A NOCTURNE
“YOU look,� He said nastily, as She raised her disheveledcoiffureand tear-blurred features from the center of a large muslin-flounced and covered cushion that sat at the end of the lounge that opened like a box, and held frilled petticoats—“you look like a wilted prize chrysanthemum.�
She mechanically put up one hand to drive home deserting hairpins into the mass of hair He had, in the lyrical days of early passion, celebrated as Corinthian gold-bronze, in a halting sonnet of which he was now profoundly ashamed. Stifling the recurrent hiccough that accompanies a liberal effusion of tears, she stared at him blankly.
A silver timepiece, a wedding present from His mother, who had objected to the match, struck the midnight hour. The thin sound of the last stroke, spun into tenuity by silence, died, and the clanking, hooting, nerve-shattering scurry of racing motor-buses went by like a wild hunt of iron-shackled fiends. A private car passed with its exhaust wailing like an exiled banshee, a belated hansom or two bowled along the sloppy asphalt, the raucous screech of a constable-defying nymph of the pavement rent the muggy air. He hardly heard it; he had been agreeing with his mother ever since the clock had struck. To-morrow he would go and look in at 000, Sloane Street, and tell her that she had always known best. In imagination he was telling her so, when the sable-bordered tail of a dove-colored Indian cashmeredressing gown he had worshiped during the honeymoon swept across the feuille-rose carpet in the direction of the boudoir; Sada Yacco and Abé San, snub-nosed, blue-and-pink-bowed canine causes of the conjugal quarrel, joyously yelping in its wake.
“Aren’t you going to bed?� He demanded.
“You did not seem inclined to go to your dressing-room,� She returned with point, “and as I have to write an important letter, I may as well do it now!�
He knew that the letter would be addressed to Her mother, who had also objected to the match, and would contain a daughter’s testimony to the correctness of the maternal judgment. Sada Yacco and Abé San, sitting on their haunches, with their pink tongues lolling, looked as though they knew it too. How he loathed those Japanese pugs! As he glared at them she gathered them up, one under each arm, protectingly.
“Don’t be afraid!� He said, with the kind of laugh described by the popular novelist as grating; “I am not going to murder the little brutes, after paying thirty pounds for the pair.� This was a touch of practical economy that made Her lip curl. “What I say is, I decline to have those animals galloping over me in the middle of the night.�
“It is the middle of the night now,� She said, concealing a yawn behind three fingers—his wedding ring and keeper upon one—“and they are not galloping over you. Men are supposed to be more logical than women. I have often wondered why since last May.�
“We were married in May,� He said, folding his arms after a method much in favor with the popular novelist when heroes are grim.
“It seems,� She said, rather drearily, “a long time ago.�
“If I had told you last May,� He retorted, “that I object to wake in the middle of the night with one Japanese pug snorting upon my—ah—my chest, and the other usurping the greater part of my pillow, you would have sympathized with my feeling, understood the objection, and relegated Sada Yacco and Abé San to their comfortable basket in the corner of the kitchen—or anywhere else,� he added hurriedly, seeing thievish early errand-boys on the tip of her tongue, “except your bedroom!�
The popular novelist would have described her pose as “sculpturesque,� her expression as “fateful,� and her tone as “icy,� as She said:
“The bedroom being mine, perhaps you will permit me to remind you that you possess one of your own, and that it is nearly one o’clock!�
It was, in fact, a quarter-past twelve. But the door closed behind Him with such a terrific bang that the thready little utterance of the silver timepiece was completely unnoticed.
She put her hand to her throat, as a leading actress invariably does in moments of great mental stress, and uttered a choking little laugh of sorrow and bitterness. Men were really like this, then! Fool, oh, fool, to doubt! Had she not read, had she not seen, had not other women whispered?... And had her mother not plainly told her that this man—now her husband!—was more like other men than any of the other men resembled others? She sobbed a few sobs, dried her eyes, and prepared for bed. But when arrayed in white samite, mystic and wonderful, with the traces of tears effaced by perfumed hot water, the pinkness of nose and eyelids ameliorated by a dab or two of powder, the gold-brown tresses He had once sonneted, and nowsneered at, brushed out and beautiful, she took up the double basket owned by Sada Yacco and Abé San, placed it in the boudoir, returned for the canine couple, deposited them inside it, and then, resolutely shutting the door of communication upon their astonished countenances, got into bed, cast one indifferent glance at the twin couch adjoining, shrugged her shoulders, and switched off the light.
