Chapter Text
“True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.”
-George Washington
***
Valjean sat staring out the window of his room, but his thoughts were not on the garden below. Clouded by guilt, they pored over past conversations.
How many subtle hints had there been of the man’s financial situation?
‘I thought you preferred sweet things to bitter?’
‘I also prefer … the prudence of frugality.’
‘I dislike philanthropy.’
‘He hardly ever eats anything. Big man like that … You’d assume he’d have an appetite to match.’
Valjean’s eyes flicked back and forth, frowning despairingly.
‘This ought to have been examined by a doctor.’
‘Doctors cost money.’
‘You summoned a doctor for me.’
‘That was different.’
‘How?’
‘Why pay for something I can fix myself?’
‘This is not the sort of thing to be stingy about, Javert.’
‘I’m an old hand at this.’
‘You are surely in great deal of pain from that, and yet you take nothing for it.’
‘So?’
‘So, why? Why torture yourself?’
‘I don’t need it, that’s why. It is an unnecessary expense.’
Maybe some of it was simply stubbornness, or frugality for prudence’s sake alone, but it was possible that Javert hadn’t even the funds for food, or healthcare, beyond what was strictly necessary for his own survival.
Valjean knew that the man did not have that much money. For how long he’d known, he could not say. But police salaries were not very high, even in cities such as this. Besides that, the man had no family or friends to speak of, only himself to rely on.
Of course Javert was prideful about it. Why would he not be? To be able to support oneself, fully and truly, is something anyone should be proud of. And it was not hard to understand why he would refuse assistance, for all his talk of “self-respect” and “dignity” and “debts”. It was not hard to see why he would rather scrape by on what he could earn by honest means than accept another’s help.
If the man would have allowed it—would have been relieved by it—Valjean would have given him thousands. But Javert abhorred all charity, all pity.
And yet! How could Javert not resent a man who had a fortune, and spent none of it, hoarding it away all his life? Who had the ability to live a life of luxury, but whose humility would not permit him to?
To have riches incomprehensible, and to bestow them on someone who had no need of them, and never knew that they existed? When there were so many others that were truly in need? Of course the man was frustrated with him.
And Valjean understood it! Perfectly! And it agonized him to his core.
He had felt guilt over having the money ever since he’d withdrawn it. Sure he needed something to live off of, and to provide for Cosette, and any possible needs that might arise—but the amount he had far surpassed any conceivable need. He knew that. And he had withdrawn it anyway. Because otherwise, it would have been seized by the state following his arrest, and then it would never help anyone. At least, not in the ways that he felt it should.
Could he have donated anonymously to charitable organizations? School, hospitals, churches? Possibly. And yet he hadn’t. And he had always felt troubled by that. But even anonymous, there was this fear in him of discovery, of suspicion, questions. Sure he gave alms to every beggar he met, sure he bestowed coins of silver and gold upon gamins, and yet—yet he could have done more. But something compelled him, some secret dread, to hold on to what money he could—even if it was a ludicrous sum—and distribute it only in small amounts. There was safety in financial security, a safety that he knew was very, very hard to come by. The memory of his family’s plight in Faverolles had never left him.
Was he a hypocrite, then? Was it selfish of him to hold onto that money, even if he’d done it in part for the sake of his daughter? He didn’t know, but he felt certain that Javert thought so. And he could not bring himself to blame him. Christ himself had asked his followers to give up all their earthly treasures, and deliver them to those less fortunate.
How could Valjean repair this rent between them? He suspected it was not envy that compelled Javert, but anger. And such a delicate problem it was.
Valjean could not give him money; could not even offer to. He knew it would only aggravate the man further. Yet he wanted so badly to help him, if Javert was truly struggling to make ends meet. And as long as the man struggled, and Valjean did not, there would always be this divide. But the man did not want his help. The man had never wanted his help.
On top of everything, Valjean felt a crushing shame that he often tried to solve problems by simply throwing money at them. So many things could not be fixed that way, he knew. He had once had power to make legislation and reforms that truly made a difference—to build things—but ever since he’d been stripped of that, he was powerless to do anything more than offer up condolences and banknotes.
How it all must look to Javert! Conceited. Arrogant. What kind of man did Javert think he was?
‘Look at this false humility he cultivates!’ he could hear the district attorney saying.
Acting so humble, when his means were in no way meager … Handing out a few coins here and there as if that would somehow change the way things were …
Javert had been diligently slaving away all his life for mere change, and here he was, not having worked a single day in years, and sitting atop a treasure he had barely touched.
It was no wonder the man had stormed out on him.
Valjean put his head in his hand.
