Pretty Lady — Chapters 18 & 19
Assuredly she had not expected this development.
She thought: "Is he not sober yet?"
But the query had no conviction in it.
She wanted to believe that he was sober.
At any rate he had removed the absurd towels from his boots.
Chapter 18 THE MYSTIC
"Say you forgive me!"
The officer insisted.
"But there is nothing--" "Say you forgive me!"
She had counted on a scene of triumph with him when he woke up, anticipating that he was bound to cut a ridiculous appearance.
He knelt dimly there without a sign of self-consciousness or false shame.
She forgave him.
"Great baby!"
Her hand was kissed again and loosed.
She detected a faint, sad smile on his face.
"Ah!"
He rose, towering above her.
"I know I'm a drunken sot," he said.
"It was only because I knew I was drunk that I didn't want to come with you last night.
And I called this morning to apologise.
I did really.
I'd no other thought in my poor old head.
I wanted you to understand why I tried to hit that chap.
The other woman had spoken to me earlier, and I suppose she was jealous, seeing me with you.
She said something to him about you, and he laughed, and I had to hit him for laughing.
I couldn't hit her.
If I'd caught him an upper cut with my left he'd have gone down, and he wouldn't have got up by himself--_I_ warrant you--" "What did she say?"
Christine interrupted, not comprehending the technical idiom and not interested in it.
"I dunno; but he laughed--anyhow he smiled."
Christine turned on the light, and then went quickly to the window to draw the curtains.
"Take off your overcoat," she commanded him kindly.
He obeyed, blinking.
She sat down on the sofa and, raising her arms, drew the pins from her hat and put it on the table.
She motioned him to sit down too, and left him a narrow space between herself and the arm of the sofa, so that they were very close together.
Then, with puckered brow, she examined him.
"I'd better tell you," he said.
"It does me good to confess to you, you beautiful thing.
I had a bottle of whisky upstairs in my room at the Grosvenor.
Night before last, when I arrived there, I couldn't get to sleep in the bed.
Hadn't been used to a bed for so long, you know.
I had to turn out and roll myself up in a blanket on the floor.
And last night I spent drinking by myself.
Yes, by myself.
Somehow, I don't mind telling _you_.
This morning I must have been worse than I thought I was--" He stopped and put his hand on her shoulder.
"There are tears in your eyes, little thing.
Let me kiss your eyes....
No!
I'll respect you.
I worship you.
You're the nicest little woman I ever saw, and I'm a brute.
But let me kiss your eyes."
She held her face seriously, even frowning somewhat.
And he kissed her eyes gently, one after the other, and she smelt his contaminated breath.
He was a spare man, with a rather thin, ingenuous, mysterious, romantic, appealing face.
It was true that her eyes had moistened.
She was touched by his look and his tone as he told her that he had been obliged to lie on the floor of his bedroom in order to sleep.
There seemed to be an infinite pathos in that trifle.
He was one of the fighters.
He had fought.
He was come from the horrors of the battle.
A
man of power.
He had killed.
And he was probably ten or a dozen years her senior.
Nevertheless, she felt herself to be older than he was, wiser, more experienced.
She almost wanted to nurse him.
And for her he was, too, the protected of the very clement Virgin.
Inquiries from Marthe showed that he must have entered the flat at the moment when she was kneeling at the altar and when the Lady of VII Dolours had miraculously granted to her pardon and peace.
He was part of the miracle.
She had a duty to him, and her duty was to brighten his destiny, to give him joy, not to let him go without a charming memory of her soft womanly acquiescences.
At the same time her temperament was aroused by his personality; and she did not forget she had a living to earn; but still her chief concern was his satisfaction, not her own, and her overmastering sentiment one of dutiful, nay religious, surrender.
French gratitude of the English fighter, and a mystic, fearful allegiance to the very clement Virgin--these things inspired her.
"Ah!"
he sighed.
"My throat's like leather."
And seeing that she did not follow, he added: "Thirsty."
He stretched his arms.
She went to the sideboard and half filled a tumbler with soda water from the siphon.
"Drink!"
she said, as if to a child.
"Just a dash!
The tiniest dash!"
he pleaded in his rich voice, with a glance at the whisky.
"You don't know how it'll pull me together.
You don't know how I need it."
But she did know, and she humoured him, shaking her head disapprovingly.
He drank and smacked his lips.
"Ah!"
he breathed voluptuously, and then said in changed, playful accents: "Your French accent is exquisite.
It makes English sound quite beautiful.
And you're the daintiest little thing."
"Daintiest?
What is that?
