Chapter FOURTEEN

They sat facing her in the railway carriage and she looked at them with calmness, clear-sightedly, freed for one moment from her obsessions of love and hatred. They were so obviously husband and wife, so suited to each other, they were even in some strange way a little alike. ‘Every pot has its lid,’ says the French proverb, or perhaps Belgian--but French or Belgian, it’s a good proverb.

Lois sat sturdily, with her knees, as usual, a little apart; her ungloved hands were folded over a huge leather handbag; on her dark face was the expression of the woman who is wondering how she is going to manage about the extra person to dinner. She probably was wondering just that. Her adequately becoming and expensive hat was well pulled down over her eyes. Her beige coat was well cut. Obviously of the species wife.

There she was: formidable, very formidable, an instrument made, exactly shaped and sharpened for one purpose. She didn’t analyse; she didn’t react violently; she didn’t go in for absurd generosities or pities. Her motto was: ‘I don’t think women ought to make nuisances of themselves. I don’t make a nuisance of myself; I grin and bear it, and I think that other women ought to grin and bear it, too.’

And there he was, like the same chord repeated in a lower key, sitting with his hands clasped in exactly the same posture as hers. Only his eyes were different. He could dream, that one. But his dreams would not be many-coloured, or dark shot with flame like Marya’s. No, they’d be cold, she thought, or gross at moments. Almost certainly gross with those pale blue, secretive eyes. It seemed to her that, staring at the couple, she had hypnotized herself into thinking, as they did, that her mind was part of their minds and that she understood why they both so often said in exactly the same tone of puzzled bewilderment: ‘I don’t see what you’re making such a fuss about.’ Of course! And then they wanted to be excessively modern, and then they’d think: ‘After all, we’re in Paris.’

There they were. And there Marya was; haggard, tortured by jealousy, burnt up by longing.

They reached Brunoy. The cab was there and Lois said, exactly as Marya had known she would say: ‘I must stop on the way because there’s not much to eat in the house.’

The old horse set off at a jog-trot up the street and stopped outside the grocer’s shop with its display of piles of dried fruit, packets of coffee and a jovial advertisement for Pâtés de la Lune. Next door, in the hairdresser’s window, was the bust of a pink and white lady in a provocative attitude and a huge bottle of bright green liquid; then came a shoemaker’s necklaces of hobnailed boots.

It was all very peaceful.

Lois came out, accompanied by a boy carrying parcels; the cabman flicked up his horse; they passed the last houses and the road stretched long and grey in front of them. Marya sat squeezed between the Heidlers, listening to the melancholy sound of the hoofs and the rattling of the old cab. In the dusk the trunks of the trees gleamed as though they were made of some dull metal, but when they had been driving for half an hour it had grown dark and she could only see the shadows of the branches running along in front of the cab. There were lights in the windows of a straggling row of small houses.

The cab stopped. They got out, walked along a muddy path, and Lois pushed a door open and led the way into a room with gay check curtains, straw armchairs, and a divan with coloured cushions. The table was laid ready for a meal.

‘D’you want to go up?’ asked Lois. ‘Here’s a candle for you. You know where your room is?’

Marya said that she remembered. She went through the kitchen, up a narrow staircase into a room which smelt sweet and cool. Rabbits chased each other over the wallpaper. The window was wide open and the stillness outside seemed wonderful after the shriek of Paris. Soft, like velvet.

‘Hurry up,’ called Lois from the foot of the stairs. ‘H. J.’s mixing the cocktails.’

Marya thought: ‘Oh, Lord! what a fool I am.’ Her heart felt as if it were being pinched between somebody’s fingers. Cocktails, the ridiculous rabbits on the wallpaper. All the fun and sweetness of life hurt so abominably when it was always just out of your reach.

Dinner was a silent, solemn meal. A dog howled with melancholy persistency. Lois sat with an invulnerable expression on her dark face. It was as if she were saying: ‘You can’t down me. My roots go very deep.’ She ate heartily and rather noisily, drank a good deal more than usual, and then announced that she was going to bed.

‘Goodnight, you two.’

The door shut sharply behind her.

* * * * *

‘You’re not going,’ said Heidler to Marya. He came over to take her in his arms.

‘You must be mad,’ she told him fiercely. ‘D’you think I am a _bonne_ or something to be made love to every time the mistress’s back is turned? Can’t you see? You must be the cruellest devil in the world.’ She burst into miserable tears.

‘I’m as unhappy as you are,’ muttered Heidler. His face looked white and lined. He began to argue: ‘I don’t show it as much as you do, because I’ve trained myself not to show things, but I’m so miserable that I wish I were dead. You don’t help at all, Mado. You make things worse. I love you; I can’t help it. It’s not your fault; it’s not my fault. I love you; I’m burnt up with it. It’s a fact. There it is, nobody’s fault. Why can’t you just accept it instead of straining against it all the time? You make things so difficult for me and for yourself.’

