The Pretty Lady
by
Arnold E. Bennett
Part 1 out of 5
THE PRETTY LADY
A Novel
by
ARNOLD BENNETT
1918
"_Virtue has never yet been adequately represented by any
who have had any claim to be considered virtuous. It is the
sub-vicious who best understand virtue. Let the virtuous
people stick to describing vice--which they can do well
enough_."
SAMUEL BUTLER
CONTENTS
Chapter
1. THE PROMENADE
2. THE POWER
3. THE FLAT
4. CONFIDENCE
5. OSTEND
6. THE ALBANY
7. FOR THE EMPIRE
8. BOOTS
9. THE CLUB
10. THE MISSION
11. THE TELEGRAM
12. RENDEZVOUS
13. IN COMMITTEE
14. QUEEN
15. EVENING OUT
16. THE VIRGIN
17. SUNDAY AFTERNOON
18. THE MYSTIC
19. THE VISIT
20. MASCOT
21. THE LEAVE-TRAIN
22. GETTING ON WITH THE WAR
23. THE CALL
24. THE SOLDIER
25. THE RING
26. THE RETURN
27. THE CLYDE
28. SALOME
29. THE STREETS
30. THE CHILD'S ARM
31. "ROMANCE"
32. MRS. BRAIDING
33. THE ROOF
34. IN THE BOUDOIR
35. QUEEN DEAD
36. COLLAPSE
37. THE INVISIBLE POWERS
38. THE VICTORY
39. IDYLL
40. THE WINDOW
41. THE ENVOY
Chapter I
THE PROMENADE
The piece was a West End success so brilliant that even if you
belonged to the intellectual despisers of the British theatre you
could not hold up your head in the world unless you had seen it; even
for such as you it was undeniably a success of curiosity at least.
The stage scene flamed extravagantly with crude orange and viridian
light, a rectangle of bedazzling illumination; on the boards, in the
midst of great width, with great depth behind them and arching height
above, tiny squeaking figures ogled the primeval passion in gesture
and innuendo. From the arc of the upper circle convergent beams of
light pierced through gloom and broke violently on this group of the
half-clad lovely and the swathed grotesque. The group did not quail.
In fullest publicity it was licensed to say that which in private
could not be said where men and women meet, and that which could
not be printed. It gave a voice to the silent appeal of pictures and
posters and illustrated weeklies all over the town; it disturbed the
silence of the most secret groves in the vast, undiscovered hearts of
men and women young and old. The half-clad lovely were protected from
the satyrs in the audience by an impalpable screen made of light and
of ascending music in which strings, brass, and concussion
exemplified the naive sensuality of lyrical niggers. The guffaw which,
occasionally leaping sharply out of the dim, mysterious auditorium,
surged round the silhouetted conductor and drove like a cyclone
between the barriers of plush and gilt and fat cupids on to the
stage--this huge guffaw seemed to indicate what might have happened if
the magic protection of the impalpable screen had not been there.
Behind the audience came the restless Promenade, where was the reality
which the stage reflected. There it was, multitudinous, obtainable,
seizable, dumbly imploring to be carried off. The stage, very daring,
yet dared no more than hint at the existence of the bright and joyous
reality. But there it was, under the same roof.
Christine entered with Madame Larivaudiere. Between shoulders and
broad hats, as through a telescope, she glimpsed in the far distance
the illusive, glowing oblong of the stage; then the silhouetted
conductor and the tops of instruments; then the dark, curved
concentric rows of spectators. Lastly she took in the Promenade, in
which she stood. She surveyed the Promenade with a professional eye.
It instantly shocked her, not as it might have shocked one ignorant
of human nature and history, but by reason of its frigidity, its
constraint, its solemnity, its pretence. In one glance she embraced
all the figures, moving or stationary, against the hedge of shoulders
in front and against the mirrors behind--all of them: the programme
girls, the cigarette girls, the chocolate girls, the cloak-room girls,
the waiters, the overseers, as well as the vivid courtesans and their
clientele in black, tweed, or khaki. With scarcely an exception they
all had the same strange look, the same absence of gesture. They
were northern, blond, self-contained, terribly impassive. Christine
impulsively exclaimed--and the faint cry was dragged out of her, out
of the bottom of her heart, by what she saw:
"My god! How mournful it is!"
Lise Larivaudiere, a stout and benevolent Bruxelloise, agreed with
uncomprehending indulgence. The two chatted together for a few
moments, each ceremoniously addressing the other as "Madame,"
"Madame," and then they parted, insinuating themselves separately into
the slow, confused traffic of the Promenade.
Chapter 2
THE POWER
Christine knew Piccadilly, Leicester Square, Regent Street, a bit of
Oxford Street, the Green Park, Hyde Park, Victoria Station, Charing
Cross. Beyond these, London, measureless as the future and the past,
surrounded her with the unknown. But she had not been afraid, because
of her conviction that men were much the same everywhere, and that she
had power over them. She did not exercise this power consciously; she
had merely to exist and it exercised itself. For her this power was
the mystical central fact of the universe. Now, however, as she stood
in the Promenade, it seemed to her that something uncanny had happened
to the universe. Surely it had shifted from its pivot! Her basic
conviction trembled. Men were not the same everywhere, and her power
over them was a delusion. Englishmen were incomprehensible; they were
not human; they were apart. The memory of the hundreds of Englishmen
who had yielded to her power in Paris (for she had specialised in
travelling Englishmen) could not re-establish her conviction as to
the sameness of men. The presence of her professed rivals of various
nationalities in the Promenade could not restore it either. The
Promenade in its cold, prim languor was the very negation of
desire. She was afraid. She foresaw ruin for herself in this London,
inclement, misty and inscrutable.
And then she noticed a man looking at her, and she was herself again
and the universe was itself again. She had a sensation of warmth and
heavenly reassurance, just as though she had drunk an anisette or
a creme de menthe. Her features took on an innocent expression; the
characteristic puckering of the brows denoted not discontent, but a
gentle concern for the whole world and also virginal curiosity. The
man passed her. She did not stir. Presently he emerged afresh out of
the moving knots of promenaders and discreetly approached her. She
did not smile, but her eyes lighted with a faint amiable
benevolence--scarcely perceptible, doubtful, deniable even, but
enough. The man stopped. She at once gave a frank, kind smile, which
changed all her face. He raised his hat an inch or so. She liked men
to raise their hats. Clearly he was a gentleman of means, though in
morning dress. His cigar had a very fine aroma. She classed him in
half a second and was happy. He spoke to her in French, with a slight,
unmistakable English accent, but very good, easy, conversational
French--French French. She responded almost ecstatically:
"Ah, you speak French!"
She was too excited to play the usual comedy, so flattering to most
Englishmen, of pretending that she thought from his speech that he was
a Frenchman. The French so well spoken from a man's mouth in London
most marvellously enheartened her and encouraged her in the perilous
enterprise of her career. She was candidly grateful to him for
speaking French.
He said after a moment:
"You have not at all a fatigued air, but would it not be preferable to
sit down?"
A man of the world! He could phrase his politeness. Ah! There
were none like an Englishman of the world. Frenchmen, delightfully
courteous up to a point, were unsatisfactory past that point.
Frenchmen of the south were detestable, and she hated them.
"You have not been in London long?" said the man, leading her away to
the lounge.
She observed then that, despite his national phlegm, he was in a state
of rather intense excitation. Luck! Enormous luck! And also an augury
for the future! She was professing in London for the first time in her
life; she had not been in the Promenade for five minutes; and lo! the
ideal admirer. For he was not young. What a fine omen for her profound
mysticism and superstitiousness!
Chapter 3
THE FLAT
Her flat was in Cork Street. As soon as they entered it the man
remarked on its warmth and its cosiness, so agreeable after the
November streets. Christine only smiled. It was a long, narrow flat--a
small sitting-room with a piano and a sideboard, opening into a larger
bedroom shaped like a thick L. The short top of the L, not cut off
from the rest of the room, was installed as a _cabinet de toilette_,
but it had a divan. From the divan, behind which was a heavily
curtained window, you could see right through the flat to the
curtained window of the sitting-room. All the lights were softened by
paper shades of a peculiar hot tint between Indian red and carmine,
giving a rich, romantic effect to the gleaming pale enamelled
furniture, and to the voluptuous engravings after Sir Frederick
Leighton, and the sweet, sentimental engravings after Marcus Stone,
and to the assorted knicknacks. The flat had homogeneity, for
everything in it, except the stove, had been bought at one shop in
Tottenham Court Road by a landlord who knew his business. The stove,
which was large, stood in the bedroom fireplace, and thence radiated
celestial comfort and security throughout the home; the stove was
the divinity of the home and Christine the priestess; she had herself
bought the stove, and she understood its personality--it was one of
your finite gods.
"Will you take something?" she asked, the hostess.
Whisky and a siphon and glasses were on the sideboard.
"Oh no, thanks!"
"Not even a cigarette?" Holding out the box and looking up at him,
she appealed with a long, anxious glance that he should honour her
cigarettes.
"Thank you!" he said. "I should like a cigarette very much."
She lit a match for him.
"But you--do you not smoke?"
"Yes. Sometimes."
"Try one of mine--for a change."
He produced a long, thin gold cigarette-case, stuffed with cigarettes.
She lit a cigarette from his.
"Oh!" she cried after a few violent puffs. "I like enormously your
cigarettes. Where are they to be found?"
"Look!" said he. "I will put these few in your box." And he poured
twenty cigarettes into an empty compartment of the box, which was
divided into two.
"Not all!" she protested.
"Yes."
"But I say NO!" she insisted with a gesture suddenly firm, and put a
single cigarette back into his case and shut the case with a snap, and
herself returned it to his pocket. "One ought never to be without a
cigarette."
He said:
"You understand life.... How nice it is here!" He looked about and
then sighed.
