Raoul was in France for a year, and he was off to join a regiment of the line on the fifteenth. He was to be stationed at Belfort.
I talked to him and put him at his ease as much as I could, for Lilian's sake, and to my surprise, I saw that he had no idea of how to behave to the officers who would command him, nor of the obligations and discipline of life in barracks. Arvel hardly spoke to him except to sneer visibly whenever he opened his mouth, and only Lilian's warning cough and intercession between him and Mamma kept him from quarrelling with everybody. Lilian was a power now in the household, I could see.
The house had been thoroughly done up and painted. I was shown the dark room, a very useful construction, near the garden gate, fitted with every convenience for Mr. Arvel's new hobby. He explained to me that he saw a future in taking photographs and writing articles round them for the illustrated newspapers, as that was now a new fashion in journalism. He had visited some old castles in Normandy already last month with a splendid detective camera he showed me. His negatives and the letterpress had been well received and an engagement on a newly started newspaper had followed. I knew a little about photography and gave him a few hints for which he was grateful.
Lilian was as cold as ice to me all day. She kept away from me in her workshop and I spent my time mostly with Papa, who talked against his stepson. According to him, he was a lazy, good-for-nothing fellow, fond of gadding about at nights, a silly fool to be betrothed to Charlotte-who was a little whore, though Lilian's friend-and utterly incapable. Luckily for Raoul, he said, his employers had taken a foolish fancy to him. His mother could see no faults in him and he had even got on the right side of Lilian. I tried to pour oil on the troubled waters, but nothing I said could stop my host growling when he felt inclined to growl.
Then I tried to interest the youth and draw him out, and Lilian would flit about a little in the background, with a cloud on her brow and two black crescents under her eyes. A neighbor, I think it was the wife of the village baker and pastry cook, came to see my little milliner and she had foolishly brought her black poodle with her, although she knew that the Arvel dogs were rather savage and jealous. The Bordeaux hound rushed at the intruder and began to worry him, and Blackamoor and the other dogs also attacked the poor little beast. Lilian, shrieking, appeared to get the big dog off, and everybody galloped to the scene of the affray. Eventually, all was made right, and the poodle, barring a little bit of flesh nipped off his loins, was none the worse for his encounter. But Lilian burst into a fit of hysterical weeping and though I tried to whisper a few words of comfort in her ear, she turned roughly away from me without speaking. What had I done to merit such rudeness from her?
Papa had engaged a waggonette and we were all to be driven a few miles off to the establishment of a horticulturist to buy fruit trees for an orchard and kitchen- garden, to be inaugurated next spring in the newly acquired ground.
We were all ready to start, but Lilian sent word she would not come, predicting a lot of work, although Mamma asserted it would do her good. Lilian was far from well, she said, she had no appetite, did not sleep, and suffered from headache. So we started off without her, Raoul joining the coachman on the box.
As we jolted along, Madame Arvel told me what she evidently thought was greatly to her son's credit, as showing his love for his sister.
He was fearfully upset at seeing the dogfight, and witnessing the outburst of tears of Mademoiselle, and his anxiety grew into positive uneasy fear when his mother told him that it might be serious for his sister, as she was very unwell that day. Mamma chuckled at the brother's solicitude for the girl during her catamenial flow. I thought about the indelicacy of discussing such topics between mother, brother, and sister, not to mention the master of the house and, lastly, myself.
So I set to a-thinking as I felt awfully bored, listening and forcing myself to answer the commonplaces of Ma and Pa, and now and then my ears were delighted with fragmentary echoes of Raoul's remarks to the coachman. His every sentence began with the same words:
“In England we do so-and-so!”
My thoughts went back to the date of Lilian's menstruation. It generally began on the twenty-seventh or twenty-eighth. In August, it was all over by the twenty-fifth, and in September also, as she had lunched with Lord and Lady Fontarcy on the twenty-eighth of that month and now we were at the eleventh of a fresh period of thirty days, and she was menstruating freely. She was suffering from anemia or chlorosis, I could plainly diagnose, though my medical knowledge was slight and empirical, and in such a state, sexual excitement and masturbation, alone or in company, would produce irregularity of her periodical loss of blood. She had been to London with Charlotte and had returned with her and Raoul. I did not know when she had left, nor how long she had been back. What had she been doing at the West End? How had they been living? Had she joined her handsome brother and Lolotte between the sheets? Was her friend in the lace trade a little Lesbian? Here was an explanation of Arvel's jealousy and hatred of the lad. Suppose that Lilian loved Raoul too well? Had they ever played carnally together as children, perhaps to amuse Arvel… perhaps at his instigation? That would be quite enough to make him jealous now that he loved Lilian, I imagined, not like a child, whose half-innocent caresses had warmed his blood before he joined Adèle in bed, but like a woman ripening gradually for sensual service at his fireside.
Time would show, I said to myself, and I drove those thoughts from me and wondered, poor fool that I was then, what Lilian meant by sulking with her wretched old Jacky!
Mamma and Papa bought about five hundred francs' worth of trees. Adèle was mad on gardening just then. She thought she could manage to have fruit enough to go into business the next year. I chatted with them all, and tried to be friendly with the brother.
I saw nothing of my charmer until a few moments before dinner, when we were all in the drawing-room. She arrived, nicely tidied up, with a dash of powder on her dark complexion. She immediately went to her Papa and sat on the arm of his chair, after having patted his face and told him how well he looked. She had a box of fancy note-paper in her hand and told me it was to write to her most intimate friends with.
“I am going to write some letters now,” she said saucily. When I don't care for the people, I send them typewritten notes on Pa's business paper. Eh, Papa?”
He did not answer. He never responded to her advances or to her caresses before me. Whenever she rubbed against him, or tickled him, or caressed him in any way, his face grew dull; he frowned, and lost all expression. He loved her and a caress from the loved one was evidently a serious thing for him.