[286]
Several times already the rumour had spread in the Promenade that the Promenade would be closed on a certain date, and the Promenade had not been closed. But to-night it was stated that the Promenade would be closed at the end of the week, and everybody concerned knew that the prophecy would come true. No official notice was issued, no person who repeated the tale could give a reliable authority for it; nevertheless, for some mysterious reason it convinced. The rival Promenade had already passed away. The high invisible powers who ruled the world of pleasure were moving at the behest of powers still higher than themselves; and the cloak-room attendants, in their frivolous tiny aprons, shared murmuringly behind plush portières in the woe of the ladies with large hats.
The revue being a failure, the auditorium was more than half empty. In the Promenade to each man there were at least five pretty ladies, and the ladies looked gloomily across many rows of vacant seats at the bright proscenium where jocularities of an exacerbating tedium were being enacted. Not that the jocularities were inane beyond the usual, but failure made them seem so. None had the slightest idea why the revue had failed; for[287]precisely similar revues, concocted according to the same recipe and full of the same jocularities executed by the same players at the same salaries, had crowded the theatre for many months together. It was an incomprehensible universe.
Christine suddenly shrugged her shoulders and walked out. What use in staying to the end?
It was long after ten o'clock, and an exquisite faint light lingering in the sky still revealed the features of the people in the streets. The man who had devoted half a life to the ingenious project of lengthening the summer days by altering clocks was in his disappointed grave; but victory had come to him there, for statesmen had at last proved the possibility of that which they had always maintained to be impossible, and the wisdom of that which they had always maintained to be idiotic. The voluptuous divine melancholy of evening June descended upon the city from the sky, and even sounds were beautifully sad. The happy progress of the war could not exorcise this soft, omnipotent melancholy. Yet the progress of the war was nearly all that could be desired. Verdun was held, and if Fort Vaux had been lost there had been compensation in the fact that the enemy, through the gesture of the Crown Prince in allowing the captured commander of the fort to retain his sword, had done something to rehabilitate themselves in the esteem of mankind. Lord Kitchener was drowned, but the discovery had been announced that he was not indispensable; indeed, there were those who said that it was better thus. The Easter Rebellion was well in hand; order was understood to reign in an[288]Ireland hidden behind the black veil of the censorship. The mighty naval battle of Jutland had quickly transformed itself from a defeat into a brilliant triumph. The disturbing prices of food were about to be reduced by means of a committee. In America the Republican forces were preparing to eject President Wilson in favour of another Hughes who could be counted upon to realise the world-destiny of the United States. An economic conference was assembling in Paris with the object of cutting Germany off from the rest of the human race after the war. And in eleven days the Russians had made prisoners of a hundred and fifty thousand Austrians, and Brusiloff had just said: "This is only the beginning." Lastly the close prospect of the resistless Allied Western offensive which would deracinate Prussian militarism was uplifting men's minds.
Christine walked nonchalantly and uninvitingly through the streets, quite unresponsive to the exhilaration of events.
"Marthe!" she called, when she had let herself into the flat. Contrary to orders, the little hall was in darkness. There was no answer. She lit the hall and passed into the kitchen, lighting it also. There, in the terrible and incurable squalor of Marthe's own kitchen, Marthe's apron was thrown untidily across the back of the solitary windsor chair. She knew then that Marthe had gone out, and in truth, although very annoyed, she was not altogether surprised.
Marthe had a mysterious love affair. It was astonishing, in view of the intensely aphrodisiacal[289]atmosphere in which she lived, that Marthe did not continually have love affairs. But the day of love had seemed for Marthe to be over, and Christine found great difficulty in getting her ever to leave the flat, save on necessary household errands. On the other hand it was astonishing that any man should be attracted by the fat slattern. The moth now fluttering round her was an Italian waiter, as to whom Christine had learnt that he was being unjustly hunted by the Italian military authorities. Hence the mystery necessarily attaching to the love affair. Being French, Christine despised him. He called Marthe by her right name of "Marta," and Christine had more than once heard the pair gabbling in the kitchen in Italian. Just as though she had been a conventionalbourgeoiseChristine now accused Marthe of ingratitude because the woman was subordinating Christine's convenience to the supreme exigencies of fate. A man's freedom might be in the balance, Marthe's future might be in the balance; but supposing that Christine had come home with a gallant—and nofemme de chambreto do service!