"But why do you sigh?"
"Sigh of content! I was just thinking this place would be something
else if an English girl had it. It is curious, lamentable, that
English girls understand nothing--certainly not love."
"As for that, I've always heard so."
"They understand nothing. Not even warmth. One is cold in their
rooms."
"As for that--I mean warmth--one may say that I understand it; I do."
"You understand more than warmth. What is your name?"
"Christine."
She was the accidental daughter of a daughter of joy. The mother, as
frequently happens in these cases, dreamed of perfect respectability
for her child and kept Christine in the country far away in Paris,
meaning to provide a good dowry in due course. At forty-two she had
not got the dowry together, nor even begun to get it together, and she
was ill. Feckless, dilatory and extravagant, she saw as in a
vision her own shortcomings and how they might involve disaster
for Christine. Christine, she perceived, was a girl imperfectly
educated--for in the affair of Christine's education the mother had
not aimed high enough--indolent, but economical, affectionate, and
with a very great deal of temperament. Actuated by deep maternal
solicitude, she brought her daughter back to Paris, and had her
inducted into the profession under the most decent auspices. At
nineteen Christine's second education was complete. Most of it the
mother had left to others, from a sense of propriety. But she herself
had instructed Christine concerning the five great plagues of the
profession. And also she had adjured her never to drink alcohol save
professionally, never to invest in anything save bonds of the City of
Paris, never to seek celebrity, which according to the mother meant
ultimate ruin, never to mix intimately with other women. She had
expounded the great theory that generosity towards men in small things
is always repaid by generosity in big things--and if it is not the
loss is so slight! And she taught her the fundamental differences
between nationalities. With a Russian you had to eat, drink and
listen. With a German you had to flatter, and yet adroitly insert, "Do
not imagine that I am here for the fun of the thing." With an Italian
you must begin with finance. With a Frenchman you must discuss finance
before it is too late. With an Englishman you must talk, for he will
not, but in no circumstances touch finance until he has mentioned
it. In each case there was a risk, but the risk should be faced. The
course of instruction finished, Christine's mother had died with a
clear conscience and a mind consoled.
Said Christine, conversational, putting the question that lips seemed
then to articulate of themselves in obedience to its imperious demand
for utterance:
"How long do you think the war will last?"
The man answered with serenity: "The war has not begun yet."
"How English you are! But all the same, I ask myself whether you would
say that if you had seen Belgium. I came here from Ostend last month."
The man gazed at her with new vivacious interest.
"So it is like that that you are here!"
"But do not let us talk about it," she added quickly with a mournful
smile.
"No, no!" he agreed.... "I see you have a piano. I expect you are fond
of music."
"Ah!" she exclaimed in a fresh, relieved tone. "Am I fond of it! I
adore it, quite simply. Do play for me. Play a boston--a two-step."
"I can't," he said.
"But you play. I am sure of it."
"And you?" he parried.
She made a sad negative sign.
"Well, I'll play something out of _The Rosenkavalier_."
"Ah! But you are a _musician_!" She amiably scrutinised him. "And
yet--no."
Smiling, he, too, made a sad negative sign.
"The waltz out of _The Rosenkavalier_, eh?"
"Oh, yes! A waltz. I prefer waltzes to anything."
As soon as he had played a few bars she passed demurely out of the
sitting-room, through the main part of the bedroom into the _cabinet
de toilette_. She moved about in the _cabinet de toilette_ thinking
that the waltz out of _The Rosenkavalier_ was divinely exciting. The
delicate sound of her movements and the plash of water came to him
across the bedroom. As he played he threw a glance at her now and
then; he could see well enough, but not very well because the smoke of
the shortening cigarette was in his eyes.
She returned at length into the sitting-room, carrying a small silk
bag about five inches by three. The waltz finished.
"But you'll take cold!" he murmured.
"No. At home I never take cold. Besides--"
Smiling at him as he swung round on the music-stool, she undid the
bag, and drew from it some folded stuff which she slowly shook
out, rather in the manner of a conjurer, until it was revealed as a
full-sized kimono. She laughed.
"Is it not marvellous?"
"It is."
"That is what I wear. In the way of chiffons it is the only fantasy
I have bought up to the present in London. Of course, clothes--I have
been forced to buy clothes. It matches exquisitely the stockings, eh?"
She slid her arms into the sleeves of the transparency. She was a
pretty and highly developed girl of twenty-six, short, still lissom,
but with the fear of corpulence in her heart. She had beautiful hair
and beautiful eyes, and she had that pucker of the forehead denoting,
according to circumstances, either some kindly, grave preoccupation or
a benevolent perplexity about something or other.
She went near him and clasped hands round his neck, and whispered:
"Your waltz was adorable. You are an artist."
And with her shoulders she seemed to sketch the movements of dancing.
Chapter 4
CONFIDENCE
After putting on his thick overcoat and one glove he had suddenly
darted to the dressing-table for his watch, which he was forgetting.
Christine's face showed sympathetic satisfaction that he had
remembered in time, simultaneously implying that even if he had not
remembered, the watch would have been perfectly safe till he called
for it. The hour was five minutes to midnight. He was just going.
Christine had dropped a little batch of black and red Treasury
notes on to the dressing-table with an indifferent if not perhaps
an impatient air, as though she held these financial sequels to be
a stain on the ideal, a tedious necessary, a nuisance, or simply
negligible.
She kissed him goodbye, and felt agreeably fragile and soft within
the embrace of his huge, rough overcoat. And she breathed winningly,
delicately, apologetically into his ear:
"Thou wilt give something to the servant?" Her soft eyes seemed to
say, "It is not for myself that I am asking, is it?"
He made an easy philanthropic gesture to indicate that the servant
would have no reason to regret his passage.
He opened the door into the little hall, where the fat Italian maid
was yawning in an atmosphere comparatively cold, and then, in a change
of purpose, he shut the door again.
"You do not know how I knew you could not have been in London very
long," he said confidentially.
"No."
"Because I saw you in Paris one night in July--at the Marigny
Theatre."
"Not at the Marigny."
"Yes. The Marigny."
"It is true. I recall it. I wore white and a yellow stole."
"Yes. You stood on the seat at the back of the Promenade to see a
contortionist girl better, and then you jumped down. I thought you
were delicious--quite delicious."
"Thou flatterest me. Thou sayest that to flatter me."
"No, no. I assure you I went to the Marigny every night for five
nights afterwards in order to find you."
"But the Marigny is not my regular music-hall. Olympia is my regular
music-hall."
"I went to Olympia and all the other halls, too, each night."
"Ah, yes! Then I must have left Paris. But why, my poor friend, why
didst thou not speak to me at the Marigny? I was alone."
"I don't know. I hesitated. I suppose I was afraid."
"Thou!"
"So to-night I was terribly content to meet you. When I saw that it
was really you I could not believe my eyes."
She understood now his agitation on first accosting her in the
Promenade. The affair very pleasantly grew more serious for her. She
liked him. He had nice eyes. He was fairly tall and broadly built,
but not a bit stout. Neither dark nor blond. Not handsome, and yet
... beneath a certain superficial freedom, he was reserved. He had
beautiful manners. He was refined, and he was refined in love; and yet
he knew something. She very highly esteemed refinement in a man.
She had never met a refined woman, and was convinced that few such
existed. Of course he was rich. She could be quite sure, from his way
of handling money, that he was accustomed to handling money. She would
swear he was a bachelor merely on the evidence of his eyes.... Yes,
the affair had lovely possibilities. Afraid to speak to her, and
then ran round Paris after her for five nights! Had he, then, had the
lightning-stroke from her? It appeared so. And why not? She was not
like other girls, and this she had always known. She did precisely
the same things as other girls did. True. But somehow, subtly,
inexplicably, when she did them they were not the same things.
The proof: he, so refined and distinguished himself, had felt the
difference. She became very tender.
"To think," she murmured, "that only on that one night in all my life
did I go to the Marigny! And you saw me!"
The coincidence frightened her--she might have missed this nice,
dependable, admiring creature for ever. But the coincidence also
delighted her, strengthening her superstition. The hand of destiny was
obviously in this affair. Was it not astounding that on one night of
all nights he should have been at the Marigny? Was it not still more
astounding that on one night of all nights he should have been in the
Promenade in Leicester Square?... The affair was ordained since before
the beginning of time. Therefore it was serious.
"Ah, my friend!" she said. "If only you had spoken to me that night at
the Marigny, you might have saved me from troubles frightful--fantastic."
"How?"
He had confided in her--and at the right moment. With her human lore
she could not have respected a man who had begun by admitting to a
strange and unproved woman that for five days and nights he had gone
mad about her. To do so would have been folly on his part. But having
withheld his wild secret, he had charmingly showed, by the gesture of
opening and then shutting the door, that at last it was too strong for
his control. Such candour deserved candour in return. Despite his age,
he looked just then attractively, sympathetically boyish. He was a
benevolent creature. The responsive kindliness of his enquiring "How?"
was beyond question genuine. Once more, in the warm and dark-glowing
comfort of her home, the contrast between the masculine, thick rough
overcoat and the feminine, diaphanous, useless kimono appealed to her
soul. It seemed to justify, even to call for, confidence from her to
him.
The Italian woman behind the door coughed impatiently and was not
heard.
Chapter 5
OSTEND
In July she had gone to Ostend with an American. A gentleman, but mad.
One of those men with a fixed idea that everything would always be
all right and that nothing really and permanently uncomfortable
could possibly happen. A very fair man, with red hair, and radiating
wrinkles all round his eyes--phenomenon due to his humorous outlook on
the world. He laughed at her because she travelled with all her bonds
of the City of Paris on her person. He had met her one night, and
the next morning suggested the Ostend excursion. Too sudden,
too capricious, of course; but she had always desired to see the
cosmopolitanism of Ostend. Trouville she did not like, as you had sand
with every meal if you lived near the front. Hotel Astoria at Ostend.
