One afternoon at the end of April, whilst sitting in the Café du Dôme,
drinking a gin and vermouth, Cairn, that imaginative and slightly
sentimental young man, wrote the following pneumatique to Marya.
_Mon vieux_,
_I haven’t met you for an age. Can you come to August’s for lunch
tomorrow--Saturday, one o’clock? Do. I’ll be tickled to death to see
you._
_Yours,
Cairn._
Then, full of imaginative and slightly sentimental resolution, he went
out and posted the pneumatique. ‘For,’ thought he, ‘that girl’s not
getting a fair deal.’
However, throughout luncheon with Marya, he felt doubtful, cautious and
somewhat embarrassed. That day she was not so pretty as he remembered
her. ‘After all,’ he told himself, ‘I’ve got no money. I can’t do
anything for her. She probably knows perfectly well what she’s up to,
and can bargain while the bargaining’s good.’
‘Shall we drink Burgundy?’
‘Yes, let’s,’ said Marya.
He wondered if she knew the sort of thing people were saying about her,
and decided she probably did because her mouth was so hard and her
eyes were so sad. Lost she looked. L’Enfant Perdu or The Babe in the
Wood. Something like that. And she was the type he liked, too. Not a
beautiful specimen of the type, of course.
After the meal was over: ‘Let’s go and have coffee at the Closerie des
Lilas.’
‘Yes, do let’s,’ said Marya.
It was a sunny day and they sat on the terrace. Cairn sneezed and she
started so violently that half her coffee was spilt over into the
saucer.
‘Nerves, nerves,’ said Cairn. ‘Now then, what’s the matter? Something’s
the matter; you’re not looking well.’
She told him irritably: ‘Don’t poor-little-thing me. I can’t stand it
this morning.’
‘You ought to be talked to sensibly,’ said Cairn. ‘Why have you got to
look so peaky all of a sudden?’
‘Because I hate trailing about with the Heidlers.’
He said ‘Oh!’ and looked taken aback.
‘I don’t care,’ said Marya, ‘what it sounds like. There’s the truth.’
Cairn’s little twinkling eyes behind his spectacles were suddenly
very wary. Of course he was a clever young man, but how clever, that
was the question. Clever enough to recognize the truth when he heard
it? Hardly anybody was clever enough for that. People went ludicrously
wrong. You told the truth, the stark truth--or perhaps you gave it
a fig-leaf so as not to harrow too much--and everybody said: ‘Come,
come,’ and ‘Don’t tell me,’ and: ‘Do you think I was born yesterday?’
You told lies and they said: ‘Ah, the _cri du cœur_!’ Supposing that
she said: ‘Very well then, I will tell you. Listen. Heidler thinks he
loves me and I love him. Terribly. I don’t like him or trust him. I
love him. D’you get me? And Lois says that she doesn’t mind a bit and
gives us her blessing--the importance of sex being vastly exaggerated
and any little thing like that. But she says that I mustn’t give her
away. So does Heidler. They call that playing the game. So I have to
trail around with them. And she takes it out of me all the time in all
sorts of ways. I can just keep my end up now, but soon I won’t be able
to. And then, you see, I’m conscience-stricken about her. I’m horribly
sorry for her. But I know that she hasn’t a spark of pity for me. She’s
just out to down me--and she will.’
Supposing that she said all that to this calm, clever young man? No,
his eyes were too cautious. He wouldn’t be clever enough, she decided.
Besides, one didn’t say that sort of thing.
He was asking her reasonably why she didn’t go off if she was not happy.
‘Because I haven’t anywhere else to go. Oh, don’t let’s talk about it.
I realize what a feeble excuse that is. Besides, it isn’t the real
excuse.’
Cairn said slowly that it wasn’t so feeble as all that.
‘Not for a woman, anyway.’
‘For a woman--for a woman. Why this sudden tenderness for the female
sex? But, my poor dear,’ she mocked, ‘you’re positively rococo, as
what’s-her-name would say.’
