Just before dinner was served, Lilian said that I ought to sleep at Sonis one or two nights now and again. I answered that I should be delighted to do so, that very night if she liked, but I should have to be up very early so as to see my mistress in the morning, as was my habit.
“I hate her! I hate her!” she cried, clenching her little fists.
I paid no attention to these ravings, but waited patiently until the storm subsided, and than I asked her if it would do any good for me to sleep at the house.
“You would not come to my room in the night?” I said, dubiously.
“Yes, I would. I would manage to worm myself in to you!”
I asked her how it would be for me to have a false attack of giddiness after dinner, which I could ascribe afterwards to indigestion, and I showed her exactly how I would act as a man utterly unable to stand upright without assistance. It was arranged that I should play that part, and she added that Mamma would never let me go to Paris in such an apparent state of weakness. Having arranged with her not to laugh while I was acting, as I knew in that case I should laugh too, she left me and we dined shortly afterwards. But the first moment she could find to speak privately to me directly the dinner was over, she told me not to attempt my scheme of sham illness, as I looked too well and jolly after the meal. I did as she told me, but I still think that she consulted Papa and it was by his orders that she changed her mind.
I have no recollection of anything more particular taking place that day, but I find by a note in my diary that I was again a guest at the Villa Lilian on:
February 21, 1899.
Instead of taking a train at ten o'clock, as I usually did, I could not get to the station except for the 11:30, and while quietly seated in my compartment, I saw Lilian running up and down the platform, peeping into every carriage. She was looking for me, hoping that I had taken the same train as she had. She had been up to Paris to go to market and was returning with her purchases, being accompanied by one of her workgirls. We carried on our conversation in English, and we spoke of a letter I had written her, wherein I had informed her that “all the schemes on which I had built to be able to take her to London, had fallen through, and I was very unhappy, but nevertheless I counted on the love of the daughter of the Mikado, and hoped she would intercede for me with the great chief and master of the house, over whom she possessed such extraordinary influence.” I wished her to understand that I knew all that was going on between her mother's lover and herself, but that I was not jealous and could perfectly understand that a man could fall in love with a young girl with whom he was in daily contact, especially as she resembled her mother in several little ways. Here was a man of strong animal instincts, linked to a vulgar, jealous woman, albeit devoted to him as the breadwinner, and, I should think, incapable of disinterested affection. To keep him at home, she would voluntarily shut her eyes to any commerce he might have with Lilian and the task would be easier if they had already, both of them, been too free with her as a child. Lilian never took offense at this moment when I recurred to the understanding that existed evidently between Mr. Arvel and herself, while I made my allusions in a most respectful manner and never let myself be betrayed into speaking against him, although Lilian always alluded to him with a show of contempt, and I sometimes pitied him as, whatever his faults, he slaved and worked for these two women, who after all only formed his little harem. He did sleep with the girl, but was it real incest? Was he her real father, or not? The idea could only be loathsome to the lascivious lass, but as long as she herself felt no disgust at the approach of the man whose lips had pressed her mother's for twenty years, and who had dandled her on his knee and brought her up, who had a right to feel indignant? She was a woman of strong passions, and if she was to become a whore, what mattered if the little man who was her natural guardian possessed her or not? As far as I was concerned, I was rather pleased to think that now she ran no risk of being driven to ordinary professional prostitution.
Lilian was very lively and full of fun, and she got quite spoony over a handsome young officer who was seated in front of us, and who really looked very smart in his cavalry uniform. She turned red and white by turns as she furtively admired him and I chaffed her about her adoration for the military.
An exalted personage had just died in France, and all sorts of strange rumors were floating about concerning his death, as it was currently reported that he had died suddenly in a woman's arms, or rather had succumbed to the caresses of a complaisant mistress. He had died in erotic delirium, and this end, more frequent than many people might think, was only remarkable by reason of the great positions the unfortunate victim to his passions had occupied during his lifetime. His age was about sixty, and I told Lilian the peculiar story of his last moments and how he had while unconscious continually called upon his numerous concubines by name and cursed his weak organ of virility because it refused to respond to the call of lust.
On arriving at Sonis, I went for a walk with Papa, and I recited to him the wonderful end of the great statesman. I looked at him out of the corner of my eye as I walked and talked with him on the pleasant country road, and I soon saw the dull, sullen look steal over his face again as I broached erotic subjects, which I saw interested him deeply, and now I was almost certain that I could produce that expression on his features whenever I chose.
Elated with the sense of my power of reading the thoughts of Lilian's Papa, I took the liberty of asking him if it was true what I had heard concerning the genital strength of men of sixty years of age, more or less. I explained that it appeared to be a most unfortunate state of things when the desire of venereal diversion, centered in the brain, persisted years after the seminal flow had ceased, and I opined that it must be terrible for an old man to be tortured by lewd imaginations without having the natural means to gratify them, when driven by erotic dreams into a woman's arms. It was a fearful ending for a man to finish up like a mad eunuch. He pooh-poohed my theory, which I submitted to him with the greatest deference, as I always treated him with respect and politeness, and told me that desire ceased always when the virile power was dead, and though I did not believe him, I agreed with him all the same. I always enjoyed the suburban skill of the narrow-minded dwellers in villadom, as they possessed a wonderful knack of settling the most difficult problems in a moment. They always knew everything, and arranged political and social complications with a rapid coolness that would have seemed conceited in a Cavour. And they did not want a fine library, a staff of secretaries, or a lot of expensive maps; they settled things offhand in a tramcar or a railway carriage.
I envied such men as these, and Mr. Arvel was of the same kidney, for they made life easy for themselves by the adoption of certain easy formulae which did away at once with all useless discussions. With some, all women were prostitutes; another camp swore females were angels. It was the same with everything else: religion, the army, and the benighted inhabitants of any other nation. Their petty view of things in general betraying limited intelligence only inspired me with a desire to leave their society at once, but their principal fault was that, in their great desire to show their knowledge and talk at all hazards, they thought nothing of confiding to utter strangers the secrets of their wives' wombs, their daughters' constipation, and all possible sexual troubles. Arvel's pleasure was to talk against everybody, and he did not spare Lilian, her brother, or his wife.