Complete flat in the hotel. Very chic. The red-haired one, the
_rouquin_, had broad ideas, very broad ideas, of what was due to a
woman. In fact, one might say that he carried generosity in details to
excess. But naturally with Americans it was necessary to be surprised
at nothing. The _rouquin_ said steadily that war would not break out.
He said so until the day on which it broke out. He then became a Turk.
Yes, a Turk. He assumed rights over her, the rights of protection, but
very strange rights. He would not let her try to return to Paris. He
said the Germans might get to Paris, but to Ostend, never--because
of the English! Difficult to believe, but he had locked her up in the
complete flat. The Ostend season had collapsed--pluff--like that. The
hotel staff vanished almost entirely. One or two old fat Belgian
women on the bedroom floors--that seemed to be all. The _rouquin_ was
exquisitely polite, but very firm. In fine, he was a master. It was
astonishing what he did. They were the sole remaining guests in the
Astoria. And they remained because he refused to permit the management
to turn him out. Weeks passed. Yes, weeks. English forces came to
Ostend. Marvellous. Among nations there was none like the English. She
did not see them herself. She was ill. The _rouquin_ had told her
that she was ill when she was not ill, but lo! the next day she was
ill--oh, a long time. The _rouquin_ told her the news--battle of the
Marne and all species of glorious deeds. An old fat Belgian told her
a different kind of news. The stories of the fall of Liege, Namur,
Brussels, Antwerp. The massacres at Aerschot, at Louvain. Terrible
stories that travelled from mouth to mouth among women. There was
always rape and blood and filth mingled. Stories of a frightful
fascination ... unrepeatable! Ah!
The _rouquin_ had informed her one day that the Belgian Government had
come to Ostend. Proof enough, according to him, that Ostend could not
be captured by the Germans! After that he had said nothing about the
Belgian Government for many days. And then one day he had informed
her casually that the Belgian Government was about to leave Ostend
by steamer. But days earlier the old fat woman had told her that the
German staff had ordered seventy-five rooms at the Hotel des Postes at
Ghent. Seventy-five rooms. And that in the space of a few hours Ghent
had become a city of the dead.... Thousands of refugees in Ostend.
Thousands of escaped virgins. Thousands of wounded soldiers.
Often, the sound of guns all day and all night. And in the daytime
occasionally, a sharp sound, very loud; that meant that a German
aeroplane was over the town--killing ... Plenty to kill. Ostend was
always full, behind the Digue, and yet people were always leaving--by
steamer. Steamers taken by assault. At first there had been
formalities, permits, passports. But when one steamer had been taken
by assault--no more formalities! In trying to board the steamers
people were drowned. They fell into the water and nobody troubled--so
said the old woman. Christine was better; desired to rise. The
_rouquin_ said No, not yet. He would believe naught. And now he
believed one thing, and it filled his mind--that German submarines
sank all refugee ships in the North Sea. Proof of the folly of leaving
Ostend. Yet immediately afterwards he came and told her to get up.
That is to say, she had been up for several days, but not outside. He
told her to come away, come away. She had only summer clothes, and it
was mid-October. What a climate, Ostend in October! The old woman said
that thousands of parcels of clothes for refugees had been sent by
generous England. She got a parcel; she had means of getting it. She
opened it with pride in the bedroom of the flat. It contained eight
corsets and a ball-dress. A droll race, all the same, the English.
Had they no imagination? But, no doubt, society women were the same
everywhere. It was notorious that in France....
Christine went forth in her summer clothes. The _rouquin_ had got
an old horse-carriage. He gave her much American money--or, rather,
cheques--which, true enough, she had since cashed with no difficulty
in London. They had to leave the carriage. The station square was full
of guns and women and children and bundles. Yes, together with a
few men. She spent the whole night in the station square with the
_rouquin_, in her summer clothes and his overcoat. At six o'clock in
the evening it was already dark. A night interminable. Babies crying.
One heard that at the other end of the square a baby had been born.
She, Christine, sat next to a young mother with a baby. Both mother
and baby had the right arm bandaged. They had both been shot through
the arm with the same bullet. It was near Aerschot. The young woman
also told her.... No, she could not relate that to an Englishman.
Happily it did not rain. But the wind and the cold! In the morning
the _rouquin_ put her on to a fishing-vessel. She had nothing but her
bonds of the City of Paris and her American cheques. The crush was
frightful. The captain of the fishing-vessel, however, comprehended
what discipline was. He made much money. The _rouquin_ would not come.
He said he was an American citizen and had all his papers. For the
rest, the captain would not let him come, though doubtless the captain
could have been bribed. As they left the harbour, with other trawlers,
they could see the quays all covered with the disappointed,
waiting. Somebody in the boat said that the Germans had that morning
reached--She forgot the name of the place, but it was the next
village to Ostend on the Bruges road. Thus Christine parted from the
_rouquin_. Mad! Always wrong, even about the German submarines. But
_chic_. Truly _chic_.
What a voyage! What adventures with the charitable people in England!
People who resembled nothing else on earth! People who did not
understand what life was.... No understanding of that which it
is--life! In fine ...! However, she should stay in England. It was
the only country in which one could have confidence. She was trying
to sell the furniture of her flat in Paris. Complications! Under the
emergency law she was not obliged to pay her rent to the landlord; but
if she removed her furniture then she would have to pay the rent.
What did it matter, though? Besides, she might not be able to sell her
furniture after all. Remarkably few women in Paris at that moment were
in a financial state to buy furniture. Ah no!
"But I have not told you the tenth part!" said Christine.
"Terrible! Terrible!" murmured the man.
All the heavy sorrow of the world lay on her puckered brow, and
floated in her dark glistening eyes. Then she smiled, sadly but with
courage.
"I will come to see you again," said the man comfortingly. "Are you
here in the afternoons?"
"Every afternoon, naturally."
"Well, I will come--not to-morrow--the day after to-morrow."
Already, long before, interrupting the buttoning of his collar, she
had whispered softly, persuasively, clingingly, in the classic manner:
"Thou art content, _cheri_? Thou wilt return?"
And he had said: "That goes without saying."
But not with quite the same conviction as he now used in speaking
definitely of the afternoon of the day after to-morrow. The fact
was, he was moved; she too. She had been right not to tell the story
earlier, and equally right to tell it before he departed. Some men,
most men, hated to hear any tale of real misfortune, at any moment,
from a woman, because, of course, it diverted their thoughts.
In thus departing at once the man showed characteristic tact. Her
recital left nothing to be said. They kissed again, rather like
comrades. Christine was still the vessel of the heavy sorrow of the
world, but in the kiss and in their glances was an implication that
the effective, triumphant antidote to sorrow might be found in a
mutual trust. He opened the door. The Italian woman, yawning and with
her hand open, was tenaciously waiting.
Alone, carefully refolding the kimono in its original creases,
Christine wondered what the man's name was. She felt that the
mysterious future might soon disclose a germ of happiness.
Chapter 6
THE ALBANY
G.J. Hoape--He was usually addressed as "G.J." by his friends, and
always referred to as "G.J." by both friends and acquaintances--woke
up finally in the bedroom of his flat with the thought:
"To-day I shall see her."
He inhabited one of the three flats at the extreme northern end of the
Albany, Piccadilly, W.I. The flat was strangely planned. Its shape
as a whole was that of a cube. Imagine the cube to be divided
perpendicularly into two very unequal parts. The larger part,
occupying nearly two-thirds of the entire cubic space, was the
drawing-room, a noble chamber, large and lofty. The smaller part was
cut horizontally into two storeys. The lower storey comprised a very
small hall, a fair bathroom, the tiniest staircase in London, and
G.J.'s very small bedroom. The upper storey comprised a very small
dining-room, the kitchen, and servants' quarters.
The door between the bedroom and the drawing room, left open in the
night for ventilation, had been softly closed as usual during G.J.'s
final sleep, and the bedroom was in absolute darkness save for a faint
grey gleam over the valance of the window curtains. G.J. could think.
He wondered whether he was in love. He hoped he was in love, and the
fact that the woman who attracted him was a courtesan did not disturb
him in the least.
He was nearing fifty years of age. He had casually known hundreds of
courtesans in sundry capitals, a few of them very agreeable; also a
number of women calling themselves, sometimes correctly, actresses,
all of whom, for various reasons which need not be given, had proved
very unsatisfactory. But he had never loved--unless it might be,
mildly, Concepcion, and Concepcion was now a war bride. He wanted to
love. He had never felt about any woman, not even about Concepcion, as
he felt about the woman seen for a few minutes at the Marigny Theatre
and then for five successive nights vainly searched for in all the
chief music-halls of Paris. (A nice name, Christine! It suited her.)
He had given her up--never expected to catch sight of her again; but
she had remained a steadfast memory, sad and charming. The encounter
in the Promenade in Leicester Square was such a piece of heavenly and
incredible luck that it had, at the moment, positively made him giddy.
The first visit to Christine's flat had beatified and stimulated him.
Would the second? Anyhow, she was the most alluring woman--and
yet apparently of dependable character!--he had ever met. No other
consideration counted with him.
There was a soft knock; the door was pushed, and wavy reflections of
the drawing-room fire played on the corner of the bedroom ceiling.
Mrs. Braiding came in. G.J. had known it was she by the caressing
quality of the knock. Mrs. Braiding was his cook and the wife of his
"man". It was not her place to come in, but occasionally, because
something had happened to Braiding, she did come in. She drew the
curtains apart, and the day of Vigo Street, pale, dirty, morose,
feebly and perfunctorily took possession of the bedroom. Mrs.
Braiding, having drawn the curtains, returned to the door and from the
doorway said:
"Breakfast is practically ready, sir."
G.J. perceived that this was one of her brave, resigned mornings.
