Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 766
Eudoxie would have been triumphantly acquitted if she would have given an undertaking never to sell any more snow. But she wouldn’t. Either she liked the limelight or she really thought that snow was a benefit to humanity. So she had been sentenced to a month’s imprisonment avec sursis... with the benefit of the First Offender’s act.... It had been after that that she had taken on her aunt’s beauty shop....
Jeanne Becquerel was even sceptical as to whether she had ever even supplied any snow to the clients of the shop. She liked to have a dashing reputation and the odour of public martyrdom. Thus she exaggerated the time she had spent in the hands of Justice.... For you couldn’t call it in prison. The French do not keep in prison filles de famille — young ladies of good family — whilst they are under a charge. Their friends have to be answerable that they will turn up for trial.... So that the most Eudoxie had been under any restraint at all had been for the sixteen hours she had spent in the dock.... Nevertheless she had managed to give the impression to everyone who had not been actually at the trial or was a new acquaintance that she had spent a month in gaol.... She was, Jeanne Becquerel said, an adept at giving impressions!
Jeanne Becquerel had professed to be equally in the dark as to Eudoxie’s subsequent attitude towards her husband. Eudoxie, she said, was as adept in concealing her real feelings as in conveying about herself the impressions that she wanted to convey. It was perhaps loyalty to her husband that made her proclaim the benefits of the drug traffic. If she had any quality it must be confessed that she had that of loyalty.... “Of too much damn loyalty!”... “De sacrément trop de loyauté!” as Jeanne Becquerel put it — meaning once more to say that she would be glad to do without Eudoxie’s managing her affairs.... And apparently she intended to be loyal to him at least as long as he was in prison.... She might have had as many opulent, romantic and attractive lovers as she wanted, but she had none. She was of course puritaine. Old fashioned!
Perhaps too she cherished the memory of that poor Henri Martin.... Asch Emma Smeez had heard her say that she would have been ready to become his mistress if he had not died like that. And it was true the ring he had given her had never left her finger....
That unfortunate man had made the greatest impression on her. It was not so much what she said but the incomprehensible nature of her actions. She could not have known that poor man very long.... She did not always, Jeanne Becquerel said, tell the truth more than any other person. She said she had only seen him on the night before his death. He had come across the floor of the dancing where she had been sitting for a moment and had talked about the Roman boy to whom the monument was erected — the boy who danced and gave pleasure.... “Puer septentrioncdis: saltavit et placuit.”... The famous inscription.... He had talked about that and had given her the ring.... And had then committed suicide....
That was perhaps not true.... Perhaps she had had a love affair with the poor man.... It was imagined in the town — and even by Eudoxie’s aunt — that she had refused to give herself to him after a long coquetting with him — and that then he had given her the ring and had killed himself.... At any rate for two or three days afterwards she had gone about like one distracted and could not really give an account of herself that anyone could believe. — Asch Emma Smeez had seen her at his bedside after the accident.... Hadn’t she seemed distracted?... Did he not remember how she had talked about waving to his boat in the great storm? That had seemed rather mad!
There was no lack of confirmation of his having given her the ring. Rosalie Lebrun — the poule — had told everybody how that pauvre Henri Martin had been sitting talking with her and how he had suddenly sprung across the room to Eudoxie’s table and had said one or two words to her. Then he had pulled off the ring and thrown it on the table.... Eudoxie of course — as again Asch Emma Smeez would remember — when her cousin Coco had been making his enquiry into the death, had told him that the poor fellow had seemed perfectly calm. And of course Coco, who was notoriously his cousin’s lap dog, had accepted that preposterous falsehood and had incorporated it in his report. But it was a lie that Eudoxie had told: to defend herself against public opinion! For public opinion will not willingly accept that a young woman should drive a fine young man to suicide... unless of course he kills her too, which levels things out. It was imagined that she had refused to give herself to him because of loyalty to her infamous husband — which made it all the worse.... And she knew that that was how people felt.
