Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 737
Of course Hugh Monckton did not misplace his ‘h’s.’ And the ‘ah’ sound in his ‘i’s’ had been hardly noticeable.
Destiny must have watched over that affair with singular minuteness. Henry Martin imagined that he had no particular accent. One cannot tell. But no one had ever mimicked him as they would have if his speech had been at all outrageous. On the other hand in French he had no doubt a strong American accent just as Hugh Monckton had a strong English one. The difference was very marked. Apparently to the French the English accent was what they called ‘zézayant’... a little childish and appealing. The American on the other hand they considered harsh and overbearing. The boat had been then a good friend to him. He had at first imagined that those two strokes of her yard had been a sign of enmity. Now he saw that the one in the temple supplied him with a necessary scar. That on the jaw gave him an excuse for speaking for quite a time with a voice that was no voice at all. When his natural voice returned his French friends would accept the change as being a product of the accident. As for his English friends Henry Martin would have to avoid them. Destiny had begun its job very thoroughly: it was unlikely that that august Force would now spoil the ship for want of a ha’porth of tar! But it would be better to avoid the girl next door. Her ululations had an ominous sound: like a dog baying the moon.
A dog that howls at his master’s gate
Foretells the ruin of the state
Something like that! But he was tired for the moment of Destiny. He desired to try a little freewill. As if he proposed to take the bit between his teeth.
There came from the next room a crash: a thud: half a dozen more crashes and the tinkling of broken glass sliding down. Then moans. Gradually becoming stifled. Lasting a long time. Then silence....
You can of course produce a devil of a row in the middle of the night. With comparatively few effects.... But when you have knocked things over and smashed, say a wash-basin and a tooth glass you generally start picking them up. Then they clink....
He found that he was hammering on the communicating door.... She couldn’t have cut her throat because of the Governor of Cochin-Saigon. She ought to have gotten over that by now....
He was pressing the button of the bell by the door.
... The door giving on to the passage. He was in the passage, ringing at the same time the bell and shouting. The bell resounded from dark distances: his shouting was inaudible.... There was a horrible smell.... He was not too steady on his legs. But they would serve.
The smell in the girl’s room was atrocious. He dragged her by the hand along the floor into his own room. Hugh Monckton’s. It had been a basin that had smashed. No doubt as she staggered. She was lying among parti-coloured fragments. A basin and a ewer! She must have grabbed them as she fell.... Particoloured herself too. In a Cochin-Chinese bathrobe.
... Batik they called the colouring. She was flattened into his floor in a way only the dead have. And not all of them. Hugh Monckton had not looked flattened. Rather in what you call high relief.
She wasn’t breathing. She was like a little mound of stuffs.
He drew deep breaths. He thanked God for his large lungs and the cool air that came into them, yet the night was hot. He had held his nose with his left hand, dragging her with his right. He could not have lifted her. She had poisoned herself by turning on a gas jet.... She must have held her head over it. And then fallen against the wash things.
He had closed the door between the two rooms. That ought to have settled it. Of course it hadn’t. The slightest spark and half the house would be blown to pieces. His head ached and all his limbs. It hadn’t been without damage that he had rolled down that slope. He wetted a towel in his ewer and covered his nose and mouth. It was a weary business.
He was back in his room, the gas-tap was turned off. He had not drawn a single breath. But his head swam. He sat down on the horsehair sofa. He wondered if, having changed identity with Hugh Monckton, he had inherited his physical disadvantages. Supposing it was to be all pain and neither wine nor women! That would be... oh, poetic vengeance.
He had been sitting with his elbows on his knees and his hands over his eyes and bandages. He might have been sitting there a long time. He might have been asleep. As he had been that morning when the sun had touched the fingers of the stone-pine branch.
The girl’s arm which had been over her breast was stretched out. She lay in the form of a cross.
An impulsion of intense weariness went over him. He would have to set about reviving her. Of course she was not dead. It was wrong to imagine that every one in that countryside had the knack of successful suicide. But apparently those who did it for the sake of love were more persistent than those who were beggared.
You revive, don’t you, those who are suffering from gas poisoning by the same thing you do for the nearly drowned? To expel the gas from the lungs! He didn’t believe he could do it....
The bell rang in distant darknesses. In the corridor he hammered on several doors. From behind one came a somnolent man’s answer, but no result....
He was on his knees at the girl’s head. He worked her arms up and down. The small wrists were quite warm. The batik gown, with the up and down motion divided itself gradually. Her form became plain. And rather agreeable. The Indo-Something Governor must have been a connoisseur in night-gowns.... No thinner fabric could have been imagined....
He worked unceasingly. It seemed unceasing! All the sinews of the back of his neck ached, going down into his shoulders....
Seen from above her unconscious features were very regular. Of course you cannot tell what a woman is like till you’ve seen her eyes.... Her figure was extremely symmetrical. The small feet stood up; bare. Their nails were reddened. Her hair exhaled an agreeable, oriental odour.... She was no doubt a completely uninteresting poule but the Governor would have seen that she had a good figure.... Governors can be trusted to see to that. And agreeable, preferably regular, features!
