And as I watched her in the strong light of the two large petroleum lamps lit for dinner, she seemed greatly altered. She was a trifle stouter; her glance was more audacious; she was more manly. I had not seen her for six weeks, and I could have sworn a great change had taken place.
I went to the cellar with her father, as he was in some difficulty with a padlock below, and wanted me to help him. As I was going down, she called out in French:
“Mr. S., do you like going down to the cellar?”
Now this was a bawdy slang term for the lingual caress, as applied to a woman's private parts. “Going down to her”: under her petticoats, or beneath the bedclothes. A similar phrase is: “doing the little photographer,” in allusion to the disappearance of an operator's head under the black cloth of the camera. Recently the young men of Paris call it, “going down to the cream shop.”
I was so astonished at hearing her say this quite loudly before her stepfather, that I could only turn round and stand stock-still on the steps, looking up at her, as I gasped out: “No!”
When I returned, I asked if she knew the meaning of what she had said.
“Of course I do!”
“Who taught you that? You never learnt it from me?”
“Never mind who it was!”
“Does he do it nicely?”
“Beautifully!”
“Then you are no longer a virgin?”
She fired up at this. The blue-black cloud overspread her features, and she looked ghastly through her powder.
“You are an insolent fellow. I certainly am, just the same as ever!”
Poor Lilian, I am afraid, betrayed herself by the expression of temper that always showed in her face when I was right. I felt certain that she was no longer a maid.
“Does your Papa know the meaning of what you said?” I continued.
“If he does, he will never dream I do. That is why I said it.” And to change the conversation: “Do you know I am not going to Nice this year but shall remain here alone with Granny? Pa and Ma leave on the tenth of January.”
I now began to use the same tactics as she did. When embarrassed, I found it easy not to speak, and so I let the statement of her being alone at home go by, without the observations that she doubtless thought it would bring forth.
After some more desultory chaff, she asked me:
“Do you want to sit next to me at dinner?”
“No!” I replied coolly.
But she placed me next to her all the same, and I told her during the soup to put her foot on mine and keep it there. She did so, and seemed pleased, merry, and happy to be with me.
The table was a square one, and we sat at the end, where there was just room for two. She was on my right. On her right was Papa. Whenever she could, she caught hold of my hand and made motions imitating the act of masturbation on my fingers, and I tried to follow her example by copying the same caress on her palm or between her digits. I was perfectly certain that Mr. Arvel saw part of our play. She was very excited and knocked my glass over,
She could not finish all her plum-pudding, and for fear of her mother, who had made it, asked her father to change plates with her. He refused, and finally I took her plate and finished her slice, under her father's eyes. In fact, we behaved like lovers, quite openly.
During the meal, Papa got into a towering rage with the servants, and bawled out his remonstrances in a strident voice, as he half rose from his chair, as if he would leave his place to go to them.
Lilian rose too, and placing her hand on his portly paunch, said to him in English:
“Don't be silly, darling!”
I thought this rather strange, as she had never addressed him in this way before me, especially as Mamma, so jealous, I was led to believe, knew what “darling” meant. I kept this to myself for many months.
Lilian distributed little bits of holly, fixing one in my buttonhole herself, to bring luck during the next year. The withered remains of my sprig are stuck in an ornament on my mantelpiece.
As I write, I look up and see it, just upon a year afterwards. I have had no luck these twelve months. So I rise and throw the darkened prickly leaves and discolored stalk and berries in the fire. They curl up and turn black, even as Lily's lips, when I aroused her anger; and then they disappear, even as Lily's lips.
After everyone has their holly, I produce a branch of mistletoe, and whisper to Lilian that I am going to kiss every woman at the table. I knew this coarse, commercial traveler's joke would be properly appreciated at Sonis.
Lily flies into a towering rage again, and under her breath tells me that if I kiss her mother, she will never speak to me again in her life. Strange jealousy! I do not insist. I did not wish to kiss her old grandmother, nor her Mamma, nor the lady guest.
During dessert, when she condescends to prepare me an orange, she again tries to make me jealous, by telling me that she had been a great deal to Paris lately, and had been to some theatres. I took all she said quite coolly and told her one or two plays I had seen. Then I asked her what pieces she had witnessed; but she dropped that subject quickly. I did not believe her. Her little trick was to try and invent stories that she thought would tease and annoy me, and above all excite my jealousy.
I felt quite a different man with her. I was entirely at my ease and watched her well, listening calmly to all her statements. I had great command over myself now, and I could divine all her deceit, and began at last to study and know her, even as I knew myself. Analysis, alas! is death to sentiment.
When the guests were gone, she asked me to go out alone with her and the dogs. Her parents consented. This was absolutely the first time that she had left the villa alone with me at night. She spoke up boldly, too, as if mistress of the house. I noticed all these changes, and made up my mind to get to the bottom of all the hidden vice of the villa, if I could. This resolution excited me strangely. I felt like a kind of sensual Sherlock Holmes.
We went out, and I walked with her in the lonely, frosty roads.
“Put your arm round me. And now hold me tight. Feel my back and shoulders. Pinch my arms. Take me. Be nice and rough.”
I obeyed her behests and she pressed herself against me, cooing and purring, as in the old days. But I did not have the old sensation of pleasure. I felt some slight upheaval of my innate salacious being, but not as I once did. And a great feeling of bitterness came over me, as I thought of the lie of the lost letter, and what trouble I had had to gather the money together to keep my poor invalid in comfort in Paris, and how this black, lascivious lass had treated me for the last three months.
Lilian now broke the silence, by using the little phrase with which she had so often teased me when we were together:
“You hurt me!”
“I adore hurting you. But if I hurt you, take it in your hand yourself, and stop it if it goes in too far.”
She rubbed against me like a cat, with a little mewing laugh at this recollection.
The more caressing she got, the more my bitterness increased, and I spoke out, surprised at the sound of my own voice, hoarse with suppressed rage, which she did not guess at, astonished at the courage I had to talk so plainly. A few months ago, I should never have dared to be so veracious and categorical, whatever she might have done.
JACKY. But why do you treat me so strangely? Why didn't you write to me, or try to see me. You do not love me. No power on earth can stop a woman communicating with the man she really loves. Why even your fraternal love is stronger than the feeling you have for me. What could prevent you seeing or writing to your brother?
LILIAN. Oh, I don't care for him.
JACKY. Then who do you love? No one? (No answer.) It is true you never said outright to me: “I love you!”
LILIAN. But the other woman has everything, and I have nothing.
JACKY. Don't talk about her, please. She is very ill. Her heart is touched. She may live perhaps only a few months, perhaps years, no one can tell. But she is always suffering and sometimes-as you want me to tell you everything-her limbs are swollen until they are as big as yonder post. Do you want any more details? (No answer.) Do you want me to leave her?