Jacky S - Suburban Souls, Book II

And why drag Adèle's jealousy into this pitiful writing, designed to trick and pain? She knew very well that her mother had naturally been jealous of her for years, and now she alone could form an idea how her mother looked and felt on the morning of her departure, and what she had said to her husband before God. There may have been some little disgust at the events of the night, although that is open to doubt, but any trace of physical repugnance would soon be gone after a nice déjeuner, when her Papa should return from Roubaix, if ever he went at all. Arvel's jealousy of Raoul I have already explained.

It is likely that the sexual act itself in its bare manifestation of penetration had no great charm for my ex-virgin, who cared much more for the preliminaries, and delicate caresses and attentions. Papa had probably never “had” her at his ease, nor quite freely, entirely naked in a bed in his arms; and the month of February had served as a sort of training for him, to get up his genital strength for this “honeymoon" trip. He was too fat and scant of breath, unable to stoop, and he would require time, warmth, and full commodity and space to enjoy a woman at his age.

It had long been arranged that she should give way to him. She had seduced him, partly from interested motives, partly through vice. She liked him; she was used to him. It was a great achievement for her to have triumphed over her mother, who in time would come round and accept the situation, if she had not done so already, and the two women would hold Papa between them and look after any money and property he might leave behind him when he died.

I took a great deal of trouble to try and analyze Lilian's feelings from her horrible letter, with its depressing undercurrent of physical repulsion, showing the disillusion she experienced at the first night completely alone with him and at his mercy. In the morning, sick, tired, disgusted, full of regret and remorse; all her daydreams of tender voluptuousness rudely dispelled by the long and painful pushing efforts of the heavy-bodied and coarse stepfather, with his teasing semi-erections; ready to vomit, the cheap champagne and bad drink and food of the provincial restaurant and café-concert having produced their effect of nausea; her thoughts go out to me, and she starts a confession, which, like those of all hysterical females, is made up of equal parts of truth and lies. Lilian is fearful lest I despise her; this tardy effort to stand well in my eyes is pitiful in the extreme, and to anyone unable to dissect the mobile brain of such abnormal creatures, the letter penned after this “first night” with Papa reads as the wailing cry of a violated, disappointed bride.

And perchance, all said and done, it may have been a vast and wicked hoax, arranged by the guilty pair to torture and trick a miserable lover, who must perforce, according to their petty ideas, be madly, wildly, jealous, and at any rate, Lilian, full of weak vanity, posing as a queen over men, and badly advised as usual by her Eric, would imagine that once a man has said, “I love you!” to a woman, he is her slave, bound by the chains of his passion forged with his own hands, and therefore in a fit state to accept whatever stupid falsehoods his mistress would have him believe.

I am convinced that women are purely instinctive beings, inexplicable; continually changing and renewing their ideas and capable even accidentally-of obstinate fidelity. They are to be pardoned or despised according to the degree of love we may feel for them. Arvel's mysterious daughter liked us both, but she wanted to keep her secret. Her treachery towards me and which she knew I had discovered, was a precise and plain fact which had upset her murky understanding.

She thought she was in duty bound to make me believe she had chosen between us two men, by saying that she must hate Arvel because she loved Jacky, not realizing that I was quite ready to grasp the fact that a woman could be just as faithful to two men as to one.

LILIAN TO JACKY.

Hôtel des Trois Pigeons, Brussels.

Wednesday, March 15, 1899.

My love,

Just a word, in the greatest haste, to announce my return to you. We leave to-morrow, Thursday.

I am delighted, firstly because I hope to see you soon, and secondly, I am dreadfully bored here.

I must have a letter from you at Sonis for Friday, without fail.

To your dear lips,

LILIAN.

The foregoing was scribbled in pencil on the paper of the hotel, with its printed heading; the letter from Lille was also on the hotel paper, but in ink.

About this time, I had received news of Lady Clara, who was traveling in the south of France, and she never forgot to ask for news of Lilian. I had told as well as I dared that the course of my true love was far from running smoothly, and, without initiating her into the mystery of Lilian's liaison with her Papa, I said enough to show her what a wicked little woman was my idol, and I told her that the history of Jacky and Lilian was as strange as a penny novelette.

“A novelette?” replied dear Clara, by return of post, “Say rather a real three-volume novel! You write very nice letters, Jacky, why don't you put your adventures into a book?” I scouted the idea at first, but now, smarting at the treachery of Lilian, who was trying to turn me into a simple, uxorious, paying customer of hers, I gradually got used to the thought of making the whole story of Lilian, as far as I knew it, in book form. I counted my puppets. There were Papa, Mamma, Raoul, Charlotte, Lilian and the author. A goodly troupe, by my faith! of which the first five formed as many links in a chain of vice; pleasant, alluring vice to a libertine like myself, but my gall was bursting to think that all was now changed, by reason of the news from Lilian. She had been talking to her Papa, and I was not to be admitted into the magic circle. The chain was stretched against me. Hence her change of attitude at present. I ought to have remembered that I was an Englishman, and have walked away quietly, without ever giving proofs of my existence down at Sonis, but long residence in France had made me as cunning as a monkey. I was tickled at the scheme of using my puppets to form a future novel, and I seemed to be doubling my personality, as I looked upon myself as an actor-author, playing the principal part in one of his own dramas. I wanted purely and simply to find out everything with regard to Lilian, not for my own curiosity, but to be able later on to take her pretty head and rub her sweet, pointed nose in her filth shoveled up by her own hands. I knew perfectly well that Lilian was no longer a virgin, but up to now, I had pretended to believe her when she kept up the fiction to the contrary; I was fully convinced that she was the mistress of her mother's old lover. I wanted to show Lilian that I knew all the lies she could invent; I should have the ferocious satisfaction of a Marquis de Sade, if I could only succeed in showing Miss Arvel that I saw through her, by placing before her eyes proof of her own villany. How was that ambitious program to be carried out?

It was a long time before I hit upon a scheme, or plan of campaign, which would enable me to show Lilian and her parents, if necessary, that I not only knew, but possessed proofs, of three things: Lilian's intimacy with Papa; the disappearance of her maidenhead; the evident complicity of all the inhabitants of the Villa Lilian to get money out of me, and let me have my sweetheart every day to myself if I would only “pay, pay, pay!”

How was I to go about my wild scheme? It did not come to my mind all at once, but when it did creep into my brain, I fully grasped the idea, and it became an obsession until I worked it out. To resume everything briefly, I intended to play Hamlet in private life, and pretend to go mad, if need be, to get Lilian and any other inhabitants of her villa off their guard. Of course, should Lilian prove true and tender to me, as she had promised before going to Brussels, I would drop my Shakespearean mask and become my ordinary self once more. I knew I could hardly fail to succeed, as they were all so self-sufficient that they would never dream that any man would sacrifice his own vanity, and coolly and calmly play the fool to try and find out a lying sweetheart's secrets.