Weighed down by his troubles, Valjean had paid little attention to the house he found himself in, whereas had he visited in better circumstances he would have been very interested indeed to see what the Inspector had made of his residence. Let us, in his stead, open our eyes and look now.
It was an old house, which made it neither as tall nor as fussy upon the division of rooms as its modern kin. Along the far wall by a door that lead to a garden, was a sink and a wide cutting block set beneath the window. Then came the narrow larder cupboard, and in the alcove formed between this and the stairs, shelves had been fitted to hold crockery and kettle, pans, cutlery and other kitchen necessities.
Away from the back wall, the character of the room changed from that of kitchen to that of gentleman's drawing room. To the left what had once been a large linen press or dresser had been adapted and forced into service as a combination of library and writing-desk. The wood still held a faint scent of beeswax, lavender and tarragon as if haunted by the ghost of its earlier life. A high-backed, battered leather chaise sat before the desk.
Opposite was the table close to the hearth with chairs at either side, where the two men currently sat. Behind Valjean on the mantelpiece were three handsome brass candle sticks, a pewter plate polished so it shone almost as fair as silver, and two jugs with patterns upon their glaze. The walls were unadorned and had at the start of their existence been painted what must have been a deep shade close to mulberry; this over years assaulted by both sun and wash-cloth, had faded to an agreeable stormy colour. The floor was tiled in stone or clay of a bleak hue, but across this at an angle so it traversed from desk to hearth had been lain a vast rug which was the most singular thing by far about the entire room. It was old, of that there was no doubt, and its span proclaimed it had come from grander surroundings before its retirement here. The weave although worn was still thick, the thread unusual shades of birch-bark, royal blue, dove grey, indigo and gold. The pattern upon it was more mystifying still: it spread naturally like flames or vines, sometimes suggesting clouds, sometimes brambles, here and there with the look of a Celestial dragon.
There is, as with all things of character and antiquity a story as to how it came to be within old Archard Javert's house. But there is a time and a place for such things, and I shall not preempt Valjean in the question of how Javert's family came to have a Tibetan carpet in their possession. For now, let us be content with its splendor, and return to the two men sitting at either side of the scrubbed oak table.
There was silence comprised of two different notes of quiet: Valjean's grave stillness of defeat, and Javert's voiceless calculating as he sought through questions in his mind and discarded them like stale bread when they proved unsatisfactory. It was not, as has been shown before, a silence that lasted over-long. Two men with such broad similarities, stark differences and long histories cannot sit in one another's company without speaking: they (much as they might deny it) delight too much in cataloguing the points of similarity and the chasms of difference between them, like cartographers mapping the land.
"A year's absence teaches me that you were unable to journey here without cause. Perhaps," Javert suggested, "that you did not wish to journey here at all..."
That sparked the beaten man to find his voice. "No! I..."
Javert held up his hand. "Peace! It doesn't matter to me why you did not visit. Rather, I am interested in why you did." Silver eyes studied Valjean from across the table with the cool intensity of a logistician asking why the mouse ran hither instead of thither in its search for food. "I must surmise – given your aptitude for it – that you came here because you were running away. I mean no disrespect; but you have had a lifetime of being hunted – in such a situation one fights or one runs. You, after Toulon, always had a reluctance to do violence. So you ran," he concluded, "to a place you hoped would lend you aid or at least a haven. Here. That being the case, it would be tantamount to fecklessness to leave." His words held a casual detachment, as if he was not a player in the scene but a member of the audience and could wash his hands of the whole matter whenever he wished simply by leaving his seat.
A second silence, shorter yet more profound than the first. "Valjean!" the Inspector said, leaning forward a little, his voice filled with an urgency and feeling it had earlier lacked. "Make a stand. What is so terrible it would bring you here from Paris and yet you fear to tell me?" He looked equal parts angered and entreating; his brows had burrowed down at the bridge of his nose and his forehead showed two vertical lines that would not look out of place upon a statue chiselled by a master mason. "Please," he said quietly, and his voice was so low and the sincerity in it so great that were I not able to tell you emphatically that it was so you would doubt your own ears.