She had even tried to defend herself. She had declared to her old witch of an aunt who had been taxing her with her misdeeds that she had offered herself to that poor fellow as plainly as any girl could who wanted to retain a rag of modesty. He had been talking about the Roman boy dead two thousand years who was yet still famous because he had danced and given pleasure. And she said that she had answered that: Yes, that was the motto of all that region of the shores of the Mediterranean. If he could come to her room he would see that, embroidered on her curtain, was that inscription: Puer Septentrionales: Saltavit et Placuit....
It was true that that was on her curtains. But all the rest, Jeanne Becquerel said, was a package of lies. For was it to be thought that that poor fellow, even if he was an American, would have given her a valuable ring at his first sight of her — though he might well do it if she had manhandled him so that immediately afterwards he shot himself?... In that case he might do it to be a lasting reproach to her.... And it was quite as unlikely that Eudoxie — who was really for all her airs of bravado — as puritan as any English mees, would offer herself to a young man, however attractive, after having spoken to him only two words about a Roman monument and on their first meeting! Asch Emma Smeez might believe her, Jeanne Becquerel’s, word! that that would have been unthinkable!
No doubt the young man had been attractive.... He was said strikingly to have resembled Asch Emma Smeez.... Strikingly!... Then Eudoxie might well have been attracted to him.... It was said that the servant at the Carqueiranne hotel had cried for three days on end after hearing that he had shot himself... And two old maids in the pension — as miserly as spiders — had on the 16th of every month — the anniversary, if that was the word — subscribed for a little bunch of flowers that they tied with black ribbon and carried to the tomb at le Revest des Eaux.
And what made the whole thing more preposterous had been Eudoxie’s incomprehensible behaviour about her divorce. Before the Henri Martin affair, in spite of the yells of fury of her miserly old witch of an aunt who had actually once struck her over the matter, Eudoxie had persisted that she would divorce her husband in England as soon as he came out of prison. The aunt’s objection was not to divorce as such but simply that divorce in England was six or seven times as expensive as in France. And when Eudoxie’s father from the Consulate General across the Atlantic had agreed with Eudoxie and had consented to pay for the English proceedings, thus reducing the family fortune, the aunt’s rage had become unparalleled....
What Eudoxie’s real reason for that step might have been Jeanne Becquerel did not know. She said herself that she did not want to divorce Trig in France because, in order to bring that about, Trig would have to come to France. You could not be divorced in France without the indispensable interview between husband and wife after the judge had tried to reconcile them.... Husband and wife had to be shut up together alone in the judge’s private room in order to satisfy the judge that they really disliked each other.... But, said Eudoxie, in the first place when Trig came out of prison he would be on ticket-of-leave and the English police would not sanction his leaving England and equally the French police would not permit him to enter France.... The aunt answered that that was absurd. Everybody knew that Coco was under Eudoxie’s thumb. For the mere asking he could perfectly easily arrange that Trig could come to France for as long as the divorce would take. Then he could be expelled again.... The aunt had been of opinion that Eudoxie was putting this strain on the family fortune because she shrank from the idea of having to be alone in the same room with Trig....
Jeanne Becquerel was of opinion that there might be some reason in that. In spite of Eudoxie’s affichage — declaration — of her meaning to be loyal to the odious dwarf as long as he was in prison she had not been able to conceal her detestation of her husband and her shrinking from his person. It appeared that she had supported the eccentric humour of his appearance, his squandering of money and his childish boastfulness for only as long as he had been able to keep up the pretence that he was a tuberculous musician.... As soon as it came out that he was positively bursting with as much health as could be packed into a personality so minute she began to distrust him. The distrust grew when she discovered that he did not know a note of music. His famous songs had been made up by humming slight variations of already popular ballads to a dictaphone from which a real musician had transcribed them.
