CHAPTER II
Antonia stood in the empty room in Bayswater, reading a scrawl of explanation which Gillian had left behind for her on the dusty mantelpiece. The floor was littered with bits of straw and string, a broken teacup, some torn-up MSS., an old stocking and a tin of Bluebell polish ... her foot struck against the latter, and it rolled towards the tin fender and stopped with a forlorn clank....
“My dear—I’ve decided to go and live with Theo—why not? You’ll find me here if you come this afternoon, 54 Middle Inn Gardens. I’m leaving behind a bottle of Elliman’s Embrocation, because I haven’t room for it. Bring it along, and anything else you see lying about. Yours, Jill.”
“So she’s done it at last.” Slowly Antonia left the house, came back for the Embrocation, could not find it, and went on to Middle Inn Square with the Bluebell polish as a substitute. With an air more than ever slim and defiant and passion-free, she swung into Gillian’s presence——
“Jill!”
“It was—this—or sharing him with fifty others,” the culprit explained coolly. She did not look in the least like the famous bacteriologist, as she sat astride a wooden packing-case, tugging with giant pincers at a refractory nail; hair rakish from the frequent tumbling of her fingers; eyes two greenish slits of roguery; cigarette tilted well upwards from the corner of her mouth. She did not look like a heroine of passion either.... Her blouse was open and her sleeves rolled up, and her short navy-blue skirt was smeared with white where she had leant against some wet paint.
“You can help me unpack while you disapprove. That lazy little cat Winnie has gone off to spend the day with Camellia.”
“Winnie? She’s still with you?”
“My dear, what was I to do with her? I couldn’t send herhome again just because of a whim of mine. It wouldn’t be fair. She isn’t happy at home——”
Antonia sat down helplessly. “A year ago Deb gets turned out of home, plus an income. Now you elope, plus Winifred Potter. You’re a pair to make any friend of yours hysterical....”
“A little more, and I’d have despatched Winifred labelled right-side-up as a farewell present to you,” Gillian retorted grimly. “But she’ll do for Theo to flirt with in his lighter moments.”
“Theo’s are mostly lighter moments, aren’t they? Jill, I wouldn’t have minded the sacrifice; I wouldn’t have said a single word ... if he’d been worthy.” She was ice-white with the conviction of his unworthiness.
Gillian said nothing for a minute or two. She still sat bent over the packing-case, one leg on either side of it, wrenching at the wood. Then: “Much need for sacrifice with a man who’s worthy!”
“Then you admit he isn’t?” Antonia sprang up. “Oh, Gillian, if youmusttry a theory——”
“Theory? Good Lord! Nothing of that sort. It’s just that Theo isn’t big enough or good enough, if you like, to remain faithful and decent and honourable to a woman who’s only his spiritual love. Why pretend?—we all know what Theo is!” she shrugged her thin shoulders and flashed a wide smile up at her friend—“He’s clever—with a sort of malicious destructive cleverness. Otherwise just an amorous gutter-snipe, who can’t resist anything of the other sex—a Zoe in male. His reputation is a joke—I’ve heard scores of people chuckling over the latest Theo Pandos story.”
“You know this—and still——”
“I know it—and because. He won’t do without the others—but he can’t do without me. Look here, you blooming Artemis, I justify myself to you just this once and never again. Understand this. That little rotter is my ... completion, if you like; the answer to my special quantity of X. It’s a pity, I’m sure, that it didn’t happen to be someone grand and distinguished and austere, who’d spend all day long renouncing me, and all night long being nobly glad that he did so. Can you see Theo being glad he’s renounced anyone, ever?” again the swift joyous grin.... Antonia could not help returning it.
“Theo’s got a wife, I believe?”
“Oh, curse her, yes. A Spanish Catholic who won’t divorce him. A dark flashing thing who looks all passion and Carmen and castanets. She’s no earthly use to him.”
“Gillian, you’re a thoroughly immoral creature!”