***
Near the end of the week, a red-haired little gamin dropped off a note.
Giving the boy a few coins and sending him on his way, Valjean unfolded it.
Upon the rag paper was merely ‘#55?’
The first thing Javert had ever written him in all this time, and, of course, it was nothing more than a number with a question mark attached to it. No signature, either—though he supposed that there wasn’t a need. Javert was the only person who would ever send such an informal correspondence.
More surprising than this, however, was the fact that Javert had sent him anything at all—let alone now, when he seemed to be so frustrated with him. Valjean hadn’t been sure the man had wanted to see him again this week. But then, perhaps that was why Javert had sent a note.
Confused, but slightly encouraged, Valjean stuck the paper in his pocket.
***
The light was fading in the garden.
Valjean had been waiting anxiously for hours, and he was beginning to worry the man would not show. He had cleaned the whole house, if for nothing else than to give him something to do, and still there was no sign of him.
But, at half past eight, just as the sun was slipping beneath the horizon, he heard a knock at the door.
Javert stood on the step with a shadow on his face.
Hastily, as though it had been waiting to burst out of him the whole week (which it likely had), Valjean apologized. “Javert, if I have offended you somehow, I am sor—”
“You have not offended me,” the man cut him off, walking past him into the house.
Utterly perplexed, Valjean followed him inside.
***
Javert remained silent as Valjean built a fire in the hearth, sitting hunched over on one of the armchairs before it. When offered something to drink, the man shook his head.
With a worried sigh, Valjean sat down in the chair opposite him.
The house had turned dark, the only light coming from the flickering flames that were inching their way up the logs. They cast an orange glow on their faces.
Both of them seemed to be waiting for something, and Valjean did not know what.
“I should not have walked out on you like that,” Javert finally said. He had not turned to look at him, rather, he was gazing solemnly at the fire. The corner of his mouth twitched into a frown for a split-second. “It was rude of me, and I apologize. You have not … done anything to warrant my anger.”
“It’s all right,” Valjean told him. “I understand why you—”
“No. You don’t.”
A wave of mortification hit him.
Amid the pops and crackles of the fire, he waited for an explanation—or further rebuke.
“It’s true that my salary is low,” the man went on. It was clear, from the way he spoke, that this was not an easy thing to say. “And it’s true that I cannot fathom what it would be like to have as much money as you. But that’s not what was troubling me.”
Puzzled, and deeply concerned, Valjean cocked his head.
Javert fell quiet for a long time, his eyes losing focus in the firelight. He seemed to be struggling to put words to his unrest. Fidgeting, as he was wont to do, he reached up and undid the cord from his ponytail, running his hands restlessly through strands of grey and black.
After awhile, his head drooped, dark hair slipping past his shoulders to shroud his face in a veil of shadow. His hushed voice, in the silence of the room, only served to make his words feel more profound.
“The town failed, after you left.”
Struck by this, Valjean sat back in his chair, his gaze drifting off. It was not a recent wound, but it was a deep one, and had never been properly treated. He had tried his best not to think on it, and so, to have it brought back up all of a sudden made it seem fresher in his mind than it ought to be. “I had heard,” he said, an ache in his gut.
Javert wrung his hands feverishly. “It has been weighing on me, of late.” He thrust his eyes away. “It did not mean anything to me, then. It was simply how things were. That the factory closed, and the schools—that the poor fell back into degeneration—these things did not matter to me. I could not see any correlation between the town’s hardship and its loss of you. Or, rather, I could not see a reason to feel remorse for it.”
“The means justified the ends. It was wrong for a convict to be a mayor, and so any ill that came from removing him from office paled in light of the righteousness of doing so. I gave no consideration to the outcome of my actions beyond putting a criminal behind bars. To me, there was nothing else to consider—nothing else more important than carrying out proper judgment in accordance with the law.” He paused. “I thought I was doing what was right.”
Valjean drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, his face falling. “I know.” He closed his eyes. “I know.”
“After the barricade, after … everything else, I began to think on it, and—” Javert scratched at his sleeve, clearly uncomfortable. “You … I always thought it didn’t matter; it didn’t matter what you did, what any man did, in the face of their past.” He thrust a palm up in gesticulation. “So a criminal gives alms, so a degenerate is kind, so what? These actions could not possibly be sincere, in my mind. Not truly. And even if they were, why should that be cause for reconsideration of judgment? It did not change who they were—what they’d done.”