Since August she had borne the entire weight of the war on her back,
and sometimes the burden would overpower her, but never quite. G.J.
switched on the light, arose from his bed, assumed his dressing-gown,
and, gazing with accustomed pleasure round the bedroom, saw that it
was perfect.
He had furnished his flat in the Regency style of the first decade
of the nineteenth century, as matured by George Smith, "upholder
extraordinary to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales". The Pavilion
at Brighton had given the original idea to G.J., who saw in it the
solution of the problem of combining the somewhat massive dignity
suitable to a bachelor of middling age with the bright, unconquerable
colours which the eternal twilight of London demands.
His dome bed was yellow as to its upper works, with crimson valances
above and yellow valances below. The yellow-lined crimson curtains (of
course never closed) had green cords and tassels, and the counterpane
was yellow. This bed was a modest sample of the careful and
uncompromising reconstitution of a period which he had everywhere
carried out in his abode.
The drawing-room, with its moulded ceiling and huge recessed window,
had presented an admirable field for connoisseurship. Here the clash
of rich primary colours, the perpendiculars which began with bronze
girls' heads and ended with bronze girls' feet or animals' claws,
the vast flat surfaces of furniture, the stiff curves of wood and a
drapery, the morbid rage for solidity which would employ a candelabrum
weighing five hundredweight to hold a single wax candle, produced a
real and imposing effect of style; it was a style debased, a style
which was shedding the last graces of French Empire in order soon to
appeal to a Victoria determined to be utterly English and good; but
it was a style. And G.J. had scamped no detail. Even the pictures were
hung with thick tasselled cords of the Regency. The drawing-room was a
triumph.
Do not conceive that G.J. had lost his head about furniture and that
his notion of paradise was an endless series of second-hand shops.
He had an admirable balance; and he held that a man might make a
faultless interior for himself and yet not necessarily lose his
balance. He resented being called a specialist in furniture. He
regarded himself as an amateur of life, and, if a specialist in
anything, as a specialist in friendships. Yet he was a solitary man
(liking solitude without knowing that he liked it), and in the midst
of the perfections which he had created he sometimes gloomily thought:
"What in the name of God am I doing on this earth?"
He went into the drawing-room, and there, by the fire and in front of
a formidable blue chair whose arms developed into the grinning
heads of bronze lions, stood the lacquered table consecrated to
his breakfast tray; and his breakfast tray, with newspaper and
correspondence, had been magically placed thereon as though by
invisible hands. And on one arm of the easy-chair lay the rug which,
because a dressing-gown does not button all the way down, he put over
his knees while breakfasting in winter. Yes, he admitted with pleasure
that he was "well served". Before eating he opened the piano--a modern
instrument concealed in an ingeniously confected Regency case--and
played with taste a Bach prelude and fugue.
His was not the standardised and habituated kind of musical culture
which takes a Bach prelude and fugue every morning before breakfast
with or without a glass of Lithia water or fizzy saline. He did,
however, customarily begin the day at the piano, and on this
particular morning he happened to play a Bach prelude and fugue.
And as he played he congratulated himself on not having gone to seek
Christine in the Promenade on the previous night, as impatience
had tempted him to do. Such a procedure would have been an error in
worldliness and bad from every point of view. He had wisely rejected
the temptation.
In the deep blue arm-chair, with the rug over his knees and one hand
on a lion's head, he glanced first at the opened _Times_, because
of the war. Among the few letters was one with the heading of the
Reveille Motor Horn Company Ltd.
G.J. like his father, had been a solicitor. When he was twenty-five
his father, a widower, had died and left him a respectable fortune
and a very good practice. He sold half the practice to an incoming
partner, and four years later he sold the other half of the practice
to the same man. At thirty he was free, and this result had been
attained through his frank negative answer to the question, "The law
bores me--is there any reason why I should let it continue to bore
me?" There was no reason. Instead of the law he took up life. Of
business preoccupations naught remained but his investments. He
possessed a gift for investing money. He had helped the man who had
first put the Reveille Motor Horn on the market. He had had a mighty
holding of shares in the Reveille Syndicate Limited, which had so
successfully promoted the Reveille Motor Horn Company Limited. And in
the latter, too, he held many shares. The Reveille Motor Horn Company
had prospered and had gone into the manufacture of speedometers,
illuminating outfits, and all manner of motor-car accessories.
On the outbreak of war G.J. had given himself up for lost. "This
is the end," he had said, as a member of the sore-shaken investing
public. He had felt sick under the region of the heart. In particular
he had feared for his Reveille shares. No one would want to buy
expensive motor horns in the midst of the greatest war that the world,
etc., etc.
Still the Reveille Company, after sustaining the shock, had somehow
continued to do a pretty good business. It had patriotically offered
its plant and services to the War Office, and had been repulsed with
contumely and ignominy. The War Office had most caustically intimated
to the Reveille Company that it had no use and never under any
conceivable circumstances could have any use whatever for the Reveille
Company, and that the Reveille Company was a forward and tedious
jackanapes, unworthy even of an articulate rebuff. Now the autograph
letter with the Reveille note-heading was written by the managing
director (who represented G.J.'s interests on the Board), and it
stated that the War Office had been to the Reveille Company, and
implored it to enlarge itself, and given it vast orders at grand
prices for all sorts of things that it had never made before. The
profits of 1915 would be doubled, if not trebled--perhaps quadrupled.
G.J. was relieved, uplifted; and he sniggered at his terrible
forebodings of August and September. Ruin? He was actually going to
make money out of the greatest war that the world, etc. etc. And why
not? Somebody had to make money, and somebody had to pay for the
war in income tax. For the first time the incubus of the war seemed
lighter upon G.J. And also he need feel no slightest concern about
the financial aspect of any possible developments of the Christine
adventure. He had a very clear and undeniable sensation of positive
happiness.
Chapter 7
FOR THE EMPIRE
Mrs. Braiding came into the drawing-room, and he wondered, paternally,
why she was so fidgety and why her tranquillising mate had not
appeared. To the careless observer she was a cheerful woman, but the
temple of her brightness was reared over a dark and frightful crypt
in which the demons of doubt, anxiety, and despair year after year
dragged at their chains, intimidating hope. Slender, small, and neat,
she passed her life in bravely fronting the shapes of disaster with an
earnest, vivacious, upturned face. She was thirty-five, and her aspect
recalled the pretty, respected lady's-maid which she had been before
Braiding got her and knocked some nonsense out of her and turned her
into a wife.
G.J., still paternally, but firmly, took her up at once.
"I say, Mrs. Braiding, what about this dish-cover?"
He lifted the article, of which the copper was beginning to show
through the Sheffield plating.
"Yes sir. It does look rather impoverished, doesn't it?"
"But I told Braiding to use the new toast-dish I bought last week but
one."
"Did you, sir? I was very happy about the new one as soon as I saw
it, but Braiding never gave me your instructions in regard to it." She
glanced at the cabinet in which the new toast-dish reposed with other
antique metal-work. "Braiding's been rather upset this last few days,
sir."
"What about?"
"This recruiting, sir. Of course, you are aware he's decided on it."
"I'm not aware of anything of the sort," said G.J. rather roughly,
perhaps to hide his sudden emotion, perhaps to express his irritation
at Mrs. Braiding's strange habit of pretending that the most startling
pieces of news were matters of common knowledge.
"Well, sir, of course you were out most of yesterday, and you dined at
the club. Braiding attended at a recruiting office yesterday, sir.
He stood three hours in the crowd outside because there was no room
inside, and then he stood over two hours in a passage inside before
his turn came, and nothing to eat all day, or drink either. And when
his turn came and they asked him his age, he said 'thirty-six,' and
the person was very angry and said he hadn't any time to waste, and
Braiding had better go outside again and consider whether he hadn't
made a mistake about his age. So Braiding went outside and considered
that his age was only thirty-three after all, but he couldn't get in
again, not by any means, so he just came back here and I gave him a
good tea, and he needed it, sir."
"But he saw me last night, and he never said anything!"
"Yes, sir," Mrs. Braiding admitted with pain. "I asked him if he had
told you, and he said he hadn't and that I must."
"Where is he now?"
"He went off early, sir, so as to get a good place. I shouldn't be a
bit surprised if he's in the army by this time. I know it's not the
right way of going about things, and Braiding's only excuse is it's
for the Empire. When it's a question of the Empire, sir...." At that
instant the white man's burden was Mrs. Braiding's, and the glance of
her serious face showed what the crushing strain of it was.
"I think he might have told me."
"Well, sir. I'm very sorry. Very sorry.... But you know what Braiding
is."
G.J. felt that that was just what he did not know, or at any rate had
not hitherto known. He was hurt by Braiding's conduct. He had always
treated Braiding as a friend. They had daily discussed the progress
of the war. On the previous night Braiding, in all the customary
sedateness of black coat and faintly striped trousers, had behaved
just as usual! It was astounding. G.J. began to incline towards the
views of certain of his friends about the utter incomprehensibility
of the servile classes--views which he had often annoyed them by
traversing. Yes; it was astounding. All this martial imperialism
seething in the depths of Braiding, and G.J. never suspecting the
ferment! Exceedingly difficult to conceive Braiding as a soldier! He
was the Albany valet, and Albany valets were Albany valets and naught
else.
Mrs. Braiding continued:
"It's very inconsiderate to you, sir. That's a point that is
appreciated by both Braiding and I. But let us fervently hope it won't
be for long, sir. The consensus of opinion seems to be we shall be
in Berlin in the spring. And in the meantime, I think"--she smiled an
appeal--"I can manage for you by myself, if you'll be so good as to
let me."
"Oh! It's not that," said G.J. carelessly. "I expect you can manage
all right."
