Christmas Holiday (12 page)

Finally an impulse took her to the Salle Pleyel and
there he was, where he had said he would be, waiting for her. His eyes lit up and he shook her warmly by the hand as though they were old friends.

“I’m so glad you’ve come,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for twenty minutes. I was so afraid I’d miss you.”

She blushed and smiled. They went into the concert room and she found he had seats in the fifth row.

“Did you get these given you?” she asked with surprise.

“No, I bought them. I thought it would be nice to be comfortable.”

“What folly! I’m so used to standing.”

But she was flattered by his generosity and when presently he took her hand did not withdraw it. She felt that if it gave him pleasure to hold it, it did her no harm, and she owed him that. During the interval he told her his name, Robert Berger, and she told him hers. He added that he lived with his mother at Neuilly and that he worked in a broker’s office. He talked in an educated way, with a boyish enthusiasm that made her laugh, and there was an animation about him that Lydia could not but feel attractive. His shining eyes, the mobility of his face, suggested an ardent nature. To sit next to him was like sitting in front of a fire; his youth glowed with a physical warmth. When the concert was over they walked along the Champs-Élysées together and then he asked her if she would like some tea. He would not let her refuse. It was a luxury Lydia had never known to sit in a smart tea-shop among well-dressed people, and the appetizing
smell of cakes, the heady smell of women’s perfume, the warmth, the comfortable chairs, the noisy talk, went to her head. They sat there for an hour. Lydia told him about herself, what her father had been and what had happened to him, how she lived now and how she earned her living; he listened as eagerly as he talked. His gray eyes were tender with sympathy. When it was time for her to go he asked her whether she would come to a cinema one evening. She shook her head.

“Why not?”

“You are a rich young man, and …”

“Oh, no, I’m not. Far from it. My mother has little more than her pension and I have only the little I make.”

“Then you shouldn’t have tea at expensive tea-rooms. Anyhow I am a poor working girl. Thank you for all your kindness to me, but I am not a fool; you have been sweet to me, I don’t think it would be very nice of me to accept more of your kindness when I can make no return for it.”

“But I don’t want a return. I like you. I like to be with you. Last Sunday, when you were crying, you looked so touching, it broke my heart. You’re alone in the world, and I—I’m alone too in my way. I was hoping we could be friends.”

She looked at him coolly for a moment. They were the same age, but of course really she was years older than he; his mien was so candid she had no doubt that he believed what he said, but she was wise enough to know that he was talking nonsense.

“Let me be quite frank with you,” she said. “I know
I’m not a raving beauty, but after all I’m young and there are people who think me prettyish, people who like the Russian type, it’s asking too much of me to believe that you are seeking my society just for the pleasure of my conversation. I’ve never been to bed with a man. I don’t think it would be very honest of me if I let you go on wasting your time and your money on me when I have no intention of going to bed with you.”

“That is frank enough in all conscience,” he smiled, oh, so charmingly, “but you see, I knew that. I haven’t lived in Paris all my life without learning something. I know instinctively whether a girl is ready for a little fun or if she isn’t. I saw at once that you were good. If I held your hand at the concert it was because you were feeling the music as deeply as I was, and the touch of your hand—I hardly know how to explain it—I felt that your emotion flowed into me and gave mine a richer intensity. Anyhow there was in my feeling nothing of desire.”

“And yet we were feeling very different things,” she said thoughtfully. “Once I looked at your face and I was startled by its expression. It was cruel and ruthless. It was not like a human face any more, it was a mask of triumphant malice. It frightened me.”

He laughed gaily and his laugh was so young, so musical and care-free, the look of his eyes so tenderly frank, it was impossible to believe that for a moment under the influence of that emotional music his features had borne an expression of such cold ferocity.

“What fancies you have! You don’t think I am a
white-slaver, like at the cinema, and that I am trying to get you into my clutches and shall then ship you out to Buenos Aires?”

“No,” she smiled, “I don’t think that.”

“How can it hurt you to come to the pictures with me? You’ve made the position quite clear and I accept it.”

She laughed now. It was absurd to make so much fuss. She had little enough amusement in her life, and if he liked to give her a treat and was content merely to sit beside her and to talk, she would be a fool to forgo it. After all, she was nothing. She need answer for her actions to nobody. She could take care of herself and she had given him full warning.

