He murmured, hesitatingly: "Well, you see--but I really dare not--I was
working last night very late and quite early this morning on the article
upon Algeria, upon which Monsieur Walter asked me to write, and I could
not get on with it--I tore up all my attempts. I am not accustomed to
this kind of work, and I came to ask Forestier to help me this once--"
She interrupted him, laughing heartily. "And he told you to come and see
me? That is a nice thing."
"Yes, madame. He said that you will get me out of my difficulty better
than himself, but I did not dare, I did not wish to--you understand."
She rose, saying: "It will be delightful to work in collaboration with
you like that. I am charmed at the notion. Come, sit down in my place,
for they know my hand-writing at the office. And we will knock you off
an article; oh, but a good one."
He sat down, took a pen, spread a sheet of paper before him, and waited.
Madame Forestier, standing by, watched him make these preparations, then
took a cigarette from the mantel-shelf, and lit it.
"I cannot work without smoking," said she. "Come, what are you going to
say?"
He lifted his head towards her with astonishment.
"But that is just what I don't know, since it is that I came to see you
about."
She replied: "Oh, I will put it in order for you. I will make the sauce,
but then I want the materials of the dish."
He remained embarrassed before her. At length he said, hesitatingly: "I
should like to relate my journey, then, from the beginning."
Then she sat down before him on the other side of the table, and looking
him in the eyes:
"Well, tell it me first; for myself alone, you understand, slowly and
without forgetting anything, and I will select what is to be used of
it."
But as he did not know where to commence, she began to question him as a
priest would have done in the confessional, putting precise questions
which recalled to him forgotten details, people encountered and faces
merely caught sight of.
When she had made him speak thus for about a quarter of an hour, she
suddenly interrupted him with: "Now we will begin. In the first place,
we will imagine that you are narrating your impressions to a friend,
which will allow you to write a lot of tom-foolery, to make remarks of
all kinds, to be natural and funny if we can. Begin:
"'My Dear Henry,--You want to know what Algeria is like, and you shall.
I will send you, having nothing else to do in a little cabin of dried
mud which serves me as a habitation, a kind of journal of my life, day
by day, and hour by hour. It will be a little lively at times, more is
the pity, but you are not obliged to show it to your lady friends.'"
She paused to re-light her cigarette, which had gone out, and the faint
creaking of the quill on the paper stopped, too.
"Let us continue," said she.
"Algeria is a great French country on the frontiers of the great unknown
countries called the Desert, the Sahara, central Africa, etc., etc.
"Algiers is the door, the pretty white door of this strange continent.
"But it is first necessary to get to it, which is not a rosy job for
everyone. I am, you know, an excellent horseman, since I break in the
colonel's horses; but a man may be a very good rider and a very bad
sailor. That is my case.
"You remember Surgeon-Major Simbretras, whom we used to call Old
Ipecacuanha, and how, when we thought ourselves ripe for a twenty-four
hours' stay in the infirmary, that blessed sojourning place, we used to
go up before him.
"How he used to sit in his chair, with his fat legs in his red trousers,
wide apart, his hands on his knees, and his elbows stuck, rolling his
great eyes and gnawing his white moustache.
"You remember his favorite mode of treatment: 'This man's stomach is
out of order. Give him a dose of emetic number three, according to my
prescription, and then twelve hours off duty, and he will be all right.'
"It was a sovereign remedy that emetic--sovereign and irresistible. One
swallowed it because one had to. Then when one had undergone the effects
of Old Ipecacuanha's prescription, one enjoyed twelve well-earned hours'
rest.
"Well, my dear fellow, to reach Africa, it is necessary to undergo for
forty hours the effects of another kind of irresistible emetic,
according to the prescription of the Compagnie Transatlantique."
She rubbed her hands, delighted with the idea.
She got up and walked about, after having lit another cigarette, and
dictated as she puffed out little whiffs of smoke, which, issuing at
first through a little round hole in the midst of her compressed lips,
slowly evaporated, leaving in the air faint gray lines, a kind of
transparent mist, like a spider's web. Sometimes with her open hand she
would brush these light traces aside; at others she would cut them
asunder with her forefinger, and then watch with serious attention the
two halves of the almost impenetrable vapor slowly disappear.
Duroy, with his eyes, followed all her gestures, her attitudes, the
movements of her form and features--busied with this vague pastime which
did not preoccupy her thoughts.
She now imagined the incidents of the journey, sketched traveling
companions invented by herself, and a love affair with the wife of a
captain of infantry on her way to join her husband.
Then, sitting down again, she questioned Duroy on the topography of
Algeria, of which she was absolutely ignorant. In ten minutes she knew
as much about it as he did, and she dictated a little chapter of
political and colonial geography to coach the reader up in such matters
and prepare him to understand the serious questions which were to be
brought forward in the following articles. She continued by a trip into
the provinces of Oran, a fantastic trip, in which it was, above all, a
question of women, Moorish, Jewish, and Spanish.
"That is what interests most," she said.
She wound up by a sojourn at Saida, at the foot of the great tablelands;
and by a pretty little intrigue between the sub-officer, George Duroy,
and a Spanish work-girl employed at the _alfa_ factory at Ain el Hadjar.
She described their rendezvous at night amidst the bare, stony hills,
with jackals, hyenas, and Arab dogs yelling, barking and howling among
the rocks.
And she gleefully uttered the words: "To be continued." Then rising, she
added: "That is how one writes an article, my dear sir. Sign it, if you
please."
He hesitated.
"But sign it, I tell you."
Then he began to laugh, and wrote at the bottom of the page, "George
Duroy."
She went on smoking as she walked up and down; and he still kept looking
at her, unable to find anything to say to thank her, happy to be with
her, filled with gratitude, and with the sensual pleasure of this
new-born intimacy. It seemed to him that everything surrounding him was
part of her, everything down to the walls covered with books. The
chairs, the furniture, the air in which the perfume of tobacco was
floating, had something special, nice, sweet, and charming, which
emanated from her.