Jacky S - Suburban Souls, Book I

During dessert, when she condescends to prepare me an orange, she again tries to make me jealous, by telling me that she had been a great deal to Paris lately, and had been to some theatres. I took all she said quite coolly and told her one or two plays I had seen. Then I asked her what pieces she had witnessed; but she dropped that subject quickly. I did not believe her. Her little trick was to try and invent stories that she thought would tease and annoy me, and above all excite my jealousy.

I felt quite a different man with her. I was entirely at my ease and watched her well, listening calmly to all her statements. I had great command over myself now, and I could divine all her deceit, and began at last to study and know her, even as I knew myself. Analysis, alas! is death to sentiment.

When the guests were gone, she asked me to go out alone with her and the dogs. Her parents consented. This was absolutely the first time that she had left the villa alone with me at night. She spoke up boldly, too, as if mistress of the house. I noticed all these changes, and made up my mind to get to the bottom of all the hidden vice of the villa, if I could. This resolution excited me strangely. I felt like a kind of sensual Sherlock Holmes.

We went out, and I walked with her in the lonely, frosty roads.

“Put your arm round me. And now hold me tight. Feel my back and shoulders. Pinch my arms. Take me. Be nice and rough.”

I obeyed her behests and she pressed herself against me, cooing and purring, as in the old days. But I did not have the old sensation of pleasure. I felt some slight upheaval of my innate salacious being, but not as I once did. And a great feeling of bitterness came over me, as I thought of the lie of the lost letter, and what trouble I had had to gather the money together to keep my poor invalid in comfort in Paris, and how this black, lascivious lass had treated me for the last three months.

Lilian now broke the silence, by using the little phrase with which she had so often teased me when we were together:

“You hurt me!”

“I adore hurting you. But if I hurt you, take it in your hand yourself, and stop it if it goes in too far.”

She rubbed against me like a cat, with a little mewing laugh at this recollection.

The more caressing she got, the more my bitterness increased, and I spoke out, surprised at the sound of my own voice, hoarse with suppressed rage, which she did not guess at, astonished at the courage I had to talk so plainly. A few months ago, I should never have dared to be so veracious and categorical, whatever she might have done.

JACKY. But why do you treat me so strangely? Why didn't you write to me, or try to see me. You do not love me. No power on earth can stop a woman communicating with the man she really loves. Why even your fraternal love is stronger than the feeling you have for me. What could prevent you seeing or writing to your brother?

LILIAN. Oh, I don't care for him.

JACKY. Then who do you love? No one? (No answer.) It is true you never said outright to me: “I love you!”

LILIAN. But the other woman has everything, and I have nothing.

JACKY. Don't talk about her, please. She is very ill. Her heart is touched. She may live perhaps only a few months, perhaps years, no one can tell. But she is always suffering and sometimes-as you want me to tell you everything-her limbs are swollen until they are as big as yonder post. Do you want any more details? (No answer.) Do you want me to leave her?

LILIAN. No, it is your duty to look after her. You have had her youth, as you would have mine.

An answer was on my lips. I could have asked her what she was doing with her youth, and to whom she had given her flower. I could have demanded details concerning the mystery of her life, and what strange feeling of misplaced pride had caused her to give way to the senile passion of her mother's old love? But I resolved not to touch upon that topic as yet. I studiously avoided alluding to Mr. Arvel any more. I had something else to tell her before that. I was sensible enough to know that I should have had no satisfaction, but on the contrary, she would have been on her guard against me, and perhaps warned Papa that I was too far-seeing. More evidence was what I wanted, and I resolved to wait for it. I did not care if what I was going to say would widen the breach between us for ever. I was quite prepared for her to tell me that all was over between us, and I behaved and spoke as a man would when seeking the rupture of a liaison.

JACKY. I want to say something to you. I wish to speak plainly, and you must promise me that whatever I may say you will not be offended. And after all, if you are, what matters it? I shall then only be in the same position as I was this morning. In spite of all you have ever said or written to me, you do not love me. All you care for is money; the money you think I ought to give you. Whether I have got it or not, does not matter to you. You are mercenary. I told you I had nothing but my love, and that was clearly not enough for you, and so you never answered my last letters, proving that you did not want to see me, without I gave you money.

LILIAN. You only wrote a lot of foolishness. And if I did not write, it was because you told me not to.

JACKY. That is a lie! I said: “If you do not write, I shall know you have had enough of me.” Read my letters again. And even if I had said so, I am going to be fool enough to tell you what you ought to have written-if you really loved me: “I want to see you. I don't care what you have written. Come to me, for I want to see you soon. Be of good heart, for I love you.”

LILIAN. But you want everything and give nothing in return. I am not mercenary.

JACKY. That is not true. You are. I'll prove it. I could not fathom your conduct up to now, but I have just done so. Listen to me. I am not intelligent -

LILIAN. Yes, you are.

JACKY. No, I am not. I am slow at seeing things, but I remember, and think them over, and put two and two together; and by analysis and deduction I find out the truth, even as I have now got the key to your mysterious conduct of the past month. I know you now. That is why I brought you a looking-glass. I can see all, as though in a mirror. Every move you make has a motive of venality.

LILIAN. (Quite off her balance now.) You don't understand! You have wrong ideas of me! You are strange! You are unjust!

JACKY. Then tell me what you want. (No answer.) You would not come to Paris where we used to go any more. Shall I take a furnished apartment at about a hundred and fifty francs a month?

LILIAN. No.

JACKY. Will you come if I promise you five louis for every visit to me in Paris?

(Here she did a thing I had never noticed in a woman before. She turned away from me and twisted her body as if I had a whip in my hand, writhing as if I had struck her.)

LILIAN. Oh! No! No! I don't want that!

JACKY. Then tell me what you are driving at. Marriage? That you've asked me for twice. I'm forty-six, going on for forty-seven. In four or five years I shall be used up, good for nothing. You'll be in your prime, and I shall be done for, perhaps a querulous, rheumatic invalid. I am a prisoner. Can't you see that? You should be kind to a man in prison.

LILIAN. All men are free, or should make themselves so. You have no consideration for me or my feelings.

JACKY. Untrue again. Whatever I may be, I have been loyal to you You made the first advances. I have not seduced you. You set your cap at me. Is that a lie? (No answer.) You know that I should never have dared to take a liberty with the daughter of the house where I was a guest, unless I had plainly seen that she wanted me. I have long since proved to you that I desired you two years before you thought of me, and I kept my lust hidden. Had I been the traitor you try to make me out, this is what I could have done, and take heed of what I am going to say, as it applies to all men. (I caught hold of her by the arm and tried to see her face, but she kept her features averted from my searching gaze and bent her head upon her breast. To make her hear me, I had to bend my head too.) This will be useful to you: beware of men who promise much. Let me suppose that this summer I had promised you all kinds of things for the end of the year-marriage, money, and God knows what! Then I could have said: “Now let me have you entirely.” Believing in me as you do, and though you often lie to me you know I have always been truthful to you, have I not?