“Oh, very well,” she said.

They went to the pictures several times and after the show Robert accompanied Lydia to whichever was the nearest station for her to get a train home. During the little walk he took her arm and for a part of the performance he held her hand, once or twice when they parted he kissed her lightly on both cheeks, but these were the only familiarities he permitted himself. He was good company. He had a chaffing, ironic way of talking about things that pleased her. He did not pretend to have read very much, he had no time, he said, and life was more entertaining than books, but he was not stupid and he could speak intelligently of such books as he had read. It interested Lydia to discover that he had a peculiar admiration for André Gide. He was an enthusiastic tennis-player and he told her that at one time he had been encouraged to take it seriously;
people of importance in the game, thinking he had the making of a champion, had interested themselves in him. But nothing came of it.

“One needs more money and more time to get into the first rank than I could dispose of,” he said.

Lydia had a notion that he was in love with her, but she would not allow herself to be certain of it, for she could not but fear that her own feelings made her no safe judge of his. He occupied her thoughts more and more. He was the first friend of her own age that she had ever had. She owed him happy hours at the concerts he took her to on Sunday afternoons, and happy evenings at the cinema. He gave her life an interest and excitement it had never had before. For him she took pains to dress more prettily. She had never been in the habit of making up, but on the fourth or fifth time she met him she rouged her cheeks a little and made up her eyes.

“What have you done to yourself?” he said, when they got into the light. “Why have you been putting all that stuff on your face?”

She laughed and blushed under her rouge.

“I wanted to be a little more of a credit to you. I couldn’t bear that people should think you were with a little kitchen-maid who’d just come up to Paris from her native province.”

“But almost the first thing I liked in you was that you were so natural. One gets so tired of all these painted faces. I don’t know why, I found it touching that you had nothing on your pale cheeks, nothing on your lips, nothing on your eyebrows. It was refreshing, like a little
wood that you come into after you’ve been walking in the glare of the road. Having no make-up on gives you a look of candour and one feels it is a true expression of the uprightness of your soul.”

Her heart began to beat almost painfully, but it was that curious sort of pain which is more blissful than pleasure.

“Well, if you don’t like it, I’ll not do it again. After all, I only did it for your sake.”

She looked with an inattentive mind at the picture he had brought her to see. She had mistrusted the tenderness in his musical voice, the smiling softness of his eyes, but after this it was almost impossible not to believe that he loved her. She had been exercising all the self-control she possessed to prevent herself from falling in love with him. She had kept on saying to herself that it was only a passing fancy on his part and that it would be madness if she let her feelings run away with her. She was determined not to become his mistress. She had seen too much of that sort of thing among the Russians, the daughters of refugees who had so much difficulty in making any sort of a living; often enough, because they were bored, because they were sick of grinding poverty, they entered upon an affair, but it never lasted; they seemed to have no capacity for holding a man, at least not the Frenchmen whom they generally fell for; their lovers grew tired of them, or impatient, and chucked them; then they were even worse off than they had been before, and often nothing remained but the brothel. But what else was there that she could hope for? She knew very well
he had no thought of marriage. The possibility of such a thing would never have crossed his head. She knew French ideas. His mother would not consent to his marrying a Russian sewing-woman, which was all she was really, without a penny to bless herself with. Marriage in France was a serious thing; the position of the respective families must be on a par and the bride had to bring a dowry conformable with the bridegroom’s situation. It was true that her father had been a professor of some small distinction at the university, but in Russia, before the revolution, and since then Paris swarmed with princes and counts and guardsmen who were driving taxis or doing manual labour. Everyone looked upon the Russians as shiftless and undependable. People were sick of them. Lydia’s mother, whose grandfather had been a serf, was herself hardly more than a peasant, and the professor had married her in accordance with his liberal principles; but she was a pious woman and Lydia had been brought up with strict principles. It was in vain that she reasoned with herself; it was true that the world was different now and one must move with the times: she could not help it, she had an instinctive horror of becoming a man’s mistress. And yet. And yet. What else was there to look forward to? Wasn’t she a fool to miss the opportunity that presented itself? She knew that her prettiness was only the prettiness of youth, in a few years she would be drab and plain; perhaps she would never have another chance. Why shouldn’t she let herself go? Only a little relaxation of her self-control and she would love him madly, it would be a relief not to keep
that constant rein on her feelings, and he loved her, yes, he loved her, she knew it, the fire of his passion was so hot it made her gasp, in the eagerness of his mobile face she read his fierce desire to possess her; it would be heavenly to be loved by someone she loved to desperation, and if it didn’t last, and of course it couldn’t, she would have had the ecstasy of it, she would have the recollection, and wouldn’t that be worth all the anguish, the bitter anguish she must suffer when he left her? When all was said and done, if it was intolerable there was always the Seine or the gas oven.