I have much to learn in English.
But it is something nice--daintiest; it is a compliment."
She somehow understood then that, despite appearances, he was not really a devotee of her sex, that he was really a solitary, that he would never die of love, and that her _rôle_ was a minor _rôle_ in his existence.
And she accepted the fact with humility, with enthusiasm, with ardour, quite ready to please and to be forgotten.
In playing the slave to him she had the fierce French illusion of killing Germans.
Suddenly she noticed that he was wearing two wrist-watches, one close to the other, on his left arm, and she remarked on the strange fact.
The officer's face changed.
"Have you got a wrist-watch?"
he demanded.
"No." Silently he unfastened one of the watches and then said: "Hold out your beautiful arm."
She did so.
He fastened the watch on her arm.
She was surprised to see that it was a lady's watch.
The black strap was deeply scratched.
She privately reconstructed the history of the watch, and decided that it must be a gift returned after a quarrel--and perhaps the scratches on the strap had something to do with the quarrel.
"I beg you to accept it," he said.
"I particularly wish you to accept it."
"It's really a lovely watch," she exclaimed.
"How kind you are!"
She rewarded him with a warm kiss.
"I have always wanted a wrist-watch.
And now they are so _chic_.
In fact, one must have one."
Moving her arm about, she admired the watch at different angles.
"It isn't going.
And what's more, it won't go," he said.
"Ah!"
she politely murmured.
"No!
But do you know why I give you that watch?"
"Why?"
"Because it is a mascot."
"True?"
"Absolutely a mascot.
It belonged to a friend of mine who is dead."
"Ah!
A lady--" "No!
Not a lady.
A man.
He gave it me a few minutes before he died--and he was wearing it--and he told me to take it off his arm as soon as he was dead.
I did so."
Christine was somewhat alarmed.
"But if he was wearing it when he died, how can it be a mascot?"
"That was what made it a mascot.
Believe me, I know about these things.
I wouldn't deceive you, and I wouldn't tell you it was a mascot unless I was quite certain."
He spoke with a quiet, initiated authority that reassured her entirely and gave her the most perfect confidence.
"And why was your friend wearing a lady's watch?"
"I cannot tell you."
"You do not know?"
"I do not know.
But I know that watch is a mascot."
"Was it at the Front--all this?"
The man nodded.
"He was wounded, killed, your friend?"
"No, no, not wounded!
He was in my Battery.
We were galloping some guns to a new position.
He came off his horse--the horse was shot under him--he himself fell in front of a gun.
Of course, the drivers dared not stop, and there was no room to swerve.
Hence they had to drive right over him ...
Later, I came back to him.
They had got him as far as the advanced dressing-station.
He died in less than an hour...."
Solemnity fell between Christine and her client.
She said softly: "But if it is a mascot--do you not need it, you, at the Front?
It is wrong for me to take it."
"I have my own mascot.
Nothing can touch me--except my great enemy, and he is not German."
With an austere gesture he indicated the glass.
His deep voice was sad, but very firm.
Christine felt that she was in the presence of an adept of mysticism.
The Virgin had sent this man to her, and the man had given her the watch.
Clearly the heavenly power had her in its holy charge.
"Ah, yes!"
said the man in a new tone, as if realising the solemnity and its inappropriateness, and trying to dissipate it.
"Ah, yes!
Once we had the day of our lives together, he and I. We got a day off to go and see a new trench mortar, and we did have a time."
"Trench mortar--what is that?"
He explained.
"But tell me how it works," she insisted, not because she had the slightest genuine interest in the technical details of war--for she had not--but because she desired to help him to change the mood of the scene.
"Well, it's not so easy, you know.
It was a four and a half pound shell, filled with gun-cotton slabs and shrapnel bullets packed in sawdust.
The charge was black powder in a paper bag, and you stuck it at the bottom end of the pipe and put a bit of fuse into the touch-hole--but, of course, you must take care it penetrates the charge.
The shell-fuse has a pinner with a detonator with the right length of fuse shoved into it; you wrap some clay round the end of the fuse to stop the flash of the charge from detonating the shell.
Well, then you load the shell--" She comprehended simply nothing, and the man, professionally absorbed, seemed to have no perception that she was comprehending nothing.
She scarcely even listened.
Her face was set in a courteous, formal smile; but all the time she was thinking that the man, in spite of his qualities, must be lacking in character to give a watch away to a woman to whom he had not been talking for ten minutes.
His lack of character was shown also in his unshamed confession concerning his real enemy.
