Jacky S - Suburban Souls, Book I

This letter is vague. Will you be able to make head or tail of it? What is the “horrible sentence” of my poor letter? Have I said anything horrible to you… whose soul I martyrize?

Have you never guessed how I always struggled against your fascination? How many times have I regretted a night I refused at Sonis! Do you recollect? I feared to compromise you. Yet had I been more selfish? That lost night!.. What a fool I was!

You told me: “I often go to Paris now.” Is that true, or only to tease me? You often liked to vex me by telling me little things which were not true, to laugh at my amazement afterwards.

Can I see you? Anywhere you like… to talk to you an hour or less, between two trains… if it is true that you often come to Paris, I ask nothing of you. I no longer speak as master. I am a wretch and a coward!

I have nothing of you as a souvenir, not even your photograph. Your letters are not mine, but your property. I want to give them back to you. I have nothing but a little bit of pink ribbon.

J.S.

The foregoing letter I have copied from some rough notes which I happened to keep. I think I wrote more than what is set down here. I alluded to my age and said that marriage was impossible between a man of forty-six and a girl of twenty-two. I also concluded very erotically, asking her to meet me at night in the darkness of the country lanes at Sonis, while her Pa was in London during the remainder of the month.

The general effect of my letter was to show her that I could not possibly carry on our connection any more, as I could see that she wanted something advantageous-money or marriage; and infatuated though I was, it slowly dawned upon me that Miss Arvel did not want Jacky, if Jacky was poor. At the same time, I was careful not to blame her in any way, but heaped reproaches on my own head.

I had no answer. I did not expect she would reply when I wrote. I bore up manfully against the blow for which, however, I was slightly prepared by her silence during the preceding month, and, being so much troubled in every way in Paris, I began to get used to the buffetings of the world. One wound more or less, what does it matter when you are fighting, and getting the worst of every round?

She could only have written in one way and that would have been to say: “I want to see you at once,” and she should have appeared and cried in my arms and proved her love for me in a thousand pretty ways. Luckily for me, she did nothing of the sort. She was not one of the crying kind, being too selfish and hard-hearted. She never wept for me.

I think as far as a man can judge himself, that I really felt an immense love for her of an intensely sensual kind at that moment. I will not tell what thoughts filled my racked brain at this juncture, but had she sought me out, she might have done what she liked with me. But it must have been at once; every day took me farther from her. She did not know her power then, and I may as well say frankly that she never regained it. She did not really care for me, save as stepping-stone to get over part of the torrent of life dry shod.

On the sixth of December, I received a small envelope, bearing the Sonis postmark. It contained a little portrait of Mademoiselle Arvel, about the size of a postage-stamp. This had been torn off her railway season ticket, which I suppose she was now renewing.

It was in answer to the last part of my letter of “adieu.” I supposed that she wished to begin with me again, so I sent the following note which I candidly confess I wrote with great care and sincerity.

JACKY TO LILIAN.

Paris. December 7, 1898.

My dear little Lilian,

I am very perplexed. I do not know if it will please you or not to receive a few lines from me, as I ignore what you may have thought of my last letter, written about the seventeenth of November.

As far as I can recollect… it is nearly a month ago!.. and the time seems so long to me… I wrote then a few sentences a little too lascivious. I do not ask you to excuse or to pardon me, for I sent that letter under the influence of a species of fever, combined with lust. And I am sure you have understood and if you are vexed with me it is not for that. Therefore I am going to be calm and reasonable, and as brief as possible. As you have not answered me, I think it may perhaps bore you to receive a letter from me, but I shall soon know that by this very simple sign: if you do not reply, that will mean that Miss Arvel informs me that my little daughter is dead. Indeed, when the twenty-sixth of November passed without news of her, my heart went into mourning. It is true that I am so unhappy, covered with so many wounds, so to speak, that a new grief, a fresh wound, cannot increase my sufferings much. For me only the worst happens.

See what a wretched position I am in, in front of you. If I complain, that will seem to you perhaps ridiculous on the part of a man. If I show temper, you will say I am spiteful because you will not see or write to me. If I sulk and do not write to you, you will think (and rightly, too), that we ought to be at least polite and always answer a note, especially when corresponding with those we love and esteem. But it is all over between us two. Our love has gone with the summer sun, with all that was joy and pleasure. Now the cold winds blow. All is frozen. Winter is here.

Let me get done: the real motive of my letter… which is probably tiresome for you… is to thank you a thousand times for having sent me the portrait of my little daughter, so adored, so desired, who will never come to my arms again, since she is no more. I can see her prettier than on that photograph, because I love to remember her features when she smiled, her mouth half open, her lips all moist, and her beautiful Spanish eyes lighted up and sparkling, laughing. Then she was truly beautiful. Poor child! I loved her well.

It is a good and charming movement coming from the bottom of your little heart that has made you send me that portrait, and I recognize your usual kindness.

I dare not ask you news of your health, nor of your brother, nor of Blackamoor, because I do not want you to think that I use tricky means to drag a few lines out of you.

I ask for nothing; I want nothing of you out of pity or charity.

I think I have already told you (an old foreign snob like me has the privilege of repeating himself a little), that I detested the idea of two persons who love each other, or who have loved, doing composition, or sending ironical letters, making bittersweet sentences, etc. If I write to you it is purely and simply without any afterthought to have the pleasure of chatting with you from afar.

A strange idea has just come into my brain… (You know my peculiar imagination? All this pleased you once. Why have you changed? Mystery! — which I shall try to clear up.)

“Mademoiselle Arvel had a little sister, Lilian, who loved me. She is dead. I called her my daughter. When poor Lilian died, her big sister, who knew of our liaison, found a photograph of her, and sent it to me. She died towards the end of September.”

I assure you I loved her well.

J.S.

My bookselling friend in Rotterdam was evidently pleased with my efforts in correcting The Horn Book, for he now took the liberty of sending me another long and very obscene manuscript to correct and send through the press for him.

It was called, The Double Life of Cuthbert Cockerton, and strange to say, was principally about incestuous love between a father and daughter.

This book necessitated a lot of correction, and Vanderpunk insisted upon me adding a few words to the preface, and I did so, with the thought of my love Lilian, now dead to me, running through my poor brain. (See Appendix B.)