Cloudless May (40 page)

“And Labenne?”

Huet was seized by an impulse to make Labenne seem “not untreacherous.” He gave way to it instantly.

“When it's to his own interest, Labenne will help you,” he said in a grave voice.

“Of course,” Vayrac said curtly. He turned his head to look at Huet. “What a clever brute, though.”

The courtyard of M. de Thiviers's house in Seuilly had a charming fountain attributed to Jean Goujon; the sculptured frieze running above the ground-floor windows was said to be . . . the niches and bust of the first floor were credibly supposed . . . the clock—but why go on with a list which is unjust to an admirable Louis XVI house, of decent proportions, and mature simple charm? In restoring it, Thiviers had only given way to the mania for authorities which made his books a trickle of text in a desert of footnotes drawn from the most respectable sources. He imagined he had proved his point when he could quote a similar opinion from another writer, and until he had thought of attaching Jean Goujon's name to his fountain he was not convinced that it was fine and delicate.

He had collected for his library the busts—all, he believed, even the head of Socrates as a young man with a superb youthful beard, authentic—of famous writers and philosophers: sitting among them, himself almost authentic, dictating long falsely exact phrases to his secretary, he pursued these famous shades with his eloquence and cloudy abstractions, so certain of their approval that when a ray of sun touched Bossuet's lips he smiled back at him.

Before Mme de Freppel came in, he had just succeeded in putting together two sentences without joining them by a quotation. He looked at her gravely. His afternoons were slightly sacred to writing. Besides, her finger resting on it threw a doubt on the bust of Ronsard, attributed to . . . He dismissed his secretary, and took both her hands in a friendly grasp.

She freed one hand and tapped him lightly on the cheek. Was she surprised to find it warm? She drew back.

“My dear, I'm interrupting you.”

She was amused. Behind his dignity—almost real, in any case not a wilful fake—he was nervous. The thought: I still disturb him, gave her confidence. Resting her arms on his desk, she faced him across a corner of it, and began with her air of simplicity to talk about Colonel Rienne. He was—
surely?—dangerous. And his influence made Émile so reckless. . . .

“Can't you get rid of him, my dear Robert? Have him sent to the front? Such a fire-eater——”

“In any emergency—don't be anxious—Colonel Rienne will be watched,” Thiviers said, with a smile.

He patted her arm. Mme de Freppel seized his hand in both hers and leaned forward so that he found himself looking in her eyes, at the gleam of animal brightness under their soft black. She knew the effect she had on him. She was using her body to subdue him, without shame—you use, or defend, what you have: one woman is quicker to use, another to defend. There were things Mme de Freppel was passionate to defend, but her body was not one of them.

“Tell me what to do,” she said with energy. “I'm distracted. You needn't tell me we're going to lose the war. I know. Tell me what I ought to do. I thought of putting everything into diamonds. In New York I could sell them to savages called Smith or Franklin. If we ever get to New York. Do you think diamonds?”

Thiviers drew his hand away. She was startled. Is he afraid of me? Or bored? She watched him, listening with only part of her mind.

“Yes, yes, I know,” she interrupted. “You explained days ago that Seuilly can't be defended, if the Germans get here the war's lost, and so on and so on——”

“You didn't take it in,” Thiviers said gently. “We expected you to make Émile see reason.”

Who does he mean by we? “What are you talking about?”

“Émile is almost a criminal——”

“That's not true,” she said vehemently.

She checked herself. . . . I mustn't irritate him. . . . To soften her words she gave him an affectionate glance.

“Listen, Marguerite,” Thiviers said in a cold voice. “Émile's efforts will land him in prison. I'm serious. If he persists in rousing the mob he will have to be put out of the way for his own sake and the sake of order and stability. Émile—it horrifies me; I expected so much of him, with his training—you don't look in the Political Science School for anarchists—but he's an anarchist.”

He is really horrified, she thought. She felt a baffled impatience. Why is he so moral? Why must Émile run these insane risks?

“An anarchist who has sent money to the United States,” Thiviers added.

She looked at him. “Émile is not the only one,” she said calmly.

