Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 743
He was left alone with Jeanne Becquerel. Her face was averted.
No he had no curiosity as to what she was thinking. He had practically never felt curiosity as to what Alice had thought when she went into one of her trances. Actually she must have thought of miles of pictures in the Louvre.... Very likely Jeanne Becquerel thought about the salaams of Cochin-Saigonese or whatever they were.... Apparently, out there of an evening, she had mixed cocktails of unusual fruit juices for the Governor’s male friends. In a Batik wrapper of unbelievable intricacy of colour and a Japanese sash wound round and round her. Like the sarong now. Only the Japanese sash would be in great bows behind whereas the sarong was knotted or draped or something, in front. She would stand in a dim, shining room and as each man took his drink he would kiss her hand. Or the Saigonese would raise it to their foreheads....
Maybe she was thinking of that.... Perhaps there had been incense-joss sticks - and gongs and paper lanterns and things.... But Eudoxie had said that she dreamed of a future in a farmhouse in that countryside. Beside a bon père de jamille....
He wished he did not have to think of Alice every time he thought of this girl. This girl was in no way like her.... She had long, well moulded, slow moving limbs. Alice had been by comparison squat. And about this girl there was no avarice at all. She had not yet asked him for a penny. Not even for the cable she had sent to father for him.... The eight thousand francs had trailed about the hotel room for days. At last Eudoxie had taken them to open an account for her. In some bank that was said to be sound.
Apparently, like so many French people, the ex-Governor had been close. In every direction but one. He had given the girl no money and she had taken none though she might apparently have had the resources of a province to play with. In the way of bribes and exactions. On the other hand the governor had fairly buried her under silks, large conglomerations of jewellerylike cat’s-eyes and moonstones and objects in brass. Perhaps she liked that. At one moment she would be in a garment, black in base, with emerald green, orange, scarlet and purple scrolls. When you next looked round she would be in a scarlet jacket with black, blue and gold-wine embroidery. With her hair as if glued back under jewelled combs....
In that, if in no other way, she was an improvement on Alice who would wear the same stuff gown without change for a couple of months. She had had one Indian printed muslin that had driven him fairly batty because she would wear nothing else. Yet she had bought frocks fairly often.... Perhaps for the charming of Mrs. Percival!
When they moved up to the villa Jeanne Becquerel’s kimonos and bales of silk and large jewel cases had hardly left them room in the car to sit in and it had jingled like an old iron cart with her hammered brass pots and ash trays and vases. And he must already have seen her in fifty different, clinging dresses. It was rather agreeable. It was agreeable too to see her flesh under the clean sky.... As if you were beginning to collect statues....
The dark girl came back with a tray. A ewer full of ice cubes and another of red-orange liquid.
‘A l’Américaine,’ she said.... ‘Though of course you are not a New Yorker. Still here’s the juice of ten oranges....’
She slipped the net over Jeanne Becquerel’s head and went along the terrace dragging the shrieking girl after her.
In a minute she was back in the doorway. Her face was grave enough.
‘That old letter,’ she said in English. ‘The one I gave you last night....’
He said:
‘No, it was a very good old letter....’
She exclaimed:
‘I was afraid it told you where you got off....’
He answered slowly:
‘No: it solved the last of my moral doubts....’
She said:
‘You’ll admit it looked like blue ruin....’ And then: ‘But a moral... oh, la, la.... Isn’t my little friend moral enough for you? Is your urge for New England schoolmarms?...’
She added:
‘It is true. You are a good boy.... And he did not wish the news of his death....? That is of course why.
...’ She was rather breathless.
Jeanne Becquerel was dragging her by the bare arm.
‘This is not convenable,’ she said.... ‘You shall not send me to catch rascasse and creep to my man....’
They went from that doorway and then appeared at the other, further down the room. They had their arms about each other and stretched their free hands towards him in a Roman salute.