She asked him if he really imagined she could live there between them. And as she asked it, she thought: ‘I wonder how many times I’ve said that. A vain repetition, that’s what it is. A vain repetition.’

‘I don’t see why not,’ he said slowly. ‘After all, you’re supreme here; you’ve only to say what you want and it will be done.’

There was a loud bump from upstairs. Heidler remarked indifferently:

‘There’s Lois falling about.’

‘Oh, you must go up,’ said Marya in a very low voice, ‘She may be ill--’

‘I’m going,’ he answered wearily, taking one of the lamps.

He was away for quite a long time, and she waited with her head in her hands, listening.

Steps, more bumps, the dog in the garden of the next cottage still howling. Then Heidler tramped down the creaking stairs again, the lamp with the green and yellow check shade in his hand.

‘Poor Lois is quite seedy,’ he remarked, putting the lamp down on the table with an expressionless face. ‘She’s been awfully sick, nearly fainted.’

Marya asked, without lifting her eyes: ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Well,’ said Heidler, ‘she thinks it’s the cassoulet. So do I. I don’t trust this tinned stuff.’

Of course, there they were: inscrutable people, invulnerable people, and she simply hadn’t a chance against them, naïve sinner that she was.

* * * * *

The night before they were to return to Paris she woke about midnight to a feeling of solitude and desolation. She had gone with Lois down to the village to buy plants, and they had walked almost all the way in dead silence. It was comical, of course, and degrading. They were like two members of a harem who didn’t get on. When Lois did speak to her it was with a strained politeness which at moments was cringing--as if she said: I must keep her in a good temper. Marya was brooding, nervous, waiting and hoping for the violent reaction that might free her from an impossible situation.

The room was full of night noises. ‘After all,’ she thought, ‘I can’t lie here for ever listening to these cracks and tappings.’ She got up, lit the lamp and went downstairs for a bottle of Vittel and a book. There was a light under the sitting-room door. Voices. A vague murmur from Heidler. And then Lois, very clear and loud:

‘And she’s so rude sometimes--surly. It gets on my nerves. Her whole attitude gets on my nerves. I don’t trust her, let me tell you that. She isn’t to be trusted.’

Another murmur from Heidler.

‘They’re talking about me,’ Marya told herself. ‘They’re sitting there talking about me. Those two. I can’t stick this,’ she thought. ‘Not a minute longer. It’s got to finish, quick.’

Then she realized that she was holding the lamp at a dangerous angle and put it down on the kitchen table. But her breath had gone. One moment to fill her lungs--she didn’t want to stammer stupidly--then she opened the door as noisily as she could.

‘Hullo!’ said Heidler, looking round.

Lois made a wincing movement with her mouth and pulled her dressing-gown together at the throat, looking frightened.

Marya told them: ‘I heard what you said just now.’

‘Well, why not?’ said Heidler with an expression of good-natured sarcasm.

‘You were talking about me.’

‘Well,’ he asked again, ‘and why shouldn’t we?’

‘You mustn’t think....’ Her breath had gone again and her voice trembled. ‘You mustn’t think that I don’t realize ... that I haven’t realized for a long time the arrangement that you and Lois have made about me.’

‘You’re mad,’ said Lois with indignation.

‘You have made an arrangement!’ said Marya loudly. ‘Not in so many words, perhaps, a tacit arrangement. If he wants the woman let him have her. Yes. D’you think I don’t know?’

Heidler got up and said nervously: ‘Don’t shout. You can hear every single word that’s said at Madame Guillot’s next door!’

‘_Tant mieux!_’ screamed Marya. ‘_Tant mieux, Tant mieux!_’

Lois made a nervous movement.

‘No, let me talk to her,’ said Heidler. ‘You don’t understand how to deal with this sort of woman; I do.’

It was horrible, the power he had to hurt her.

‘Look out, Heidler,’ she said.

‘Don’t be hysterical,’ he told her with contempt, ‘talk calmly. What do you want? What’s it all about?’

But every vestige of coherence, of reason had fled from her brain. Besides, however reasonably or coherently she talked, they wouldn’t understand, either of them. If she said: ‘You’re torturing me, you’re mocking me, you’re driving me mad,’ they wouldn’t understand.

She muttered: ‘I’m not going to live with Lois and you any longer. I--am--not! And you must arrange....’

‘Ah!’ said Heidler, ‘it’s a question of money. I rather thought that was what you were getting at.’

She jumped forward and hit him as hard as she could.

‘Horrible German!’ she said absurdly. ‘Damned German! _Crapule!_’ She stood panting, waiting for him to drop his arm that she might hit again.

‘You’re quite right,’ he muttered, and put his head in his hands. ‘You’re quite right. Oh God! Oh God!’

Lois went up to him and he lifted his head and looked at her with hatred.

‘Leave me alone,’ he said. ‘I’ve done with you.’

She began to talk in a caressing voice.

‘Damn you, leave me alone!’ he shouted, and pushed her so that she staggered back against the wall. Then he buried his face in his arms again and began to sob.

