The Age of Reason (15 page)

‘Not so much as all that,’ thought Daniel, ‘not so much as you think.’

‘As a matter of fact,’ he said; ‘it can’t he so very disagreeable to be a wash-out. I mean an utter and absolute wash-out. Flat and finished. Married, with three children, just as you said. That would quieten a man down.’

‘It would indeed,’ said Mathieu. ‘I meet fellows like that every day: fathers of pupils who come to see me. Four children, unfaithful wives, members of the Parents’ Association. They certainly look quiet enough — I might even say benign.’

‘They’ve got a kind of gaiety of their own, too,’ said Daniel. ‘They make me shudder. So the prospect doesn’t tempt you? I can see you so well as a married man,’ he continued. ‘You’d be just like them, fleshy, neatly-dressed, rather facetious, and with celluloid eyes. Not at all a bad type of fellow, I think.’

‘And not unlike yourself,’ said Mathieu blandly. ‘But I would, none the less, much prefer to ask my brother for four thousand francs.’

He got up. Daniel put Malvina down and got up too. ‘He knows I’ve got the money, and he doesn’t hate me: what on earth can one do to such people?’

The notecase was there; Daniel had only to put his hand in his pocket and say, ‘There you are, my dear chap, I was just putting you off for a bit, — I wasn’t serious.’ But he was afraid he might despise himself.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said in a halting tone. ‘If I see any prospect, I’ll write...’

He had accompanied Mathieu to the outer door.

‘Don’t you worry,’ said Mathieu cheerfully. ‘I’ll manage.’

He shut the door behind him. As Daniel listened to his brisk step on the staircase, he thought: ‘That’s final.’ And he caught his breath. But the feeling didn’t last: ‘Not for a moment,’ he said to himself, ‘did Mathieu cease to be
balanced
, composed, and in perfect accord with himself. He’s certainly upset, but that doesn’t go very deep. Inside, he’s quite at ease.’ Daniel walked up to the mirror and inspected his dark and comely countenance, and thought: ‘All the same, it would be worth a packet if he were forced to marry Marcelle.’

S
HE
had by now been awake a long time: and she must be fretting. He ought to go and cheer her up, and tell her that she would not go there
in any case
. Mathieu recalled with affection her poor ravaged face of the day before, and he suddenly envisaged her as pathetically fragile. He must telephone to her. But he decided to call on Jacques first. ‘In that way, I might perhaps have a bit of good news for her.’ He thought with annoyance of the attitude Jacques would adopt. An attitude of sage amusement, without a hint of reproach or tolerance, his head on one side, and his eyes half-closed. ‘What! In need of money again?’ The prospect made Mathieu’s flesh creep. He crossed the road, thinking of Daniel: he wasn’t angry with him. That was how it was, one couldn’t be angry with Daniel. He was angry with Jacques. He stopped outside a squat building in the Rue Réaumur, and read with irritation, as indeed he always did: ‘Jacques Delarue. Solicitor. Second Floor.’ He went in and took the lift, sincerely hoping that Odette would not be at home.

She was: Mathieu caught sight of her through the glass door of the little drawing-room, sitting on a divan, elegant, slim, and neat to the point of insignificance. She was reading. Jacques often said: ‘Odette is one of the few women in Paris who find time to read.’

‘Would you like to see Madame, sir?’ asked Rose.

‘Yes, just to say good morning: but will you tell Monsieur that I shall be coming along to his office in a few minutes?’

He opened the door, and Odette looked up: it was a lovely face, impassive, much made-up.

‘Good morning, Thieu,’ she said, pleasantly. ‘I hope this is my visit at last.’

‘Your visit?’ said Mathieu.

It was with rather baffled appreciation that he observed that high calm forehead and those green eyes. She was beautiful beyond all doubt, but her beauty was of the kind that vanishes under observation. Accustomed to faces like Lola’s, the sense of which was grossly obvious at once, Mathieu had on countless occasions tried to unify these fluid features, but they escaped him: as a face, Odette’s always seemed to be dissolving, and thus retained its delusive bourgeois mystery.

‘Indeed I wish it were your visit,’ he continued. ‘But I must see Jacques, I want to ask him to do something for me.’

‘You aren’t in such a hurry as all that,’ said Odette. ‘Jacques won’t run away. Sit down here.’ And she made room for him beside her. ‘Take care,’ she said with a smile. ‘One of these days I shall be angry. You neglect me. I have a right to my personal visit, you promised me one.’

