The Thibaults (40 page)

Jacques, resting his elbow on the table, kept silence. In such moods his face seemed emptied of intelligence; with his dull eyes and slightly parted lips he had the look of an animal, brooding and lethargic. Listening to his friend’s chatter, he watched Nivolsky and the girl Paule. She had a vanity-box in her hand and, pouting her lips, dabbed them with a lipstick, to which her fingers gave a brisk little twirl, as though she meant to bore a hole with it. As the painter watched her, he kept swinging her bag round and round his finger. It was obvious that theirs was merely a cabaret acquaintanceship; nevertheless, she touched his hands and knee, and set his tie straight. Once, when he leaned towards her confidentially, she pressed her little white hand against his face and teasingly pushed him away. Jacques’s senses tingled.

Not far from her a dark woman was sitting by herself, huddled up at the far end of the settle, her black satin cloak drawn tightly round her as though she feared the cold; her ardent gaze was riveted on Paule, who showed no sign of being aware of it.

Jacques’s brooding eyes rested on all these folk; was he studying them, or building fancies round them? He had only to watch any one of them for a while to surmise in him or her a maelstrom of emotions. Moreover, he did not seek to analyse the feelings he read into each and could not have put his intuitions into words; he was far too taken by the spectacle before his eyes to double his personality and register his impressions. But, anyhow, this sense of communion, real or illusive, with other beings gave him unbounded pleasure.

“Who is that tall woman talking to the barman?” he asked.

“In peacock-blue, with a necklace down to her knees?”

“Yes. What a cruel face!”

“That’s Marie-Josèphe; a name that would become an empress. Fine-looking woman, eh? There’s a funny history to those pearls of hers. Are you listening?” With a smile Daniel turned to his friend. “She was kept by Reyvil, the perfume-king’s son. Now, Reyvil had a lawful, if unfaithful, spouse at home, who was Josse the banker’s mistress… . Look here, are you listening?”

“Yes, yes—with all my ears.”

“Well, you look half asleep. Josse is immensely rich and one day he was moved to make a present of some pearls to his mistress, Mme. Reyvil. The problem was how to do so without angering her husband. But Josse is as cute as you make ‘em! He faked up a lottery in aid of the White Slaves’ Rescue League, persuaded M. Reyvil, the husband, to take ten tickets at a franc each, and saw to it that Reyvil won the necklace intended for Mme. Reyvil. But then the trouble began. Reyvil wrote to Josse to thank him, but added a postscript asking him not to breathe a word about the lottery to Mme. Reyvil as he had just given the pearls to his mistress, Marie-Josèphe. But there’s more to come—the end of the story goes one better. Josse saw red; his one idea was to have the necklace back or, failing that, to have the lady who was wearing it. And, three months later, he’d dropped
Mme.
 
Reyvil and cut out his dear friend Reyvil with Marie-Josèphe—exchanged the pearlless wife for the pearl-decked mistress. So now the worthy Reyvil, who has completely forgotten that the necklace only cost him ten paltry francs, declaims in season and out of season against the unspeakableness of the demi-rep! Hallo, Werff!” He paused to shake hands with a handsome youth who had just come in, greeted from the far end of the room with cries of “Apricot! Hi, Apricot!”

“You know each other, don’t you?” Daniel asked Jacques, who held out his hand somewhat ungraciously to the new-comer. “Good morrow, fair lady!” Daniel continued, as Paule, the Russian painter’s anaemic companion, walked past; and stooped to kiss her hand. “May I introduce my friend Thibault?” he added. Jacques rose. The girl’s neurotic eyes just glanced at Jacques’s and lingered more intently on Daniel’s face; she seemed about to address him, then changed her mind and walked away.

“Do you come here often?” Jacques inquired.

“No. Well . , . yes; several times a week. A habit. And yet, as a rule, I get tired of seeing the same people, the same place, pretty quickly. I like to feel that life is moving on. , . ,”

Suddenly Jacques remembered: “I’ve passed!” and drew a deep breath. An idea flashed through his mind.

“Do you know when the Maisons-Laffitte telegraph-office shuts down?”

“It’s closed by now. But, if you send a wire at once, your father will get it first thing in the morning.”

Jacques beckoned to a page.

“Telegraph-blank, please.”

He scribbled the telegram in such feverish haste, and this belated eagerness to announce his success was so like Jacques, that Daniel smiled and leaned over his friend’s shoulder; but only to draw back hastily, surprised and even annoyed by his unwitting tactlessness. He had read, not M. Thibault’s address, but: “Mme. de Fontanin, Chemin de la Forêt, Maisons-Laffitte.”