“So a thief saves lives, so a convict becomes an upstanding citizen—well, so? They have still stolen, they have still broken parole; the law calls for their arrest, and justly so!” His words began tumbling over themselves, his voice beginning to strain. “What matter is it to the police if they have improved the lives of those around them? If they’ve brought opportunities and hope where there were none? If they provided for those in need—the children and the infirm, the wretched, the poor—funded public services out-of-pocket, given freely what they had to others—grown the town up from the roots in their wake? If they—”
“Javert,” Valjean interrupted him, raising a hand to silence him. “Please,” he breathed, as though he were in pain, “You don’t … You don’t have to.” His eyes fell. “You don’t have to.”
The man stared glassily at the floor. “I do.”
Valjean rose from his seat, placing his hand over Javert’s shoulder. “What happened was not your fault. You were only doing your duty.”
Javert jerked his shoulder back. “And nothing more.”
“Stop this,” Valjean breathed, his face scrunching up. “You cannot blame yourself, Javert. You were only doing what you thought best at the time. The past is behind us; we cannot change it. Do not torture yourself by reliving it. That would serve no purpose. What happened to the town was regrettable, but there is nothing to be done about it now. Its people … They have forgotten it, for better or for worse. So should you. I cannot bear to see you torment yourself thusly, mon ami.”
The man looked up at him as though wounded. “You would call me that? Even so?”
Valjean was bewildered—then, perturbed. “Of course!” he said, clasping both the man’s shoulders, “Yes; mon Dieu, yes! You are my friend, Javert! What you have done for me … How could you think otherwise? I have never held a grudge against you; not for anything!”
Javert scrutinized him. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised,” he muttered. “You are a philanthropist, after all.”
“That has nothing to do with it; you know that.”
There was a bitter tone to the man’s words. “I am only here because you pitied me.”
Valjean pushed him back into his seat, forcing him meet his gaze. “I am not friends with you because I pity you.” There was a terrible resoluteness in his voice, a steely resolve. “I am friends with you because you are a good man. Because you have done me kindnesses I can never repay. Because I respect you, Javert, and I even admire you a little. No, Javert; I am friends with you because you are worth befriending.”
The man’s eyes had been wide whilst he was speaking, and when Valjean finished and stepped back, they stared incredulously at him a second longer before squeezing shut, as though the words had stung them. He turned his face away, grimacing.
Valjean frowned. “You undervalue yourself, Javert. And I am lucky to have you. I wish I could make you see that.”
Javert was silent for a long time, unable to look at him. “You are a sentimental fool,” he finally breathed. “Any other man in your position should be happy to be rid of me. It is only that ridiculous altruism you cultivate that keeps me in your graces.”
Valjean sighed, leaning against his chair with a hand on his hip. “Frankly, Javert, it is you who is the fool. And furthermore, you are as stubborn as an ass.”
Javert scoffed, a miserable smile turning up the corners of his mouth.
“You may think my inclinations ridiculous, but I assure you they are not some passing fancy borne of charity,” he continued. “My soul might have been bought for God, but that is not the reason I act the way I do. Perhaps it was, once—but only briefly. I couldn’t do things any other way if I tried, now.” His face fell. “And there were times when I tried.”
“I cannot help the way I am. The way I feel. I can’t deny what’s in my heart, even if it might save my skin. You may laugh at it, if you wish, but do not dare believe I do things out of mere obligation alone. Do not dare believe my actions are not also in my heart.”
Javert held his gaze reluctantly, was forced to bow beneath it.
“You are my friend, Javert. And I am yours. Never doubt that. Never.”
The air was filled with the popping and crackling of the fire, the shadows dancing on the walls. A creak came from the walls as the house settled.
Javert wrung his hands. “You feel too strongly for me,” he said.
Valjean turned indignant, thrust his chin up, jaw clenched. “Javert!”
The man looked up at him with a start. “N-no, I mean …” He hid his face again, mumbling, “I do not know what to say to you, when you speak of such things.”
Valjean’s lips parted, he tilted his head a little.
It was not a great revelation that Javert should be at a loss when it came to topics involving expression of one’s emotions or the intricacies of personal relationships, but Valjean had never quite thought about how foreign it might be to him—how little experience he might have in dealing with these sorts of conversations.
Actually, he wasn’t sure why he himself was any good at them, considering—but then, he had fought with his own conscience on many a moral debate over the years, and too, what little experience he had with interpersonal relationships certainly made him an expert when compared to Javert, who had never even entertained the ideas of such things until now, apparently.
“Well,—” Valjean cut himself off for a moment, studying him. “You do not have to say anything at all, really.”
“Mm. Then let us talk of something else.”
“Dieu, yes,” he said, settling back into his chair. “Let’s.”