Some men would bare their souls to a _cocotte_ in a fashion that was flattering neither to themselves nor to the _cocotte_, and Christine never really respected such men.
She did not really respect this man, but respected, and stood in awe of, his mysticism; and, further, her instinct to satisfy him, to make a spoiled boy of him, was not in the least weakened.
Then, just as the man was in the middle of his description of the functioning of the trench mortar, the telephone-bell rang, and Christine excused herself.
The telephone was in the bedroom, not by the bedside--for such a situation had its inconveniences--but in the farthest corner, between the window and the washstand.
As she went to the telephone she was preoccupied by one of the major worries of her vocation, the worry of keeping clients out of each other's sight.
She wondered who could be telephoning to her on Sunday evening.
Not Gilbert, for Gilbert never telephoned on Sunday except in the morning.
She insisted, of course, on his telephoning to her daily, or almost daily.
She did this to several of her more reliable friends, for there was no surer way of convincing them of the genuineness of her regard for them than to vituperate them when they failed to keep her informed of their health, their spirits, and their doings.
In the case of Gilbert, however, her insistence had entirely ceased to be a professional device; she adored him violently.
The telephoner was Gilbert.
He made an amazing suggestion; he asked her to come across to his flat, where she had never been and where he had never asked her to go.
It had been tacitly and quite amiably understood between them that he was not one who invited young ladies to his own apartments.
Christine cautiously answered that she was not sure whether she could come.
"Are you alone?"
he asked pleasantly.
"Yes, quite."
"Well, I will come and fetch you."
She decided exactly what she would do.
"No, no. I will come.
I will come now.
I shall be enchanted."
Purposely she spoke without conviction, maintaining a mysterious reserve.
She returned to the sitting-room and the other man.
Fortunately the conversation on the telephone had been in French.
"See!"
she said, speaking and feeling as though they were intimates.
"I have a lady friend who is ill.
I am called to see her.
I shall not be long.
I swear to you I shall not be long.
Wait.
Will you wait?"
"Yes," he replied, gazing at her.
"Put yourself at your ease."
She was relieved to find that she could so easily reconcile her desire to please Gilbert with her pleasurable duty towards the protégé of the very clement Virgin.
Chapter 19 THE VISIT
In the doorway of his flat Christine kissed G. J.
vehemently, but with a certain preoccupation; she was looking about her, very curious.
The way in which she raised her veil and raised her face, mysteriously glanced at him, puckered her kind brow--these things thrilled him.
She said: "You are quite alone, of course."
She said it nicely, even benevolently; nevertheless he seemed to hear her saying: "You are quite alone, or, of course, you wouldn't have let me come."
"I suppose it's through here," she murmured; and without waiting for an invitation she passed direct into the lighted drawing-room and stood there, observant.
He followed her.
They were both nervous in the midst of the interior which he was showing her for the first time, and which she was silently estimating.
For him she made an exquisite figure in the drawing-room.
She was so correct in her church-dress, so modest, prim and demure.
And her appearance clashed excitingly with his absolute knowledge of her secret temperament.
He had often hesitated in his judgment of her.
Was she good enough or was she not?
But now he thought more highly of her than ever.
She was ideal, divine, the realisation of a dream.
And he felt extraordinarily pleased with himself because, after much cautious indecision, he had invited her to visit him.
By heaven, she was young physically, and yet she knew everything!
Her miraculous youthfulness rejuvenated him.
As a fact he was essentially younger than he had been for years.
Not only she, but his war work, had re-vitalised him.
He had developed into a considerable personage on the Lechford Committee; he was chairman of a sub-committee; he bore responsibilities and had worries.
And for a climax the committee had sent him out to France to report on the accountancy of the hospitals; he had received a special passport;
he had had glimpses of the immense and growing military organisation behind the Front; he had chatted in his fluent and idiomatic French with authorities military and civil; he had been ceremoniously complimented on behalf of his committee and country by high officials of the Service de Santé.
A wondrous experience, from which he had returned to England with a greatly increased self-respect and a sharper apprehension of the significance of the war.
Life in London was proceeding much as usual.
If on the one hand the Treasury had startlingly put an embargo upon capital issues, on the other hand the King had resumed his patronage of the theatre, and the town talked of a new Lady Teazle, and a British dye-industry had been inaugurated.
But behind the thin gauze of social phenomena G. J.
now more and more realistically perceived and conceived the dark shape of the war as a vast moving entity.
