“May I give you my answer this evening?” he said, getting up and taking off his oriental garments to get into his day clothes. “I must go home quickly now so as to catch my brother Olivier before he goes out. I’ve got something to say to him.”
He said it by way of apology, to give colour to his departure; but when he went up to Lilian, she turned round to him smiling, and so lovely that he hesitated.
“Unless I leave a line for him to get at lunch time,” he added.
“Do you see a great deal of him?”
“Hardly anything. No, it’s an invitation for this afternoon, which I’ve got to pass on to him.”
“From Robert? … Oh! I see! …”2 she said, smiling oddly. “That’s a person, too, I must talk to you about. … All right! Go at once. But come back at six o’clock, because at seven his car is coming to take us out to dinner in the Bois.”
Vincent walks home, meditating as he goes; he realizes that from the satisfaction of desire there may arise, accompanying joy and as it were sheltering behind it, something not unlike despair.
VIII
Edouard and Laura
Il faut choisir d’aimer les femmes ou de les connaître; il n’y a pas de milieu.
Chamfort
Edouard, as he sits in the Paris express, is reading Passavant’s new book, The Horizontal Bar, which he has just bought at the Dieppe railway station. No doubt he will find the book waiting for him when he gets to Paris, but Edouard is impatient. People are talking of it everywhere. Not one of his own books has ever had the honour of figuring on station bookstalls. He has been told, it is true, that it would be an easy matter to arrange, but he doesn’t care to. He repeats to himself that he hasn’t the slightest desire to see his books in railway stations—but it is the sight of Passavant’s book that makes him feel the need of repeating it. Everything that Passavant does, and everything that other people do round about him, rubs Edouard up the wrong way: the newspaper articles, for instance, in which his book is praised up to the skies. It’s as if it were a wager; in every one of the three papers that he buys on landing, there is a eulogy of The Horizontal Bar. In the fourth there is a letter from Passavant, complaining of an article which had recently appeared in the same paper and which had been a trifle less flattering than the others. Passavant writes defending and explaining his book. This letter irritates Edouard even more than the articles. Passavant pretends to enlighten public opinion—in reality he cleverly directs it. None of Edouard’s books has ever given rise to such a crop of articles; but, for that matter, Edouard has never made the slightest attempt to attract the favour of the critics. If they turn him the cold shoulder, it is a matter of indifference to him. But as he reads the articles on his rival’s book, he feels the need of assuring himself again that it is a matter of indifference.
Not that he detests Passavant. He has met him occasionally and has thought him charming. Passavant, moreover, has always been particularly amiable to him. But he dislikes Passavant’s books. He thinks Passavant not so much an artist as a juggler. Enough of Passavant!
Edouard takes Laura’s letter out of his coat pocket—the letter he was reading on the boat; he reads it again:
Dear friend,
The last time I saw you—(do you remember?—it was in St. James’s Park, on the 2nd of April, the day before I left for the South?) you made me promise to write to you if ever I was in any difficulty. I am keeping my promise. To whom can I appeal but you? I cannot ask for help from those to whom I should most like to turn; it is just from them that I must hide my trouble. Dear friend, I am in very great trouble. Some day perhaps, I will tell you the story of my life after I parted from Felix. He took me out to Pau and then he had to return to Cambridge for his lectures. What came over me, when I was left out there all by myself—the spring—my convalescence—my solitude? … Dare I confess to you what it is impossible to tell Felix? The time has come when I ought to go back to him—but oh! I am no longer worthy to. The letters which I have been writing to him for some time past have been lying letters, and the ones he writes to me speak of nothing but his joy at hearing that I am better. I wish to heaven I had remained ill! I wish to heaven I had died out there! … My friend, the fact must be faced: I am expecting a child and it is not his. I left Felix more than three months ago; there’s no possibility of blinding him at any rate. I dare not go back to him. I cannot. I will not. He is too good. He would forgive me, no doubt, and I don’t deserve—I don’t want his forgiveness. I daren’t go back to my parents either. They think I am still at Pau. My father—if he knew, if he understood—is capable of cursing me. He would turn me away. And how could I face his virtue, his horror of evil, of lying, of everything that is impure? I am afraid too of grieving my mother and my sister. As for … but I will not accuse him; when he was in a position to help me, he promised to do so. Unfortunately, however, in order to be better able to help me, he took to gambling. He has lost the money which should have served to keep me until after my confinement. He has lost it
