The Counterfeiters (7 page)

“Did he tell you?”

“People tell me everything. You know they do, you shocking creature!” And she stroked his face with the feathers of her closed fan.

“Did you suspect that he had been to see me every single day since the evening you first brought him?”

“Every day? No, really! I didn’t suspect that.”

“On the fourth, he couldn’t resist any longer; he came out with the whole thing. But on every day following, he kept adding details.”

“And it didn’t bore you? You’re a wonder!”

“I told you, my dear, that I love him.” And she seized his arm emphatically.

“And
he
 … loves the other woman?”

Lilian laughed.

“He did love her. Oh, I had to pretend at first to be deeply interested in her. I even had to weep with him. And all the time I was horribly jealous. I’m not any more now. Just listen how it began. They were at Pau together in the same home—a sanatorium, where they had been sent because they were supposed to be tuberculous. In reality, they weren’t, either of them. But they thought they were very ill. They were strangers, and the first time they saw each other was on the terrace in the garden, where they were lying side by side on their deck chairs; and all round them were other patients, who spend the whole day lying out of doors in the sun to get cured. As they thought they were doomed to die an early death, they persuaded themselves that nothing they did would be of any consequence. He kept repeating all the time that they neither of them had more than a month to live—and it was the springtime. She was there all alone. Her husband is a little French professor in England. She left him to go to Pau. She had been married six months. He had to pinch and starve to send her there. He used to write to her every day. She’s a young woman of very good family—very well brought
up—very reserved—very shy. But once there—I don’t exactly know what he can have said to her, but on the third day she confessed that though she lay with her husband and belonged to him, she did not know the meaning of the word pleasure.”

“And what did he say then?”

“He took her hand, as it hung down beside her chair, and pressed a long kiss upon it.”

“And when he told you that, what did
you
say?”

“I? Oh, frightful! Only fancy! I went off into a
fou rire
. I couldn’t prevent myself, and once I had begun, I couldn’t stop.… It’s not so much what he said that made me laugh—it was the air of interest and consternation which I thought it necessary to take, in order to encourage him to go on. I was afraid of seeming too much amused. And then, in reality, it was all very beautiful and touching. You can’t imagine how moved he was when he told me about it. He had never spoken of it to anyone before. Of course his parents know nothing about it.”

“
You
are the person who ought to write novels.”

“
Parbleu, mon cher
, if only I knew what language to write them in!… But what with Russian, English and French, I should never be able to choose—Well, the following night he went to his new friend’s room and there taught her what her husband had never been able to teach—and I expect he made a very good master. Only as they were convinced that they had only a short time to live, they naturally took no precautions, and, naturally, after a little while, with the help of love, they both began to get much better. When she realized she was
enceinte
, they were in a terrible state. It was last month. It was beginning to get hot. Pau in the summer is intolerable. They came back to Paris together. Her husband thinks she is with her parents, who have a boarding school near the Luxembourg; but she didn’t dare to go to them. Her parents, on the other hand,
think she is still in Pau; but it must all come out soon. Vincent swore at first not to abandon her; he proposed going away with her—anywhere—to America—to the Pacific. But they had no money. It was just at that moment that he met you and began to play.”

“He didn’t tell me any of all this.”

“Whatever happens, don’t let him know that I’ve told you.”

She stopped and listened a moment.

“I thought I heard him.… He told me that, during the railway journey from Pau to Paris, he thought she was going mad. She had only just begun to realize she was going to have a child. She was sitting opposite him in the railway carriage; they were alone. She hadn’t spoken to him the whole morning; he had had to make all the arrangements for the journey by himself—she was absolutely inert—she seemed not to know what was going on. He took her hands, but she looked straight in front of her with haggard eyes, as if she didn’t see him, and her lips kept moving. He bent towards her. She was saying: ‘A lover! A lover! I’ve got a lover!’ She kept on repeating it in the same tone; and still the same word kept coming from her over and over again, as if it were the only one she remembered. I assure you, Robert, that when he told me that, I didn’t feel in the least inclined to laugh any more. I’ve never in my life heard anything more pathetic. But all the same, I felt that as he was speaking he was detaching himself more and more from the whole thing. It was as though his feeling were passing away in the same breath as his words; it was as though he were grateful to my emotion for coming to relay his own.”

