I was choking with rage, disgust, and surprise. I was completely taken aback and could not find a word to say:
“Oh, Lilian!” was all I could gasp out.
I think she must have seen something in my face that frightened her, or perhaps she thought she had gone far enough. She put her arm through mine and told me that it did not much matter:
“I am very unhappy! We were so miserable in London, were we not, Raoul?”
And she called him to create a diversion.
“I was in bed each night at ten o'clock. We went to no theatres or music halls. We had no money. All three of us, Lolotte, Raoul, and myself would dine at a foreign restaurant and, fagged out, retire to rest.”
Heaven knows how much of this was true. I could not analyze her talk then.
We returned home, and at the gate, Raoul asked me if I was going to sleep at their place.
Lilian chimed in gracefully:
“Oh, no! We are too poor and common for him!”
And she bounced past us. After having bid Pa and Ma good night, and thanked them for their kind reception, etc., Raoul and Lilian escorted me to the station.
The brother obligingly disappeared in the trees and she gave me her mouth, and put her hand to see if my manly organ responded to the cunning thrust of her tongue between my lips, as it always had done. Satisfied with her examination, she became somewhat mollified.
But there was a barrier between us. I felt a strange uneasiness, and I really do think that this was the turning-point of my liaison with Lilian. From that moment my feelings underwent a change. I could not see for myself just then, but light did come and I was saved, as the reader will see.
She asked after Lord Fontarcy. I told her how he had called her “a strange girl.”
She said she did not like the couple, though she could at a pinch have put up with Fontarcy himself. She told me frankly that her brother would never have consented to go and see Clara, as he was madly, sentimentally, in love with Charlotte, who had been three weeks in London with her. He was fully resolved to marry his mistress, although she was about three years his senior. And Lilian added that she was tired out, unhappy, and felt very ill.
“You require care, Lilian. Your health is not good. You are anemic!”
At these words, which I had let drop harmlessly enough, Lilian started as if I had shot her.
“Anemic? I? Anemic!” she shrieked out, and her face was all black, and her mouth twisted awry. She was in a fit of mad passion.
“I don't know what you mean. You've given yourself away fairly this time! You think you are talking to somebody else. You're quite mistaken, my dear fellow!”
I was surprised at this outbreak, but was cool enough in spite of my trouble to divine that if there was one thing Lilian hated more than another it was the truth.
I had pity on her, too, because at that moment I still loved her in my vile, salacious way and my bowels yearned for her. I had not yet had time to think over the events of the day. But I knew enough of women to see that she was under the neurotic influence of difficult menstruation and as such must be spared for the nonce.
I do not remember if I spoke about seeing her again or not, or whether we made any plans for the future. I know I alluded to my beard. She shrugged her shoulders and told me that she was only running me down to please Papa and divert his suspicions, if he had any.
I never spoke of him nor of the numerous signs of illicit intercourse between them. I wanted to hold my tongue and learn more.
I told her I would write and I asked her to make a few discreet enquiries at the post-office at Sonis.
She did not reply, but with a cordial “adieu,” she and Raoul saw me into the train and we parted good friends; not lovers, only friends.
I went back to Paris and dreamt that I was on my honeymoon with Lilian Arvel and that I was alone in a railway carriage with her, her skirts thrown up and my hands on her naked thighs.
I looked up my diary and found that I had posted the fifty-franc note on the first of October.
I composed a letter for Lilian. I wanted to write a beautiful letter to her. I desired to make all my next letters kind and delicate, so that they should exactly delineate my thoughts and my state of mind as I wrote them. I kept altering a comma here, a word there, and often changed the order of sentences. This did not change the sense, but I flattered my wretched self that I made my prose lighter and clearer, with more tenderness, more kindness, more passionate love. Alas, poor Jacky!
JACKY TO LILIAN.
Paris. November 12, 1898.
My dear Lilian,
As soon as I got home last night, I quickly looked at my diary and I find I sent the bank-note on Saturday, October 1st. The letter ought to have been delivered on Sunday morning, the second.
In spite of all, I am as if stunned by a blow from a club, proving such atrocious ill-luck that I can hardly realize the fact of it being precisely that one particular letter which should have been lost or stolen.
What a misfortune for me and naturally for you, too!
I have always tried to be so careful, to protect you whom I had so much joy in imagining to be my daughter; so that for once, neglecting prudence, I had myself in a pitiful position, for what causes me enormous grief, of which you cannot form the slightest idea, is that you have no longer confidence in me.
I am sad, weary, disgusted with life and all its defeats, illnesses, and wounds. One has so little happiness in this world, and such… oh! such trouble!
But you are young and you cannot understand at all what I feel. In a few short years, when you will have been able to appreciate life better, when you will have seen other things and other men, then you will think of me and render me justice. Today, I hope for nothing.
I pray you, excuse the serious tone of this letter of complaint. There is nothing so silly as a man who groans and laments, but if I go mad with rage in front of this paper; if I choke in my throat as if I were about to be weak enough to weep, it is because I think that you have attributed to me: lies, villany, and meanness. You have believed that my soul was base and paltry, as vilely low as that of a huckstering shopkeeper! But enough; perhaps I ought not to send you this sad scrawl?
Let me conclude with an effort to be gayer. I dreamt of you all night. Irony of the fates… we were on our honeymoon! I had just married you!
This was an effect of cerebral impression, caused by my conversation with you in the station, the railway ride, etc.
I thank you for your kiss, for your slight caress.
Do not forget to tell your brother, as I can see that he does not have all necessary advice given him, to cease having a will of his own directly he enters the barracks, and never to answer a superior even if a hundred times in the right. Let him become a machine-if I may venture to say so-and not a man.
Make him wear flannel, and woolen socks. It is impossible to walk with cotton hose; he would soon get blistered and bleeding feet.
Tell him also never to say: “In England we do this or that.” He will find such conduct more prudent-at least for the moment.
He loves you well, that I saw. He will listen to this advice coming from you. Make out as if these were your own ideas.
And I love you also.
J.S.
LILIAN TO JACKY.
(No date or place.) Received November 15, 1898
My little Father,
I will not let you have a moment of sadness through any fault of mine, so I come quickly to tell you that I have no longer the least doubt about you, for a man who can have the kindliness and the delicacy to be able to understand all you have understood, cannot be base one instant.
Therefore all is forgotten and I am once more your loving “daughter.”
I wish to believe that the wretched month I have just passed was only a nightmare, a bad dream.