It was no doubt because of his lech for the dark girl that he found no physical attraction towards this one. Or because of his physical exhaustion. Or because he was annoyed with her for causing him the extra fatigue. Or because she was upside down to his eyes.
But there were white limbs just sheathed and shining.
... One ought to feel attraction. Or at least curiosity. Physical attraction was mostly curiosity of an exploring kind.... There must then be something wrong with him. Perhaps it was poetic vengeance - no, Justice! - once more. Perhaps like Hugh Monckton he was never again to know what is called love of woman.... What a hope! As Hugh Monckton said. He himself wasn’t mad about women. But that would be a dumb outlook.... Yet he had been hit over the head just as Hugh Monckton had been. He didn’t know how the yard of a boat compared with a German sabre.
‘... Not as deep as a well or as wide as a church door.
But ‘twill serve.’
Why did he have to think of gloomy quotations?
A single large drop of moisture was on the girl’s forehead. It must be his own sweat. He was panting by now. That was perhaps a direction. Try water. When he rose he reeled right over to one of the packing cases. The harlequin grip was at his feet.... It was perhaps a sign that brandy was indicated.
He opened it. Just like that!... Without having to pause to think he had pressed a stud. The jaws of that monstrosity went apart with a faint sumph like a sigh. It had acknowledged its master’s hand....
He was drinking a minute sip of the fine de la République.
. — .. Hugh Monckton had recommended him to finish it with his girl....
Damnation. Was it possible that he was never to drink again? And that he was to be impotent?... Or afraid to risk it for the fear of death? Because of the crack on his skull.
He knelt on one knee beside the girl. He placed the mouth of the square case bottle to her lips.... Any other alcohol would have done as well. He elevated grudgingly the end of the bottle. She certainly swallowed.
He lifted up her head with his arm underneath her dark hair. He pressed his lips on hers.... A man must want to explore.
Her arms of course were round his neck. They would be. Her eyes remained closed but she said distinctly:
‘C’est toi!’ and, ‘Ah que je suis contente!’
She must be taking him for the Indo-Something Governor.
He said:
‘Do you think you could stand?’ The floor must be very hard.
She was of course going to sleep in his bed. There was no end to this nuisance. But perhaps, then, he might feel at least some physical attraction.
She said:
Je croyais que tu t’étais suicidé... à cause de l’autre.’
She thought he had suicided. Because of the other.... Then she must be taking him for Hugh Monckton. Her eyes remained closed: her head hung back over his arm. They must have made a romantic picture. He kneeling. Her voice seemed to come from remote distances of her inner consciousness. It said:
‘Pourquoi as tu fermé ta porte à clé?... Alors je me suis décidée à me tuer.... Je te croyais mort derrière le cloi....’
You would have said that she was suffering from the effects of a narcotic. She could not finish the word which was no doubt ‘cloison’.... She thought Hugh Monckton had locked the door against her. Then she had decided to kill herself....
It began at least well. She had taken him for that fellow.... There was no knowing what their relationship had been. But so far he, Henry Martin, had made a satisfactory substitute. After all, why shouldn’t he?
The clothing had fallen right off her shoulder. Her skin was brown. Over the armpit it was quite dark. In creases. It was at least a change from the skin of Alice which was mat white. And wearisomely unattractive. Some blood showed at least under this skin.... Why did he have to think of Alice?
If he had opened the window in her room he could have taken her back. She was trying to help him to help her to rise. But listlessly.... But he had not opened the window....
Her eyes opened for a moment. She was on her feet holding her hand to her hair as if to be sure that it was tidy. Her eyes were blue-grey. They closed ineffably. She said:
‘Pardon que je t’ai tutoyé.... Je vous aime tant.’
She was asking for forgiveness for having said ‘thou’ to him. As you do to children or your lover. Then she had said: ‘I love you so much.’ It proved she had a tidy mind to think of that at that moment.... Then Hugh Monckton had only been kind to her. As he would have been to any stray.
He was getting his breath to make the formidable journey to the bed. He supposed it did not matter to these girls where they slept. She exclaimed:
‘Vous... si fort... si courageux... si généreux...
He was going to have some job to live up to that fellow. Well, he would tackle it. He would be strong: courageous: generous! Why not? He owed it to Hugh Monckton.
She sat crumpled together on the side of the bed and took off her batik covering. There was nothing to her. She was smaller than Alice. She had an oval face and the slightest moustache. Like any other girl of that country where they descend from the Phoenicians or God knew what race. She said drowsily:
‘Vous savez je vous ai jeté l’argent dans le visage parce que vous m’aviez ignorée... mais main...’ and collapsed sideways on the pillow....
That difficulty had solved itself. Those eight thousand francs were disposed of. She had thrown them at Hugh Monckton the other evening because till then he had ignored her... Her charms presumably. But now apparently she could take it.
CHAPTER IV.
THE dark girl was sitting in a round-backed arm-chair just on the other side of the night table. She was reading the New York Herald. On his shoulder Henry Martin felt the breath of the ex-lady of the governor of Cochin-Something. It was exceedingly still in the room. The eight thousand francs lay on the night table. The dark girl was wearing his ring on her wedding finger.
