The Thinking Reed (7 page)

“You are very young,” he said reflectively. “One forgets how young you are.”

“Oh, not so young,” said Isabelle. “No younger than most of the women in the world who have had to make great decisions. That is the special handicap of our sex, the important part of our lives comes before we have acquired any experience. And in my ignorance I thought there was nothing very difficult about the decision that was before me. I merely had to choose a partner, and I looked round and chose André de Verviers.”

Laurence made the faintest moan of disapprobation.

“Men do not look the same to women as they do to other men,” she reminded him, “and I had no superior tie. I knew of nobody whom I could have loved, who was free to love me. And André is a superb human being, just as Roy was. I thought I could have had some of the same sort of happiness with André I had with Roy. So we were to be married this summer.” She pondered for an instant whether she ought to be more precise about her relationship, and decided that she need not. Though men were not very jealous, they thought they were under an obligation to be extremely so, and it would relieve Laurence of this tiresome necessity if she were to leave him the possibility of thinking that André and she had not been lovers. “But, Laurence!” She looked into his eyes. “André isn’t any good.”

“I can believe it,” he nodded.

“It was not so terribly foolish of me to think that he might have been,” she defended herself. “What else had Roy got to start with except just that physical faculty, that trick of accomplishment, that André has? Only something hidden, that turned everything he did to gaiety and happiness. Well, it was hidden too, the thing that governed André, and turned everything to fever and violence and disorder.”

He murmured sympathetically, “Yes. Yes. I know. One doesn’t see it, the thing that governs people …”

“And I had, you know, other ideas. I wanted to make something decent of my life. I wanted to marry a man who was devoting himself to some work that mattered, I wanted to help him and have his children, and bring them up well. I wanted to live at the centre of a focus of pleasantness, and harmony, and things coming right. And instead I was tossing about in a whirlpool of useless passion and frenzy and jealousy, that wasn’t even real, that was all put on to whip up sensation. I didn’t want that, I didn’t want it any more than I wanted to marry a drug-taker and be forced by him to take drugs. And I couldn’t get rid of him. That was the frightening thing. He wouldn’t take any notice when I asked him to go away.”

“A man who will not take his dismissal,” said Laurence, sounding more southern than was his habit, “is a scoundrel.”

“Nothing I could say made any impression. So, at last, I thought of this way.” She swallowed the bitterness in her mouth. “This hateful way that you saw.”

He raised his eyebrows as if to assure her that she was wrong, that he had not thought it hateful at all.

“You see, André loves violence because his life is utterly peaceful,” she explained. “He has a large income, he has an unassailable position, nothing can happen to him, so he likes a little fictitious excitement. But only so long as it doesn’t threaten his security. That’s why he liked me. He knew I was calm, he knew I could be trusted never to lose my self-control and cause a scandal, however much he stormed. So I set out to pretend that that wasn’t true, that I could be dangerous. I took those roses and threw them all over the courtyard so that his servant would tell him, and he would think that he had driven me beyond the limits of self-control, and let me go.” She lived through the moment in the courtyard all over again, and cried out, “Oh, I hated it all so, I hated acting like a madwoman!”

While the blackness was before her eyes, she heard his soothing murmur; but when his face was clear again, it was not wholly kind. She could not quite believe that; she stared. His eyes were kind, but they immediately slid away from hers, and his mouth was pursed, his nostrils dilated. He began to tidy the crumbs by his plate into a little heap, and he seemed wholly absorbed in this task, though his eyes stole back to hers once and he gave her a guilty, insincere smile before he looked back at the tablecloth.

The blood beat in her ears. After all, he was not quite what she wanted. He had understood and accepted all she had told him; he knew that she was the same sort of person as himself, that she had fallen into the hands of the enemy and had suffered outrageously and had taken what means she could to free herself. But he was not going to tell her that he loved her and wished to marry her because he belonged to the vast order of human beings who cannot be loyal to their beloved if a stranger jeers. There had been reason in what she did in front of André’s house, but someone who knew nothing of the circumstances, who had merely looked down on her from a window, could not have known that reason, and would have censured her. Perhaps that had happened, perhaps Madame Dupont-Gaillard had leaned against his shoulder as he watched her grind her heel on the roses and had said, cruel as people are when they speak of those they do not know, “Look, she must be mad!” And his fear of what a stranger might say, of what had been said by an old woman who had forgotten how life sometimes drives the poor dog mad, had outweighed all the promise of sweetness there had been between them. Well, it was not the kind of fault that men outgrew.