She walked about the flat, shut the windows, drew the blinds, removed her hat, removed her gloves, stretched them, put her things away; she gazed at the two principal rooms, at the soiled numbers ofLa Vie Parisienneand the cracked bric-à-brac in the drawing-room, at the rent in the lace bedcover, and the foul mess of toilet apparatus in the bedroom. The forlorn emptiness of the place appalled her. She had been quite fairly successful in her London career. Hundreds of men had caressed her and paid her with compliments[290]and sweets and money. She had been really admired. The flat had had gay hours. Unmistakable aristocrats had yielded to her. And she had escaped the five scourges of her profession....
It was all over. The chapter was closed. She saw nothing in front of her but decline and ruin. She had escaped the five scourges of her profession, but part of the price of this immunity was that through keeping herself to herself she had not a friend. Despite her profession, and because of the prudence with which she exercised it, she was a solitary, a recluse.
Yes, of course she had Gilbert. She could count upon Gilbert to a certain extent, to a considerable extent; but he would not be eternal, and his fancy for her would not be eternal. Once, before Easter, she had had the idea that he meant to suggest to her an exclusive liaison. Foolish! Nothing, less than nothing, had come of it. He would not be such an imbecile as to suggest such a thing to her. Miracles did not happen, at any rate not that kind of miracle.
In the midst of her desolation an old persistent dream revisited her: the dream of a small country cottage in France, with a dog, a faithful servant, respectability, good name, works of charity, her own praying-stool in the village church. She moved to the wardrobe and unlocked one of the drawers beneath the wide doors. And rummaging under the linen and under the photographs under the linen she drew forth a package and spread its contents on the table in the drawing-room. Her securities, her bonds of the City of Paris, ever[291]increasing! Gilbert had tried to induce her to accept more attractive investments. But she would not. Never! These were her consols, part of her religion. Bonds of the City of Paris had fallen in value, but not in her dogmatic esteem. The passionate little miser that was in her surveyed them with pleasure, even with assurance; but they were still far too few to stand for the realisation of her dream. And she might have to sell some of them soon in order to live. She replaced them carefully in the drawer with dejection unabated.
When she glanced at the table again she saw an envelope. Inexplicably she had not noticed it before. She seized it in hope—and recognised in the address the curious hand of her landlord. It contained a week's notice to quit. The tenancy of the flat was weekly. This was the last blow. All the invisible powers of London were conspiring together to shatter the profession. What in the name of the Holy Virgin had come over the astounding, incomprehensible city? Then there was a ring at the bell. Marthe? No, Marthe would never ring; she had a key and she would creep in. A lover? A rich, spendthrift, kind lover? Hope flickered anew in her desolated heart.
It was the other pretty lady—a newcomer—who lived in the house: a rather stylish woman of about thirty-five, unusually fair, with regular features and a very dignified carriage, indeed not unimposing. They had met once, at the foot of the stairs. Christine was not sure of her name. She proclaimed herself to be Russian, but Christine doubted the assertion. Her French had no trace of a foreign accent; and in view of the achieve-merits[292]of the Russian Army ladies were finding it advantageous to be of Russian blood. Still she had a fine cosmopolitan air to which Christine could not pretend. They engaged each other in glances.
"I hope I do not disturb you, madame."
"Not at all, madame. I am obliged to open the door myself because my servant is out."
"I thought I heard you come in, and so—"
"No," interrupted Christine, determined not to admit the defeat of having returned from the Promenade alone. "I have not been out. Probably it was my servant you heard."
"Ah!... Without doubt."
"Will you give yourself the trouble to enter, madame?"
"Ah!" exclaimed the Russian, in the sitting-room. "You will excuse me, madame, but what a beautiful photograph!"
"You are too amiable, madame. A friend had it done for me."
They sat down.
"You are deliciously installed here," said the Russian perfunctorily, looking round. "Now, madame, I have been here only three weeks. And to-night I receive a notice to quit. Shall I be indiscreet if I ask if you have received a similar notice?"
"This very evening," said Christine, in secret still more disconcerted by this further proof of a general plot against human nature. She was about to add: "I found it here on my return home," but, remembering her fib, managed to stop in time.
[293]
"Well, madame, I know little of London. Without doubt you know London to the bottom. Is it serious, this notice?"
"I think so."
"Quite serious?"
Christine said:
"You see, there is a crisis. It is the war that in London has led to the discovery that men have desires. Of course, it will pass, but—"
"Oh, of course.... But it is grotesque, this crisis."