She had broad shoulders, high breasts. A green jewel showed on the lace insertion of her black dress. It went up and down as she breathed. The clock ticked.
Her dark eyebrows and her high colour expressed a capability of anger. Of passion. When she touched the hair just above her ear with her ring hand he felt extraordinary pleasure.
She looked at him and said:
‘Is there no end to human madness? Surely the gods intend the destruction of humanity....’ She added. ‘But why should they destroy us who are sane?’ She tapped the newspaper as if some paragraph in it had aroused her animosity. She looked extraordinarily sane. He almost regretted that she had spoken.
He said: ‘You read English?’
She exclaimed:
‘You need not whisper. The opiate I gave la petite should keep her doped for an hour or two yet.’
He had indeed whispered: he did not know whether it was because his jaw had been fractured or because the injury had affected the muscles of his throat. She lowered her newspaper and crossed her legs.
‘La petite tried to suicide?’ she asked. ‘She said that she would. So I gave her that heavy opiate. Under the pretext that it would drown any pain.’
That was evidently what had happened. He might have gathered from the girl’s voluptuous drooping, that she had been doped, not poisoned by gas which was probably disagreeable. She had looked like an enraptured flower.
‘It is amusing,’ the dark girl said, ‘all these failures to suicide.... And indeed suicides! For that other pauvre has succeeded. And a man at la Cressonade has killed himself and his mistress and three children.’
She added, in English:
‘It was good dope that. My boy friend gave it to me. In case I should be sleepless in the cells.’ And then in French: ‘But I supported all that with equanimity.’ Henry Martin whispered:
‘Another has suicided?’
‘Encore un Smeez,’ she answered. ‘Another Smith. A New Yorker. I saw you with him, night before last. I too am a New Yorker. I shall attend his obsequies. He was down and out.’
She counted on her fingers:
‘Two Smiths. Mademoiselle Becquerel. The man at la Cressonade. He was called Amontillado or something like that. From Genoa. And four he killed.’
Henry Martin said:
‘Becquerel?’
She answered:
‘The participatrix of Monsieur’s couch is Mademoiselle Jeanne Becquerel.’
Henry Martin managed to get out: ‘Virginie!’ rather louder. In alarm! Hugh Monckton’s note had said: ‘Virginie.’ The eight thousand francs were to be given to Miss Virginie. If he had given them to a Miss Jeanne he would have to make it up himself.
The girl said indifferently:
‘Jeanne - Virginie. Virginie-Jeanne. It is all one. That nasty fellow called her Virginie so I call her Jeanne ever since though I called her Virginie before....’ She added in English. ‘He was the sort of quarter-tipper that would call her Virginie. I bet he never tipped a cloakroom girl more than a quarter in a speakeasy.’
Henry Martin whispered:
‘He at least was not a New Yorker!’ He imagined she was talking of the ex-Governor.
‘No, sir! Il est un sale Moco... et un sale monsieur.
...’ A Moco was a local inhabitant. ‘But if Jeanne’s mother had not sufficient sense to see that she had a reasonable settlement when she became his maîtresse en titre I don’t see why he should make up the deficiency....’
He asked:
‘She was very hard up?’
‘She was in the cart,’ the girl answered. ‘Dans la misère même. And she had not the spirit to go out and do the requisite. She could no doubt have got a speculative lawyer to make that sorry fellow cough up. It was I who handed her all her food through the door. Except her petit déjeuner which is provided by the hotel. And that comes to an end to-morrow.’
She added.
‘There were days when she would not open to me, myself.... The truth was, I imagine that she loved that monsieur! She would not hock the jewels he had given her.’ She added again.... ‘We are like that, we others.... A ring, a necklace, becomes sacred. More fools we.’
A waiter in his shirt sleeves with a yellow-striped waistcoat and a face like that of a stupid racoon came in with two round trays on his left arm.
The girl said:
‘You can put Mademoiselle’s coffee on the divan. She will not wake yet. I will heat it over the gas when she does.’
The waiter put the tray on the night table, having first taken up the notes. He laid them on the croissants. He said they had made Monsieur some gruel in case his jaws would not work. If he did not eat the croissants they would be allowed for in the account.
He took up his station behind the curving mahogany foot of the bed and looked without interest at the face of the girl on Henry Martin’s shoulder. He had a short lock of darkish hair that fell over in front of his eyes. He said nonchalantly that an emissary of the commissaire de police was waiting to know when it would be convenient for monsieur to receive him.
The personality of the dark girl had so overwhelmed Henry Martin that he had not begun to put two and two together. He had not got over the improbability of the dark girl’s being a New Yorker. His brain was probably not working very fast because of the opiate he had had the night before.... But he feared the French police.
The waiter said:
‘It is because you were the last man, probably, to see that poor mad man alive. He sprang out of a boat in the storm and tried to murder Marius Guiol and Marius of the Reserve. He threatened them with a revolver. Then he shot himself under their eyes. There was a third man too.’
The dark girl said:
‘They say he demanded their money. But no one believes it. They are a couple of fat Mariuses.’
She said in English:
