“All the more considerate,” pompously added Monsieur Tellier, “that I have company at the present moment.”
Jeanne turned round to see where the company was, and perceived Daniel in his corner. She looked at him with curiosity for a second or two, then she pouted a little with disappointment. She had never got nearer loving anything but the images of the saints at her convent and the lanky youth, with plain features, who stood awkwardly there, by no means recalled to her those saints, with their clear-cut profiles and silky looking beards.
Daniel had lowered his eyes when she turned to look at him. He was blushing and he felt unhappy. Never would he have thought that this meeting, so ardently longed for during many years, would be so painful to him. He remembered the emotion which agitated him when he came to the rue d’Amsterdam; he had a vision of himself in the street, delirious with excitement and dreaming of taking Jeanne in his arms and carrying her off. Now he was there, trembling before the young girl, with not a word to say for himself.
A hidden force, however, seemed to be driving him towards Jeanne. After the first few moments of timidity he was tempted to kneel at her feet. It was not Monsieur Tellier’s presence which restrained him, for he had quite forgotten where he was; but the crushing sense of the true state of affairs rivetted him to the spot. He perceived clearly that Jeanne did not recognise him. He had caught sight of the young girl’s pout, and a deep shame filled his heart with bitterness. She did not love him — she never would — and by that he meant that he could never be as a father to her and she could never be as a daughter to him.
Whilst he thus meditated Jeanne advanced, took up the cage, and tripped away, without answering a single word to her uncle’s remonstrances. When she had left the room Monsieur Tellier said:
“My young friend, I broke off at the theoretical question of association. Put two workmen together...
And so he rambled on for a whole hour. Daniel kept nodding his head as a sign of approval, without listening. He was surreptitiously looking towards the door by which Jeanne had disappeared.
CHAPTER VIII
THE next day Daniel was settled at Monsieur Tellier’s. He was to occupy a rather big room on the fourth storey, in which the windows looked out on the courtyard. He had to work in the mornings from eight o’clock to mid-day in the study. His work consisted in writing a few letters, and listening to the interminable orations of the deputy, who seemed to be trying the effect of his speeches on his secretary. Then in the afternoon Daniel spent his time in arranging the mass of papers which Monsieur Tellier invariably left about. In the evening he was free.
Daniel had expressed a desire to eat in his own room, and the first few days the servants of the establishment did not even know of his presence there. He proceeded straight to the study very quietly. Then he shut himself up, and was seen and heard no more.
One night, however, he went out to see George. His friend found him careworn and anxious-looking. He did not say a word of the life he was now leading. He talked feverishly of the past. George understood that he was seeking consolation in its memories. He proposed to him, not without hesitation, to come back and lodge with him, and take up their common task again. But Daniel refused, almost angrily.
During those sad first days at Monsieur Tellier’s he had only had one idea — to fathom Jeanne’s heart, and find out what they had done with his dear little daughter to make her change so. She was restored to him very different from what he left her, and he asked himself who this grand young lady with the disdainful smile could be.
He turned himself into a sort of private detective. He spied on Jeanne’s actions, taking note of her slightest movements, her slightest word. He was angry that he could not obtain a greater acquaintance with her. All he saw of her was just when she was passing through a room; all he heard of her was just a laugh when she was saying a few hurried words. He dared not approach her more closely. She seemed to him unapproachable, surrounded by a blinding halo. When she was before him in the dazzling brightness of her beauty and youth he felt overpowered as if by the presence of a divinity.
Every afternoon towards four o’clock, when it was fine, he took up his place at the window.”
Below in the courtyard a carriage was nearly always waiting for Madame Tellier and Jeanne, to take them to the Bois de Boulogne. The two ladies slowly descended the doorsteps with trailing skirts, but Daniel had eyes only for the young girl. He studied her least movements. She leant back on the cushions of the carriage with a careless ease that was most distasteful to him. Her toilettes, too, shocked him; he felt that it was all these ribbons and laces that intimidated him and kept him at a distance from her.
The carriage started and Daniel was alone again at his window above the courtyard. The great gulf between him and her seemed blacker and more desolate than ever. He stared sorrowfully at the blank walls, and pondered bitterly over the beautiful dreams he formerly had whilst gazing at the elms in the impasse St. Dominique d’Enfer.
He concluded that Jeanne had a bad disposition, and that the poor dead woman had reason to be afraid for her future. He argued in this way from vexation, angry because he could not understand what he saw going on about him. The transition he had undergone was too abrupt. He had lived himself as austerely as a Benedictine monk in his cell; he knew only the miseries and rough side of life. This big, simple scholar had a holy horror of luxury, and knew absolutely nothing of a woman’s heart. And all of a sudden he found himself face to face with this life of riches and selfish ease; he had to set himself the task of deciphering the mystery of a young girl’s heart. If Jeanne had merely come forward in a friendly way and held out her hand, as George had lately held out his, he would have thought such an action quite natural, for he had no experience of the ways of society. He could not get beyond those, to him, terrifying furbelows, and he imagined that her heart was spoiled.
Kept in a convent till the age of eighteen, Jeanne had preserved all the infantile ways of early childhood. Her heart and mind had been wrapped up in the gossip of her little friends, and far off, at a distance, life seemed to her as a dazzling fairyland which she would enter later. Her days were filled by the thousand and one pretty follies of the education that is given to girls in France. So she had become an excitable child — a doll that was to be prepared for fashion and distinction. She had only a vague memory of her mother. No one spoke to her about her, and she herself only thought of her when she saw the mothers of other girls come into the parlour. She did then feel that there was something lacking in her heart, but she could not tell what it was. As she grew up she became accustomed to the solitude of her life. Her heart had recoiled into itself. She became reckless, almost wicked. Her spirit stirred in her a mocking, aggressive spirit, and she acquired the terrible reputation of being a scoffer. All the tenderness of her affectionate nature went to sleep, so to speak, in the depths of her heart. Even a kiss might perhaps have made a loving, self-sacrificing woman of this sarcastic girl. But then there was no one to give her this kiss.
Then she left the convent and went under the deplorable influence of Madame Tellier. There were two distinct natures in her: the young maiden of mocking spirit, the disdainful rebellious child, and the goodhearted girl who ignored self, and showed, at times, by a mere look, a deeply affectionate disposition. Now she plunged headlong into luxury and gaiety; she satisfied all the feverish desires of her young days, which she had been unable to satisfy. It was a frenzy. At times she felt all the emptiness of the life she led with her aunt, but then she laughed and told herself that she had everything she wanted, and accused herself of longing for things which had no existence. And, truly, love had so far no existence for her. After that she gave herself up wholly to pleasure. She endeavoured to satisfy herself with vanity only; she extracted all the happiness she possibly could from the rustling of her beautiful silks, from the admiration of the crowd, from comfort and wealth; and she thought she was enjoying real life.