“No. But he might be the only one to be ruined.”

She was silent. She did not feel defeated. Her instincts—she had an instinctive disrespect for men as animals—promised her that she was still partly controlling him. Looking at her hands on the desk, she imagined them, but did not bring herself to it, touching the quilt of soft flesh between her fingers and the bones of his body. Like embracing an adult child. The wave of repulsion starting at the ends of her fingers dragged her back with it. She trembled with a little horror of herself. So far as she was concerned Thiviers's body was dead. She became alert and calm.

“I couldn't face poverty,” she said in a frank voice.

Thiviers glanced at her with a curious, almost disinterested respect.

“Why should you be poor? I'm a rich man. You can rely on me to help you. You know that. There's very little you don't know about me.”

With both hands she made a gesture of lifting something and letting it fall. A touch of fear came to weaken her. . . . Perhaps I can't use him; he's stronger, less rigid than I imagined. . . . The thought made her angry. Hiding her anger, she said, with a friendly smile,

“You exaggerate Émile's obstinacy. I know him better than you do. I assure you he's very reasonable. I'll talk to him.”

She stood up. Thiviers got up more heavily. Only the corner of the desk separated them, and she felt that in a moment he would embrace or insult her. Either act would be fatal to her power over him. She must speak.

“Dear Robert, you're quite charming,” she said gaily, “you're a scholar, a philosopher, a banker—what a monster!—but you have very little tact and you simply don't understand less exalted people. You don't know how to talk to us.”

She saw, with pleasure, that she had hurt his vanity. He reddened and said stiffly,

“You find me dull, no doubt.”

“Not in the least.” Her eyes sparkled. Suddenly she felt that her will was stronger than his. The certainty that she would outwit him made her feel madly happy.

She walked towards the door. It opened when she was almost there. Mme de Thiviers came in.

She was in outdoor dress, swaddled in spite of the heat in a thick coat. She was always cold. Leaning the awkward weight of her body on her maid's arm, she moved forward slowly. She looked at Mme de Freppel with contempt.

“I see you're going, Countess,” she said. “I regret that I wasn't at home to receive you. I didn't know you did me the honour of calling on me.”

“But I came to see your husband,” Mme de Freppel said, smiling. “On business.”

“I understand,” Mme de Thiviers said. “I can choose my callers, my husband cannot choose his business associates.”

“Nini——” Thiviers said, alarmed.

“But don't apologise for Madame de Thiviers's awkwardness,” Marguerite said in a clear voice. “I can see she is a sick woman.”

She knew she was looking remarkably beautiful at this moment, her eyes brilliant, her body giving off its energy. And at this moment of triumph and happiness she made a mistake. Thiviers was holding the door open; as she passed through she let him see that she was laughing at his embarrassment. This second wound to his vanity went too deep. His face became gloomy and he looked at her with an anger he saw no reason to hide. It jumped into his mind that she would make a laughingstock of him among her friends. It would be too easy, and he knew she enjoyed using her shrewd vulgar wit. Ridicule was the one injury he could not forgive. At this moment he would have sent her to a concentration camp to be punished.

Marguerite walked rapidly through streets filled with Sunday idlers towards the square where she had left her car. She was vexed and anxious. Her fears sharpened as she went. . . . What
an idiot I was to smile. . . . She was seized by panic. Her confidence had gone, leaving only dismay. She knew that she had behaved with the greatest folly. Far from making him feel he must help me, she thought, I've offended him. What shall I do?. . . Her mind was becoming feverish. She told the chauffeur to take her home; half-way there she made him turn back to the Prefecture, and there, without getting out, she ordered him to Mme Vayrac's. Léonie will advise me, she thought.

Mme Vayrac was alone. She was cold and constrained. Marguerite felt that a grudge was listening to her, not a close friend. She faltered. At any other time she would have asked Léonie frankly why she was angry, but she was not capable at this moment of behaving frankly or calmly. When she was in a panic, deceit came naturally to her. Panic woke all her inbred cunning; at the same time it so distorted things that her mind flew along any false track—if she had been an animal she would have run straight into the trap.

