Pretty Lady — Chapters 10 & 11
"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