A buzz of curiosity had greeted the appearance of an elderly dame, a familiar figure at the cabaret, who had just come in accompanied by a pretty, dark girl whose observant air, though in no wise timid, gave the impression that this was her first visit to the place.

“Hallo, something new!” Daniel murmured under his breath.

Werff, who happened to be passing, smiled.

“Don’t you know? Ma Juju’s launching a ‘deb.’ ”

“Damned pretty little thing, anyhow,” commented Daniel after taking a good look at her.

Jacques turned. Yes, she was really charming, with her bright eyes, natural complexion, and general air of not “belonging” here. Her gauzy dress was of the palest pink; she wore no ornaments, no jewels. Beside her even the youngest women present looked tawdry.

Daniel had returned to his seat beside Jacques.

“You should get a close-up view of Ma Juju,” he suggested. “I know her well; she’s quite a character. Nowadays she enjoys a social standing of sorts; she has quite a nice flat and an at-home day, indulges in evening parties, and gives young girls their start in life. Her peculiarity was that she would never let a man keep her; she was just a nice little prostitute and never tried to ‘better’ herself. For thirty years she figured on the police register and plied her trade between the Madeleine and the Rue Drouot. But her life fell into two compartments: from nine a.m. till five p.m. she went as Mme. Barbin and led a quiet middle-class existence in a ground-floor flat in the Rue Richer, with a hanging lamp, a housemaid, and all the household cares of that walk of life—accounts to keep, the stock-markets to be watched with an eye to her investments, servant troubles, family ties, nephews and nieces, birthdays, and, to crown all, a children’s party round the Christmas tree. It’s gospel truth. Then at five each evening, wet or fine, she doffed her flannel camisole for a smart tailor-made coat and skirt and sallied forth, without the least compunction, on her beat; Mme. Barbin had changed to Juju, pretty lady, a keen worker, ever cheerful, never glum, and a familiar, well-liked client of all the accommodating hotels along the boulevards.”

Jacques could not take his eyes off Ma Juju. With her laughing, energetic, rather cunning face, she had the genial aspect of a country parish priest; her bobbed hair showed snow-white beneath a wideawake hat.

“Without the least compunction …” Jacques repeated pensively.

“Of course,” said Daniel. There was a touch of raillery, almost of aggressiveness in his manner as, glancing towards Jacques, he murmured Whitman’s lines:

“You prostitutes flaunting over the trottoirs or obscene in your rooms,

Who am I that I should call you more obscene than myself?”

Daniel knew he was administering a shock to Jacques’s modesty and he did it deliberately, for it irritated him to see how easily Jacques, for months on end—was it by way of a reaction against his friend’s loose living?—endured a life of all but perfect chastity. Daniel was simple-minded enough, in fact, to be greatly upset about it and he knew that Jacques too was sometimes, rather uneasy about the insidious lethargy gaining on a temperament which in early youth showed promise of more ardent ways. Once in the course of the past winter they had broached that delicate topic; it was on their way home from the theatre, as they threaded their way along the boulevards dense with a seething “crowd of lovers. Daniel had expressed amazement at his companion’s apathy. “Still,” Jacques answered, “I’m fit as a fiddle. At my army medical I noticed that they put me in the top class physically.” But Daniel had remarked a quaver of anxiety in his friend’s voice.

His musings were cut short by the arrival of Favery, who had appeared in the offing and was looking in their direction; with studied nonchalance he committed hat, stick, and gloves to the cloak-room attendant. He hailed Jacques with a grin.

“Hasn’t your brother come yet?”

In the evening Favery always wore collars that were a trifle too high, new suits that looked as if they were someone else’s, and he stuck out his smooth-shaven chin with a jaunty air that prompted Werff to sneer: “See the conquering proctor comes!”

“I’ve passed!” thought Jacques, with half a mind to take French leave and catch an evening train to Maisons-Laffitte. Only the thought that Antoine had promised to meet him here and might turn up at any moment held him back. If not tonight, he consoled himself, then tomorrow morning very early. And at the thought the cabaret faded out and, drenched in coolness, he was watching the new-risen sun drinking up the dew along the avenues.