‘You mean that you yourself promised to receive me one of these days.’

‘How polite you are,’ she laughed. ‘Your conscience is uneasy.’

Mathieu sat down. He liked Odette but he never knew what to say to her.

‘How are you getting on, Odette?’ He imparted a little warmth to his voice in order to disguise his rather clumsy question.

‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Do you know where I’ve been this morning? To Saint-Germain, with the car, to see Francoise; it was delightful.’

‘And Jacques?’

‘He is very busy these days: I see very little of him. But he’s in rude health as usual.’

Mathieu was suddenly aware of a profound sense of dissatisfaction. She belonged to Jacques. He looked distastefully at the long brown arm emerging from a very simple frock caught in at the waist with a scarlet cord, almost a girl’s frock. The arm, the frock, and the body beneath the frock, belonged to Jacques, as did the easy chair, the mahogany writing-table, and the divan. This discreet and modest lady was redolent of possession. A silence followed, after which Mathieu resumed the warm and rather nasal tone that he kept for Odette. ‘That’s a nice frock of yours,’ he said.

‘Oh come!’ said Odette with a pettish laugh. ‘Leave my frock alone: every time you see me you talk about my frocks. Suppose you tell me what you’ve been doing this week.’

Mathieu laughed too, and began to feel more at ease. ‘In point of fact,’ said he, ‘I have something to say about that frock.’

‘Dear me,’ said Odette, ‘what can it be?’

‘Well, I’m wondering whether you shouldn’t wear ear-rings with it.’

‘Ear-rings?’ Odette eyed him with a strange expression.

‘I suppose you think them vulgar?’

‘Not at all. But they give one a rather forward look.’ And she added brusquely, with a frank laugh: ‘You would certainly be much more at ease with me if I did wear them.’

‘Surely not — why should I?’ said Mathieu vaguely.

He was surprised, and he realized that she was by no means stupid. Odette’s intelligence was like her beauty — there was an elusive quality about it.

A silence fell. Mathieu could think of nothing else to say. And yet he had no desire to go, he enjoyed a sort of complacence in her company.

‘But I mustn’t keep you,’ said Odette kindly. ‘Run along to Jacques, you look as if you had something on your mind.’

Mathieu got up. He remembered that he was going to ask Jacques for money, and felt the tips of his fingers tingle.

‘Good-bye, Odette,’ he said affectionately. ‘No, no, don’t get up. I’ll look in again on my way out.’

Up to what point was she a victim? — he wondered, knocking at Jacques’ door. With that type of woman one never knew.

‘Come in,’ said Jacques.

He rose, alert and erect, and approached Mathieu.

‘Good morning, old boy,’ he said cordially. ‘How are things?’

He looked much younger than Mathieu, although he was the elder of the two: Mathieu thought he was thickening round the hips; though he no doubt wore a body-belt.

‘Good morning,’ said Mathieu, with a friendly smile.

He felt himself at fault: for twenty years he had felt himself at fault each time he recalled or met his brother.

‘Well,’ said Jacques, ‘and what brings you here?’

Mathieu made a gesture of disgust.

‘Something wrong?’ asked Jacques. ‘Look here, take a chair. Would you care for a whisky?’

‘A whisky would go down well,’ said Mathieu. He sat down, his throat felt dry. How about drinking his whisky and clearing out without uttering a word? No, it was too late. Jacques knew perfectly well what was up. He would simply think that his brother hadn’t had the courage to ask him for a loan. Jacques remained standing, he produced a bottle of whisky and filled two glasses.

‘It’s my last bottle,’ he said, ‘but I shan’t get in any more before the autumn. After all, a good gin-fizz is a better drink for the hot weather, don’t you think?’

Mathieu did not reply. There was no affection in his eyes as he looked at that fresh and ruddy face, a young man’s face, and that cropped fair hair. Jacques smiled guilelessly, indeed there was a guileless air about the man that morning. ‘That,’ thought Mathieu savagely, ‘is all put on: he knows why I have come, he is just choosing his attitude.’

‘You know quite well,’ said Mathieu harshly, ‘that I’ve come to touch you for money.’

There, the die was cast. He couldn’t draw back now: his brother had already raised his eyebrows in an expression of profound surprise. ‘He won’t spare me anything,’ thought Mathieu with dismay.

‘Certainly I didn’t know,’ said Jacques, ‘how should I? Do you mean to insinuate that that’s the sole object of your visits?’