As if to compound this doubt, Javert drank a mouthful of wine and placed the half-full beaker upon the table with a snap. "You are killing yourself," he announced coldly to the room in general. A grimace and his tone rose from matter of fact to false levity. "An act which is more commonly termed suicide and is, I do seem to recall reading somewhere, a mortal sin..."
"I could never..."
Javert swore, viciously and at length, a string of invectives that would give even the most seasoned dock-worker pause for thought. He passed his hand over his own eyes, resting his fingers for a moment by those twin lines which knifed down above his nose, natural scars forged from frowning and so ingrained that they never entirely disappeared even in repose. "Let's not waste time in pointless argument; I'll explain it for you. I know very well you can swim. If I saw you thrown into the sea and watched as you lifted not one limb to save yourself... Well. I would call that suicide – no, worse - I would call that bowing out. At least have the courage of your conviction if you're set upon such a task – take a pistol and blow out your own brains. I'm certain I could find you one if the need was that great."
Valjean's mind had not recovered from its earlier exhaustion and turmoil and so he responded to the words offered to him like one in shock, addressing only the most immediate point, and that with a bewildered air. "I do not – I - I could not kill myself..."
"No?" Javert asked with an unpleasant edge. "So what is it you have been doing? Your hand is unsteady, your eyes are dull, the air rasps in your throat, you are gaunt and wasted – you need a shroud not a coat! Pardieu," he spat, "there are galley slaves twice your age and thrice your strength!"
Despite himself Valjean gave the shadow of a smile. "If they are, that places them well beyond their prescribed three score years and ten."
"Are you calling me a liar?" the Inspector demanded imperiously.
"I should not dare."
He seemed disappointed. "Very well. It was an exaggeration. But that does not dismiss the truth at its core. How long is it since you ate?"
It was clear Valjean did not wish to answer. "A day or so," he allowed.
"And before that?"
Valjean remained silent.
Javert braced his hands against the table and levered himself to his feet. He went to the slate-shelved cupboard and retrieved something on a plate there, and another item from a cutlery box nearby. Long legs made short work of the journey back to the fireside table; he placed a wide slice of glazed tart before his guest as well as a thin-carved horn spoon with a silver tip to its handle before sinking to his seat again.
The ex-convict stared at both with the eyes of a man who feared either might kill him.
Javert tipped his head back on his neck as if it was broken and stared at the plaster and beams of the ceiling for some seconds. Then in a violently fluid movement he quit his chair, retrieved another spoon from the cutlery box and returned. Sitting down with the same aggressive elegance he moved the plate to the middle of the table, stabbed a sliver from off the tart with his spoon and ate it. Every action was a wolf's challenge, every line of him that which proclaimed, 'step up and prove me wrong, cur'. His eyes reflected like lightening in the firelight. "Now you. Or you are forfeit."
Tension held the moment between ultimatum and choice; and then slowly, uncertainly, Valjean reached out and took up the silver-tipped spoon; with it he cut a morsel of tart and ate it.
To we who observe such a scene it is strange; why should Javert abandon conversation and instead make a battle ground of a pastry? And furthermore, why should Valjean let him? With your leave, I shall explain. The Inspector knew that this visit was some final gambit on Valjean's behalf – a physic of kill or cure for what ailed him. More importantly, and here we must thank God for the man's experience and intuition, he knew that if Valjean had not wanted to live he would not have come. Armed with that knowledge he saw a path, one filled with a certain amount of coercion and bullying, which might set things aright.
Javert's soul was not without subtlety, but above all he loved expedience. This game – this challenge – was the clearest path he saw to getting what he desired. He smiled, a wide, harsh flash of teeth. "We will eat. And we will talk." Seeped within those words was a dark and crushing threat of what might happen were his wishes in this matter not obeyed. Javert had as little idea of what he would do if thwarted as Valjean did – and in truth they both knew this too – but somehow that made the unknowable threat all the more terrible.