‘Oh, it’s a sad world!’ grumbled Cairn. ‘Sometimes it’s so difficult to
know what the hell to say.’
‘Don’t say anything,’ she told him firmly.
‘Look here,’ he said, ‘I’ll say this much anyhow. I haven’t got any
money myself, as you know, but I’ll borrow five hundred francs for
you. It’s not much, but, after all, you can live in the Dôme on coffee
and croissants for quite a long time on that. Besides, when I get back
to America I’ll probably be able to send you some more. Heidler is a
humbug,’ he added violently, ‘and God help you if you don’t see it.’
‘You think so?’ asked Marya.
‘I don’t think; I know, and as for Mrs Heidler....’
‘She hates me,’ said Marya in a low voice.
‘Of course she hates you,’ Cairn replied impatiently. ‘What do you
expect? She’d be a very unnatural woman if she didn’t hate you.’
‘But I don’t mind her hating me,’ continued Marya. ‘What I mind is that
she pretends she doesn’t.’
‘That,’ said Cairn, ‘is what is known here as a _moyen classique_.’
‘So it’s as obvious as all that?’ asked Marya after a silence.
‘Oh, yes, it’s fairly obvious.’
Cairn looked away with an embarrassed, even alarmed expression,
fidgeted and cleared his throat.
‘I must go,’ she told him. ‘I’m going to meet Heidler.’
‘Oh, are you?’ said Cairn, looking grim.
‘Yes, at St Julien le Pauvre. He wants to show it to me.’
‘He would,’ muttered Cairn; ‘he would choose a church for a background.
Oh, my God!’
But Marya had decided that Cairn couldn’t help her. He only added a
sharp edge to her obsession.
‘You’ll come on Tuesday?’ said Cairn, still with that air of being
exceedingly embarrassed.
‘Yes,’ she said absently.
There he was, incapable of helping.
Before she had walked three steps from the Closerie des Lilas she had
forgotten all about him.
* * * * *
The church was very cool and dark-shadowed, when they came in out of
the sun. It smelled of candles and incense and ancient prayers. Marya
stood for a long time staring at the tall Virgin and wondered why she
suggested not holiness but rather a large and peaceful tolerance of
sin. We are all miserable sinners and the dust of the earth. A little
more or a little less, a dirty glass or a very dirty glass, as Heidler
would say....
‘And you don’t suppose that it matters to me,’ said the tall Virgin
smiling so calmly above her candles and flowers.
Marya turned to watch Heidler go down on one knee and cross himself as
he passed the altar. He glanced quickly sideways at her as he did it,
and she thought: ‘I’ll never be able to pray again now that I’ve seen
him do that. Never! However sad I am.’ And she felt very desolate.
‘Hep!’ shouted Heidler to a passing taxi. ‘Get in. Look here,’ he
said, ‘I don’t want you to see Cairn again.’
‘All right,’ answered Marya.
His hand was over hers. Peace had descended on her and to that peace
she was ready to sacrifice Cairn or anybody or anything.
‘But I promised to lunch with him on Tuesday.’
‘Well, write and say that you can’t come. You must cut Cairn right out,
you see.’
‘Very well. I’m sorry, because I think he’s kind; I like him.’
‘He’s hysterical,’ said Heidler contemptuously.
The taxi jolted onwards.
‘We want you to come down to Brunoy with us this afternoon.’
‘Oh, no,’ she told him hastily, ‘I don’t want to come.’
‘But you must come. You’re not looking well. We both think you need a
change. What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Why did you stiffen all over like that? Can’t you come just to please
me? Can’t you not go to Fresnes for once?’
‘Yes,’ she said. And stopped herself from saying: ‘I’ll do anything to
please you--anything.’
‘What were you praying about just now?’ she asked him suddenly.
‘You!’ he said.
‘God’s quite a pal of yours?’
‘Yes,’ said Heidler.