After the usual effusive compliments at the end of such an amusing day, I took my departure, and went away to dream of the charming offer that my adored Lilian had made to me, all for love of me, for that glorious Thursday in eight days' time.
13
Virgin me no virgins!
I must have you private-start not-I say, private; If thou art my true daughter.
Then, as to what she suffers from her father,
In all this there is much exaggeration.
Old men are testy, and will have their way.
LILIAN TO JACKY.
Sonis-sur-Marne. March 5, 1899.
My Jacky, who is mine alone,
My sweet dream for next Thursday, day of Mi-Carême, will not be realized, as I start for Brussels Tuesday morning. I am very much annoyed. I should also have liked to have seen you before my departure, but in spite of all my insinuations, there has been no chance of arranging matters to have you invited. So I am in a rage, and I dare not insist too much for fear of exciting suspicion, which must not arise at any cost.
Tomorrow is Papa's birthday. Do not forget to telegraph your best wishes on receipt of this note, which I write in haste, and in which I make the most monstrous faults; but you will excuse me, will you not?
I must have a line from you before I start, Monday evening or Tuesday morning.
I leave you; I hear someone coming upstairs.
I kiss you where it will please you most. I love you,
LILIAN.
JACKY TO ERIC ARVEL.
Telegram. Paris. March 6, 1899.
Many happy returns of the day.
JACKY.
As it will be seen, I sent the wire of birthday congratulation to my old friend, and I was highly delighted to do so, because I had no idea when his birthday fell, or what was his exact age, but I took it as proof that Lilian was still at work for me, and in reward for my absence of jealousy, was doing all she could for me to remain in the best books of her elderly lover, for there was now no possible doubt concerning the illicit intercourse of the semi-incestuous couple, and once more the knowledge that he also knew about me from Lilian-as he could not be such a blind fool as to have ignored our connection-brought a glorious thrill of lust through my veins, as I conjured up a lascivious future at the Villa Lilian.
In obedience to my charmer's commands, I sat down and wrote her at once the letter she had ordered, which, as well as I can recollect, for I kept no copy, may be summarized as follows:
I thanked her for thoughts of me. I excused her not keeping her appointment, as it was not her fault; I told her to enjoy herself in every way and not to fret about me. She need not even trouble to write, if she could not find an opportunity. What did I care for a letter or so, more or less, since she had told me how she loved me? I was proud to be one of her troupe of marionettes, which she maneuvered with such skill, and she was so clever, I opined, that I took the liberty of calling her Mademoiselle Bismarck; and did not forget to put in a good word for the health of Papa. I told her that I should love her without stupid jealousy, and added some guarded maxims about women employing their natural cunning, talents, and beauty to entrap men for their own ends. “Seduce and give way, but propose your conditions beforehand, and remain sovereign mistress.” I told her that I had been thinking over what she had said about an instinctive movement of shame when I had touched her between the legs. I wished to cure her of that feeling, desiring her to be absolutely without shame with me, and utterly perverted, if she cared to please me. I intended to punish her for that recoil from my middle finger, by making her stand before me, and with her clothes well raised, open her drawers and masturbate herself thoroughly, remaining as long as possible in this humiliating position, until thoroughly cured of all false shame with me. I concluded with all kinds of good wishes for her health and enjoyment, and recommended her to go to the Wiertz Museum and the Zoological Gardens at Antwerp.
LILIAN TO JACKY.
Hotel des Grands Fabricants, Lille. March 8, 1899.
My best beloved,
We left yesterday morning, or rather yesterday afternoon, at 1:15 for Lille. We arrived at 5:30, took a little walk, and then had dinner. Then we went to a concert, where we assisted at a two hours' procession of the most grotesquely ugly women it is possible to imagine. After that, we returned to go quietly to bed in a large double-bedded room, as they told us there were no rooms communicating.
This morning, Papa had gone to Roubaix to see a friend. As for me, I told him that I did not care to go, so as to be able to write to my Jacky, for perhaps I shall not be able to do so before my return.
Now I am going to write to you very frankly. You are not mistaken; Mr. A. loves me and without quite knowing it himself. Nevertheless, he is and always will be respectful towards me. To begin with, I love Mamma too much to let things be otherwise and I do not love him at all! And then the bare idea disgusts me deeply, and is repugnant. Therefore, in future, I shall keep a watch over my most trifling words, and my most innocent gestures, as far as he is concerned, for I will not encourage this idiotic passion.
My dear adored one, you who are my only love, I hope that you will be able to understand completely what I am going to say. I am very unhappy here. I suffer and I should like to be home again already; firstly, to see you, to feel that you were near me, and also that you might support me by your counsel. I want to open my heart to you more than I have done up to the present. I feel so lonely and so sad. Mamma does not love me as before, and yet she has nothing to reproach me with, and I love her dearly. Mr. A. is so wicked towards my brother, that the poor woman thinks she ought to love him doubly. Note that I am not jealous, I love my brother too well for that, but I suffer to feel myself neglected by Mamma and I am too proud to let her see it.
But I fatigue you with all my lamentations; how can I help it? It seems to me that you alone understand me.
Love me well and tenderly, my beloved Jacky, my adoration. I swear to you that I require all your love and that I am worthy of it. Never have I loved any man before you, and never has any other man touched me.
I detest Mr. A., for it seems to me that it is his fault if Mamma is so changed towards me.
You…I love,
LILIAN.
I am very good and shall always be so, where you are not concerned.
If ever I felt the lack of literary training, it is now. O for the pen of a Thackeray, or the smallest modicum of his talent, to enable me to bring home to the reader in some slight degree the effect this letter had upon me. That it was entirely false from beginning to end, I was nearly inclined to believe; and although I did not mind her trying to conceal from me that she was now the official concubine of her mother's old lover, I felt a terrible pang of disgust and horror to think that Lilian had pushed the deception so far as to try and render me unhappy and extort my pity by daring to say that she was suffering. I was always ready all my life to put myself in the wrong, so I confess I did for an instant have a little remorse, as I reproached myself for having given her bad advice. Had I debauched her? Had I ruined her young life? Had I, by my famous training, nurtured those wrong ideas in her, which had driven her into the arms of a senile satyr, who had perhaps violated her, whipped her, kept her all night at work on his body, and disgusted her entirely? I got the letter in the evening. It was long; one of the longest letters I had ever had from her, and there was not an erasure in the whole of it. So, evidently, she had been at some pains to compose it and catch the post. She was fresh out of bed when she did so. I think the document may have been genuine up to a certain point, as far as the words “double-bedded room,” but from there, all branches off confusedly, and she wanders and flounders about in her desperate attempts to hide the truth from me. And why write at all? Had I not told her a hundred times that I was not jealous and that she was free to dispose of her body as she listed? I wanted but a trifle of that love which she had always offered me herself from the onset, and as I have plainly stated in this wretched story, I never asked her for any favor that could possibly interfere with her young life, now devoted to the old man who had shared her mother's bed for twenty years or more.