"Here, I'll begin," he said as if he was offering a boon. "The boy – the revolutionary you rescued. What happened to him?" It will surprise us not at all that the Inspector's supposed beneficence was pointed in the extreme.
"He went home," Valjean imbued the words with a tranquillity he did not feel.
"I know that," he chided. "A poor answer." He nodded to the plate on the table indicating his guest's failure had earnt him another spoonful of the pastry. Mechanically, Valjean obeyed. "Did he live?"
"He did."
"Hm. Were his family grateful?"
"Doubtless they were."
"Doubtless…?" Grey eyes sparked to hold an edge like napped flint and he studied Valjean for several endless seconds. At last he huffed and his mouth twisted in exasperation. "You did something," he accused. "Something inconceivable and stupid and infuriating that I simply will not understand. Out with it. What did you do Valjean?"
"Nothing," he said humbly.
"Nothing? You must have..." The Inspector's words faded as thoughts and possibilities were sorted in his mind and slotted into their most likely places. "You didn't tell them, did you? The little idiot doesn't know it was you he owes his life to." He took a swallow of wine. "Why didn't you tell him?"
"He has other matters to concern him."
"Valjean!" The Inspector had not previously made much use of the ex-convict's name, but now he seemed determined to address the lack and with as much asperity as he could muster. "I did not seek what concerned him – I don't give a damn for his concerns – I sought why you had not told him." A beat. "He has asked who saved him I take it? Oh mon Dieu – tell me he asked!"
"He asked."
"So?"
"I didn't tell him. His mysterious rescuer remains just that – a mystery. The deed was not done for his thanks." Valjean sought to sound reproachful, like a priest reminding his flock that goodness is its own reward. However Javert had not spent overly much of his life listening to priests and as such picked a differing detail from Valjean's statement.
"Why did you do it?" In what he considered a show of good faith, Javert took a second narrow spoonful of caramelised apple.
Valjean looked at the table for some moments and then exchanged his spoon for the cup, gazing bleakly at the dark-hued wine it held. "Atonement." There was a fault-line of uncertainty in his voice.
"For what?"
"I'd wished him dead. I knew he was going to the barricades; I was pleased to think he'd die there." There was anguish in his words and countenance.
"You rescued a man as penance for wishing him dead? No," Javert opinioned. "No, no, no – this is no good. You must have known full well I would ask you questions before you came here, just as you know I have a nose for the truth. If this is to be an interrogation then you can damned well make a full confession or let us drop the subject entirely and speak on the weather instead. Do not fob me off with some half-cut explanation that makes you sound a positive imbecile. Why did you rescue the boy? And – unless you were possessed of a singular political fervour that came and went like a summer cold then you were at the barricade to look out for him. You didn't rescue him by chance or for principle's sake. Who is he to you?"
Valjean raised the cup carefully to his lips and took a swallow of wine as if it was hemlock. "He is the man my daughter Cosette fell in love with."
Javert scratched behind his ear. "You wouldn't be the first father to think ill of their daughter's choice of lover. Come to that if one was to condemn and sentence a man for the thoughts in his head I doubt there would be a single person left at liberty."
Valjean raised his eyes and a half-hearted smile. "Not even you?"
"Not even I," he agreed and drank a mouthful of wine himself. "Very well. It is safe to assume that after hating the boy and wishing him dead, you suffer a fit of conscience and decide instead to be his guardian angel, yes? Not something I hasten to add I would believe of many men, but for you I'll credit it. And you mention nothing of this act of heroics to the boy or his family because... what? You believe it is an imposition to put him in your debt?"
"Something like that."
"Something like that," Javert echoed and then sighed. "Do these dramas befall you?" he mused, "or do you create them for yourself?"
"Says the man who jumped into the Seine."
"So evades the man who followed him!" he shot back. "I'll admit I've had my moments, but I do not delight in making my own life difficult. One could not take on oath the same was true for you. Oh do not look at me like that – come, what is it?" His tone although still brisk was mitescent. "What am I missing? I have a mind for puzzles but I don't indulge in Marseilles cards – tell me the rest of it. Or eat," he offered with false magnanimity.