"It is perfectly grotesque," Christine agreed.
"You do not by hazard know where one can find flats to let? I hear speak of Bloomsbury and of Long Acre. But it seems to me that those quarters—"
"I am in London since now more than eighteen months," said Christine. "And as for all those things I know little. I have lived here in this flat all the time, and I go out so rarely—"
The Russian put in with eagerness:
"Oh, I also! I go out, so to speak, not at all."
"I thought I had seen you once in the Promenade at the—"
"Yes, it is true," interrupted the Russian quickly. "I went from curiosity, for distraction. You see, since the war I have lived in Dublin. I had there a friend, very highly placed in the administration. He married. One lived terrible hours during the revolt. I decided to come to London, especially as—However, I do not wish to fatigue you with all that."
Christine said nothing. The Irish Rebellion did not interest her. She was in no mood for[294]talking about the Irish Rebellion. She had convinced herself that all Sinn Feiners were in German pay, and naught else mattered. Never, she thought, had the British Government carried ingenuousness further than in this affair! Given a free hand, Christine with her strong, direct common sense would have settled the Irish question in forty-eight hours.
The Russian, after a little pause, continued:
"I merely wished to ask you whether the notice to quit was serious—not a trick for raising the rent."
Christine shook her head to the last clause.
"And then, if the notice was quite serious, whether you knew of any flats—not too dear.... Not that I mind a good rent if one receives the value of it, and is left tranquil."
The conversation might at this point have taken a more useful turn if Christine had not felt bound to hold herself up against the other's high tone of indifference to expenditure. The Russian, in demanding "tranquillity," had admitted that she regularly practised the profession—or, as English girls strangely called it, "the business"—and Christine could have followed her lead into the region of gossiping and intimate realism where detailed confidences are enlighteningly exchanged; but the tone about money was a challenge.
"I should have been enchanted to be of service to you," said Christine. "But I know nothing. I go out less and less. As for this notice, I smile at it. I have a friend upon whom I can count for everything. I have only to tell him, and he will put me among my own furniture at once. He has[295]indeed already suggested it. So that,je m'en fiche."
"I also!" said the Russian. "My new friend—he is a colonel, sent from Dublin to London—has insisted upon putting me among my own furniture. But I have refused so far—because one likes to know more of a gentleman—does not one?—before ..."
"Truly!" murmured Christine.
"And there is always Paris," said the Russian.
"But I thought you were from Petrograd."
"Yes. But I know Paris well. Ah! There is only Paris! Paris is a second home to me."
"Can one get a passport easily for Paris?... I mean, supposing the air-raids grew too dangerous again."
"Why not, madame? If one has one's papers. To get a passport from Paris to London, that would be another thing, I admit.... I see that you play," the Russian added, rising, with a gesture towards the piano. "I have heard you play. You play with true taste. I know, for when a girl I played much."
"You flatter me."
"Not at all. I think your friend plays too."
"Ah!" said Christine. "He!... It is an artist, that one."
They turned over the music, exchanged views about waltzes, became enthusiastic, laughed, and parted amid manifestations of good breeding and goodwill. As soon as Christine was alone, she sat down and wept. She could not longer contain her distress. Paris gleamed before her. But no! It was a false gleam. She could not make a new start in Paris during the war. The adventure[296]would be too perilous; the adventure might end in a licensed house. And yet in London—what was there in London but, ultimately, the pavement? And the pavement meant complications with the police, with prowlers, with other women; it meant all the scourges of the profession, including probably alcoholism. It meant prostitution, to which she had never sunk!
She wished she had been killed outright in the air-raid. She had an idea of going to the Oratory the next morning, and perhaps choosing a new Virgin and soliciting favour of the image thereof. She sobbed, and, sobbing, suddenly jumped up and ran to the telephone. And even as she gave Gilbert's number, she broke it in the middle with a sob. After all, there was Gilbert.
[297]
"Get back into bed," said G.J., having silently opened the window in the sitting-room.