Her distrust had turned to real dislike when she had discovered that his interests were exclusively commercial. Jeanne Becquerel imagined that if he had taken the trouble to pretend that he trafficked in snow for the benefit of humanity and as a bold outlaw, Eudoxie might still have at least tolerated him. But he had done nothing of the sort and, during his stay in the port below, Eudoxie had stayed with her aunt up the hill. She only occasionally visited him in his hotel. He was in the meanwhile behaving outrageously, throwing money away on the most notorious women of the town and on men against whom she had repeatedly warned him. It had been one of these men who had warned the police that she had been carrying snow to her friend.... And when Trig had eventually been arrested in London one of the flashiest women of the town below had been found to be living with him.... Whilst Eudoxie herself had actually been in the hands of the police!... So Eudoxie would have no difficulty in divorcing him. It would have taken a great deal of time, but the result was certain....
The most astonishing thing of all in Jeanne Becquerel’s eyes had, however, been the fact that immediately after the suicide of that poor Henri Martin she had suddenly abandoned her suit. For this there had seemed to be no reason unless it was that she had had the idea that, since she could not be free with the dead man, she did not want her freedom at all. In any case she had seemed to be very much changed and at times Jeanne Becquerel had doubted if she were really in possession of her reason at all! And Jeanne Becquerel gave instances....
This narration had taken up nearly all the night. Jeanne Becquerel having interspersed the narration with a great many digressions of a moral and philosophical kind.... And, since that morning, Henry Martin had had almost no communication with Eudoxie at all. Certainly he had had no intimate messages or enlightenment as to her state of mind.... At the car-side whilst the luggage was being piled on she had behaved to him like a gay acquaintance who was going on an agreeable excursion. That might have been because she was all the time under the eyes of Jeanne Becquerel and in the blinding sunlight. Her correspondence with him had limited itself to messages on postcards, the reverse side of which shewed places of interest in the neighbourhood of London. These were usually initialled by Jeanne Becquerel. One indeed had actually come from Monckton-Warminster — and that was not only initialled by Jeanne Becquerel but by Mr. Old-Smith, Mr. Crape and by Eustace Monckton and also by someone with illegible initials who had written: “Cheerio! Old Bean!” above them and might be taken to be an old Army friend of Hugh Monckton’s.... From a rather excited and incoherent letter from Jeanne Becquerel he had learned that Eustace Monckton had entertained at the haunt of ancient peace a house-party for the purpose of finally ratifying the agreement for the Monckton car film. Eudoxie had apparently been there as representing Henry Martin in his Hugh Monckton aspect He learned, however, that Eudoxie actually represented Aunt Elizabeth. He learned that from Aunt Elizabeth herself. She had apparently put some money into Mr. Crape’s adventure on condition that Jeanne Becquerel was given a part in the film. Henry Martin had uttered remonstrances to the effect that that seemed to be his job rather than hers. She had answered coolly and with that expression of masterful all-knowledge that at times she could put on: Not at all; the girl was a nice girl who would be much better engaged making a career for herself than knocking about for ever at a loose end.... Henry Martin had not seen how that let him out. But he had let it go at that. These women had him down....
What really worried him most, as he went down to breakfast, was the chronology of all these emotions. He had never been good at dates: in these softly flowing climates one day goes by without separation from the other.... Supposing then that Eudoxie, Jeanne Becquerel, and the fellow Macdonald had gone off in the car at the beginning of May?... It was now certainly September.... Both Mary and the mistral had said that clearly enough.... The mistral does not blow like that till well on into September.... Then he had to account for the second visit of Sir Owen Tressider — which had happened well after that carload had gone away.... He had subscribed to the golf club on the 10th of May.... He did not know why he knew that — but he knew it. And he had played two or three... four... times two or three holes with his aunt.... Say that made eight days.... They had played every other day....