He lay for a long time looking at the amethystine blue sea. The slopes of the peninsula opposite were dusky. The sunlight had gone round to the other side. The cleared space round the base of the semaphore showed as a green lawn. He sipped his orange juice from a thin, frosted glass in which ice tinkled.... They had looked like sisters of the Roman decadence moving in long steps.... Or of course like mannequins on the terrace of a Riviera resort.
That was all one.
‘The point is,’ he said, ‘that that really is Alice!’
The taste of the orange juice had reminded him of the dining-room in Albany station. You eat rather well there. He used to think so.
One morning towards five, coming from Buffalo when he had been drumming for Pisto-Brittle, he had got out of the train and drank three glasses of orange juice on end. Afterwards he had had a real American breakfast.... Perhaps he would never eat a real American breakfast again! It looked like that....
He lay for a long time, regarding the white triangles of sails over against St. Mandrier. Even the cataclysm of three weeks ago had not cured them of their passion for catching minute sea-creatures. Perhaps because that was something for nothing. If they went to New York the first thing they would ask as the boat approached the Twenty-third Street Quay was whether there you could catch small fish for a friture....
Alice at least had never paid him the compliment of even simulating jealousy when Mrs. Percival had deigned to give him a moment or two of private interview. This girl called him ‘mamour’ with a pretence of possessiveness!... One progressed! The species remained the same, the genus underwent modification.
CHAPTER II.
THE night before she had handed him a letter just as they got into the car to leave the hotel. It was addressed to ‘Henry Martin Aluin Smith’. The waiter indignantly protested that he had not been able to read the name. And the patronne had lost her spectacles three weeks ago on the day the letter had arrived. Henry Martin had expected so little trouble from letters that he felt no shock at receiving this. But when he saw that the postmark was ‘Hyères’ of the sixteenth of August he had a shock. It was as if the dead had risen. He had held it in his hand on the wheel when he had been driving to the villa. All the while she had been looking at him with anxiety and sympathy. And all the while they had been sitting in the little saloon, by the light of a single candle she had looked at him.... Perhaps with panic. He was aware now that it had been at least with sympathy and anxiety. He was warranted in believing that was because she had just said that she had been afraid it was where he got off.... Then she was with him!
It was difficult to know what she thought. She knew he was not Hugh Monckton. Of that he had been aware from the very first. At the very first whilst the doctor had displayed his damaged face.
He had felt a moment’s alarm. That secret might be worth money. She too might want something for nothing. But he had long known that she didn’t want money at all. She wanted only that Jeanne Becquerel should be provided with a dot. So that she might be married to a wealthy farmer when he, Henry Martin, was ready to dispense with her society....
She would gain nothing by hurting him. She would only hurt Jeanne Becquerel.
All the same their conversations had had a certain piquancy.... As if she knew that she could make him jump at any moment. For fear she should laugh at him because she had so easily penetrated his disguise.... And within a very short time he was sure that she cared for him a great deal. So that those tanquineries - the teasings - were mere by-play of intimacy. They showed they had a secret known to no one else in the world.
And her zealous retrieving of the letter showed that she watched out for his good.
No letter had come for Hugh Monckton.... No communications at all. He had perhaps a private box at the post office. Or perhaps on first setting out with Gloria for the Islands of the Blest he had cut himself adrift from his kind. That was most likely true because no one had called to see him. He had left no address. Probably he was in that obscure hotel in order really to cover his tracks. And wasn’t it likely that in confiding to Henry Martin so considerable a trust he was showing that he had lost touch with his social kind? That neighbourhood even now swarmed with English. Rich English. Hugh Monckton must, if he had wanted to in the ordinary course, have been able to find half a dozen men he knew better than Henry Martin.
That he should have so confided was not as extraordinary as it appeared. It is not at all unusual to meet men whom one would trust on sight with one’s most vital affairs. It would be too much to say that it happened every day and one doesn’t very often trust strangers with one’s intimate secrets. But it is not at all unusual.... In a very short space of time he himself had met Hugh Monckton, Eudoxie and Lamoricière....