“I’m not going to be one of a crowd. ’Tisn’t good for the self-respect. And it isn’t good for Theo—Oh, I’ve no illusions about my young man.... It amounts to this—I’m fed up with the type of woman who can’t sling sex out of her mind. The mind isn’t the proper place for sex. I want my mind for my work. Enforced virginity, not chosen, mind you, but enforced, is unbalancing; it hangs about and takes up more room than it ought to.... My work has got to come to fruition sooner or later ... and all this has got to be cleared out of the way, somehow, first. Theo is thoroughly unsuitable, he’s younger than I am, he’s married, he’s fast and horrid ... granted!—but Theo is a factor that can’t be slung out. So he’s got to stay—with as little fuss as possible. I thought about it all hard, and when last night I’d decided, I packed, and I came. Poor old Theo ...” and she chuckled softly as at some memory of the preceding evening—but her brows were contracted with pain.
“Wasn’t he terrifically glad, at least?”
“Oh—glad enough. But just last night ... it was—awkward. I ought to have ’phoned him beforehand—See? Antonia, you’re shrinking like bad material in the wash!”
“Bad material perhaps—but not in the wash ... at the present moment!”
“Cue for a wince from the fallen woman! Frankly, are my affairs as unsavoury as all that?”
“Not you, Jill. Never you, but Theo. He’s your demon.”
“Not much demon about him when he hung from the left foot on to the right at his front door last night, and I sat demurely on my trunk outside.... If the Bacteriological Society could have seen me—I’m lecturing there next week! I’m what Theo had been waiting and longing for since three and a half years, and coming just then—for once even he wasn’t able to carry it off. Zoe would have chucked the incubus through a door, or into a cupboard, or under the bed, and turned up smiling—Theo just stood staring at me with the tears streaming down his face.... My beloved little cad!... So I went home again, and returned this morning—Antonia,you’renotto look like that!” in a spasm of fury. “Didn’t I know he’d get rid of her not ten minutes after I left....”
“Oh, I suppose he said he had,” scornfully.
Gillian raged more. “You’d have sheered off and never looked at him again. ‘For better, forworse’ ... Without the marriage service read over me, I can keep to it as well as any of you. It’s Theo as he is—not Theo transformed by Maskelyne and Devant into a young bride’s dream. We shall live together quite openly; of course, without any blaze of trumpets—but concealment means a flurry again, and a furtive askew-over-your-shoulder look that I don’t approve of. Thank goodness, my private life, as I choose to hack it out, can’t interfere with my especial career. If I’d been a doctor, as I intended——”
“Then you would have had to give up Theo.”
“I’ve just spent twenty minutes patiently explaining—I s’pose you weren’t listening—that if I gave up Theo, he’d take up far too much of my time and thought and vitality and saneness. To live with him is the only way of getting rid of him—mentally.”
“It’s such a twisted, new-fashioned way of arguing.”
“New-fashioned? because I wantmyman inmyhome—” for an instant Gillian was wrapped in swift strong beauty.
“And—my child, too?”
“No,” softly. “Not that. One is just decent enough, I hope, to consider the possible preference of the child to remain unborn—Hullo, Theo!” as that gentleman stood on the threshold of a room demoralized by Gillian’s advent to an imitation of a charity bazaar after three days’ vending.
“We have all heard of the magic womanly touch which brings divine order into a bachelor’s dreary untidy chambers,” he pattered impudently. “But the reality is beyond all expectation. For pity’s sake, Gillian, let us go to a hotel for the rest of our lives. What have you done with my poor Silvester?”
“Your valet, adoring me with every breath he draws, has gone out to pick some wild flowers for me to arrange on our dinner table.... You shall have your Patmore angel-in-the-house all right! Going, Antonia?”
“Miss Verity is hating me too much for perfect comfort,” murmured Pandos with humorous resignation.
She flashed him back look for look, and went out.
... Then the man crossed the room and knelt beside the packing-case and thrust his head in Gillian’s lap ... his dark sloe eyes worshipped her; his nerves, of matted vibrating wires, were lulled to perfect rest—perfect content.... No strain between these two, of pretence or concealment or fear—Gillian had taken him for what he was.