"Oh!" cried she. "I know how you feel about it, sir, and I'm very
sorry. And at best it's bound to be highly inconvenient for a
gentleman like yourself, sir. I said to Braiding, 'You're taking
advantage of Mr. Hoape's good nature,' that's what I said to Braiding,
and he couldn't deny it. However, sir, if you'll be so good as to let
me try what I can do by myself--"
"I tell you that'll be all right," he stopped her.
Braiding, his mainstay, was irrevocably gone. He realised that, and it
was a severe blow. He must accept it. As for Mrs. Braiding managing,
she would manage in a kind of way, but the risks to Regency furniture
and china would be grave. She did not understand Regency furniture
and china as Braiding did; no woman could. Braiding had been as much a
"find" as the dome bed or the unique bookcase which bore the names of
"Homer" and "Virgil" in bronze characters on its outer wings.
Also, G.J. had a hundred little ways about neckties and about
trouser-stretching which he, G.J., would have to teach Mrs. Braiding.
Still the war ...
When she was gone he stood up and brushed the crumbs from his
dressing-gown, and emitted a short, harsh laugh. He was laughing at
himself. Regency furniture and china! Neckties! Trouser-stretching! In
the next room was a youngish woman whose minstrel boy to the war had
gone--gone, though he might be only in the next street! And had she
said a word about her feelings as a wife? Not a word! But dozens
of words about the inconvenience to the god-like employer! She had
apologised to him because Braiding had departed to save the Empire
without first asking his permission. It was not merely astounding--it
flabbergasted. He had always felt that there was something
fundamentally wrong in the social fabric, and he had long had a
preoccupation to the effect that it was his business, his, to take a
share in finding out what was wrong and in discovering and applying a
cure. This preoccupation had worried him, scarcely perceptibly, like
the delicate oncoming of neuralgia. There must be something wrong when
a member of one class would behave to a member of another class as
Mrs. Braiding behaved to him--without protest from him.
"Mrs. Braiding!" he called out.
"Yes, sir." She almost ran back into the drawing-room.
"When shall you be seeing your husband?" At least he would remind her
that she had a husband.
"I haven't an idea, sir."
"Well, when you do, tell him that I want to speak to him; and you can
tell him I shall pay you half his wages in addition to your own."
Her gratitude filled him with secret fury.
He said to himself:
"Futile--these grand gestures about wages."
Chapter 8
BOOTS
In the very small hall G.J. gazed at himself in the mirror that was
nearly as large as the bathroom door, to which it was attached, and
which it ingeniously masked.
Although Mrs. Braiding was present, holding his ebony stick, he
carefully examined his face and appearance without the slightest
self-consciousness. Nor did Mrs. Braiding's demeanour indicate that in
her opinion G.J. was behaving in a manner eccentric or incorrect. He
was dressed in mourning. Honestly he did not believe that he looked
anywhere near fifty. His face was worn by the friction of the world,
especially under the eyes, but his eyes were youthful, and his hair
and moustache and short, fine beard scarcely tinged with grey. His
features showed benevolence, with a certain firmness, and they had the
refinement which comes of half a century's instinctive avoidance of
excess. Still, he was beginning to feel his age. He moved more slowly;
he sat down, instead of standing up, at the dressing-table. And he was
beginning also to take a pride in mentioning these changes and in the
fact that he would be fifty on his next birthday. And when talking to
men under thirty, or even under forty, he would say in a tone mingling
condescension and envy: "But, of course, you're young."
He departed, remarking that he should not be in for lunch and might
not be in for dinner, and he walked down the covered way to the
Albany Courtyard, and was approved by the Albany porters as a resident
handsomely conforming to the traditional high standard set by the
Albany for its residents. He crossed Piccadilly, and as he did so he
saw a couple of jolly fine girls, handsome, stylish, independent of
carriage, swinging freely along and intimately talking with that mien
of experience and broad-mindedness which some girls manage to wear in
the streets. One of them in particular appealed to him. He thought how
different they were from Christine. He had dreamt of just such girls
as they were, and yet now Christine filled the whole of his mind.
"You can't foresee," he thought.
He dipped down into the extraordinary rectangle of St. James's, where
he was utterly at home. A strange architecture, parsimoniously plain
on the outside, indeed carrying the Oriental scorn for merely external
effect to a point only reachable by a race at once hypocritical and
madly proud. The shabby plainness of Wren's church well typified all
the parochial parsimony. The despairing architect had been so pinched
by his employers in the matter of ornament that on the whole of the
northern facade there was only one of his favourite cherub's heads!
What a parish!
It was a parish of flat brick walls and brass door-knobs and brass
plates. And the first commandment was to polish every brass door-knob
and every brass plate every morning. What happened in the way of
disfigurement by polishing paste to the surrounding brick or wood had
no importance. The conventions of the parish had no eye save for brass
door-knobs and brass plates, which were maintained daily in effulgence
by a vast early-rising population. Recruiting offices, casualty lists,
the rumour of peril and of glory, could do nothing to diminish the
high urgency of the polishing of those brass door-knobs and those
brass plates.
The shops and offices seemed to show that the wants of customers were
few and simple. Grouse moors, fisheries, yachts, valuations, hosiery,
neckties, motor-cars, insurance, assurance, antique china, antique
pictures, boots, riding-whips, and, above all, Eastern cigarettes!
The master-passion was evidently Eastern cigarettes. The few provision
shops were marmoreal and majestic, catering as they did chiefly for
the multifarious palatial male clubs which dominated the parish and
protected and justified the innumerable "bachelor" suites that hung
forth signs in every street. The parish, in effect, was first an
immense monastery, where the monks, determined to do themselves
extremely well in dignified peace, had made a prodigious and not
entirely unsuccessful effort to keep out the excitable sex. And,
second, it was an excusable conspiracy on the part of intensely
respectable tradesmen and stewards to force the non-bargaining sex to
pay the highest possible price for the privilege of doing the correct
thing.
G.J. passed through the cardiac region of St. James's, the Square
itself, where knights, baronets, barons, brewers, viscounts,
marquesses, hereditary marshals and chief butlers, dukes, bishops,
banks, librarians and Government departments gaze throughout the four
seasons at the statue of a Dutchman; and then he found himself at his
bootmaker's.
Now, his bootmaker was one of the three first bootmakers in the West
End, bearing a name famous from Peru to Hong Kong. An untidy interior,
full of old boots and the hides of various animals! A dirty girl was
writing in a dirty tome, and a young man was knotting together two
pieces of string in order to tie up a parcel. Such was the "note" of
the "house". The girl smiled, the young man bowed. In an instant the
manager appeared, and G.J. was invested with the attributes of God. He
informed the manager with pain, and the manager heard with deep
pain, that the left boot of the new pair he then wore was not quite
comfortable in the toes. The manager simply could not understand it,
just as he simply could not have understood a failure in the working
of the law of gravity. And if God had not told him he would not have
believed it. He knelt and felt. He would send for the boots. He would
make the boots comfortable or he would make a new pair. Expense was
nothing. Trouble was nothing. Incidentally he remarked with a sigh
that the enormous demand for military boots was rendering it more and
more difficult for him to give to old patrons that prompt and plenary
attention which he would desire to give. However, God in any case
should not suffer. He noticed that the boots were not quite well
polished, and he ventured to charge God with hints for God's personal
attendant. Then he went swiftly across to a speaking-tube and snapped:
"Polisher!"
A trap-door opened in the floor of the shop and a horrible, pallid,
weak, cringing man came up out of the earth of St. James's, and knelt
before God far more submissively than even the manager had knelt. He
had brushes and blacking, and he blacked and he brushed and breathed
alternately, undoing continually with his breath or his filthy hand
what he had done with his brush. He never looked up, never spoke. When
he had made the boots like mirrors he gathered together his implements
and vanished, silent and dutifully bent, through the trap-door back
into the earth of St. James's. And because the trap-door had not
shut properly the manager stamped on it and stamped down the pale man
definitely into the darkness underneath. And then G.J. was wafted out
of the shop with smiles and bows.
Chapter 9
THE CLUB
The vast "morning-room" of the Monumental Club (pre-eminent among
clubs for its architecture) was on the whole tonically chilly. But
as one of the high windows stood open, and there were two fires
fluttering beneath the lovely marble mantelpieces, between the fires
and the window every gradation of temperature could be experienced by
the curious. On each wall book-shelves rose to the carved and gilded
ceiling. The furlongs of shelves were fitted with majestic volumes
containing all the Statutes, all the Parliamentary Debates, and
all the Reports of Royal Commissions ever printed to narcotise the
conscience of a nation. These calf-bound works were not, in fact,
read; but the magnificent pretence of their usefulness was completed
by carpeted mahogany ladders which leaned here and there against the
shelfing, in accord with the theory that some studious member some day
might yearn and aspire to some upper shelf. On reading-stands and on
huge mahogany tables were disposed the countless newspapers of Great
Britain and Ireland, Europe and America, and also the files of such
newspapers. The apparatus of information was complete.
G.J. entered the splendid apartment like a discoverer. It was empty.
Not a member; not a servant! It waited, content to be inhabited,
equally content with its own solitude. This apartment had made an
adjunct even of the war; the function of the war in this apartment
was to render it more impressive, to increase, if possible, its
importance, for nowhere else could the war be studied so minutely day
by day.
A strange thing! G.J.'s sense of duty to himself had been quickened
by the defection of his valet. He felt that he had been failing to
comprehend in detail the cause and the evolution of the war, and that
even his general ideas as to it were inexcusably vague; and he had
determined to go every morning to the club, at whatever inconvenience,
for the especial purpose of studying and getting the true hang of the
supreme topic. As he sat down he was aware of the solemnity of the
great room, last fastness of the old strict decorum in the club. You
might not smoke in it until after 10 p.m.