He kept concurrently in his mind, each in its place, the most diverse factors and events: not merely the Flemish and the French battles, but the hoped-for intervention of Roumania, the defeat of the Austrians by Servia, the menace of a new Austrian attack on Servia, the rise in prices, the Russian move north of the Vistula, the raid on Yarmouth, the divulgence of the German axioms about frightfulness, the rumour of a definite German submarine policy, the terrible storm that had disorganised the entire English railway-system, and the dim distant Italian earthquake whose death-roll of thousands had produced no emotion whatever on a globe monopolised by one sole interest.
And to-night he had had private early telephonic information of a naval victory in the North Sea in which big German cruisers had been chased to their ignominious lairs and one sunk.
Christine could not possibly know of this grand affair, for the Sunday night extras were not yet on the streets; he had it ready for her, eagerly waiting to pour it into her delicious lap along with the inexhaustible treasures of his heart.
At that moment he envisaged the victory as a shining jewel specially created in order to give her a throb of joy.
"It seems they picked up a lot of survivors from the _Blucher_," he finished his narration, rather proudly.
She retorted, quietly but terribly scornful: "_Zut_!
You English are so naive.
Why save them?
Why not let them drown?
Do they not deserve to drown?
Look what they have done, those Boches!
And you save them!
Why did the German ships run away?
They had set a trap--that sees itself--in addition to being cowards.
You save them, and you think you have made a fine gesture; but you are nothing but simpletons."
She shrugged her shoulders in inarticulate disdain.
Christine's attitude towards the war was uncomplicated by any subtleties.
Disregarding all but the utmost spectacular military events, she devoted her whole soul to hatred of the Germans--and all the Germans.
She believed them to be damnably cleverer than any other people on earth, and especially than the English.
She believed them to be capable of all villainies whatsoever.
She believed every charge brought against them, never troubling about evidence.
She would have imprisoned on bread and water all Germans and all persons with German names in England.
She was really shocked by the transparent idiocy of Britons who opposed the retirement of Prince Louis of Battenberg from the Navy.
For weeks she had remained happily in the delusion that Prince Louis had been shot in the Tower, and when the awakening came she had instantly decided that the sinister influence of Lord Haldane and naught else must have saved Prince Louis from a just retribution.
She had a vision of England as overrun with innumerable German spies who moved freely at inexpressible speed about the country in high-powered grey automobiles with dazzling headlights, while the marvellously stupid and blind British police touched their hats to them.
G.
J.
smiled at her in silence, aware by experience of the futility of argument.
He knew quite a lot of women who had almost precisely Christine's attitude towards the war, and quite a lot of men too.
But he could have wished the charming creature to be as desirable for her intelligence as for her physical and her strange spiritual charm: he could have wished her not to be providing yet another specimen of the phenomena of woman repeating herself so monotonously in the various worlds of London.
The simpleton of fifty made in his soul an effort to be superior, and failed.
"What is it that binds me to her?"
he reflected, imagining himself to be on the edge of a divine mystery, and never expecting that he and Christine were the huge contrivances of certain active spermatozoa for producing other active spermatozoa.
Christine did not wonder what bound her to G. J.
She knew, though she had never heard such a word as spermatozoa.
She had a violent passion for him; it would, she feared, be eternal, whereas his passion for her could not last more than a few years.
She knew what the passions of men were--so she said to herself superiorly.
Her passion for him was in her smile as she smiled back at his silent smile; but in her smile there was also a convinced apostleship--for she alone was the repository of the truth concerning Germans, which truth she preached to an unheeding world.
And there was something else in her baffling smile, namely, a quiet, good-natured, resigned resentment against the richness of his home.
He had treated her always with generosity, and at any rate with rather more than fairness; he had not attempted to conceal that he was a man of means; she had nothing to reproach him with financially.
And yet she did reproach him--for having been too modest.
She had a pretty sure instinct for the price of things, and she knew that this Albany interior must have been very costly;
further, it displayed what she deemed to be the taste of an exclusive aristocrat.
She saw that she had been undervaluing her Gilbert.
The proprietor of this flat would be entitled to seek relations of higher standing than herself in the ranks of _cocotterie_; he would be justified in spending far more money on a girl than he had spent on her.
He was indeed something of a fraud with his exaggerated English horror of parade.
And he lived by himself, save for servants; he was utterly free; and yet for two months he had kept her out of these splendours, prevented her from basking in the glow of these chandeliers and lounging on these extraordinary sofas and beholding herself in these terrific mirrors.
Even now he was ashamed to let his servants see her.
Was it altogether nice of him?
Her verdict on him had not the slightest importance--even for herself.
In kissing other men she generally kissed him--to cheat her appetite.
She was at his mercy, whatever he was.