And Hugh Monckton had been as ready to trust Lamoricière as Henry Martin had been - and almost as much on sight. That man was made to be trusted.... You even trusted him in spite of yourself. As it were unconsciously. He, Henry Martin, had made up his mind not to indulge in that speculation. Then, next moment, he had heard himself putting all that money into the hands of that black-bearded fellow. Unconditionally. For the purpose of conducting a speculation.
That dreadful day that had ended in pain!... The seventeenth of August.
Jeanne Becquerel had gone into her room just after the doctor had finished re-bandaging his face. M. Lamoricière had apparently not made up his quarrel with the dark girl. He stood with Napoleonic folded arms over by the window. His sunk head made his black beard stick forward like a brush from his chest. His forehead was rather — not very - bald.
He had advanced immediately upon Henry Martin. He was between Eudoxie in her chair and Henry Martin’s face. He began at once an apology. The introduction was very long and stately. It disclaimed on the part of M. Lamoricière any claim to interfere into the affairs of Henry Martin.... It took Henry Martin some time to realize that he was begging forgiveness for having locked the door between Henry Martin and Jeanne Becquerel the night before.
He said he had been in a quandary. He did not of course know what he knew now. The hour had been late. There had been large - very large! - sums of money lying about. And valuables worth even more than the sums of money.... He knew of course that the English were more careless in these things than his own countrymen. Still it had seemed a little exaggerated.... There was an unlocked drawer in the secretary.... Hugh Monckton went everywhere with a Napoleonic officer’s travelling bureau. It was an ingenious piece of walnut-wood furniture.... Ingenious in the heavy way of the eighteen-tens.
As M. Lamoricière did not finish his sentence as to the contents of the unlocked drawer Henry Martin took it that they had been of great value. He made a sign that he wanted to speak. He said he could not remember what had been left in the drawer. Shock had driven it out of his mind.
M. Lamoricière had made a note of the contents. He had a large notebook and sat stiffly. There had been two books of notes of French currency: one for fifty thousand, the other for sixty thousand francs. He had taken the liberty of introducing into it:... He began to read a list of jewellery: a gold watch: a valuable pair of cuff-links: a lapis-lazuli signet ring. A number of....
Henry Martin had waved his hand. He might be taken to know what his personal effects consisted of. In his creaking whisper he asked that M. Lamoricière should put his ear next his own mouth.
The doctor had suggested that his voice-failure was self-induced. But it grew more and more difficult to speak. He said he wanted to see Mademoiselle Yu-Yu’s face. M. Lamoricière placed a hairy ear next Henry Martin’s dry lips.
These things had been difficult of arrangement. His head had been again swimming. But he had kept on. He had a desperate desire to know what the dark girl thought of him. M. Lamoricière signalled to the dark girl to move into another bergère that stood near the foot of the bed. His composure was unbreakable. He seemed to think it the most natural thing in the world that Henry Martin should desire to see the dark girl’s face.... But he seemed to think that everything was the most natural thing in the world.
Henry Martin directed his words towards the dark girl. M. Lamoricière kept his ear close to Henry Martin’s lips. Whilst Henry Martin spoke M. Lamoricière directed his eyes pensively towards the carpet. Before he himself spoke he erected himself, rigid and black, in his cane chair.
Henry Martin addressed them both. He said: they had heard the doctor’s directions as to his immediate future. He intended to follow them.
The dark girl leaned suddenly towards him, her lips parted.
He whispered on:
He desired to find a villa.... But modest.... Fit for a very small establishment with an income at the most of fifty thousand francs a year....
That should settle it. It should show the dark girl what she had to accept. She could take it or leave it. On the spot.... Her lips were more widely parted; she sat further forward; her glance seemed to penetrate his eyes.
M. Lamoricière sat up, rigid against the back of his chair.
‘That seems very proper,’ he said. ‘That seems appropriate.’ He made notes in his large black book. He said: ‘You would like it high up. For the sake of a view of the Mediterranean. And to avoid heat which would be pernicious to you in your condition.’