He sat down, still very erect, and indeed a trifle stiff, and crossed his legs with an easy swing, as though to make up for the rigidity of his torso. He was wearing a smart sports suit of English tweed.

‘I don’t mean to insinuate anything at all,’ said Mathieu; he blinked and added, as he gripped his glass: ‘But I need four thousand francs by tomorrow.’ (‘He’s going to say no. I hope to goodness he refuses quickly so that I can clear out.’) But Jacques was never in a hurry: he was a lawyer, and he had plenty of time.

‘Four thousand,’ said he, wagging his head with a knowing air. ‘Well, well, well!’

He extended his legs, and eyed his shoes with satisfaction.

‘I find you amusing, Thieu,’ said he. ‘Amusing, and also instructive. Now don’t take offence at what I say to you,’ he said briskly, at a gesture from Mathieu: ‘I have no notion of criticizing your conduct, I’m just turning the thing over in my own mind, viewing it from above — indeed, I would say “from a philosophic standpoint”, if I wasn’t talking to a philosopher. You see, when I think about you, I am the more convinced that one oughtn’t to be a man of principles. You are stiff with them, you even invent them, but you don’t stick to them. In theory, there’s no one more independent, it’s all quite admirable, you live above all class distinctions. Only, I wonder what would become of you if I wasn’t there. Please realize that I am only too happy, being a man without principles, to be able to help you from time to time. But I can’t help feeling that with your ideas I should be rather chary of asking favours from a damned bourgeois. For I am a damned bourgeois,’ he added, laughing heartily. He went on, still laughing: ‘And what is worse, you who despise the family exploit our family ties to touch me for money. For, after all, you wouldn’t apply to me if I wasn’t your brother.’

He assumed a cordial expression and added: ‘All this doesn’t bore you, I hope.’

‘I can’t very well avoid it,’ said Mathieu, laughing too.

He wasn’t going to engage in an abstract discussion. Such discussions, with Jacques, always led to trouble. Mathieu soon lost his self-control.

‘Yes, obviously,’ said Jacques coldly. ‘Don’t you think that with a little organization...? But that’s no doubt opposed to your ideas. I don’t say it’s your fault, mark you: in my view it’s your principles that are to blame.’

‘Well,’ said Mathieu, by way of saying something, ‘the rejection of principles is in itself a principle.’

‘Not much of a one,’ said Jacques.

‘At this moment,’ thought Mathieu to himself, ‘he’s in the mind to part.’ But he looked at his brother’s plump cheeks, florid complexion, his open but rather set expression, and thought with a catch at the heart: ‘He looks hard on the trigger.’ Fortunately, Jacques was again speaking.

‘Four thousand,’ he repeated. ‘It must be a sudden call, for, after all, last week when you... when you came to ask me a small service, there was no question of such a sum.’

‘That is so,’ said Mathieu. ‘I... it dates from yesterday.’

He suddenly thought of Marcelle, he saw her in his mind’s eye, a sinister, naked figure in the pink room, and he added in a pleading tone that took him by surprise: ‘Jacques, I
need
this money.’

Jacques eyed him with curiosity, and Mathieu bit his lips; when they were together the two brothers were not in the habit of displaying their feelings with such emphasis.

‘As bad as all that? I’m surprised. You are certainly not the man... You... in the ordinary way you borrow a little money from me because you either can’t or won’t manage your affairs properly, but I would never have believed... I’m not, of course, asking you any questions,’ he added in a faintly interrogative tone.

Mathieu hesitated: should he tell him it was income-tax? No. Jacques knew he had paid it in May.

‘Marcelle is pregnant,’ he said curtly.

He felt himself blush and shook his shoulders: why not, after all? Why this sudden and consuming shame? He looked straight at his brother with aggressive eyes. Jacques assumed an air of interest.

‘Did you want a child?’ He deliberately pretended not to understand.

‘No,’ said Mathieu, curtly. ‘It was an accident.’

‘It would certainly have surprised me,’ said Jacques, ‘but, after all, you might have wanted to carry your experiences as far as possible outside the established order.’

‘Yes, but it isn’t that at all.’

A silence followed, and then Jacques continued blandly: ‘Then when is the wedding to be?’

Mathieu flushed with wrath: as always, Jacques refused to face the situation candidly, he obstinately revolved around it, and in so doing his mind was searching eagerly for an eyrie from which he could take a vertical view of other people’s conduct. Whatever might be said or done to him, his first reaction was to get above the conflict, he could see nothing except from above, and he had a predilection for eyries.