Two other members came in immediately, one after the other. The first,
a little, very old and very natty man, began to read _The Times_ at
a stand. The second, old too, but of larger and firmer build, with a
long, clean-shaven upper lip, such as is only developed at the Bar,
on the Bench, and in provincial circles of Noncomformity, took an
easy-chair and another copy of _The Times_. A few moments elapsed, and
then the little old man glanced round, and, assuming surprise that
he had not noticed G.J. earlier, nodded to him with a very bright and
benevolent smile.
G.J. said:
"Well, Sir Francis, what's your opinion of this Ypres business. Seems
pretty complicated, doesn't it?"
Sir Francis answered in a tone whose mild and bland benevolence
matched his smile:
"I dare say the complications escape me. I see the affair quite
simply. We are holding on, but we cannot continue to hold on. The
Germans have more men, far more guns, and infinitely more ammunition.
They certainly have not less genius for war. What can be the result?
I am told by respectable people that the Germans lost the war at the
Marne. I don't appreciate it. I am told that the Germans don't realise
the Marne. I think they realise the Marne at least as well as we
realise Tannenberg."
The slightly trembling, slightly mincing voice of Sir Francis denoted
such detachment, such politeness, such kindliness, that the opinion it
emitted seemed to impose itself on G.J. with extraordinary authority.
There was a brief pause, and Sir Francis ejaculated:
"What's your view, Bob?"
The other old man now consisted of a newspaper, two seamy hands and
a pair of grey legs. His grim voice came from behind the newspaper,
which did not move:
"We've no adequate means of judging."
"True," said Sir Francis. "Now, another thing I'm told is that the War
Office was perfectly ready for the war on the scale agreed upon for
ourselves with France and Russia. I don't appreciate that either. No
War Office can be said to be perfectly ready for any war until it has
organised its relations with the public which it serves. My belief
is that the War Office had never thought for one moment about the
military importance of public opinion and the Press. At any rate, it
has most carefully left nothing undone to alienate both the public and
the Press. My son-in-law has the misfortune to own seven newspapers,
and the tales he tells about the antics of the Press Bureau--" Sir
Francis smiled the rest of the sentence. "Let me see, they offered the
Press Bureau to you, didn't they, Bob?"
_The Times_ fell, disclosing Bob, whose long upper lip grew longer.
"They did," he said. "I made a few inquiries, and found it was nothing
but a shuttlecock of the departments. I should have had no real
power, but unlimited quantities of responsibility. So I respectfully
refused."
Sir Francis remarked:
"Your hearing's much better, Bob."
"It is," answered Bob. "The fact is, I got hold of a marvellous feller
at Birmingham." He laughed sardonically. "I hope to go down to history
as the first judge that ever voluntarily retired because of deafness.
And now, thanks to this feller at Birmingham, I can hear better than
seventy-five per cent of the Bench. The Lord Chancellor gave me a hint
I might care to return, and so save a pension to the nation. I told
him I'd begin to think about that when he'd persuaded the Board of
Works to ventilate my old Court." He laughed again. "And now I see
the Press Bureau is enunciating the principle that it won't permit
criticism that might in any way weaken the confidence of the people in
the administration of affairs."
Bob opened his mouth wide and kept it open.
Sir Francis, with no diminution of the mild and bland benevolence of
his detachment, said:
"The voice is the Press Bureau's voice, but the hands are the hands
of the War Office. Can we reasonably hope to win, or not to lose, with
such a mentality at the head? I cannot admit that the War Office has
changed in the slightest degree in a hundred years. From time to time
a brainy civilian walks in, like Cardwell or Haldane, and saves it
from becoming patently ridiculous. But it never really alters. When I
was War Secretary in a transient government it was precisely the same
as it had been in the reign of the Duke of Cambridge, and to-day it is
still precisely the same. I am told that Haldane succeeded in teaching
our generals the value of Staff work as distinguished from dashing
cavalry charges. I don't appreciate that. The Staffs are still wide
open to men with social influence and still closed to men without
social influence. My grandson is full of great modern notions
about tactics. He may have talent for all I know. He got a Staff
appointment--because he came to me and I spoke ten words to an old
friend of mine with oak leaves in the club next door but one. No
questions asked. I mean no serious questions. It was done to oblige
me--the very existence of the Empire being at stake, according to
all accounts. So that I venture to doubt whether we're going to hold
Ypres, or anything else."
Bob, unimpressed by the speech, burst out:
"You've got the perspective wrong. Obviously the centre of gravity
is no longer in the West--it's in the East. In the West, roughly,
equilibrium has been established. Hence Poland is the decisive field,
and the measure of the Russian success or failure is the measure of
the Allied success or failure."
Sir Francis inquired with gentle joy:
"Then we're all right? The Russians have admittedly recovered from
Tannenberg. If there is any truth in a map they are doing excellently.
They're more brilliant than Potsdam, and they can put two men into the
field to the Germans' one--two and a half in fact."
Bob fiercely rumbled:
"I don't think we're all right. This habit of thinking in men is
dangerous. What are men without munitions? And without a clean
administration? Nothing but a rabble. It is notorious that the
Russians are running short of munitions and that the administration
from top to bottom consists of outrageous rascals. Moreover I see
to-day a report that the Germans have won a big victory at Kutno. I've
been expecting that. That's the beginning--mark me!"
"Yes," Sir Francis cheerfully agreed. "Yes. We're spending one million
a day, and now income tax is doubled! The country cannot stand it
indefinitely, and since our only hope lies in our being able to stand
it indefinitely, there is no hope--at any rate for unbiased minds.
Facts are facts, I fear."
Bob cried impatiently:
"Unbiased be damned! I don't want to be unbiased. I won't be. I had
enough of being unbiased when I was on the Bench, and I don't care
what any of you unbiased people say--I believe we shall win."
G.J. suddenly saw a boy in the old man, and suddenly he too became
boyish, remembering what he had said to Christine about the war not
having begun yet; and with fervour he concurred:
"So do I."
He rose, moved--relieved after a tension which he had not noticed
until it was broken. It was time for him to go. The two old men were
recalled to the fact of his presence. Bob raised the newspaper again.
Sir Francis asked:
"Are you going to the--er--affair in the City?"
"Yes," said G.J. with careful unconcern.
"I had thought of going. My granddaughter worried me till I consented
to take her. I got two tickets; but no sooner had I arrayed myself
this morning than she rang me up to say that her baby was teething
and she couldn't leave it. In view of this important creature's
indisposition I sent the tickets back to the Dean and changed my
clothes. Great-grandfathers have to be philosophers. I say, Hoape,
they tell me you play uncommonly good auction bridge."
"I play," said G.J. modestly. "But no better than I ought."
"You might care to make a fourth this afternoon, in the card-room."
"I should have been delighted to, but I've got one of these
war-committees at six o'clock." Again he spoke with careful unconcern,
masking a considerable self-satisfaction.
Chapter 10
THE MISSION
The great dim place was full, but crowding had not been permitted.
With a few exceptions in the outlying parts, everybody had a seat.
G.J. was favourably placed for seeing the whole length of the
interior. Accustomed to the restaurants of fashionable hotels,
auction-rooms, theatrical first-nights, the haunts of sport, clubs,
and courts of justice, he soon perceived, from the numerous samples
which he himself was able to identify, that all the London worlds were
fully represented in the multitude--the official world, the political,
the clerical, the legal, the municipal, the military, the artistic,
the literary, the dilettante, the financial, the sporting, and the
world whose sole object in life apparently is to be observed and
recorded at all gatherings to which admittance is gained by privilege
and influence alone.
There were in particular women the names and countenances and
family history of whom were familiar to hundreds of thousands of
illustrated-newspaper readers, even in the most distant counties, and
who never missed what was called a "function," whether "brilliant,"
"exclusive," or merely scandalous. At murder trials, at the sales of
art collections, at the birth of musical comedies, at boxing matches,
at historic debates, at receptions in honour of the renowned, at
luscious divorce cases, they were surely present, and the entire
Press surely noted that they were present. And if executions had
been public, they would in the same religious spirit have attended
executions, rousing their maids at milkmen's hours in order that they
might assume the right cunning frock to fit the occasion. And they
were here. And no one could divine why or how, or to what eternal end.
G.J. hated them, and he hated the solemn self-satisfaction that
brooded over the haughty faces of the throng. He hated himself for
having accepted a ticket from the friend in the War Office who was
now sitting next to him. And yet he was pleased, too. A disturbed
conscience could not defeat the instinct which bound him to the whole
fashionable and powerful assemblage. For ever afterwards, to his dying
hour, he could say--casually, modestly, as a matter of course, but he
could still say--that he had been there. The Lord Mayor and Sheriffs,
tradesmen glittering like Oriental potentates, passed slowly across
his field of vision. He thought with contempt of the City, living
ghoulish on the buried past, and obstinately and humanly refusing to
make a pile of its putrefying interests, set fire to it, and perish
thereon.
The music began. It was the Dead March in _Saul_. The long-rolling
drums suddenly rent the soul, and destroyed every base and petty
thought that was there. Clergy, headed by a bishop, were walking down
the cathedral. At the huge doors, nearly lost in the heavy twilight of
November noon, they stopped, turned and came back. The coffin swayed
into view, covered with the sacred symbolic bunting, and borne on the
shoulders of eight sergeants of the old regiments of the dead man.
Then followed the pall-bearers--five field-marshals, five full
generals, and two admirals; aged men, and some of them had reached
the highest dignity without giving a single gesture that had impressed
itself on the national mind; nonentities, apotheosised by seniority;
and some showed traces of the bitter rain that was falling in the
fog outside. Then the Primate. Then the King, who had supervened from
nowhere, the magic production of chamberlains and comptrollers. The
procession, headed by the clergy, moved slowly, amid the vistas ending
in the dull burning of stained glass, through the congregation in
mourning and in khaki, through the lines of yellow-glowing candelabra,
towards the crowd of scarlet under the dome; the summit of the
dome was hidden in soft mist. The music became insupportable in its
sublimity.