She began to placate Léonie. Certain that her coldness had to do with Edgar, she said hurriedly,

“Léonie, my dear, I must tell you that Louis Mathieu is doing all he can to harm Edgar. At the Prefecture the other day he warned Émile that Labenne is helping you. He even spoke of poor Edgar as a pro-German. I think it's serious.”

Mme Vayrac's eyes became a thought less opaque. “Did Émile tell you?”

“No. I overheard.”

She realised that she had involved Émile. A dozen lies, to protect him from Léonie, sprang into her head. But Mme Vayrac did not ask any more questions. Propped against the back of the couch, inert, her body began to give off warmth in place of indifference and suspicion. She spoke kindly.

“My dear girl, you're an angel. I know you try to help me. My poor boy. . . .” Her eyes became animated. Without their film of mistrust they looked guilty: it was due to use and too much tolerance. “I thought of you yesterday when I was talking to Sadinsky. He asked whether you had been able to do anything for him with Madame Huet. Have you?”

Marguerite felt relieved and thankful. “I think he might offer an impressive cheque—twenty thousand or even fifty thousand francs—to her War Comforts Fund. . . .”

Léonie's body quivered with laughter. “And I think we share a reasonable commission. You know, Sadinsky is quite reasonable. I'll suggest half to Madame Huet, twenty-five per cent each to you and me, my dear Marguerite.”

Marguerite's anxiety to please vanished. “But I shall have done everything!” she cried. “It ought to be ten and forty per cent. Really, Léonie!”

“My dear girl, he's my Jew,” Mme Vayrac said, smiling.

Marguerite knew she would have to give way. She hid her mortified disappointment under an air of simplicity and good-humour.

“Tomorrow I'm going to Andrée Huet's reception. I'll speak to her about Sadinsky and his offer. You can tell him to come and see me at the Prefecture on Tuesday——”

Léonie raised her eyebrows. She said nothing.

“—or if he rings me up there I'll tell him what I've arranged. He can give you our commission, and you'll send me your cheque.”

“Splendid,” Léonie said. Now that she was herself, that is, lazy, generous, loose, her voice had recovered its double tones. “You're my good little girl. . . . Are you going? Don't.” She got up as she spoke, and walked heavily to the door with her friend. “You didn't buy Sadinsky's diamond,” she murmured. “I'm afraid he'll sell it.”

Marguerite stood still. She felt exasperated. Was this day of failures going to end with a quite frightful loss? Everything else could be put right, but not this.

“Show it to me again.”

She gazed at it cupped in Mme Vayrac's palm and said greedily, “I must have it. A good diamond is the one thing you can feel sure of in these times. Don't you agree?”

“Oh, of course,” Léonie smiled.

Late in the afternoon of Monday, Bergeot gave his secretary a letter to take to Mme de Freppel at the Manor House. The young man found himself caught in a garden party. The lawns,
the formal garden, the orchard, were mined: people chattered round him and sunshades sprang up under his nose like clusters of fungi. Crimson with embarrassment, he blundered among them looking for Mme de Freppel. He found her at last on the lawn between the house and the Loire, and waited while she read Bergeot's note—it was to tell her that he could not possibly keep his promise to come. She crumpled it into her handbag. Looking at the young man, she said with impatience,

“Are you allowed to call your soul your own?”

“Yes. No, madame.”

“You don't seem very sure.”

“I'm not sure,” Lucien said. “But is there anything you would like me to do?”

He spoke respectfully and steadily, he was no longer afraid of her. He blushed, of course, but that was a habit. Mme de Freppel saw that she had lost an adorer. She said cruelly,

“If you think you won't be punished for staying to eat a few strawberries . . .”

He escaped. He had left his motor-cycle in the drive. Just as he reached it a group of women moved out of his way. Catherine was standing there, resting her hand on the saddle. Without wasting a second he laid his hand on hers: he drew it back at once, but it was enough; Catherine looked at him and said in her quiet voice,

“Poor Lucien, you love me.”

She meant: I love you. Lucien shivered, took his glasses off so that he could look at her without seeing her, put them on, and lived during that moment through a long and agonising life of happiness.