He spoke with courteous persuasion, but his peculiar intense politeness and restraint somewhat dismayed Christine. By experience she knew that they were a sure symptom of annoyance. She often, though not on this occasion, wished that he would yield to anger and make a scene; but he never did, and she would hate him for not doing so. The fact was that under the agreement which ruled their relations, she had no right to telephone to him, save in grave and instant emergency, and even then it was her duty to say first, when she got the communication: "Mr. Pringle wants to speak to Mr. Hoape." She had omitted, in her disquiet, to fulfil this formality. Recognising his voice, she had begun passionately, without preliminary: "Oh! Beloved, thou canst not imagine what has happened to me—" etc. Still he had come. He had cut her short, but he had left whatever he was doing and had, amazingly, walked over at once. And in the meantime she had hurriedly undressed and put on a new peignoir and slipped into bed. Of course she had had to open the door herself.
[298]
She obeyed his command like an intelligent little mouse, and he sat down on the edge of the bed. He might inspire foreboding, alarm, even terror. But he was in the flat. He was the saviour, man, in the flat. And his coming was in the nature of a miracle. He might have been out; he might have been entertaining; he might have been engaged; he might well have said that he could not come until the next day. Never before had she made such a request, and he had acceded to it immediately! Her mood was one of frightened triumph. He was being most damnably himself; his demeanour was as faultless as his dress. She could not even complain that he had forgotten to kiss her. He said nothing about her transgression of the rule as to telephoning. He was waiting, with his exasperating sense of justice and self-control, until she had acquainted him with her case. Instead of referring coldly and disapprovingly to the matter of the telephone, he said in a judicious, amicable voice:
"I doubt whether your coiffeur is all that he ought to be. I see you had your hair waved to-day."
"Yes, why?"
"You should tell the fellow to give you the new method of hair-waving, steaming with electric heaters—or else go where you can get it."
"New method?" repeated Christine the Tory doubtfully. And then with sudden sexual suspicion:
"Who told you about it?"
"Oh! I heard of it months ago," he said carelessly. "Besides, it's in the papers, in the advertisements.[299]It lasts longer—much longer—and it's more artistic."
She felt sure that he had been discussing hair-waving with some woman. She thought of all her grievances against him. The Lechford House episode rankled in her mind. He had given her the details, but she said to herself that he had given her the details only because he had foreseen that she would hear about the case from others or read about it in the newspapers. She had not been able to stomach that he should be at Lechford House alone late at night with two women of the class she hated and feared—and the very night of her dreadful experience with him in the bomb-explosion! No explanations could make that seem proper or fair. Naturally she had never disclosed her feelings. Further, the frequenting of such a house as Lechford House was more proof of his social importance, and incidentally of his riches. The spectacle of his flat showed her long ago that previously she had been underestimating his situation in the world. The revelations as to Lechford House had seemed to show her that she was still underestimating it. She resented his modesty. She was inclined to attribute his modesty to a desire to pay her as little as he reasonably could. However, she could not in sincerity do so. He treated her handsomely, considering her pretensions, but considering his position—he had no pretensions—not handsomely. She had had an irrational idea that, having permitted her to see the splendour of his flat, he ought to have increased her emoluments—that, indeed, she should be paid not according to her[300]original environment, but according to his. She also resented that he had never again asked her to his flat. Her behaviour on that sole visit had apparently decided him not to invite her any more. She resented his perfectly hidden resentment.
What disturbed her more than anything else was a notion in her mind, possibly a wrong notion, that she cared for him less madly than of old. She had always said to herself, and more than once sadly to him, that his fancy for her would not and could not last; but that hers for him should decline puzzled her and added to her grievances against him. She looked at him from the little nest made by her head between two pillows. Did she in truth care for him less madly than of old? She wondered. She had only one gauge, the physical.
She began to talk despairingly about Marthe, whom, of course, she had had to mention at the door. He said quietly:
"But it's not because of Marthe's caprices that I'm asked to come down to-night, I suppose?"
She told him about the closing of the Promenade in a tone of absolute, resigned certainty that admitted of no facile pooh-poohings or reassurances. And then, glancing sidelong at the night-table, where the lamp burned, she extended her half-bared arm and picked up the landlord's notice and gave it to him to read. Watching him read it she inwardly trembled, as though she had started on some perilous enterprise the end of which might be black desperation, as though she had cast off from the shore and was afloat amid[301]the waves of a vast, swollen river—waves that often hid the distant further bank. She felt somehow that she was playing for all or nothing. And though she had had immense experience of men, though it was her special business to handle men, she felt herself to be unskilled and incompetent. The common ruses, feints, devices, guiles, chicaneries were familiar to her; she could employ them as well as any and better than most; they succeeded marvellously and absurdly—in the common embarrassments and emergencies, because they had not to stand the test of time. Their purpose was temporary, and when the purpose had been accomplished it did not matter whether they were unmasked or not, for the adversary-victim—who, in any event, was better treated than he deserved!—either had gone for ever, or would soon forget, or was too proud to murmur, or philosophically accepted a certain amount of wile as part of the price of ecstasy. But this embarrassment and this emergency were not common. They were a supreme crisis.