G.J. was afraid, and he did not immediately know why he was afraid.
The procession came nearer. It was upon him.... He knew why he was
afraid, and he averted sharply his gaze from the coffin. He was afraid
for his composure. If he had continued to watch the coffin he would
have burst into loud sobs. Only by an extraordinary effort did he
master himself. Many other people lowered their faces in self-defence.
The searchers after new and violent sensations were having the time of
their lives.
The Dead March with its intolerable genius had ceased. The coffin,
guarded by flickering candles, lay on the lofty catafalque; the eight
sergeants were pretending that their strength had not been in the
least degree taxed. Princes, the illustrious, the champions of
Allied might, dark Indians, adventurers, even Germans, surrounded the
catafalque in the gloom. G.J. sympathised with the man in the coffin,
the simple little man whose non-political mission had in spite of
him grown political. He regretted horribly that once he, G.J., who
protested that he belonged to no party, had said of the dead man:
"Roberts! Well-meaning of course, but senile!" ... Yet a trifle! What
did it matter? And how he loathed to think that the name of the dead
man was now befouled by the calculating and impure praise of schemers.
Another trifle!
As the service proceeded G.J. was overwhelmed and lost in the grandeur
and terror of existence. There he sat, grizzled, dignified, with the
great world, looking as though he belonged to the great world; and
he felt like a boy, like a child, like a helpless infant before the
enormities of destiny. He wanted help, because of his futility. He
could do nothing, or so little. It was as if he had been training
himself for twenty years in order to be futile at a crisis requiring
crude action. And he could not undo twenty years. The war loomed about
him, co-extensive with existence itself. He thought of the sergeant
who, as recounted that morning in the papers, had led a victorious
storming party, been decorated--and died of wounds. And similar deeds
were being done at that moment. And the simple little man in the
coffin was being tilted downwards from the catafalque into the grave
close by. G.J. wanted surcease, were it but for an hour. He longed
acutely, unbearably, to be for an hour with Christine in her warm,
stuffy, exciting, languorous, enervating room hermetically sealed
against the war. Then he remembered the tones of her voice as she had
told her Belgian adventures.... Was it love? Was it tenderness? Was
it sensuality? The difference was indiscernible; it had no importance.
Against the stark background of infinite existence all human beings
were alike and all their passions were alike.
The gaunt, ruthless autocrat of the War Office and the frail crowned
descendant of kings fronted each other across the open grave, and the
coffin sank between them and was gone. From the choir there came the
chanted and soothing words:
_Steals on the ear the distant triumph-song_.
G.J. just caught them clear among much that was incomprehensible. An
intense patriotism filled him. He could do nothing; but he could keep
his head, keep his balance, practise magnanimity, uphold the truth
amid prejudice and superstition, and be kind. Such at that moment
seemed to be his mission.... He looked round, and pitied, instead of
hating, the searchers after sensations.
A being called the Garter King of Arms stepped forward and in a loud
voice recited the earthly titles and honours of the simple little dead
man; and, although few qualities are commoner than physical courage,
the whole catalogue seemed ridiculous and tawdry until the being
came to the two words, "Victoria Cross". The being, having lived his
glorious moments, withdrew. The Funeral March of Chopin tramped with
its excruciating dragging tread across the ruins of the soul. And
finally the cathedral was startled by the sudden trumpets of the Last
Post, and the ceremony ended.
"Come and have lunch with me," said the young red-hatted officer next
to G.J. "I haven't got to be back till two-thirty, and I want to talk
music for a change. Do you know I'm putting in ninety hours a week at
the W.O.?"
"Can't," G.J. replied, with an affectation of jauntiness. "I'm engaged
for lunch. Sorry."
"Who you lunching with?"
"Mrs. Smith."
The Staff officer exclaimed aghast:
"Conception?"
"Yes. Why, dear heart?"
"My dear chap. You don't know. Carlos Smith's been killed. _She_
doesn't know yet. I only heard by chance. News came through just as I
left. Nobody knows except a chap or two in Casualties. They won't be
sending out to-day's wires until two or three o'clock."
G.J., terrified and at a loss, murmured:
"What am I to do, then?"
"You know her extremely well, don't you? You ought to go and prepare
her."
"But how can I prepare her?"
"I don't know. How do people prepare people?... Poor thing!"
G.J. fought against the incredible fact of death.
"But he only went out six days ago! They haven't been married three
weeks."
The central hardness of the other disclosed itself as he said:
"What's that got to do with it? What does it matter if he went out six
days ago or six weeks ago? He's killed."
"Well--"
"Of course you must go. Indicate a rumour. Tell her it's probably
false, but you thought you owed it to her to warn her. Only for God's
sake don't mention me. We're not supposed to say anything, you know."
G.J. seemed to see his mission, and it challenged him.
Chapter 11
THE TELEGRAM
As soon as G.J. had been let into the abode by Concepcion's venerable
parlour-maid, the voice of Concepcion came down to him from above:
"G.J., who is your oldest and dearest friend?"
He replied, marvellously schooling his voice to a similar tone of
cheerful abruptness:
"Difficult to say, off-hand."
"Not at all. It's your beard."
That was her greeting to him. He knew she was recalling an old
declined suggestion of hers that he should part with his beard. The
parlour-maid practised an admirable deafness, faithfully to confirm
Concepcion, who always presumed deafness in all servants. G.J. looked
up the narrow well of the staircase. He could vaguely see Concepcion
on high, leaning over the banisters; he thought she was rather
fluffilly dressed, for her.
Concepcion inhabited an upper part in a street largely devoted to the
sale of grand pianos. Her front door was immediately at the top of a
long, straight, narrow stairway; so that whoever opened the door stood
one step higher than the person desiring entrance. Within the abode,
which was fairly spacious, more and more stairs went up and up. "My
motto is," she would say, "'One room, one staircase.'" The life of the
abode was on the busy stairs. She called it also her Alpine Club. She
had made upper-parts in that street popular among the select, and had
therefore caused rents to rise. In the drawing-room she had hung
a horrible enlarged photographic portrait of herself, with a
chocolate-coloured mount, the whole framed in German gilt, and under
it she had inscribed, "Presented to Miss Concepcion Iquist by the
grateful landlords of the neighbourhood as a slight token of esteem
and regard."
She was the only daughter of Iquist's brother, who had had a business
and a palace at Lima. At the age of eighteen, her last surviving
parent being dead, she had come to London and started to keep house
for the bachelor Iquist, who at that very moment, owing to a fortunate
change in the Ministry, had humorously entered the Cabinet. These two
had immediately become "the most talked-of pair in London," London in
this phrase signifying the few thousand people who do talk about
the doings of other people unknown to them and being neither kings,
princes, statesmen, artistes, artists, jockeys, nor poisoners. The
Iquists had led the semi-intelligent, conscious-of-its-audience set
which had ousted the old, quite unintelligent stately-homes-of-England
set from the first place in the curiosity of the everlasting public.
Concepcion had wit. It was stated that she furnished her uncle with
the finest of his _mots_. When Iquist died, of course poor Concepcion
had retired to the upper part, whence, though her position was
naturally weakened, she still took a hand in leading the set.
G.J. had grown friendly and appreciative of her, for the simple reason
that she had singled him out and always tried to please him, even when
taking liberties with him. He liked her because she was different from
her set. She had a masculine mind, whereas many even of the males of
her set had a feminine mind. She was exceedingly well educated; she
had ideas on everything; and she never failed in catching an allusion.
She would criticise her set very honestly; her attitude to it and
to herself seemed to be that of an impartial and yet indulgent
philosopher; withal she could be intensely loyal to fools and worse
who were friends. As for the public, she was apparently convinced of
the sincerity of her scorn for it, while admitting that she enjoyed
publicity, which had become indispensable to her as a drug may become
indispensable. Moreover, there was her wit and her candid, queer
respect for G.J.
Yes, he had greatly admired her for her qualities. He did not,
however, greatly admire her physique. She was tall, with a head
scarcely large enough for her body. She had a nice snub nose which in
another woman might have been irresistible. She possessed very little
physical charm, and showed very little taste in her neat, prim frocks.
Not merely had she a masculine mind, but she was somewhat hard, a
self-confessed egoist. She swore like the set, using about one
"damn" or one "bloody" to every four cigarettes, of which she smoked,
perhaps, fifty a day--including some in taxis. She discussed the
sexual vagaries of her friends and her enemies with a freedom and an
apparent learning which were remarkable in a virgin.
In the end she had married Carlos Smith, and, characteristically, had
received him into her own home instead of going to his; as a fact, he
had none, having been a parent's close-kept darling. London had only
just recovered from the excitations of the wedding. G.J. had regarded
the marriage with benevolence, perhaps with relief.
"Anybody else coming to lunch?" he discreetly inquired of his
familiar, the parlour-maid.
She breathed a negative.
He had guessed it. Concepcion had meant to be alone with him. Having
married for love, and her husband being rapt away by the war, she
intended to resume her old, honest, quasi-sentimental relations with
G.J. A reliable and experienced bachelor is always useful to a young
grass-widow, and, moreover, the attendant hopeless adorer nourishes
her hungry egotism as nobody else can. G.J. thought these thoughts,
clearly and callously, in the same moment as, mounting the next
flight of stairs, he absolutely trembled with sympathetic anguish for
Concepcion. His errand was an impossible one; he feared, or rather he
hoped, that the very look on his face might betray the dreadful news
to that undeceivable intuition which women were supposed to possess.
He hesitated on the stairs; he recoiled from the top step--(she had
coquettishly withdrawn herself into the room)--he hadn't the slightest
idea how to begin. Yes, the errand was an impossible one, and yet such
errands had to be performed by somebody, were daily being performed by
somebodies. Then he had the idea of telephoning privily to fetch her
cousin Sara. He would open by remarking casually to Concepcion:
"I say, can I use your telephone a minute?" He found a strange
Concepcion in the drawing-room. This was his first sight of Mrs.