A blinding flash as all the lights went on together startled him out of his daydream. I—have—passed! The thought seemed to restore at once his contact with reality. He looked round for his friend and espied Daniel talking confidentially to Ma Juju in a corner of the room. Daniel was perched sideways on, a swivel-chair and his vivacious gestures as he rattled on brought out the graceful poise of his head, the bright awareness of his eyes and smile, the shapeliness of his hands poised in mid-air—hands, look, and smile spoke no less than his lips. Jacques could not take his eyes off him. How handsome he looks! was his unformulated thought. How fine that one so young, so splendidly alive, should sink himself so utterly in the Now, the Here! And do it all so naturally! He doesn’t know I’m watching him, or give it a thought; he has no notion of being under scrutiny. Curious, to catch a fellow unawares like that, to pry into his inmost secrets! How can anyone manage to be so oblivious of his surroundings, when in public? When he talks, he is wholeheartedly in what he says. I’m different; I can’t be “natural.” I could never give myself away like that—except in a closed room, safe from prying eyes. And even then …! He gave his musings pause. Daniel’s not so very observant, he resumed, that’s why he’s not absorbed, as I am, by environment; he can remain himself. Jacques pondered again; then, as he rose from his seat, he summed the matter up: But I am always an easy prey to the world around me… .

“No, my charming Prophet,” Ma Juju was admonishing Daniel at that moment, “it’s no use begging; that little girl is not for you.” The suppressed fury in Daniel’s eyes made her burst into laughter. “Well, upon my word! Have a nice sit-down, dearie, and you’ll get over it!”

This Parthian shot was one of a batch of pointless gags—others were: “That’s nobody’s business,” “Be my mascot, baby!” “That ain’t nothing so long as you keep fit”—one of the second-hand phrases, restocked from time to time, wherewith the Packmell “crowd” were wont to interlard their conversation in and out of season, smiling the while masonically.

“But how did you get to know her?” Daniel insisted; his eyes were obdurate.

“No, my dear. Nothing doing in that quarter. She’s one in a thousand, that kid, a nice little thing and no nonsense about her. A top-notcher!”

“Tell me how you got to know her.”

“Will you leave her alone?”

“Yes, I promise.”

“Well, it was when I had the pleurisy—remember? She heard about it and turned up one day, all out of her own head. And, don’t forget, I hardly knew the girl’—I’d helped her a bit once or twice, but only in a small way. You see the kid had had a deal of trouble, a rotten time of it. She’d fallen in love with a society man, as far as I can make out, and there was a child (wouldn’t think it, now, would you?) who died almost at once, with the result that one can’t mention the word ‘baby’ without her starting to howl! Anyhow, when I had my attack, she came and settled in at my place, like a trained nurse, and, day and night for six weeks and more, she looked after me better than if she’d been my own daughter. Why, there were days she put as many as a hundred cupping-glasses on my chest. Yes, my dear, she saved my life, and that’s gospel truth. And didn’t spend a sou. One in a thousand! So I swore I’d see her fixed up all right. These young folk, they’re always running after whims and fancies. But my job’s to see her launched, properly launched, you know. … By the way, you might lend me a hand there—I’ll explain presently… . She hasn’t been out of my sight for three months now. First I had to find a name for her. Her real name is Victorine—Victorine Le Gad. ‘Le Gad,’ a double-barrelled name, might pass. But ‘Victorine’—I ask you! So I changed it to ‘Rinette.’ Not bad, eh? And the rest to match. Colin’s given her elocution lessons; she had a Breton accent you could cut with a knife; well, she’s kept just the right dash of it, a bit of a foreign twang—might be English—delicious anyhow. She learnt the boston in a fortnight; she’s light as a feather. What’s more, she’s no fool. She sings in tune; a real rich voice she has, with a tang of the gutter in it; that’s how I like ‘em! So there she is, shipshape, ready to be launched. The one thing now is to give her a good send-off. No, don’t laugh; that’s where
you
come in. I’ve talked to Ludwigson about her; since Bertha gave him the air, he’s all at a loose end. He’s promised to come tonight to meet the child. Put in a word saying you like her and he’ll be as keen as mustard. Ludwigson, you see, is exactly the man to suit her. She has only one idea: to collect a little nest-egg and go back to Brittany, where her home is. Damned silly, but there you are! All Bretonnes are like that. A cottage near the village pump, the usual white streamers, and plenty of processions—just Brittany, in a word! She’s not asking for the moon; if she keeps straight and listens to reason, she’ll get what she wants in no time. I hope she’ll have twenty thousand francs put away by the New Year and I know just how I’m going to invest them for her… . Look here, do you know anything about the Rand market?”