“I don’t know how you would say it in Russian or English, but I assure you that, in French, you do it exceedingly well.”

“Thanks. I’m aware of it—It was after that, that he began to talk to me about natural history; and I tried to
persuade him that it would be monstrous to sacrifice his career to his love.”

“In other words, you advised him to sacrifice his love. And is it your intention to take the place of that love?”

Lilian remained silent.

“This time, I think it really is he,” went on Robert, rising. “Quick! one word before he comes in. My father died this evening.”

“Ah!” she said simply.

“You haven’t a fancy to become Comtesse de Passavant, have you?”

At this Lilian flung herself back with a burst of laughter.

“Oh, oh, my dear friend! The fact is I have a vague recollection that I’ve mislaid a husband somewhere or other in England. What! I never told you?”

“Not that I remember.”

“You might have guessed it; as a rule a Lady’s accompanied by a Lord.”

The Comte de Passavant, who had never had much faith in the authenticity of his friend’s title, smiled. She went on: “Is it to cloak your own life, that you’ve taken it into your head to propose such a thing to me? No, my dear friend, no. Let’s stay as we are. Friends, eh?” And she held out her hand, which he kissed.

“Ah! Ah! I thought as much,” cried Vincent, as he came into the room. “The traitor! He has dressed!”

“Yes, I had promised not to change, so as to keep him in countenance,” said Robert. “I’m sorry, my dear fellow, but I suddenly remembered I was in mourning.”

Vincent held his head high. An air of triumph and of joy breathed from his whole person. At his arrival, Lilian had sprung to her feet. She looked him up and down for a moment, then rushed joyously at Robert and began belabouring his back with her fists, jumping, dancing and exclaiming as she did so. (Lilian irritates me
rather when she puts on this affectation of childishness.)

“He has lost his bet! He has lost his bet!”

“What bet?” asked Vincent.

“He had bet that you would lose your money again to-night. Tell us! Quickly! You’ve won. How much?”

“I have had the extraordinary courage—and virtue—to leave off at fifty thousand and come away.”

Lilian gave a roar of delight.

“Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!” she cried. Then she flung her arms round Vincent’s neck. From head to foot, he felt her glowing, lissom body, with its strange perfume of sandal-wood, pressed against his own; and Lilian kissed him on the forehead, on the cheeks, on the lips. Vincent staggered and freed himself. He took a bundle of bank-notes out of his pocket.

“Here! take back what you advanced me,” he said, holding out five of them to Robert.

“No,” answered Robert. “It is to Lady Lilian that you owe them now.” And he handed her the notes, which she flung on to the divan. She was panting. She went out on the terrace to breathe. It was that ambiguous hour when night is drawing to an end, and the devil casts up his accounts. Outside not a sound was to be heard. Vincent had seated himself on the divan. Lilian turned towards him:

“And now, what do you mean to do?” she asked; and for the first time she called him “thou.”

He put his head between his hands and said with a kind of sob:

“I don’t know.”

Lilian went up to him and put her hand on his forehead; he raised it and his eyes were dry and burning.

“In the meantime, we’ll drink each other’s health,” said she, and she filled the three glasses with Tokay. After they had drunk:

“Now you must go. It’s late and I’m tired out.” She accompanied them into the antechamber and then, as
Robert went out first, she slipped a little metal object into Vincent’s hand. “Go out with him,” she whispered, “and come back in a quarter of an hour.”

In the antechamber a footman was dozing. She shook him by the arm.

“Light these gentlemen downstairs,” she said.

The staircase was dark. It would have been a simple matter, no doubt, to make use of electric light, but she made it a point that her visitors should always be shown out by a servant.

The footman lighted the candles in a big candelabra, which he held high above him and preceded Robert and Vincent downstairs. Robert’s car was waiting outside the door, which the footman shut behind them.

“I think I shall walk home. I need a little exercise to steady my nerves,” said Vincent, as the other opened the door of the motor and signed to him to get in.