But the curious, the inexplicable, thing was that he didn’t seem to want her to be his mistress. He used her with a consideration that was full of respect. He could not have behaved differently if she had been a young girl in the circle of his family acquaintance whose situation and fortune made it reasonable to suppose that their friendship would eventuate in a marriage satisfactory to all parties. She could not understand it. She knew that the notion was absurd, but in her bones she had a queer inkling that he wished to marry her. She was touched and flattered. If it was true he was one in a thousand, but she almost hoped it wasn’t, for she couldn’t bear that he should suffer the pain that such a wish must necessarily bring him; whatever crazy ideas he harboured, there was his mother in the background, the sensible, practical, middle-class Frenchwoman, who would never let him jeopardize his future and to whom he was devoted as only a Frenchman can be to his mother.

But one evening, after the cinema, when they were walking to the Metro station he said to her:

“There’s no concert next Sunday. Will you come and have tea at home? I’ve talked about you so much to my mother that she’d like to make your acquaintance.”

Lydia’s heart stood still. She realized the situation at once. Madame Berger was getting anxious about this friendship that her son had formed, and she wanted to see her, the better to put an end to it.

“My poor Robert, I don’t think your mother would like me at all. I think it’s much wiser we shouldn’t meet.”

“You’re quite wrong. She has a great sympathy for you. The poor woman loves me, you know, I’m all she has in the world, and it makes her happy to think that I’ve made friends with a young girl who is well brought up and respectable.”

Lydia smiled. How little he knew women if he imagined that a loving mother could feel kindly towards a girl that her son had casually picked up at a concert! But he pressed her so strongly to accept the invitation, which he said he issued on his mother’s behalf, that at last she did. She thought indeed that it would only make Madame Berger look upon her with increased suspicion if she refused to meet her. They arranged that he should pick her up at the Porte St. Denis at four on the following Sunday and take her to his mother’s. He drove up in a car.

“What luxury!” said Lydia, as she stepped in.

“It’s not mine, you know. I borrowed it from a friend.”

Lydia was nervous of the ordeal before her and not even Robert’s affectionate friendliness sufficed to give her confidence.

They drove to Neuilly.

“We’ll leave the car here,” said Robert, drawing up to the kerb in a quiet street. “I don’t want to leave it outside our house. It wouldn’t do for the neighbours to think I had a car and of course I can’t explain that it’s only lent.”

They walked a little.

“Here we are.”

It was a tiny detached villa, rather shabby from want of paint and smaller than, from the way Robert had talked, she expected. He took her into the drawing-room. It was a small room crowded with furniture and ornaments, with oil pictures in gold frames on the walls, and opened by an archway on to the dining-room in which the table was set for tea. Madame Berger put down the novel she was reading and came forward to greet her guest. Lydia had pictured her as a rather stout, short woman in widow’s weeds, with a mild face and the homely, respectable air of a person who has given up all thought of earthly vanity; she was not at all like that; she was thin, and in her high-heeled shoes as tall as Robert; she was smartly dressed in black flowered silk and she wore a string of false pearls round her neck; her hair, permanently waved, was very dark brown and though she must have been hard on fifty there was not a white streak in it. Her sallow skin was somewhat heavily powdered. She had fine eyes, Robert’s delicate, straight nose, and the same thin lips,
but in her, age had given them a certain hardness. She was in her way and for her time of life a good-looking woman, and she evidently took pains over her appearance, but there was in her expression nothing of the charm that made Robert so attractive. Her eyes, so bright and dark, were cool and watchful. Lydia felt the sharp, scrutinizing look with which Madame Berger took her in from head to foot as she entered the room, but it was immediately superseded by a cordial and welcoming smile. She thanked Lydia effusively for coming so long a distance to see her.