They evidently had expected her to be alone and his presence disconcerted them.
They gave him a look of suspicion.
Lydia explained that he was an Englishman, a friend who was spending a few days in Paris.
Charley, a smile on his lips which he sought to make cordial, stretched out his hand; they took it, one after the other, and gave it a limp pressure.
They seemed to have nothing to say.
Lydia bade them sit down and asked them what they would have.
“A cup of coffee.”
“You’ll have something to eat?”
The elder one gave the other a faint smile.
“A cake, if there is one.
The boy has a sweet tooth, and over there, from where we come, there wasn’t much in that line.”
The man who spoke was a little under the middle height.
He might have been forty.
The other was two or three inches taller and perhaps ten years younger.
Both were very thin. They both wore collars and ties and thick suits, one of a gray-and-white check and the other dark green, but the suits were ill-cut and sat loosely on them.
They did not look at ease in them.
The elder one, sturdy though short, had a well-knit figure; his sallow, colourless face was much lined.
He had an air of determination.
The other’s face was as sallow and colourless, but his skin, drawn tightly over the bones, was smooth and unlined; he looked very ill.
There was another trait they shared; the eyes of both seemed preternaturally large, and when they turned them on you they did not appear to look at you, but beyond, with a demented stare, as though they were gazing at something that filled them with horror.
It was very painful.
At first they were shy, and since Charley was shy too, though he tried to show his friendliness by offering them cigarettes, while Lydia, seeming to find no need for words, contented herself with looking at them, they sat in silence.
But she looked at them with such tender concern that the silence was not embarrassing.
The waiter brought them coffee and a dish of cakes.
The elder man toyed with one of them, but the other ate greedily, and as he ate he gave his friend now and then little touching looks of surprised delight.
“The first thing we did when we got out by ourselves in Paris was to go to a confectioner’s, and the boy ate six chocolate eclairs one after the other.
But he paid for it.”
“Yes,” said the other seriously.
“When we got out into the street I was sick.
You see, my stomach wasn’t used to it.
But it was worth it.”
“Did you eat very badly over there?”
The elder man shrugged his shoulders.
“Beef three hundred and sixty-five days of the year.
One doesn’t notice it after a time.
And then, if you behave yourself you get cheese and a little wine. And it’s better to behave yourself.
Of course it’s worse when you’ve done your sentence and you’re freed.
When you’re in prison you get board and lodging, but when you’re free you have to shift for yourself.”
“My friend doesn’t know,” said Lydia.
“Explain to him.
They don’t have the same system in England.”
“It’s like this.
You’re sentenced to a term of imprisonment, eight, ten, fifteen, twenty years, and when you’ve done it you’re a libere.
You have to stay in the colony the same number of years that you were sentenced to.
It’s hard to get work.
The liberes have a bad name and people won’t employ them.
It’s true that you can get a plot of land and cultivate it, but it’s not everyone who can do that.
After being in prison for years, taking orders from the warders and half the time doing nothing, you’ve lost your initiative; and then there’s malaria and hook-worm; you’ve lost your energy.
Most of them get work only when a ship comes in to harbour and they can earn a little by unloading the cargo.
There’s nothing much for the libere but to sleep in the market, drink rafia when he gets the chance, and starve.