Carlos Smith since the wedding. She wore a dress such as he had never
seen on her: a tea-gown--and for lunch! It could be called neither
neat nor prim, but it was voluptuous. Her complexion had bloomed; the
curves of her face were softer, her gestures more abandoned, her
gaze full of a bold and yet shamed self-consciousness, her dark
hair looser. He stood close to her; he stood within the aura of her
recently aroused temperament, and felt it. He thought, could not help
thinking: "Perhaps she bears within her the legacy of new life." He
could not help thinking of her name. He took her hot hand. She said
nothing, but just looked at him. He then said jauntily:
"I say, can I use your telephone a minute?" Fortunately, the telephone
was in the bedroom. He went farther upstairs and shut himself in the
bedroom, and saw naught but the telephone surrounded by the mysterious
influences of inanimate things in the gay, crowded room.
"Is that you, Mrs. Trevise? It's G.J. speaking. G.J.... Hoape. Yes.
Listen. I'm at Concepcion's for lunch, and I want you to come over as
quickly as you can. I've got very bad news indeed--the worst possible.
Carlos has been killed at the Front. What? Yes, awful, isn't it? She
doesn't know. I have the job of telling her."
Now that the words had been spoken in Concepcion's abode the reality
of Carlos Smith's death seemed more horribly convincing than before.
And G.J., speaker of the words, felt almost as guilty as though he
himself were responsible for the death. When he had rung off he stood
motionless in the room until the opening of the door startled him.
Concepcion appeared.
"If you've done corrupting my innocent telephone ..." she said, "lunch
is cooling."
He felt a murderer.
At the lunch-table she might have been a genuine South American.
Nobody could be less like Christine than she was; and yet in those
instants she incomprehensibly reminded him of Christine. Then she
started to talk in her old manner of a professional and renowned
talker. G.J. listened attentively. They ate. It was astounding that
he could eat. And it was rather surprising that she did not cry out:
"G.J. What the devil's the matter with you to-day?" But she went on
talking evenly, and she made him recount his doings. He related the
conversation at the club, and especially what Bob, the retired judge,
had said about equilibrium on the Western Front. She did not want to
hear anything as to the funeral.
"We'll have champagne," she said suddenly to the parlour-maid, who was
about to offer some red wine. And while the parlour-maid was out of
the room she said to G.J., "There isn't a country in Europe where
champagne is not a symbol, and we must conform."
"A symbol of what?"
"Ah! The unusual."
"And what is there unusual to-day?" he almost asked, but did not
ask. It would, of course, have been utterly monstrous to put such
a question, knowing what he knew. He thought: I'm not a bit nearer
telling her than I was when I came.
After the parlour-maid had poured out the champagne Concepcion picked
up her glass and absently glanced through it and said:
"You know, G.J., I shouldn't be in the least surprised to hear that
Carly was killed out there. I shouldn't, really."
In amazement G.J. ceased to eat.
"You needn't look at me like that," she said. "I'm quite serious. One
may as well face the risks. _He_ does. Of course they're all heroes.
There are millions of heroes. But I do honestly believe that my Carly
would be braver than anyone. By the way, did I ever tell you he was
considered the best shot in Cheshire?"
"No. But I knew," answered G.J. feebly. He would have expected her to
be a little condescending towards Carlos, to whom in brains she was
infinitely superior. But no! Carlos had mastered her, and she was
grateful to him for mastering her. He had taught her in three weeks
more than she had learnt on two continents in thirty years. She
talked of him precisely as any wee wifie might have talked of the
soldier-spouse. And she called him "Carly"!
Neither of them had touched the champagne. G.J. decided that he would
postpone any attempt to tell her until her cousin arrived; her cousin
might arrive at any moment now.
While the parlour-maid presented potatoes Concepcion deliberately
ignored her and said dryly to G.J.:
"I can't eat any more. I think I ought to run along to Debenham and
Freebody's at once. You might come too, and be sure to bring your good
taste with you."
He was alarmed by her tone.
"Debenham and Freebody's! What for?"
"To order mourning, of course. To have it ready, you know. A
precaution, you know." She laughed.
He saw that she was becoming hysterical: the special liability of
the war-bride for whom the curtain has been lifted and falls
exasperatingly, enragingly, too soon.
"You think I'm a bit hysterical?" she questioned, half menacingly, and
stood up.
"I think you'd better sit down, to begin with," he said firmly.
The parlour-maid, blushing slightly, left the room.
"Oh, all right!" Concepcion agreed carelessly, and sat down. "But you
may as well read that."
She drew a telegram from the low neck of her gown and carefully
unfolded it and placed it in front of him. It was a War Office
telegram announcing that Carlos had been killed.
"It came ten minutes before you," she said.
"Why didn't you tell me at once?" he murmured, frightfully shocked. He
was actually reproaching her!
She stood up again. She lived; her breast rose and fell. Her gown had
the same voluptuousness. Her temperament was still emanating the same
aura. She was the same new Concepcion, strange and yet profoundly
known to him. But ineffable tragedy had marked her down, and the sight
of her parched the throat.
She said:
"Couldn't. Besides, I had to see if I could stand it. Because I've got
to stand it, G.J.... And, moreover, in our set it's a sacred duty to
be original."
She snatched the telegram, tore it in two, and pushed the pieces back
into her gown.
"'Poor wounded name!'" she murmured, "'my bosom as a bed shall lodge
thee.'"
The next moment she fell to the floor, at full length on her back.
G.J. sprang to her, kneeling on her rich, outspread gown, and tried to
lift her.
"No, no!" she protested faintly, dreamily, with a feeble frown on her
pale forehead. "Let me lie. Equilibrium has been established on the
Western Front."
This was her greatest _mot_.
Chapter 12
RENDEZVOUS
When the Italian woman, having recognised him with a discreet smile,
introduced G.J. into the drawing-room of the Cork Street flat, he saw
Christine lying on the sofa by the fire. She too was in a tea-gown.
She said:
"Do not be vexed. I have my migraine--am good for nothing. But I gave
the order that thou shouldst be admitted."
She lifted her arms, and the long sleeves fell away. G.J. bent down
and kissed her. She joined her hands on the nape of his neck, and
with this leverage raised her whole body for an instant, like a child,
smiling; then dropped back with a fatigued sigh, also like a child.
He found satisfaction in the fact that she was laid aside. It was
providential. It set him right with himself. For, to put the thing
crudely, he had left the tragic Concepcion to come to Christine, a
woman picked up in a Promenade.
True, Sara Trevise had agreed with him that he could accomplish no
good by staying at Concepcion's; Concepcion had withdrawn from the
vision of men. True, it could make no difference to Concepcion whether
he retired to his flat for the rest of the day and saw no one, or
whether, having changed his ceremonious clothes there, he went out
again on his own affairs. True, he had promised Christine to see her
that afternoon, and a promise was a promise, and Christine was a woman
who had behaved well to him, and it would have been impossible for
him to send her an excuse, since he did not know her surname. These
apparently excellent arguments were specious and worthless. He would,
anyhow, have gone to Christine. The call was imperious within him,
and took no heed of grief, nor propriety, nor the secret decencies of
sympathy. The primitive man in him would have gone to Christine.
He sat down with a profound and exquisite relief. The entrance to the
house was nearly opposite the entrance to a prim but fashionable
and expensive hotel. To ring (and ring the right bell) and wait at
Christine's door almost under the eyes of the hotel was an ordeal....
The fat and untidy Italian had opened the door, and shut it
again--quick! He was in another world, saved, safe! On the dark
staircase the image of Concepcion with her temperament roused and
condemned to everlasting hunger, the unconquerable Concepcion blasted
in an instant of destiny--this image faded. She would re-marry....
She ought to re-marry.... And now he was in Christine's warm room,
and Christine, temporary invalid, reclined before his eyes. The lights
were turned on, the blinds drawn, the stove replenished, the fire
replenished. He was enclosed with Christine in a little world with no
law and no conventions except its own, and no shames nor pretences. He
was, as it were, in the East. And the immanence of a third person,
the Italian, accepting naturally and completely the code of the little
world, only added to the charm. The Italian was like a slave, from
whom it is necessary to hide nothing and never to blush.
A stuffy little world with a perceptible odour! Ordinarily he had the
common insular appetite for ventilation, but now stuffiness appealed
to him; he scented it almost voluptuously. The ugliness of the
wallpaper, of the furniture, of everything in the room was naught.
Christine's profession was naught. Who could positively say that her
profession was on her face, in her gestures, in her talk? Admirable
as was his knowledge of French, it was not enough to enable him to
criticise her speech. Her gestures were delightful. Her face--her face
was soft; her puckered brow was touching in its ingenuousness. She
had a kind and a trustful eye; it was a lewd eye, indicative of her
incomparable endowment; but had he not encountered the lewd eye in the
very arcana of the respectability of the world outside? On the sofa,
open and leaves downward, lay a book with a glistening coloured cover,
entitled _Fantomas_. It was the seventh volume of an interminable
romance which for years had had a tremendous vogue among the
concierges, the workgirls, the clerks, and the _cocottes_ of Paris. An
unreadable affair, not even indecent, which nevertheless had
enchanted a whole generation. To be able to enjoy it was an absolute
demonstration of lack of taste; but did not some of his best friends
enjoy books no better? And could he not any day in any drawing-room
see martyred books dropped open and leaves downwards in a manner to
raise the gorge of a person of any bookish sensibility?
"Thou wilt play for me?" she suggested.
"But the headache?"
"It will do me good. I adore music, such music as thou playest."
He was flattered. The draped piano was close to him. Stretching out
his hand he took a little pile of music from the top of it.
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