"The other lady has had notice too," she said, and went on: "It's the same everywhere in this quarter. I know not if it is the same in other districts, but quite probably it is.... It is the end."
She saw by the lifting of his eyebrows that he was impressed, that he secretly admitted the justifiability of her summons to him. And instantly she took a reasonable, wise, calm tone.
"It is a little serious, is it not? I do not frighten myself, but it is serious. Above all, I do not wish to trouble thee. I know all thy anxieties, and I am[302]a woman who understands. But except thee I have not a friend, as I have often told thee. In my heart there is a place only for one. I have a horror of all those women. They weary me. I am not like them, as thou well knowest. Thus my existence is solitary. I have no relations. Not one. See! Go into no matter what interior, and there are photographs. But here—not one. Yes, one. My own. I am forced to regard my own portrait. What would I not give to be able to put on my chimney-piece thy portrait! But I cannot. Do not deceive thyself. I am not complaining. I comprehend perfectly. It is impossible that a woman like me should have thy photograph on her chimney-piece." She smiled, smoothing for a moment the pucker out of her brow. "And lately I see thee so little. Thou comest less frequently. And when thou comest, well—one embraces—a little music—and thenpouf! Thou art gone. Is it not so?"
He said:
"But thou knowest the reason, I am terribly busy. I have all the preoccupations in the world. My committee—it is not all smooth, my committee. Everything and everybody depends on me. And in the committee I have enemies too. The fact is, I have become a beast of burden. I dream about it. And there are others in worse case. We shall soon be in the third year of the war. We must not forget that."
"My little rabbit," she replied very calmly and reasonably and caressingly. "Do not imagine to thyself that I blame thee. I do not blame thee. I comprehend too well all that thou dost, all that[303]thou art worth. In every way thou art stronger than me. I am ten times nothing. I know it. I have no grievance against thee. Thou hast always given me what thou couldst, and I on my part have never demanded too much. Say, have I been excessive? At this hour I make no claim on thee. I have done all that to me was possible to make thee happy. In my soul I have always been faithful to thee. I do not praise myself for that. I did not choose it. These things are not chosen. They come to pass—that is all. And it arrived that I was bound to go mad about thee, and to remain so. What wouldst thou? Speak not of the war. Is it not because of the war that I am in exile, and that I am ruined? I have always worked honestly for my living. And there is not on earth an officer who has encountered me who can say that I have not been particularly nice to him—because he was an officer. Thou wilt excuse me if I speak of such matters. I know I am wrong. It is contrary to my habit. But what wouldst thou? I also have done what I could for the war. But it is my ruin. Oh, my Gilbert! Tell me what I must do. I ask nothing from thee but advice. It was for that that I dared to telephone thee."
G.J. answered casually:
"I see nothing to worry about. It will be necessary to take another flat. That is all."
"But I—I know nothing of London. One tells me that it is in future impossible for women who live alone—like me—to find a flat—that is to say, respectable."
"Absurd! I will find a flat. I know precisely where there is a flat."
[304]
"But will they let it to me?"
"They will let it tome, I suppose," said he, still casually.
A pause ensued.
She said, in a voice trembling:
"Thou art not going to say to me that thou wilt put me among my own furniture?"
"The flat is furnished. But it is the same thing."
"Do not let such a hope shine before me—me who saw before me only the pavement. Thou art not serious."
"I never was more serious. For whom dost thou take me, little-foolish one?"
She cried:
"Oh, you English! You arechic. You make love as you go to war. Likethat!... One word—it is decided! And there is nothing more to say! Ah! You English!"