Javert stared into the dancing flames. “The money,” he said after a moment, as though suddenly remembering something.
Valjean blinked. “What?”
“The money you’d saved—the six-hundred thousand francs that you bequeathed to Cosette. You asked me why the mention of it upset me so, earlier.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “That was the reason. Montreuil. It … You did so much good there. With your money. You did so much good. And it all fell apart after you left. Vanished—because of me. All your work, all you’d done—it was like it had never happened. Like I’d extinguished the life-force of that town. Ripped out its heart.” His head drooped. “If it wasn’t for me—if you had just been allowed to continue … who knows how much you might have done. How much suffering I have caused, in implicating you.”
“Javert …”
“No; it is true. That is what happened. I made those people suffer. I made you suffer. It was all because of me; because I couldn’t look past my own prejudices to see the good you were doing there, the value of your presence. It is my fault. Had you been allowed to continue … Ah, but that is the point—you were not. And yet—” He closed his eyes. “Yet you have money, still—a fortune you amassed, and barely touched. And all the good in that town, it came from your money.”
“Cosette and Marius, they will not use that money. They do not need it; they do not care for it. It will sit untouched. And, really, it belongs to you. It does.” He wet his lips, narrowing his eyes in consternation. “Could you not—could you not use it to …?”
Valjean knit his brow. “What are you saying, Javert?”
“Could you not use it to … fix things?” There was a sort of trepidation in his voice, as though he feared rebuke. “To start over. Not in Montreuil-sur-Mer,” he added hastily, “—that place is lost, now—but here, in Paris.”
Valjean stared at him, scrutinizing his face, turning his words over in his head and trying to make sense of them. “In Paris …” he repeated dumbly.
“Yes,” Javert said, shutting his eyes, “I know; perhaps this is—perhaps I am being a fool. Perhaps it is selfish, to even suggest such a thing. But I …” He sighed, his expression flickering between deliberation and guilt. “Could you not, conceivably, with all the money you have left, start over? Make a difference? And this time you would not have to hide behind a mask. You would garner all the credit and respect that you deserve. And you would do so much good; I know you would. Do you not … find that idea appealing?” He turned to look Valjean in the eye, a pained smile on his lips. “—Monsieur le Maire?”
A chill shot up Valjean’s spine, tingling at the base of his neck. He shivered, goose pimples breaking out along his skin even as his face grew hot.
“Don’t call me that,” he breathed, his face falling into shadow as he withdrew into his chair. “Please.”
Javert turned away, head down. “I am sorry;” he mumbled, “I should not ha—”
“No; it’s just— I’m—” Valjean managed to calm himself, to slow his pounding heart. “It has been a long time.”
“I know.”
They listened to the sounds of the fire for awhile, each in his own personal agony.
“It is not a bad idea, using the money,” Valjean finally admitted. “I had not thought of it, that way. Of course, I have always given what I could, here and there—”
“The mendicant who gives alms,” Javert huffed.
“Yes. But never like that. So openly. Not in a way that could make a real difference.”
“But you can, now. If you wish. You can; you have been pardoned, you are free to do as you please, as yourself—as Jean Valjean. You may do whatever you want, and no one would have the right to say anything.”
Valjean paused, lost in thought. His hands were folded in his lap, clasped tightly as he gazed into the flames. “You are not … asking this for the people of Paris,” he said slowly, “—are you.”
“No.”
Valjean’s head dipped in a grave nod.
They sat in silence.
“Perhaps …” Valjean said thoughtfully, “Perhaps, now that Cosette knows of my past, it would not be wrong to bring the idea up with her—to see what she thinks of it.”
Javert nodded slowly. “That would be good.”
Valjean opened his mouth to say something further, but he shut it again after a moment.
His chest ached, muscles clenching, painful. It was bitter, and it was sweet. He turned his head, tilting it to the side.
“It is kind of you, to think of me in that way,” he began carefully. “I didn’t— No one else has ever …” He shook his head, his eyes wet. A sad scoff escaped his lips—it was either that, or the precursor to a sob; he did not know which. “It is nice to have a friend.”
“You deserved one earlier,” Javert murmured.
“It was worth the wait.”
***
It was late at night, and Mme. Mercier was sweeping the entryway of the house when her tenant arrived back home.
She eyed him curiously as he hung up his top hat and coat. “And where were you?”
“Out. Here,” he said, shoving a heavy-laden basket at her, “put these in the larder.”
“Eh?” She stared stupidly down at its contents.
It was filled to the brim with different varieties of squash.
“Where on earth did you get these at this hour?”
Without bothering to look back at her, Javert started up the stairs. “A friend.”
***