddenly she recollected the man who had drawn on the wall, the tree, hung with dimpled fruits of the Orléans dynasty, the working-man whose axe was laid to its root, and the crowd, giggles rising through their intent excitement like bubbles rising through wine. Joy was it in that dawn to be alive. She also had been pleased with herself that morning, rocking on her toes with the sense of an adventure before her; and her adventure too had miscarried very oddly.
“Yes, I know about lock-outs. It is a device often used in England. But are you going to stand it?” she enquired.
“No!” said the man.
“No,” said Minna beside her — a thoughtful echo.
“Decision is a great deal,” pondered Sophia. “But not quite sufficient. I should think you would do well to get rid of some of your ridiculous leaders, for a start.”
“That idea has occurred to us also, as it happens. The more so, since we do not consider them our leaders. At first, our go-betweens; and now, for some time, our betrayers.”
Léocadie to the life, she thought, tingling with an odd sort of pleasure at the rap of his snub.
“And so ... ?”
Before she could finish the question the boy cried out with a brisk cock-a-doodling voice,
“Bread or lead!”
His voice, so young and impudent, uttering those grim words, fetched from Minna a sudden sigh, a tightening of the hand; and from a Civil Guard who was sourly prowling on the edge of the march, a shouted admonishment to hold his tongue or it would be the worse for him. Other voices took up the cry, the Civil Guard flushed angrily among his whiskers.
Pitching her voice carefully, aiming it to travel under the uproar, Sophia asked,
“Have you got the lead?”
He turned and gave her a full glance of those pungent eyes — long, searching, and ruthless. Then, suddenly casting aside his schoolmaster’s voice for the twang of the gutter, he replied,
“That’s telling, ain’t it?”
The glance, leaving her, discarded her too. They slackened step, dawdled to watch the rest of the demonstration go by, remembered that they must purchase salami. Not till some time had gone by did Minna remark,
“Did you know you were talking to a Communist?”
“Of course.”
Grabbing the end of that advantage, she added,
“And, Minna — How did you know?”
“Oh, as you did. By the way he spoke.”
“Yes. He reminded me of Ingelbrecht. So — so lucid.”
“You are lucid too, Sophia. You always know your own mind. It is one of your qualities that most delights me.”
The affable mendacity of this tilted Sophia’s thoughts back to the question of Caspar, of how soon he could be deposited with Professor Jaricot and Minna’s delight given full scope. The sooner the better, undoubtedly. It was a dubious deed, all her dealings with that luckless mulatto were shoddy enough. But testing, as it were, the resilience of her conscience, she knew that once he was out of the way, and the dubious transaction signed and delivered as her act and deed, she would be able to forget about it, and go forward with enough impetus to carry the gainsaying Minna with her.
Only the method, then, remained to be settled. Discreetest, most dignified, would be to write to Mr. Wilcox, sitting, the soul of dignity and discretion, behind his green-shaded windows, his copper-plated brass name-plate, his Georgian housefront, demurely set back a pace or two from the narrow Dorchester street. There he sat, among his documentary band-boxes, his few quiet spiders; and sometimes his eyes, so round and clear and empty of expression that they seemed very much akin to his bald forehead, might rest on the deed-box where Aspen in white letters had been cancelled with a line and Willoughby painted below. Discreetest, most dignified course. Unfortunately it would also be the slowest.
At the other extreme was an appeal to that Willoughby who had cancelled her Aspen. And mid-way, just where she would be, agile and timeless trimmer, was great-aunt Léocadie, who would, no doubt, welcome any opportunity to display her mediating talents, do another little family job. One would show oneself a swine before a pearl not to invoke Léocadie at this juncture.
The decision was speeded-up by Caspar’s greeting, and his news that during their absence a wretched Jew — a Jew with a hump-back, moreover — had come to the door, enquiring for Minna, but had been routed by Caspar’s assurance that there were no old clothes for sale to-day.
His eyes of black velvet travelled from Sophia’s rigidly unobserving face to the bunch of lilies of the valley arranged on the table, and piteously back again.
“What lovely lilies! I smelled them the moment I came in. Did you get them, Caspar? Are they for us?”
“I got them for Mrs. Willoughby.”
Slowly turning herself from Caspar to Sophia, Minna lifted her shoulders, displayed her emptied hands with the gesture of the advocate whose best plea for his client is the admission that there is nothing to
be said for him.
With a sensation that the cat was cajoling on behalf of its kitten and that she did not like cats, Sophia carried the salami into the kitchen. She pulled open the little safe and scrutinised a platter. Yes, exactly! The kitten thieved, into the bargain.
“This brat must go, and soon,” she murmured, raging, slicing the salami with the deftness of fury. “If I am to be driven into counting anchovies! ...
“And of course he’s hungry,” she added, whisking dry the lettuces, mounting on the wings of her fury into the further aether of fair-mindedness. “We’ve not had a respectable meal for a week, no wonder he has to filch anchovies. What he needs is that reliable onion soup. He shall have it.”
So great-aunt Léocadie was dismissed with Mr. Wilcox. Those mediating talents of hers might withhold the Caspar claim until some favourable moment, when one was that age time was nothing to one, ripeness, all. Moreover, a demand transmitted through her to Frederick might afford Frederick a good excuse for pretending it had never reached him. Frederick should be directly approached; and since so much depended on it, the treaty letter should be inoffensively, reasonably, tactfully constructed.
It was difficult to write tactful letters from a heart pounding with fury, from a stomach whose void was only taunted by scraps of salami and a flourish of salad, and to the accompaniment of a woman of generous disposition and great dramatic talent teaching an over-excited boy how to dance a bolero and click his own stimulus from castanets. Seven drafts were composed, and pensively corrected, and wholeheartedly torn up.
“Are you going out, Sophia?”
“Yes. To the Catacombs. For a little peace and quiet.”
“To the Catacombs? Where all the skeletons are? Oh, Mrs. Willoughby, may I come too? You promised I should see the Catacombs.”
Minna, putting away the castanets, said maternally,
“Unfortunately the Catacombs are always shut on the second Thursday of May. For spring-cleaning. But I will ask Monsieur Macgusty to take you there to-morrow.”
It was not till the evening, when Caspar had retired to the flannel bosom of Madame Coton, there to be comforted and warned afresh against the Jewess, that she had time to say,
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