He asked if, for the sake of his eyes, he might close the curtains. The sunlight had been streaming in. He came back in a soothing dimness. He said he hoped that did not prevent Monsieur’s seeing the face of Mademoiselle.
He produced his notebook again....
He said:
‘I presume you desire that the lease should be in the name of Mademoiselle Becquerel... of Madame.
... That would be the usual course.’
A convulsion moved Henry Martin’s throat. The dark girl was nodding. She wanted the lease to be in the other’s name!
M. Lamoricière went on: he had few such villas on his books. The estates he dealt in were usually much larger. But with good-will. And with the aid of Mademoiselle Yu-Yu....
The dark girl said:
‘Oh, I’m a good scout!’
‘You will perhaps desire,’ M. Lamoricière said, ‘to pay one or two years’ rent in advance.... To secure it. That is not unusual... Or to take it à volonté.... With the option of purchase. In case the arrangement proves permanent....’
Henry Martin said:
‘Whatever is usual.... Generous....’
He lay back on his pillow.... He felt faint.... It was perhaps misleading the dark girl.... As to his resources.... He had fifty thousand francs. No other certainty... He heard her say that that was swell. He was a swell guy. Her voice for the moment was a deep contralto with emotion.... He understood that she was indeed a New Yorker. At that time he had not known her history. It was the first time he had noticed her English. If she spoke English in a moment of emotion — spontaneously - she must be a New Yorker. That soothed the part of him that was homesick. As if he would be less expatriate!... A swell guy too.... That was what he was!...
The others began talking villas.... One at Dar-dennes.... Too inland. No view of the Mediterranean. The Villa Pavia... Mon Répos at La Vallette.... Not the one at Bon Rencontre of course.
She said:
‘My aunt has the Villa Nike at disposal....’
Niki meant Victory! He wanted the Villa Niké! He kept his eyes closed. To rest his voice.... He must have more money. She was a New Yorker. At that time he thought she must have contracted a New York demi-mondaine’s habits of expenditure.... She would make do with less. He had had a Scotch porridge mug as a child. It was yellow. But with brown, as if burnt in lettering it said, ‘Contented wi’ little but canny wi’ mair!’... He must get her a good time. Damn it, she deserved it. Father and mother had brought the mug home from a honeymoon voyage. They had been in Luxemburg and the Rhineland and had returned over Scotland.... She deserved... she deserved Le Secret....
It was odd. How often hadn’t he seen Le Secret off St. Mandrier. With her high spars and tall black hull?... Her screw was so powerful that when you saw her from a height beating into the port extérieur against a strong mistral - with only the mizen set - you saw behind her a great trail of blue-green whitish water. A hundred and fifty yards long. But it had never occurred to him that one day he might come to think of that marvel as a wedding present for a New Yorker!
M. Lamoricière said:
‘It is too ramshackle. It is almost a ruin....’
Henry Martin found that the thought of the twenty silver-white notes was burning into his being. From behind his right shoulder! He must have left the painted grip open last night.
Eudoxie said:
‘We will make the old she-devil diminish the rent by half. With the other half we can arrange it tastefully. Besides, that will much lessen the taxes....’
Henry Martin found he was trembling. He clenched his teeth. They had been knocking together and had hurt his jaw. It was perhaps in that way that thieves felt at the thought of easy hauls of great booty. He had once been on a jury in Springfield. A burglar who was being tried for burgling Mrs. Von Augsburg’s had explained. He had successfully made off with half the diamonds of Mrs. Carl Busch next door and had been having a good time at Miami. But in coming away from Mrs. Carl Busch’s he had noticed that Mrs. Von Augsburg’s would be extraordinarily easy to break into. The thought had so distracted him that he had lost all taste for Miami and eventually he had come back. So the cops had got him.
M. Lamoricière said:
‘If you have sufficient influence with Madame your Aunt the Villa Niké would be admirable.’