Valjean took another spoonful, although within his heart and beneath Javert's waiting gaze he knew it was a brief delay and not a pardon. He swallowed. "They are married."
"They? – your daughter and the revolutionary..."
"Baron Pontmercy," he corrected.
"Congratulations and felicitations upon them both," Javert said vaguely. "It is nice to know that the Baron's ideals of Egalité were not a front. Marrying for love the fatherless daughter of a dead street jade." His words were bland, absent of spite but absent of faith also as if he was waiting to hear the catch.
"I drafted papers for her; gave her a respectable family. I am simply her guardian. Cosette's unhappy past is unknown."
Javert snorted, vindicated. "Hm. Are you welcome in their house?"
"I was."
"Dieu, Valjean," he muttered, an edge of distemper in his tone which clearly asked again – what did you do?
"I told Cosette she no longer needed a father, she had a husband."
The Inspector uttered a strangled bark of disbelief. "How do you voice such idiocy with a clear conscience? I don't even know what to say to that."
Valjean's head bowed a little. "Cosette said something similar."
"So, the young lady has more sense than I previously credited her with. What else?"
We, who from this narrative know Valjean like a friend or a brother, have seen his trials and triumphs as they are unfolded before our eyes, would scarce believe that the man who sat in the little house in the Saint Loup district was the same man who had a year ago dragged Marius through the mire of the Paris sewers to safety and scant hours later pulled Javert from the river, then sat up the rest of the night arguing philosophy and the doctrine of God's grace. That man, broad of shoulder, strong of arm, iron of will and with face and eyes possessed of more vitality than the silver-white of his hair or the year of his birth would suggest... that man was worn to a shadow. And sitting at the fireside, still swathed in his heavy greatcoat, as he bowed his head further he seemed to age and wither all the more.
"Cosette arranged that I should have a room at their house, that I should live there as her father still even though I had told her that Faulchlevant – the old gardener at the Convent..."
"The man beneath the cart," Javert interrupted, showing his memory for such detail was sharp as any policeman's should be.
He nodded. "Yes. I had said he was her father – it is not important. I had my chance at such a life myself when I was young – I wasted and ruined it," he said wretchedly. "If I stayed there would always be the risk that my life might stain hers – I couldn't bear for that to happen."
Again those two scars of displeasure deepened upon the Inspector's brow. "Did you not rustle up a shining clean but equally tragic past for yourself when you were scripting one for the Mademoiselle?"
"No." There was such hopelessness in that one short denial that it was unassailable.
Javert bided a moment in silence, looking at his wine cup upon the table. He was a man who despised drunkenness – in himself above all things – but on this night it held a tempting lustre it had previously always lacked. He grimaced but made no move to take up his wine. "So you just left?"
Valjean shook his head at his own folly. "I wasn't strong enough for that... Although I wish to God I had been. I asked permission to visit Cosette and the Baron was good enough to grant it. I called upon her in the early evenings..." In his mind's eye Valjean saw once more the damp, vaulted room with its terracotta tiles upon the floor and pealing ochre paint upon the walls. A mean room meant more for the storage of wine and cold meats than the receiving of visitors; decorated not with charming pictures and velvet curtains but with whorls of dust and the delicate lace of spider's webs. "I..." he faltered. To speak on the lowliness of the surroundings would be to cause Javert to question why his doting daughter and indifferently beneficent son in law had suffered him to be there and not in the drawing room with its plush rugs, wide hearth and welcoming chaises. "I did not intrude. I addressed Cosette with all formality and bid her do likewise."
Javert's head had canted to the right and his eyes narrowed – in both cases by the scarcest of measurements. But it was an attitude that we might interpret as 'you would sell me this bagatelle, but what details are you skimming over?'. A look which Valjean, in his abject misery, did not see.
"I made my appointments briefer by degrees. Then – then some evenings I did not call at all. Days slipped past and I stayed away. She never sent word enquiring as to my absence." His voice had grown quieter as he spoke, and the last of what he said was little more than a whisper: "She did not even notice."