“Don’t you really want me to take you home?” And Robert suddenly seized Vincent’s left hand, which he was holding shut. “Open your hand! Come! Show us what you’ve got there!”

Vincent was simpleton enough to be afraid of Robert’s jealousy. He blushed as he loosened his fingers and a little key fell on to the pavement. Robert picked it up at once, looked at it and gave it back to Vincent with a laugh.

“Ho! Ho!” he said and shrugged his shoulders. Then as he was getting into his car, he turned back to Vincent, who was standing there looking a little foolish:

“It’s Thursday morning. Tell your brother that I expect him this afternoon at four o’clock.” And he shut the door of the carriage quickly without giving Vincent time to answer.

The car went off. Vincent walked a few paces along the quay, crossed the Seine, and went on till he reached the part of the Tuileries which lies outside the railings; going up to the little fountain, he soaked his handkerchief
in the water and pressed it on to his forehead and his temples. Then, slowly, he walked back towards Lilian’s house. There let us leave him, while the devil watches him with amusement as he noiselessly slips the little key into the keyhole.…

It is at this same hour that Laura, his yesterday’s mistress, is at last dropping off to sleep in her gloomy little hotel room, after having long wept, long bemoaned herself. On the deck of the ship which is bringing him back to France, Edouard, in the first light of the dawn, is re-reading her letter—the plaintive letter in which she appeals for help. The gentle shores of his native land are already in sight, though scarcely visible through the morning mist to any but a practised eye. Not a cloud is in the heavens, where the glance of God will soon be smiling. The horizon is already lifting a rosy eyelid. How hot it is going to be in Paris! It is time to return to Bernard. Here he is, just awaking in Olivier’s bed.

Bernard has had an absurd dream. He doesn’t remember his dream. He doesn’t try to remember his dream, but to get out of it. He returns to the world of reality to feel Olivier’s body pressing heavily against him. Whilst they were asleep (or at any rate while Bernard was asleep) his friend had come close up to him—and, for that matter, the bed was too narrow to allow of much distance; he had turned over; he is sleeping on his side now and Bernard feels Olivier’s warm breath tickling his neck. Bernard has nothing on but his short day-shirt; one of Olivier’s arms is flung across him, weighing oppressively and indiscreetly on his flesh. For a moment Bernard is not sure that Olivier is really asleep. He frees himself gently. He gets up without waking Olivier, dresses and then lies down again on the bed. It is still too early to be going. Four o’clock. The night is only just beginning to dwindle. One more hour of rest, one more hour for gathering strength to start the coming day valiantly. But there is no more sleep for him. Bernard stares at the glimmering window pane, at the grey walls of the little room, at the iron bedstead where George is tossing in his dreams.

“In a moment,” he says to himself, “I shall be setting out to meet my fate. Adventure! What a splendid word! The
advent
of destiny! All the surprising unknown that awaits me! I don’t know if everyone is like me, but as soon as I am awake, I like despising the people who are asleep. Olivier, my friend, I shall go off without waiting for your good-bye. Up! valorous Bernard! The time has come!”

He rubs his face with the corner of a towel dipped in water, brushes his hair, puts on his shoes and leaves the room noiselessly. Out at last!

Ah! the morning air that has not yet been breathed, how life-giving it seems to body and soul! Bernard follows the railings of the Luxembourg Gardens, goes down the Rue Bonaparte, reaches the quays, crosses the Seine. He thinks of the new rule of life which he has only lately formulated: “If
I
don’t do it, who will? If I don’t do it at once, when shall I?” He thinks: “Great things to do!” He feels that he is going towards them. “Great things!” he repeats to himself, as he walks along. If only he knew what they were!… In the meantime he knows that he is hungry; here he is at the Halles. He has eight sous in his pocket—not a sou more! He goes into a public house and takes a roll and coffee, standing at the bar. Price, six sous. He has two sous left; he gallantly leaves one on the counter and holds out the other to a ragamuffin who is grubbing in a dustbin. Charity? Swagger? What does it matter? He feels as happy as a king. He has nothing left—and the whole world is his!