She had almost screamed, shuddering under the shock of his decision, for which she had impossibly hoped, but whose reality overwhelmed her. He sat there in front of her, elegant, impeccably dressed, distinguished, aristocratic, rich, in the full wisdom of his years, and in the strength of his dominating will, and in the righteousness of his heart. One could absolutely trust such as him to do the right thing, and to do it generously, and to do it all the time. And she,shehad won him. He had recognised her qualities. She had denied any claim upon him, but by his decision he had admitted a claim—a claim that no money could satisfy. After all, for eighteen months she had been more to him than any other woman. He had talked freely to her. He had concealed[305]naught from her. He had spoken to her of his discouragements and his weaknesses. He had had no shame before her. By her acquiescences, her skill, her warmth, her adaptability, her intense womanliness, she had created between them a bond stronger than anything that could keep them apart. The bond existed. It could not during the whole future be broken save by a disloyalty. A disloyalty, she divined, would irrevocably destroy it. But she had no fear on that score, for she knew her own nature. His decision did more than fill her with a dizzy sense of relief, a mad, intolerable happiness—it re-established her self-respect. No ordinary woman, handicapped as she was, could have captured this fastidious and shy paragon ... And the notion that her passion for him had dwindled was utterly ridiculous, like the notion that he would tire of her. She was saved. She burst into wild tears.
"Ah! Pardon me!" she sobbed. "I am quite calm, really. But since the air-raid, thou knowest, I have not been quite the same ... Thou! Thou art different. Nothing could disturb thy calm. Ah! If thou wert a general at the front! What sang-froid! What presence of mind! But I—"
He bent towards her, and she suddenly sprang up and seized him round the neck, and ate his lips, and while she strangled and consumed him she kept muttering to him:
"Hope not that I shall thank thee. I cannot. I cannot! The words with which I could thank thee do not exist. But I am thine, thine! All of me is thine. Humiliate me! Demand of me impossible things! I am thy slave, thy creature![306]Ah! Let me kiss thy beautiful grey hairs. I love thy hair. And thy ears ..."
The thought of her insatiable temperament flashed through her as she held him, and of his northern sobriety, and of the profound, unchangeable difference between these two. She would discipline her temperament; she would subjugate it. Women were capable of miracles—and women alone. And she was capable of miracles.
A strange, muffled noise came to them across the darkness of the sitting-room, and G.J. raised his head slightly to listen.
"Repose! Repose thyself in the arms of thy little mother," she breathed softly. "It is nothing. It is but the wind blowing the blind against the curtains."
And later, when she had distilled the magic of the hour and was tranquillised, she said:
"And where is it, this flat?"
[307]
Christine said to Marie, otherwise La Mère Gaston, the new servant in the new flat, who was holding in her hand a telegram addressed to "Hoape, Albany":
"Give it to me. I will put it in front of the clock on the mantelpiece."
And she lodged it among the gilt cupids that supported the clock on the fringed mantelpiece in the drawing-room. She did so with a little gesture of childlike glee expressing her satisfaction in the flat as a whole.
The flat was dark; she did not object, loving artificial light. The rooms were all very small; she loved cosiness. There was a garage close by, which might have disturbed her nights; but it did not. The bathroom was open to the bedroom; no arrangement could be better. G.J. in enumerating the disadvantages of the flat had said also that it was too much and too heavily furnished. Not at all. She adored the cumbrous and rich furniture; she did not want in her flat the empty spaces of a ball-room; she wanted to feel that she was within an interior—inside something. She gloried in the flat. She preferred it even to her memory of G.J.'s flat in the Albany. Its golden[308]ornateness flattered her. The glittering cornices, and the big carved frames of the pictures of impossible flowers and of ladies and gentlemen in historic coiffures and costumes, appeared marvellous to her. She had never seen, and certainly had never hoped to inhabit, anything like it. But then Gilbert was always better than his word.
He had been quite frank, telling her that he knew of the existence of the flat simply because it had been occupied for a brief time by the Mrs. Carlos Smith of whom she had heard and read, and who had had to leave it on account of health. (She did not remind him that once at the beginning of the war when she had noticed the name and portrait of Mrs. Carlos Smith in the paper, he, sitting by her side, had concealed from her that he knew Mrs. Carlos Smith. Judiciously, she had never made the slightest reference to that episode.) Though she detested the unknown Mrs. Carlos Smith, she admired and envied her for a great illustrious personage, and was secretly very proud of succeeding Mrs. Carlos Smith in the tenancy. And when Gilbert told her that he had had his eye on the flat for her before Mrs. Carlos Smith took it, and had hesitated on account of its drawbacks, she was even more proud. And reassured also. For this detail was a proof that Gilbert had really had the intention to put her "among her own furniture" long before the night of the supreme appeal to him.... Only he was always so cautious.