“S’n’ff!�
That was Abé San snuffing inquiringly at the bottom of the door. Sada Yacco joined him, and they snuffed together. It was impossible to sleep, especially when they began to discuss the situation in whimpers and short yelps. Then they began to race round the boudoir, barking in whimpers. Then, just as She had made up her mind to buy peace by letting them in, there was a sharp bark from Sada Yacco, a joyous scrape at a distant door, and a rattling of claws as the couple, emancipated from vile durance in the boudoir, joyously galloped down the passage. Then sleep soporifically stole over the senses of a wronged and brutally injured woman. It was not chilly, sloppy December: it was radiant July. She was not in a London flat. She was in a well-known back-water above Goring-on-Thames, cosy in a red-curtained punt, with a Japanese umbrella and two Japanese pugs and a husband, very handsome, almost quite new, madly devoted, not the quite plain, absolutely sulky, unspeakably disagreeable He now conjecturally snoring on the opposite side of the passage. And so She slept and dreamed.
He was not asleep. Propped up in his own beautiful little bed in his own cosy dressing-room, he was smoking a long cigar, and, as a further demonstration of bachelor independence, a brandy and Apollinaris stood untouchedbeside him. By the electric light dangling over his head, where sardonically hung suspended a wooden Cupid—ha, ha!—he was perusing a book. She objected to reading in bed, that was why—ha, ha! again. The thin-paper volume, supposed to be an enlightening work on Oval Billiards, proved, by a tricky freak of Fate, to be an English translation ofThus Spake Zarathustra. This is what he read:
“Calm is the bottom of my sea:Who would divine that it hideth droll monsters?Unmoved is my depth, yet it sparkleth with swimming enigmas and laughters.An imposing One saw I to-day—a solemn One, a penitent of the Spirit....Should he become weary of his imposingness, this imposing one....�
“Calm is the bottom of my sea:Who would divine that it hideth droll monsters?Unmoved is my depth, yet it sparkleth with swimming enigmas and laughters.An imposing One saw I to-day—a solemn One, a penitent of the Spirit....Should he become weary of his imposingness, this imposing one....�
“Calm is the bottom of my sea:
Who would divine that it hideth droll monsters?
Unmoved is my depth, yet it sparkleth with swimming enigmas and laughters.
An imposing One saw I to-day—a solemn One, a penitent of the Spirit....
Should he become weary of his imposingness, this imposing one....�
There came a scratch at the bottom of the door, a snuffling sound, and a sneeze he knew well. What did Abé San straying about draughty passages by night? But it was no business of his. Let the beast’s owner see to it. He read on:
“Gracefulness belongeth to the generosity of the magnanimous.�
Sada Yacco had joined her lord. Together they burrowed, mutually they snuffed. It was not to be borne. He got up and opened the door. Sada Yacco and Abé San rushed in, their tongues lolling, their eyes bulging with curiosity, and, after a brief excursion round the apartment, which they found small, fawned upon him with a sickening devotion. He scowled on the small black-and-white silky handfuls. Then he yielded to the impulse that plucked at his maxillary muscles and grinned. The little brutes were so painfully sorry forhim. They were so clearly under the impression that he was in disgrace.
He got back into bed, and lay there, grinning still, if unwillingly. Sada Yacco, with the forwardness of her sex, scrambled up and sat upon him. Abé San scratched at the coverlet imploringly, until, hoisted upward by the scruff, he, too, gained the desired haven. They had plainly come to stay, so He resigned himself with a sigh, switched off the electric light, and fell asleep before Abé San had turned round the regulation number of times.
Meanwhile She, wakened by the toot of a belated motor-taxi, began to wonder whither the Japanese couple had strayed. Urged and wearied by the unbroken silence, she rose, arrayed herself in her dressing gown, armed herself with a lighted wax taper in a silver candlestick—another wedding present—and began a tour of discovery. The pugs had vanished. Had the maids yielded to their entreaties and taken them in? She listened at two doors; the steady snoring of the sleepers within was unmingled with snort or slumbering whimper of Sada and her mate. Then, returning, she noticed that His dressing-room door was open.
Taper in hand, She went in. He was sound asleep, Sada Yacco sweetly slumbering on the surface covered by daylight with a waistcoat, Abé San curled up, a floss-silk ball, on the pillow by his ear. If he had seen her eyes as she bent over him, shading the light, he would have regained his old opinion of them in the twinkling of the tear She dropped upon His cheek.
Don’t say there are no such things as guardian angels. His woke him up just as She kissed him—the kiss was so light it would not have wakened him by itself.