She fastened the studs at the wrist of her gauntlets, looking at the distance, where the chestnut and the planes rocked together as if they were rooted in a painful place and longed for freedom. She felt a little less humiliated now she knew his disloyalty than she had when she had thought his rejection of her a causeless caprice, but she was far more apprehensive. For she knew that his mind would be ashamed of deserting her, and would try to justify itself by looking on herewith a jaundiced eye and imagining in her a thousand defects which would make the desertion seem a necessity. Everything about their intercourse would be vilified. As she thought how her candid unveiling of her plight would then be regarded, she shuddered and looked at her wristwatch, to find a pretext for an early departure. She saw that it was half past two, and remembered something that had slipped her mind.

Lifting her eyes to Laurence’s, she said gaily, “You understand why I was specially anxious to get rid of André de Verviers at this particular moment, don’t you?”

As she had feared, he flushed and looked embarrassed. He might as well have said aloud, “Why, of course I understand. You hoped to marry me. But how can you be so indecent as to talk about it?”

This, she found, she could not endure. To have him thinking of her like that was more disagreeable than any price she would have to pay for putting an end to it.

“How odd it is,” she said, taking care not to laugh too extravagantly, “that my excitement over the hateful thing I had to do this morning should have put out of my head what is far more important! Have you noticed nothing about me lately?”

He shook his head, a little stiffly.

“I’ve sometimes wondered if I haven’t seemed a little too frank and free with you, if you might not have thought I had ‘gone gay’, considering our friendship was so far from intimate. I would have kept my distance and my party manners properly if there had been only André. But when one is in love, you know, one becomes extraordinarily indiscreet, one treats all other men in a way that must be rather puzzling to them if they haven’t got the key.”

His eyes had become glassy, he was leaning forward to listen to her.

“Yes, I’m in love!” she told him gaily. “And if I’ve been successful in ridding myself of André, I shall marry quite soon. And if I’ve been boring you with an explanation of all the whys and wherefores of this morning’s scene with the roses, it’s because I’ve wanted to appear to you with a clean sheet, since I’m a little shy about telling one of Roy’s friends about my new choice.” The waiter had laid down a plate of change at Laurence’s elbow, and Laurence swept it back to him with a gesture full of hate.

“You see, Roy was perfect.” He was, he was, her heart said. He would have sent any stranger to hell rather than think disloyally of me. “And my second husband hasn’t, poor dear, anything of Roy’s outward perfection.”

“Who is it?” asked Laurence. “But who is it?”

“Why, Marc Sallafranque.”

“Marc Sallafranque,” repeated Laurence. He sat for a second in silence, then exclaimed, “But I thought you didn’t like Sallafranque?”

“Ah, you’ve evidently seen some gestures that were meant for André,” she laughed. “But do say you’ll approve, and not cast me off. I know he looks the funniest thing in the world, but inside he has a lot of the goodness and sweetness of Roy.” She paused, because she had suddenly felt a click in her brain, as if these words which she had spoken for a false purpose had coincided with the truth. “Take that on my word,” she said, “and say you’ll be my friend.” She stood up, but he did not say the word, or do anything but regard her with the queer mask, as of a stricken hyena, that people wear who are making haste laughing at themselves before other people can start laughing at them. Her plan had evidently succeeded perfectly. Its only defect was that it left her in possession of Sallafranque, which was a responsibility that she might as well assume fully at once.

“Marc will be waiting in the hall now, I expect,” she said. “I told him to come here at half past two so that you could congratulate us. I’ll go and fetch him.”

“What, is he here?” said Laurence in tones which betrayed that he had been nourishing even to the end a hope that her story was not really true. “Oh, yes, I’d love to see him.”

