Jacky S - Suburban Souls, Book I

I broke out at once:

“What is the matter with you?”

“I am very vexed. You left me in the lurch, and so I resolved to try and forget you. That is why I did not write from London as I had promised, nor did I go to see your friends. I asked you to do me a slight favor and you abandoned me entirely in the hour of need.”

“But, my darling, I sent you a note purporting to come from Madame Muller, containing fifty francs.”

“I never received that letter!”

“Good God! It's true I never registered it! This is horrible. In spite of all I may say, you will always have an afterthought that I have invented this lie to save fifty francs! How could it have been lost? Letters rarely go astray like this.”

“Oh! The postmen are such thieves down here!”

“I sent it. I forget what day it was, but I'll look up my diary when I get home. I am stunned. What fearful ill luck! Why should just this very letter be lost when so many others I have written have always reached you safely?”

I could not say very much more; I had not much time, as we were due to get back to the house for my train and I was all abroad. I must have looked as stupid as I felt. It was a hard case for me and incidentally for my friends, Lord Fontarcy and Clara. I was very unlucky, that was certain.

Resuming my talk, I said to Lilian:

“As you did not get the fifty francs, how did you manage?”

“My mother went to Normandy with Pa to do some photography and write about some châteaux, and I told her in a letter that I had received some money from Madame Muller.”

“But when she came back, did she not ask to see the cash? You say she sees and knows everything?”

“Yes, but I told her I had used it to pay a bill that was due.”

If I had recovered from this crushing blow, I might have continued by wanting to know whether she had seen the bill and if I could be allowed to see it too, but I frankly confess that I could not reason properly at that moment. I could only keep thinking how unfortunate I was. Nevertheless, it slowly dawned upon me that Lilian was awfully mercenary, and I think my love for her began to shrink a trifle. She went on to complain that Papa had found a post-card in one of the books I had lent him. It was from my mistress's dressmaker, speaking about a price to be paid for embroidering a jacket. Mademoiselle was evidently jealous of her or pretended to be so, and she plainly said that a man who could spend such sums on fashionable attire, and holding the great position I did in Paris, should have been more liberal with her, who had done all I asked her, and she thought I was rather tightfisted and a scurvy fellow (pignouf).

I must have been looking very miserable up to this and I lifted up my face to hers in the moonlight.

I was choking with rage, disgust, and surprise. I was completely taken aback and could not find a word to say:

“Oh, Lilian!” was all I could gasp out.

I think she must have seen something in my face that frightened her, or perhaps she thought she had gone far enough. She put her arm through mine and told me that it did not much matter:

“I am very unhappy! We were so miserable in London, were we not, Raoul?”

And she called him to create a diversion.

“I was in bed each night at ten o'clock. We went to no theatres or music halls. We had no money. All three of us, Lolotte, Raoul, and myself would dine at a foreign restaurant and, fagged out, retire to rest.”

Heaven knows how much of this was true. I could not analyze her talk then.

We returned home, and at the gate, Raoul asked me if I was going to sleep at their place.

Lilian chimed in gracefully:

“Oh, no! We are too poor and common for him!”

And she bounced past us. After having bid Pa and Ma good night, and thanked them for their kind reception, etc., Raoul and Lilian escorted me to the station.

The brother obligingly disappeared in the trees and she gave me her mouth, and put her hand to see if my manly organ responded to the cunning thrust of her tongue between my lips, as it always had done. Satisfied with her examination, she became somewhat mollified.

But there was a barrier between us. I felt a strange uneasiness, and I really do think that this was the turning-point of my liaison with Lilian. From that moment my feelings underwent a change. I could not see for myself just then, but light did come and I was saved, as the reader will see.

She asked after Lord Fontarcy. I told her how he had called her “a strange girl.”

She said she did not like the couple, though she could at a pinch have put up with Fontarcy himself. She told me frankly that her brother would never have consented to go and see Clara, as he was madly, sentimentally, in love with Charlotte, who had been three weeks in London with her. He was fully resolved to marry his mistress, although she was about three years his senior. And Lilian added that she was tired out, unhappy, and felt very ill.

“You require care, Lilian. Your health is not good. You are anemic!”

At these words, which I had let drop harmlessly enough, Lilian started as if I had shot her.

“Anemic? I? Anemic!” she shrieked out, and her face was all black, and her mouth twisted awry. She was in a fit of mad passion.

“I don't know what you mean. You've given yourself away fairly this time! You think you are talking to somebody else. You're quite mistaken, my dear fellow!”

I was surprised at this outbreak, but was cool enough in spite of my trouble to divine that if there was one thing Lilian hated more than another it was the truth.

I had pity on her, too, because at that moment I still loved her in my vile, salacious way and my bowels yearned for her. I had not yet had time to think over the events of the day. But I knew enough of women to see that she was under the neurotic influence of difficult menstruation and as such must be spared for the nonce.

I do not remember if I spoke about seeing her again or not, or whether we made any plans for the future. I know I alluded to my beard. She shrugged her shoulders and told me that she was only running me down to please Papa and divert his suspicions, if he had any.

I never spoke of him nor of the numerous signs of illicit intercourse between them. I wanted to hold my tongue and learn more.

I told her I would write and I asked her to make a few discreet enquiries at the post-office at Sonis.

She did not reply, but with a cordial “adieu,” she and Raoul saw me into the train and we parted good friends; not lovers, only friends.

I went back to Paris and dreamt that I was on my honeymoon with Lilian Arvel and that I was alone in a railway carriage with her, her skirts thrown up and my hands on her naked thighs.

I looked up my diary and found that I had posted the fifty-franc note on the first of October.

I composed a letter for Lilian. I wanted to write a beautiful letter to her. I desired to make all my next letters kind and delicate, so that they should exactly delineate my thoughts and my state of mind as I wrote them. I kept altering a comma here, a word there, and often changed the order of sentences. This did not change the sense, but I flattered my wretched self that I made my prose lighter and clearer, with more tenderness, more kindness, more passionate love. Alas, poor Jacky!

JACKY TO LILIAN.

Paris. November 12, 1898.

My dear Lilian,

As soon as I got home last night, I quickly looked at my diary and I find I sent the bank-note on Saturday, October 1st. The letter ought to have been delivered on Sunday morning, the second.

In spite of all, I am as if stunned by a blow from a club, proving such atrocious ill-luck that I can hardly realize the fact of it being precisely that one particular letter which should have been lost or stolen.