And Gilbert was the discoverer of la mère Gaston, too, and as frank about her as about the[309]flat. La mère Gaston was the widow of a French soldier, domiciled in London previous to the war, who had died of wounds in one of the Lechford hospitals; and it was through the Lechford Committee that Gilbert had come across her. A few weeks earlier than the beginning of the formal liaison Mrs. Braiding had fallen ill for a space, and Madame Gaston had been summoned as charwoman to aid Mrs. Braiding's young sister in the Albany flat. With excellent judgment Gilbert had chosen her to succeed Marthe, whom he himself had reproachfully dismissed from Cork Street.
He was amazingly clever, was Gilbert, for he had so arranged things that Christine had been able to cut off her Cork Street career as with a knife. She had departed from Cork Street with two trunks and a few cardboard boxes—her stove was abandoned to the landlord—and vanished into London and left no trace. Except Gilbert, nobody who knew her in Cork Street was aware of her new address, and nobody who knew her in Mayfair knew that she had come from Cork Street. Her ancient acquaintances in Cork Street would ring the bell there in vain.
Madame Gaston was a neat, plump woman of perhaps forty, not looking her years. She had a comprehending eye. After three words from Gilbert she had mastered the situation, and as she perfectly realised where her interest lay she could be relied upon for discretion. In all delicate matters only her eye talked. She was a Protestant, and went to the French church in Soho Square, which she called the "Temple". Christine and she had had but one Sunday together—and[310]Christine had gone with her to the Temple! The fact was that Christine had decided to be a Protestant. She needed a religion, and Catholicism had an inconvenience—confession. She had regularised her position, so much so that by comparison with the past she was now perfectly respectable. Yet if she had been candid in the confessional the priest would still have convicted her of mortal sin; which would have been very unfair; and she could not, in view of her respectability, have remained a Catholic without confessing, however infrequently. Madame Gaston, as soon as she was sure of her convert, referred to Catholicism as "idolatry".
"Put your apron on, Marie," said Christine. "Monsieur will be here directly."
"Ah, yes, madame!"
"Have you opened the kitchen-window to take away the smell of cooking?"
"Yes, madame."
"Am I all right, Marie?"
Madame Gaston surveyed her mistress, who turned round.
"Yes, madame. I think that monsieur will much like thatnégligée." She departed to don the apron.
Between these two it was continually "monsieur," "monsieur". He was seldom there, but he was always there, always being consulted, placated, invoked, revered, propitiated, magnified. He was the giver of all good, and there was no other Allah, and he had two prophets.
Christine sang, she twittered, she pirouetted, out of sheer youthful joy. She had forgotten[311]care and forgotten promiscuity; good fortune had washed her pure. She looked at herself in the massive bevelled mirror, and saw that she was fresh and young and lithe and graceful. And she felt triumphant. Gilbert had expressed the fear that she might get lonely and bored. He had even said that occasionally he might bring along a man, and that perhaps the man would have a very nice woman friend. She had not very heartily responded. She was markedly sympathetic towards Englishmen, but towards English women—no! And especially she did not want to know any English women in the same situation as herself. Lonely? Impossible! Bored? Impossible! She had an establishment. She had a civil list. Her days passed like an Arabian dream. She never had an unfilled moment, and when each day was over she always remembered little things which she had meant to do and had not found time to do.
She was a superb sleeper, and arose at noon. Three o'clock usually struck before her day had fairly begun—unless, of course, she happened to be very busy, in which case she would be ready for contact with the world at the lunch-hour. Her main occupation was to charm, allure, and gratify a man; for that she lived. Her distractions were music, the reading of novels,Le Journal, andLes Grandes Modes. And for the war she knitted. In her new situation it was essential that she should do something for the war. Therefore she knitted, being a good knitter, and her knitting generally lay about.
She popped into the dining-room to see if the[312]table was well set for dinner. It was, but in order to show that Marie did not know everything, she rearranged somewhat the flowers in the central bowl. Then she returned to the drawing-room, and sat down at the piano and waited. The instant of arrival approached. Gilbert's punctuality was absolute, always had been; sometimes it alarmed her. She could not have to wait more than a minute or two, according to the inexactitude of her clock.... The bell rang, and simultaneously she began to play a five-finger exercise. Often in the old life she had executed upon him this innocent subterfuge, to make him think she practised the piano to a greater extent than she actually did, that indeed she was always practising. It never occurred to her that he was not deceived.