Marya’s calm came back to her as theirs disappeared. She began to think how ridiculous it all was, that it was chilly, that she wanted to go upstairs, that she had only imagined the love and hate she felt for these two, that she had only imagined that such emotions as love and hate existed at all. She stood looking at the floor, feeling undecided and self-conscious. Then:

‘I’m awfully drunk,’ said Heidler suddenly, in a calm and as it were explanatory way. ‘I’m going to bed. I shan’t remember a thing about all this tomorrow morning.’

‘He always does that,’ Lois remarked in a sisterly manner when he had gone. The contempt had left her voice. It was as if she respected the outburst which seemed to Marya more and more ridiculous and inexcusable.

‘When there’s been a scene he always says, next morning, that he was drunk and that he doesn’t remember anything that happened. It’s his way of getting out of things.... Why did you come downstairs?’

‘I was thirsty.’

‘Oh, were you?’ Lois said. ‘I’ll bring you up a bottle of Vittel.’

Marya stared at her, answered with the uttermost politeness: ‘No, please don’t bother,’ and left her anxiously picking up the chair that had fallen down.

* * * * *

When she woke next morning the whole thing seemed very unreal and impossible. But even while it was going on it had seemed unreal. She had felt like a marionette, as though something outside her were jerking strings that forced her to scream and strike. Heidler, weeping, was a marionette, too. And Lois, anxious-eyed, in her purple dressing-gown. ‘Anyhow,’ thought Marya, ‘I’m going away. I’ll stick to that.’

Peace, the normal, reigned downstairs. Madame Guillot was in the kitchen, bustling about and singing.

‘_Bonjour, mademoiselle_,’ said Madame Guillot, smiling. ‘_Pardon. Madame._’

Twenty years ago Madame Guillot’s husband had killed her lover--or the other way round. In any case there had been a tragedy and a scandal, and things had apparently been made pretty hot for Madame Guillot by the village in general. But now here she was singing away among her pots and pans, and her fat back seemed to say: ‘Life has got to be lived, mademoiselle or madame. One might as well be cheerful about it.’ It was a lovely blue day, too.

‘Good morning, my dear,’ said Heidler. ‘The fly will be here at eleven. I’m coming with you to Paris to help you to find an hotel.’

He looked so calm that their dispute seemed more incredible than ever.

‘Lois has gone to the village to shop. She wants to stay on here for a few days and I shall probably come straight back. About money. Well, we’ll talk that over at lunch.’

She flushed and turned her head away.

‘Look here, H. J....’

‘I’m not going to discuss last night,’ interrupted Heidler. ‘If you’re not happy here we must find you an hotel, that’s all. But I don’t intend to let you go. Don’t you make any mistake about that. Of course, if you force me to break with Lois I will. Is that what you’re trying to do?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘No. You don’t understand me. I’m not trying to force you to do anything.’

He repeated: ‘I’ll break with her and take you away somewhere. Is that what you want?’

‘No, not for anything,’ said Marya again. ‘No, I can’t do that.’ She added in a very low voice: ‘Be kind to Lois, H. J.’

‘Ah?’ remarked Heidler. ‘H-m!’

He looked half contemptuous, half pitiful, as if he were thinking: ‘No, she can’t play this game.’

Marya went on sullenly: ‘But I couldn’t help last night. I couldn’t stick it any longer.’

‘I’m not saying,’ he told her, with a judicial expression, ‘that I don’t see your point of view.’

She said: ‘Why did you say such a damnable thing to me last night? About money.’

‘I don’t remember saying anything about it,’ he answered. ‘I remember that you were rather damnable.’

He was still looking steadily at her. His eyes were clear, cool and hard, but something in the depths of them flickered and shifted. She thought: ‘He’d take any advantage he could--fair or unfair. Caddish he is.’ Then as she stared back at him she felt a great longing to put her head on his knees and shut her eyes. To stop thinking. Stop the little wheels in her head that worked incessantly. To give in and have a little peace. The unutterably sweet peace of giving in.

She pressed her lips together and said: ‘Well, you did. And I hit you. And I’m jolly glad I hit you, too. Look here, I must go and pack.’

‘Lois will come up and help you,’ said Heidler. ‘Yes. I remember your hitting me--quite well.’

When Lois appeared she said, in an oddly apologetic manner: ‘You know, Mado, you can’t think how sorry I am about all this. What an awful pity I think it is.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ answered Marya coldly. She hated Lois. She hated her air of guilt. She hated her eyes of a well-trained domestic animal.

Lois continued, with suspicion: ‘You are not going to talk to anybody in Paris about all this, are you?’

‘Who could I talk to?’ asked Marya in an aggressive voice.

* * * * *

But in the cab she said to Heidler over and over again: ‘Oh, Heidler, be good to Lois, be good to Lois, you must be good to Lois.’

‘I shouldn’t worry too much about Lois if I were you,’ Heidler answered.