Isabelle went from the terrace into the hall, leaving him sitting in his chair with far less than his usual elegance, and was in time to see Marc Sallafranque jumping out of his cream-coloured car, which was indeed a Sallafranque, but had a special body put to it, lustrous and inclining to the baroque. He began to hurry towards the door, but turned back to caress the two wire-haired terriers that stood on the seat beside the Negro chauffeur, lifting up muzzles sharp as cut tin and howling because they were not to go with their master. Then he continued towards the restaurant, not seeing her within the darkness of the porch because of the bright sunshine. His lower lip pouted forward, he stared at his feet and from time to time sadly shook his head; he looked like a child going to an interview which might mean a beating.

When he found her waiting for him, he came to a standstill. He took his hat in both hands and held it in front of him and said, “Oh, Isabelle, my little one, my little cabbage, my little angel, I am very stupid, nearly everybody is cleverer than I am, I often do not understand things properly. But say I was not wrong about what I thought you meant on the telephone this morning?”

She nodded and smiled. “You were right.”

He continued to stand quite still, and twirled his hat round and round and round, his face growing very red. “Isabelle,” he said, “my Isabelle.”

She remembered the click her brain had given when she had spoken of his goodness, telling her that the statement she had meant to be false was in fact true; and it shamed her that she was making him so solemnly happy by what she had coldly conceived as a ruse to protect her pride. Penitently she murmured, “I will try to be good to you, Marc.”

Tears stood in his rich animal eyes, he ceased to twirl his hat, he crumpled it in his fist. “It is I who must try to be good,” he growled. He took her hand and crushed it against his warm, throbbing, rubbery side.

The tears stood in her eyes also, in another moment they would roll down her cheeks. She said, “My dear, I have been lunching here with Laurence Vernon. He is out there on the terrace. You cannot think how much I like him, you must be friends. Come out and meet him.”

“Ah yes,” said Marc. “I must be very polite to your friends. It will be my only way of winning them, they will be all so much cleverer than I am.” But as they went he slipped his arm through hers and tugged her back. “And our marriage,” he begged like a dog. “When can it be?”

“As soon as you like.”

“Ha, ha! Next week?”

“Next week, if you will.”

“But it can’t be,” he cried, “that I am going to be married to you next week? My God, I am going to be married to you next week?”

A waiter passed them, carrying two glasses of brandy on a tray. Marc’s left foot clothed in a yellow shoe shot out and caught him on the behind. The tray clattered on the floor underneath the caisse, a wall was streaked by two brown stains and shivers of glass, the waiter howled, the caissiere bent forward a Roman eyebrow and a fortress bosom, the vestiaire ran out holding one grey and two brown hats, chasseurs swarmed, glad that this time nobody could say it was their fault, the maîtres d’hôtel of the inside and outside restaurants ran in and stood like stars in conjunction.

“Ah, mesdames, messieurs,” said Marc, “it’s only me.”

“Ah, good day, Monsieur Sallafranque,” said the maîtres d’hôtel, laughing.

“Forgive me, Gustave,” said Marc, bringing out his wallet. “I had need of a behind just then, for purposes of celebration, and yours was the only one that was handy. But here’s something!” He flipped a thousand-franc note on to the man’s palm. “And here’s another, Madame, for the damage and the nerves of the personnel.” It drifted on to the mahogany of the caisse.

The waiter grinned, the Roman eyebrow abated and the fortress became more like a pleasure palace, the vestiaire, the chasseurs, the maîtres d’hôtel flowed backwards like an ebbing tide, in a rhythmic series of obeisances.

“But, Marc,” breathed Isabelle, “but, Marc!”

“Ah, little one, don’t bother about that!” said Marc. “I am very impulsive, and sometimes I like to do silly things
pour rigolo,
but it doesn’t matter. They all know me here; Maman used to bring me here for treats when I was a tiny boy. They all adore me really. Come, darling, where is your friend?”

She had contrived that violence should not make her life a tragedy. It might yet make her life a farce, which she would find hardly more tolerable. They went out on the terrace, Marc’s fingers opening and closing on her wrist, to the man who had brought this on her.