Hear Marie fly to the front door! See Christine's face, see her body, as in her pale, bright gown she peeps round the half-open door of the drawing-room! She lives, then. Her eyes sparkle for the giver of all good, for the adored, and her brow is puckered for him, and the jewels on her hand burn for him, and every pleat of her garments visible and invisible is pleated for him. She is a child. She has snatched up a chocolate, and put it between her teeth, and so she offers the half of it to him, smiling, silent. She is a child, but she is also a woman intensely skilled in her art....
"Monster!" she said. "Come this way." And she led him down the tunnel to the bedroom. There, in a corner of the bathroom, stood an antique closed toilet-stand, such as was used by men in the days before splashing and sousing were[313]invented. She had removed it from the drawing-room.
"Open it," she commanded.
He obeyed. Its little compartments, which had been empty, were filled with a man's toilet instruments—brushes, file, scissors, shaving-soap (his own brand), a safety-razor, &c. The set was complete. She had known exactly the requirements.
"It is a little present from thy woman," she said. "In future thou wilt have no excuse—Sit down. Marie!"
"Madame?"
"Take off the boots of Monsieur."
Marie knelt.
Christine found the new slippers.
"And now this!" she said, after he had washed and used the new brushes, producing a black house-jacket with velvet collar and cuffs.
"How tired thou must be after thy day!" she murmured, patting him with tiny pats.
"Thou knowest, my little one," she said, pointing to the gas-stove in the bedroom fireplace. "For the other rooms a gas-stove—I am indifferent. But the bedroom is something else. The bedroom is sacred. I could not tolerate a gas-stove in the bedroom. A coal fire is necessary to me. You do not think so?"
"Yes," he said. "You are quite right. It shall be seen to."
"Can I give the order? Thou permittest me to give the order?"
"Certainly."
In the drawing-room she cushioned him well[314]in the best easy-chair, and, sitting down on a pouf near him, began to knit like an industrious wife who understands the seriousness of war. Nothing escaped the attention of that man. He espied the telegram.
"What's that?"
"Ah!" she cried, springing up and giving it to him. "Stupid that I am! I forgot."
He looked at the address.
"How did this come here?" he asked mildly.
"Marie brought it—from the Albany."
"Oh!"
He opened the telegram and read it, having dropped the envelope into the silk-lined, gilded waste-paper basket by the fender.
"It is nothing serious?" she questioned.
"No. Business."
He might have shown it to her—he had shown her telegrams before—but he stuck it into his pocket. Then, without a word to Christine, he rang the bell, and Marie appeared.
"Marie! The telegram—why did you bring it here?"
"Monsieur, it was like this. I went to monsieur's flat to fetch two aprons that I had left there. The telegram was on the console in the ante-chamber. Knowing that monsieur was to come direct here, I brought it."
"Does Mrs. Braiding know you brought it?"
"Ah! As for Mrs. Braiding, monsieur—"
Marie stopped, disclaiming any responsibility for Mrs. Braiding, of whom she was somewhat jealous. "I thought to do well."
"I am sure of it. But surely you can see you[315]have been indiscreet. Don't do it again."
"No, monsieur. I ask pardon of monsieur."
Immediately afterwards he said to Christine in a gay, careless tone:
"And this gas-stove here? Is it all right? Have we tried it? Let us try it."
"The weather is warm, dearest."
"But just to try it. I always like to satisfy myself—in time."
"Fusser!" she exclaimed, and ignited the stove.
He gazed at it absently, then picked up a cigarette and, taking the telegram from his pocket, folded it into a spill and with it lit the cigarette.
"Yes," he said meditatively. "It seems not a bad stove." And he held the spill till it had burnt to his finger-ends. Then he extinguished the stove.
She said to herself:
"He has burned the telegram on purpose. But how cleverly he did it! Ah! That man! There is none but him!"
She was disquieted about the telegram. She feared it. Her superstitiousness was awakened. She thought of her apostasy from Catholicism to Protestantism. She thought of a Holy Virgin angered. And throughout the evening and throughout the night, amid her smiles and teasings and coaxings and caresses and ecstasies and all her accomplished, voluptuous girlishness, the image of a resentful Holy Virgin flitted before her. Why should he burn a business telegram? Also, was he not at intervals a little absent-minded?