He had been driving her slowly and desultorily along the road to Cannes.... No, to la Crau... All those roads were alike.... They had just been going for a drive.... And they had stopped to watch two foursomes progressing slowly along the greensward beneath the trees that ran along the road. He had said that he had never understood why people played golf and, beside him, she had suddenly sighed:
“Yes, I know.... You haven’t the competitive mind....” She said that she would give anything for another smack or two at a ball.... He had exclaimed: “Why shouldn’t you?... I don’t mind two or three holes....” She had clung onto his arms and said:
“Oh... Posh!” He had said that he didn’t believe for a minute that playing three short holes would hurt her. They could drive every day to just where they were then and just get out and knock the balls about....
They had driven straight up to the club-house and, after a cup of insupportable English tea on the terrace he had taken out a membership card....
So there he had been in it!... On the 10th of May....
By that time he had been living alone at the Villa Niké.... For some weeks... Aunt Elizabeth had of course undertaken to come over every day and look after him.... Or no doubt Eudoxie would never have gone.... They had worked over Hugh Monckton’s treasures and, shortly before Sir Tressider’s visit they had got them all off — some to the South Kensington Museum and the rest to the museum at the Smithville works.... And already Aunt Elizabeth had begun to plead with him to go to live with her at la Valette.... But a certain shame had made him refuse.... It seemed to him that that would be almost a sacrilege... a penetrating into the Holy of Holies of poor Hugh Monckton’s family intimacies that he was not prepared to face....
She had pleaded and pleaded... and Mary herself had begged it. He had slept at the Villa Niké only to guard those treasures that it would not have been right to leave alone. Now they were gone.... Aunt Elizabeth had even written to Eudoxie, begging her to bring pressure on him.... She had written her exaggerated accounts of Henry Martin’s sleeplessness.... For by then Henry Martin was passing sleepless nights.... The riddle of Eudoxie’s behaviour was weighing on him.... To get away from that unbearable riddle he would pass a whole night writing at his book....
Fortunately the town below possessed a magnificent municipal library.... Magnificent in the sense that the eighteenth-century donor of the books had had an almost unrivalled collection of classics — historical works — At that time Henry Martin had been working precisely over the ana of crises in Athens, Rome and Byzantium.... So on the afternoon when they didn’t golf they went down to the library. Henry Martin read in the great books with their gilt bindings, and faint smell of ancient leather, the somnolent luxuriance of Latin. And if he needed passages copied, Aunt Elizabeth, sitting beside him, did that.... But his sleepless nights told so on him that, again and again, he fell asleep in the library and at last, ferreting out from the femme de ménage who lived in the cottage below the house, beside the garage, that his light was burning sometimes as late as four in the morning and that at five he could be seen already working in the garden, she gathered the fact of his insomnia....
Things then became tangled, at any rate chronologically — the tangle increasing with his increasing sleeplessness.... There was the telegram from Eudoxie: then the visit of Sir Tressider: then the first bad relapse of Aunt Elizabeth: the extraordinary visit of Eudoxie’s father and his discovery that Eudoxie had been in his aunt’s house.... That he supposed to be the order of the events.... But always when his tired mind had got as far as that he had forgotten what date he made it.... One day, however, happening to glance, at the Golf Club, at a local English illustrated paper, he read an article advocating, naturally, the prolongation of visitors’ sojourns on the Riviera. This stated that the august visitor in attendance upon whom Sir Tressider was, always remained at his villa near Cannes till well into May, saying that May on the Riviera was the most delightful of all seasons though most visitors went away before that. That year his Royal Highness had remained until the 18th of May and had then returned to London with Sir Tressider travelling in the Royal train.... That fixed those dates for him as round about — but before — the 18th of May. Aunt Elizabeth had urgently begged Sir Tressider to make a second examination of Henry Martin. He had at first replied that he couldn’t because next day he would have to be leaving with his august patient. She had begged and begged him again to come and finally he had motored over from Cannes in the royal car on the morning of the day of his departure. That was the occasion on which Dr. Grouault had come in in consultation.... It was also the occasion of Aunt Elizabeth’s relapse.
